Frequent Miler on the Air - Sweet-Spots Return Home and Uncle Sam Stops By | Ep87 | 2-27-21

Episode Date: February 27, 2021

00:37 Giant Mailbag: Google Fi limited to 30 days abroad 4:01 What crazy thing....did the IRS do? https://frequentmiler.com/judge-rules-some-credit-card-rewards-earning-activity-is-taxable/ 18:21 Mattress running the numbers: Hyatt Bonus Journeys Q2 https://frequentmiler.com/new-world-of-hyatt-promo-2k-points-every-2-nights-2-5k-for-cardholders-with-q2-bonus-journeys/ 32:00 Main Event: Sweet-spot awards come home https://frequentmiler.com/my-top-dream-uses-for-110k-brex-points/ https://frequentmiler.com/emirates-sweet-spot-awards-first-class-from-30k-round-trip/ 55:28 Post Roast (Nick Roasts Greg about Brex) https://frequentmiler.com/brex-bonus-110k-transferable-points-without-a-credit-inquiry/ 1:01:48 Post Roast (Greg roasts Nick about Marriott and Hyatt posts with duplicated content) https://frequentmiler.com/combining-marriott-awards-certificates-and-paid-nights-for-a-single-booking/ https://frequentmiler.com/mix-free-night-certs-points-paid-nights-with-hyatt-pay-my-way/ 1:07:23 Question of the Week: Will getting a Chase card I had before cause the bank to cancel all my credit cards? Join our email list and follow us on social media. Go to https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event sweet spot awards come home but don't worry don't worry i know what you really want to hear about is the irs taxing manufactured spend what does that mean to you to me to everybody else will get into that, but not in the main event segment. Okay, so it's coming somewhere else. You have to wonder where could that possibly be. Right, unless you read the liner notes, you have no idea. Not a clue. All right, first, the giant mailbag.

Dig in. Dig right in. What are the people saying this week? What came in the mailbag? For video watchers, show the back of the giant mailbag. It has a nice little mail icon on the back that's legit very nice i like it really dig my giant mailbag okay our giant mail from today is it's literally giant mail because i record these without my glasses on and and uh so i print in like you know 25 point font or something anyway so it really is giant when we talk about the giant mail really it should be the giant mail that's right that

actually works really well considering that the mailbag isn't really that all that giant right right exactly but it's giant mail every time yeah Yeah. Okay, this came to us on YouTube in reaction to one of our segments a week or two ago where we talked about traveling abroad for an extended period of time and whether to use Google Fi or something else. And we talked about some pitfalls of Google Fi. And we had a couple good

pieces of feedback from people about that. And I just chose one of them to read here. This is from Lindsay Jensen. She says, I lived abroad for 12 months and all of us ultimately ended up getting threatening letters slash data shutoffs by Google. I love Fi, but long-term abroad, it's not a good idea. I believe technically they only allow you to be abroad for 30 days. They really started cracking down all at once in 2019, so not sure what the current policy is, but anything over 30 consecutive days abroad is risky. Coming back to the States for short periods won't reset it once you hit the 30 days. Nick gives a good recommendation to get a local SIM card and only pop in your FI SIM card occasionally if needed. It's likely to be

even cheaper than FI anyhow. You can use WhatsApp and Zoom to keep in touch with people back home. So she had a bit more there, but I thought that was good for today's segment. I thought that was some good advice and good sort of uh to tie things up from our conversation that we kind of left yeah excellent intel on that that's really interesting and interesting that coming back to the u.s doesn't reset things so like is it 30 days per year or 30 days per six months or are you just on the naughty list from then on yeah i don I don't know. Who knows? But, but the key is if you're going to go abroad for months,

apparently Google fly is not the right pick for you. And, and that's, that's unfortunate, but, but good advice. Good to know that now, you know, I've done some extended travel before, but I don't think trying to think back, I don't think any of my trips that have been like months at a time, I don't think I've ever used a single carrier. I've always gotten local SIM cards and I've taken trips that are a few weeks using T-Mobile or using Google Fi, but that's very interesting to know that after a month, you're probably better off getting something local. Right. Right. Yeah. No, I, I found that really interesting too. Um,

so yeah, so we'll see, uh, if I do end up spending more than 30 days abroad next year, uh, then I'll, then I'll do something like that. So we'll see. Good. Very good. All right. So then that brings us to what crazy thing did? Did the IRS do? It's not really the IRS, but what happened was. Who's crazy? I mean, was it the IRS crazy? Were the cardholders crazy? I mean, is it just a crazy story? It was the judge. Who knows? Who knows where the craziness is? There's some craziness. I think we can all agree there's some craziness here.

There's craziness and there's mystery. Like i think we can all agree there's some craziness here there's craziness and there's and there's mystery like where did the irs find out about this so all right so the story is and a lot of people already heard this but but anyway here you get to hear our take on it uh you're excited about that that's why you're here so that's right the story is there's this couple that uh number of years ago manufactured spend like crazy and they spent like millions of dollars. And the IRS decided to charge them as if that was income, as if the rewards that they redeemed from that spend was income. And specifically, this was from a Amex blue cash, what we refer to as the old blue cash that earned 5% at grocery stores and drugstores. And it used to not be capped at $50,000 spend a year. So this was back then they were earning 5% and they suddenly got hit by a tax bill. So they sued to say, no, it wasn't income.

We don't need to, we shouldn't have to pay this. So do you want to talk about the outcome? Well, so I think it's important to note that like Greg said, they spent millions. So the first year, I don't know, it was a couple million. Maybe the second year was five million they spent. So we're talking about, I think the IRS sent them a bill for tax owed on like 300 and something thousand dollars worth of rewards. So they redeemed more than 300 grand in rewards. The IRS is saying we want our chunk. And they said, no, it's not your chunk because it's already been determined that rebates for spend are not taxable. So that's been the precedent anyway. Now, I should note right now, right here, we are not tax professionals. We are not lawyers. So don't take this as tax advice or legal advice. This is just our opinion, guys. All right. So when we look at this, we say, all right, typically the way it's been, the longstanding thing has been that rewards earned on spend are treated like a rebate.

Just like if you buy a camera and you mail in for the rebate, you don't get taxed on that as income. It's a rebate to encourage you to spend money. So that's the argument, essentially, I think the couple was making that this was a rebate and shouldn't be taxable. And so it went to court and the judge ruled in a very interesting way. He ruled that some of what they earned was taxable and some of it wasn't. So essentially what it seems the consensus is from the judge's opinion, that the judge determined that the money they had spent on gift cards, like Visa gift cards, rather the rewards earned when purchasing Visa gift cards

were not taxable because they were buying a product. They were getting a rebate for buying a product. So even though they turned around and used those Visa gift cards to buy money orders or pay bills, it was still the thing that generated the rewards was buying a product. And so the judge said, so that is not taxable. However, at the time, they were also doing something where they were, in some cases, buying a money order directly with the credit card. We're not talking about buying a money order with the Visa gift card. They were able to use their Amex credit card to buy a money order directly. And they also did some bill payments like that,

where they paid a bill with their credit card directly. And interestingly, the judge found that the rewards earned on that spend were taxable because the judge said, I believe anyway, that's my understanding, that they weren't purchasing a product or service per se in those cases. They were basically purchasing money. And so the rewards they were earning there was income because it was, you know, like a direct to money sort of a path. There was no product. They were buying.

Yeah, it seemed to be something like that. And just, I thought the second thing was not money orders, but it was, I mean, so it was not bill pay, but it was reloading reloadable cards. Oh, right. With their credit cards. Yes, maybe you're right. So I don't know which cards they're talking about, but you used to be able to do like

Target Red Card that way with credit cards. And there were some other things that came and went over the years where you could use credit cards. It's worth stating that the ability to buy money orders with a credit card is not something that has ever been that widespread, at least in my memory. The ability to do it and certainly not something you're likely to encounter. And the ability to reload reloadable gift cards

with a credit card is also something that's not common anymore. It used to be pretty common. Right, right. And so these are things, I mean, again, you got to take into consideration, this was spend that occurred seven or eight years ago. It was quite a long time ago. And obviously the game has changed in the last six months, in the last year, in the last two years, and certainly in the last six or seven years, a lot of things have changed that aren't available anymore. But it's interesting nonetheless to see the decision. And of course, you know, we'll see long term what holds up here out of it, whether something gets appealed. But for now, anyway, it seems that the opinion was that the rebate on buying a product that was not taxable, the rebate on buying money, essentially,

like converting the credit card limit directly to cash of some sort of cash equivalent. The rebate there could be considered taxable. What do you think? Is this going to have implications moving forward? I mean, are we going to start getting 1099s from Amex when they think we've been buying something that we should be taxed on? Are they just going to cover their butts, so to speak, and give us a 1099 for everything we've earned? Oh, wow. That would be horrible if they did that. I certainly hope they don't do that. But the thing I fear that could happen and wouldn't be terribly surprising to me would be the IRS can shoot. The reason the judge ruled that way is because there was precedent about how the IRS in the past has not taxed rebates from credit card rewards.

And if the IRS could change your mind, basically, you know, someone could change a rule and just say, let's make this clear and define the situations where it's taxable and where it's not. So I wouldn't, while it seems like it's totally safe today to buy Visa or MasterCard gift cards and that you shouldn't get taxed on the rewards earned from doing that, I wouldn't say that this necessarily makes me feel better about the future because I think what it's done is pointed out to the IRS, something that they could change if they're motivated to do it. Right. And if they look at, you know, one couple that perhaps was an extreme outlier here, but look at how much they did and how much there was there, I'm sure they can do the math on how many people out there have credit cards and how much they are potentially not taxing. So that's, you know, that, that, that was definitely shaky.

And another thing that a couple of people brought up, I think in the comments was, I wonder how this will affect paying things like taxes and mortgage through bill payment services like plastic, for instance. And that's a great question. I have no idea. I mean, the, the, cause that could conceivably, I can see where somebody might interpret the decision to be that rewards on that type of spend are taxable. I mean, you know, it seems like it would be what a headache. I mean, what a headache. I can't see that because I can't see that because, um, so plastic is just the middleman, uh, you know, because the, the, the organizations

we're trying to pay don't accept a credit card directly. And if they did accept a credit card directly, there would be no question, right? That this is your normal kind of credit card spend. We wouldn't expect to be taxed on the rewards. I don't see that changing. Um, so I also wouldn't see it changing when going through a bill payment service because, again, you're just paying somebody

for some good or service and that should be considered a rebate. They were paying somebody for a money order so that they could pay a bill from someone who didn't take a credit card. Right. I mean, wasn't that essentially what the couple was doing when they were buying money orders? They were buying a money order that could have been used to pay a bill for somebody that didn't take a credit card. You could say that. I mean, the judge clearly didn't see it that way.

The judge saw it as buying or not buying something, but basically converting it to money, I think is what. Well, right. I mean, who knows? I guess we're trying to put words in the judge's mouth here. But I'm saying if they had made the argument that they were paying bills with those money orders, would that have made a difference, you think, in the outcome of the case if their argument had been that we were using those to pay bills? You know, it seems reasonable to me that if they had a case to be made that they were doing that, obviously they weren't other than unless you count their credit card bill as the bill they were paying. But yeah, I mean, I think then that would totally make sense that they're buying a product. So if someone they're paying doesn't take credit cards,

but does take money orders. I don't see why that would not be legitimate in my totally inexpert opinion. Right. I mean, yeah, it's, it's an interesting area for debate and what a can of worms it could open in terms of getting that figured out. And it does make me at least a little bit nervous in the sense that, you know, we look at the fact that referrals now generate 1099s. And that was something really new a year or two ago that all the banks started sending 1099s for referrals, if you refer to other people for credit cards and things like that. And that was not something we had seen before. And something that I think is probably somewhat debatable in terms of whether

or not that should be considered income. You know, I think is probably somewhat debatable in terms of whether or not that should be considered income. You know, I think that people have made various arguments about how do you value those points? Because, you know, like, for example, membership rewards points, they belong to Amex, right? I mean, if they decide to close your account, they can forfeit them all. They're not really numbers, they're not really cash. So it's such a murky area, but something that I think the banks did because they seem to think that that was the best way to cover themselves in terms of making sure

that they weren't running afoul of any rules. And so that's the part that makes me nervous here that it's like, you know, I don't even necessarily know that Amex really thinks that that should be taxable as much as it's not worth it to them to fight that out. Exactly.

I'm sure that's the case. In 1099, you know? Right. Right. And the only reason that that's not happening, I think with signup bonuses is that all signup bonuses require some spend, even if it's just first purchase or spend something. And so you could still make the argument that it's a rebate for spend, even if it's sort of ludicrously big rebate for that spend. Right. It's still a rebate, you know. Yeah.

And it's hard to make that argument for a referral. For sure. For sure. I don't mean to complain about it, just that I think that obviously the banks didn't consider that income until just a couple of years ago. And they all seem to confer on that decision at the same time, which leads me to believe that that was because of some pressure where they thought, you know what? Easier to just send the 1099s.

I hope that's not what happens. I don't think that's going to happen for all credit card spend, but I just wonder where this is going to go. Right. No, I totally agree with you. You know, I saw, I saw a view from the wing posted just yesterday. I think that the, what's the bank, BASC bank that does the American Airlines miles,

that you earn a mile, I think, per dollar saved, something like that, instead of interest. It's up to them. It's for some number of dollars. It's not a dollar per dollar saved. Right, right. Now, obviously, now that I think about it, it wouldn't be that much.

But they only valued, for the purpose of those 1099s, they only valued them at something like 0.42 of a point, which is less than we normally value them at. But for some of them, I would argue the cash equivalent ought to be less than that. Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. I mean, you can't redeem an Amex point for one cent of cash unless you have the Schwab Platinum card. So for the vast majority of people that don't have that specific card,

they can't get a full penny in cash, in dollars and cents. So I can definitely see somebody wanting to make the argument about that, though I can't see anybody probably having enough skin in the game, so to speak, to actually fight that one out with the IRS. And again, that's the part that makes me nervous. Well, I mean, theoretically, you can assert whatever you want when filing your taxes.

And, you know, the only issue there is maybe you'd have more chance of getting audited or have more problems during an audit, I guess. But yeah, if it was something, you know, if I had like millions of dollars equivalent of rewards so that the tax impact was really significant, I think it would be worth doing that. But normally, like the amount of points you get through referrals and stuff that is taxable isn't enough to cry about. Right, exactly. I agree. I agree. Well, hopefully there won't be enough to cry about for any of us in terms of future tax bills for rewards earned on spend.

That's right. That's right. We don't want to see that. Hopefully none of us will be crying about that anytime soon. Right, right. Rather not cry. Don't make me cry, Amex.

Don't make me cry, Chase. All right. All right. Now that's out of the way, we got to move on to Mattress Running the Numbers because this week Hyatt came out with a brand new promotion called, ready? Wait for it.

Wait for it. Drum roll. It's called Bonus Journeys. Bonus Journeys. Who would have guessed? Who would have guessed? For those who have been paying attention, their last Bonus Journeys promotion was the one that we've talked about

a million times. It was, you get double elite nights and you get triple or quadruple points for your stay. Um, both of those were combined into the bonus journeys promotion. And now, um,

they're reusing that name, which to be fair, they've been using for years and years and years, but, uh, they have a new promo out. It's kind of tough. It's kind of tough to like come up with a new promo that isn't anything like the like historic best, you know,

one of the best hotel promotions we've seen in years and years that everybody's been super excited about and talking about and people heard about it late and they're like, Oh my goodness, can I still get registered for that? And, and over and over again, I've answered, no, you can't get registered. No, they're not going to extend it. No, no no no no and then now they're going to call the new thing right right so because that won't confuse anybody they absolutely should have retired the name they should you know if they might drop because they didn't have the forethought to

just come up with a new name for that great promotion so just retire the name but it's too late now even to do that right so anyway we're stuck with another bonus journeys which is doing this promo harm because it looks terrible only compared to the old one right right otherwise right yeah i mean most of the time we'd be like oh that's that's a pretty good promo right that's not bad i'm to throw some stays toward Hyatt. Probably this promotion would be fairly popular if it didn't just follow bonus journeys, which I mean, you know, what

was Hyatt going to do? They weren't going to heat it up and make it even better, right? I mean, how much better could they have made it? It wasn't going to make it any better. And of course, during a time when people are generally expected to probably be traveling a little bit more, they don't really have a reason to make it better, but they made a pretty darn

good promotion here. It just doesn't look up to healing. Do you think we should tell people what it is? We should. What is this promo all about? How do you get points? 2,000 points for every two nights you spend, every two qualifying nights, so you

can book those nights as award stays or paid stays or whatever. You get 2,000 points for every two nights you spend, every two qualifying nights. So you can book those nights as award stays or paid stays or whatever. You get 2,000 points for every two nights during the promo period. Plus, after your first 10 nights, I'm sorry, let me back up. If you're a World of Hyatt credit card holder, you'll actually get 2,500 points.

So you get an extra 500 points for being a credit card holder after every two stays. And then after your first 10 qualifying stays during the promo period, you get a free category one to four night. Now that category one to four free night certificate is only valid for 180 days from the day you earn it. So once you hit your 10th elite night, you're going to have a certificate that's valid for six months, but free night certificate category one to four valid all the way up to a place to be what 15 K per night, right? Yeah, no, no i mean those certificates are pretty nice um unfortunately it has the same like six month um expiration that they tend to have for these promo free night awards but still uh

it's it's it's it's night i mean there are very nice hyatts at that category three and four so it's not like you're you're getting you know a side of the highway, you know, dump or anything. You can get some really nice results. At least you don't have to. I mean, you can if you want, but you don't have to. So, yeah, once you've done 10 nights, you're going to have 10,000 bonus points plus whatever points you've earned

from spending the actual nights that you stayed plus a category one to four certificate valid for up to 15k i mean that's a darn good rebate for 10 nights yeah yeah and and in fact um if you compare it so the the previous promo the bonus there were actually two overlapping promos right there was bonus journeys and this other thing that didn't really have a name where you got either 15% of your points back for awards days or 25% back if you had the Hyatt card. And, you know, I was, I was working out that for the cheapest days, so for the cheapest, like awards days, 5000 points per night,

this promo is pretty similar. If you have the credit card, you're getting basically the same kind of rebate you would have gotten before. If you don't, you're actually getting a tiny bit more, but only for the very cheapest, you know, awards day. But then you look at triple points. So normally you get five points per dollar and, uh, I'm not going to try to do the math here or as right as we're talking, but, but I was figuring out that, that, you know, a cheap stay, meaning like less than a hundred dollars was getting a similar kind of triple points or better depending on how cheap it got. And so, so from that point of view, cheap stays are almost as good in this new promo as they were before.

With one exception, you don't get double elite nights. Right, right, right. And it's that, that's the bummer, so to speak, except nobody expected double elite nights to come back right away. If they wanted to extend it, they would have extended registration beyond January 15th. So I mean, I think that anybody who was expecting to see double elite nights as the next promotion was just overly enthusiastic on that and probably

unrealistic. So, so yeah, I mean, in terms of earning for paid stays, it's about as good as the previous promotion for cheap stays, which a lot of stays in the United States right now are fairly cheap stays. Obviously not all of them, but there are plenty of cheap places to stay.

So I wasn't even counting the free night you get. So, and, and then of course, depending on where you are with your elite status, you might be close to earning your next milestone reward. And so if, so spending 10 nights means that you're going to get to the next level get some new benefit which could be an extremely good benefit or somewhere so so um so is it is it mattress run worthy i mean i wrote about that in the post this week that you'll find the link to in the show notes so i wrote about that i wrote about is it mattress run worthy for somebody who is already at 30 elite nights with Hyatt or

40 elite nights or 50 elite nights? And then when I got thinking about it afterwards, I was like, oh, well, it's also interesting for somebody who's at 20 elite nights now. And in the end, I kind of determined that if you're at 20, 40 or 50 nights, it's probably worth mattress running a category one, even if you don't intend to stay. That was my conclusion. What do you think, Greg? Is this? Well, first, so I get where you're at with at 40 or 50 nights, because if you're at 40 nights, spending 10 more nights gets you those sweet upgrade awards at 50 nights, 10 more

nights gets you a few things, right? You get two more suite upgrade awards. You get a free category one to six or one to seven, sorry, a free night and you get the, my, my high concierge, right? So you're getting quite a lot. If you have 40 or 50, if you have 50 right now, then yeah, I mean, 10 nights you're, you're scoring big, right? Cause you're going to get a category one to seven cert, a category one to four cert from this promotion, 10,000 points from this promotion, the concierge, and two more suite upgrades.

I mean, hello, that's worth what it's going to cost. Yeah. So here's the thing. So are you going to be using your Hyatt status this year before before the end of the year like so are you gonna are you gonna spend 10 nights in regular stays let's say you have you got to 50 nights let's say you have two five night stays that you're thinking of doing towards the end of the year or whenever uh and you want to use those two suite upgrade awards that you got. If that's it, if that's the extent of your plans for this year,

I don't see any point in mattress running to get to 60 because you're going to get to 60 naturally. I mean, that's probably a good point. If you're very confident that you're going to make those stays, then I guess you're right. Then it wouldn't make sense necessarily. Although, you're still going to pick up the extra category one to four, certainly extra 10,000 points. Now, is it worth spending 50,000 points to get a category one to four and 10,000 points?

No, it's probably not worth it just for those two things. If you may also use those two additional suite upgrades. I mean, I don't know. So I guess you're right. If you think you're going to spend 10 more nights this year, then it's not necessarily worth a mattress run. If you're not sure whether you're going to spend those 10 nights or you're not planning to spend 10 nights, then I think it's mattress run worthy. I'm interested in why you said at 20 nights, you think it's mattress run worthy. What's your

thinking? Well, again, we're assuming here that you're not planning natural nights for the rest of the year. So that's my assumption to start with. You're not sure you're going to stay any other nights. So you say that 10 nights from 20 to 30. And when you hit 30, you're going to get a Category 1 to 4 free night certificate as a milestone benefit. Then you'll get a Category 1 to 4 for completing those 10 nights. And you'll get 10,000 points for completing those 10 nights. And you'll get high global status. Yes. Like icing on the cake. I mean, again, that alone is worth it. Right. I mean, 10, you're talking about 10 nights. If you're able to book it

as an award, say at a category one, that's 50,000 points. And I'm using that number. If you've got a really cheap Hyatt area, that's like40 or $50 a night, then it's potentially even better. You might be able to spend $400, $500, $600. I'd rather do that than spend 50,000 points probably and get all of those things. You're talking about again, 10,000 points, two

free nights, plus the points for the paid, if you're doing a paid rate, plus the points you would normally earn on the paid rate, plus a couple of Category 1 tos and globalist status until 2023 i mean right right mattress run so do it if you're at 29 so what about so people that missed out on the great bonus journeys and now are left looking at the good bonus journeys and and thinking about mattress running and elite status and all that, people in the know are still interested and excited that this year only you can get to globalist status sets or top tier status for 30 nights instead of 60 nights.

So should you knock out 10 of those nights now during this promotion as a mattress run to get you that much closer? Maybe. No would be my initial reaction. At first, I was like, no, it's not worth it. You're not going to really get anything for 10 nights. But then on the flip side, I say, well, I mean, it is a really abbreviated path this year. If you can get the world a higher credit card, that's five nights. You mattress run 10 nights right now. You're at 15. You're halfway there. And you can cross your fingers and hope the double elite nights come back later in the year. If you can get the world, the highest credit card, that's five nights. You mattress run 10 nights right now. You're at 15, you're halfway there and you can cross your fingers and hope the double elite nights come back later in the year. And you know, if they don't, then you may have to stay 15 actual nights, but you'll at least have earned

a decent return on these 10 nights. If so, if you think you're going to, you know, if you're like, okay, by hook or by crook, I am definitely going to do it. I'm going to get those 30 nights. Cause now I really want globalist status. I, I missed the boat before, but I'm definitely going to do 30 nights this year in order to hit it. Then yeah, I guess you might as well spend 10 nights right now and maximize the return. Cause you normally wouldn't get this much return on 10 nights. So then yes, but, but if you're not committed to making up the rest of those nights, even if there's not a good promo later in the year, then I think it becomes kind of questionable, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn't do it if, if you're not sure you're going to be getting value from it. And the only way to

get value from doing it is that you're going to actually get to that 30 nights because at 20 nights, it's, it's not worth it. 20 nights gets you not much. Not much, no. But let's say you got 10 nights planned later in the year, like Greg said, if you can do 10 now and get a decent return on it, then maybe it'll be worth kind of trying to stretch out those other 10 nights you need to get to global status. So there's some scenarios where I can envision it. But generally speaking, I think the people that really need to think about mattress running this are the people who are at 20 nights, the people who are at 50 nights. I think even at 40 nights, it's worth it because if you're at 40 nights right now, you can pick up 10 nights, get a Category 1 to 4 cert, and those two suite upgrades at 50 nights, right?

I mean, those two suite upgrades can easily be worth spending 50,000 points for 10 nights at a Category 1. Sure. Yeah. So it just depends on how you use them, but it can be worth it. All right. So, so this, this one's a little hard for, you know, for me to say, you know, a single thumbs up or thumbs down. I mean, I'd say like thumbs up for the promo. Um, but if I was, you know, I can't really say blanket, like this is a mattress run for everyone. I mean, it's very rare that we can.

So let's just give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down for the promo in general, rather than a mattress run. Two thumbs up. All right. There's some mattress run ability. I think that's worth a thumb. Because a lot of promos that we talk about, we're like, no, no, you wouldn't mattress run. Get out of here.

You're crazy to mattress run. And this is one where I definitely wouldn't tell somebody they're crazy to mattress run unless they're going from like 15 nights to 25 or something. There are scenarios where it might work. There's plenty of scenarios where it makes sense. And then there are scenarios where it doesn't. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So that was mattress running the numbers. So we, we, we got to get into this main event here, Greg, because the people are waiting. They're chomping at the bit. They're like, what are we talking about?

I don't remember what I said. What is this all about? Home sweet home. Sweet spot awards. Come home. What is this all about? All right. The genesis of this topic came from, I did a post about Brex.

So Brex is that corporate no-fee card thing that's sort of like a checking account and sort of like a credit card, but not really either of them. And where there's 110,000 points signup bonus, but you have to have like an LLC or different kinds of like real corporations in order to get that those points. So I wrote a post about like sort of my dream ways of using these. And I picked out like four like first class trips around the world that I'd love to, I don't mean literally around the world, I mean to different places around the world that I'd love to do by this was that in three out of four cases, I was using the, I was going to fly, the dream thing was to fly the same airline as the miles being used. So for example, I would transfer my Brex points to Cathay Pacific, and then fly Cathay Pacific. And this was startling to me.

Imagine that. But what's hilarious about this, I think, is people who are new to this hobby, that would be your default assumption, right? You wouldn't even think, why would that be surprising at all? And the reason is that, and we've talked about this on the show that in general, the best award prices are usually to use miles from a different program than the airline you're flying. That's been like so drilled in my head from so many experiences over so many years that I've just started taking it for granted. But then I thought about this Brex thing, three out of four. And then I started looking at other things that we've talked about recently.

So like American Airlines has their web special awards for flying American. And sometimes those are fantastic values. Delta, if you look at the post I did recently on Delta's sweet spot awards, the best Spot Awards, some of the best, anyway, involve when they do their flash sails to fly Delta. What's the best way to use United miles? The excursionist perk when flying United. Not when flying Delta, that would be. I don't think they would like that. That would make no sense at all. Nobody would like that.

So, all right. I'm just going to quickly, you know, go down. So, and this isn't like I did a lot of study. I just quickly went down a list of airlines programs and I was like, Air France, their promo awards. That's when they do these like monthly discount awards for flying Air France. ANA has some great values flying ANA. Emirates. Nick just wrote a great post about how you could use relatively small numbers of Emirates miles to fly.

Guess what? Emirates. I'm sensing a pattern here, Craig. And then, of course, as I mentioned before, in the Brex post, I talked about Cathay Pacific. I talked about Singapore, how you have to use their miles if you want to fly Singapore suites. And often those airline programs release more seats to their own members. Yes, they do. That's something that we've seen from a number of foreign programs, certainly Cathay and also Singapore and then EVA, I think I've heard that they release more seats to their own members than they do to partners.

So, you know, ANA may do the same. I'm not sure. But so there's a number of situations there where it will increase your odds of getting the booking, too. Right. Right. So so that's the genesis of this this show that that the most obvious thing in the world is surprising the heck out of us. Yeah, I mean, it really is, because for a long time, you look at, for example, American Airlines and we talked about their web specials now. But for years and years, it was twelve thousand five hundred miles to fly a domestic economy saver award on American Airlines. Didn't matter if you're flying New York to Boston, New York to LA, wherever within the continental US, it was going to be 12.5 was your saver level. And so, you know, we'd often talk about things like using British Airways Avios on those really short haul trips, like the New York to Boston's of the world, because it was very few Avios to fly that much, many fewer Avios than American Airlines would charge you. Iberia presented good opportunities

and Qantas in different situations for connecting itineraries. So the best way to fly American with miles was typically to use one of those other airlines' miles. And that's what Craig's saying at the beginning, that that has been the assumption that we've had for a very long time. And this really is interesting to me

because those things still exist. And so there are still situations where it obviously would make sense to use a partner's miles. United comes to mind immediately because you mentioned the best use of United miles is probably the excursionist perk, but that's not necessarily the best way to fly a United Airlines flight. It's just the best use of the United miles themselves, which is interesting because, you know, as most regular readers will know know Turkish miles and smiles is going to be the

cheapest way to book a, generally speaking, to book a United flight, or in some cases, maybe Avianca life miles be the cheapest way to book a United flight or ANA in some cases. Yeah, that's right. That's true. So it's not going to be United miles that are going to be your cheapest option for booking a United flight, but you don't have that situation nowadays where it's like, okay, United miles are the best option for flying somebody other than United. It's not typically like your best use of those United miles is to maximize the excursionist

perk. Now, in fairness with United's case, using that excursionist perk will probably involve flying on a partner airline. You'll have to fly on probably on United's case, using that excursionist perk will probably involve flying on a partner airline. You'll have to fly on probably on United in order to set that that excursionist perk. That's true. That's true. In their case, in their case, it's not it's not required to fly United. So I kind of miss. Yeah, that shouldn't have been in our in my list. It's a stretch. But by the other situations you're talking about here are clearly true. If you want to fly Emirates first class to Europe, the best way to do it is with Emirates miles. And when I got thinking about that, when I wrote that post, I realized, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think that there is a cheaper way to fly first class between the United States and Europe than Emirates, is there? I don't. Yeah.

Okay. Let me take that back. Life miles obviously has mixed cabin pricing. So maybe if you have a really long economy class flight, maybe you could trick it into becoming a little bit less, but 67,500 miles each way for first class. That's awfully hard. It is really hard to beat um i think there might be situations with some with some um like is it jal that that has like a really great or

maybe they changed their award but but the problem was in that case so jal was like it's like a partner with british airways if you're a fly Europe, that would be the partner that you're most likely to find awards based on. And then you're going to be charged these huge fuel surcharges. But it's also really hard to get their miles. So some cases like that where maybe it's cheaper, I don't remember, aren't really relevant. What's more relevant is like of the points that we can actually get. And Emirates is one of those that is available from every transferable points currency.

So it's so easy to get their miles. The only one, you almost don't want to say it's available from Capital One because they have the two to one transfer ratio instead of the two to 1.5 that, that some of the other airlines do. So it's, so it's possible, but not advisable transfer from capital one. But yeah, I mean,

and it's interesting because you've done posts before about the best uses of Emirates miles. And I guess the key point here is that in situations like that, the best use of Emirates miles is going to be flying Emirates, which is just so counterintuitive. Whereas, you know, we've been conditioned to think, well, the best use of Turkish miles is not to fly Turkish. The best use of Turkish miles is to fly United. If you want to fly in Turkish, they have fuel surcharges. So you probably want to use airplane miles or something else. And there's situations where you might use the Turkish miles flying Turkish. But generally speaking, most cases, one airline's miles are best used for

flights on another. At least that's the way it's been. But again, you pointed out lots of good situations, American, those web specials, a lot of those flights are cheaper through American than they would be on obvious if they were even available. And I think sometimes in the case of the web specials, those web specials aren't necessarily available as partner awards. Yeah. In fact, I don't think there's any correlation between the web special pricing and partner award availability. So it's kind of confusing if you're trying to use another program's miles, because unlike United, where United actually shows on the results page which flights are saver, I don't

think American does that. So you have to kind of... Right, right. You have to kind of look at another one world tool. I usually use British Airways because I'm lazy, but when I really want to know, Qantas. Qantas is usually more accurate anyway than any of the other one world tools in my experience, I think. But I'm going to make a little bit of an argument here because you gave a bunch of examples where it is good to use an individual's airline miles to fly on that airline.

So for example, use Cathay Pacific and good use of Cathay Pacific miles is flying on Cathay Pacific. However, it's not the best way to fly on Cathay Pacific. Best way to fly Cathay Pacific business class is going to be with Alaska miles because it'd be 50,000 miles in business class to basically all of Asia or 70,000

if you want to fly first class to South Africa and stop over in Hong Kong. So you're not going to get the best deal for a Cathay Pacific flight from Asia miles. You get better availability. Singapore, I would say, I would argue that the best use of Singapore miles for a lot of North American flyers

isn't flying Singapore. It's flying United to Hawaii, right? Oh, I thought I was going to say flying Alaska Airlines to Hawaii. And I think there's a couple other options there. Now that's just economy, I think. But yeah. Yeah. Both of those are decent value. Yeah. So there are some other good values there. So there are still very good uses for some of those airlines miles for flying other airlines. It's just surprising to also see that in some cases they're going to be your best option for flying that specific airline. Cause it might be your only option,

but they're not always going to be the best. So it's a little bit debatable, but it is interesting. Cause I, you know, I never would have thought that I need to have Delta miles to fly Delta. That was just never even on my radar. I was going to fly Delta. There's no universe where I would have thought that having Delta miles was my best option. The only times I've booked Delta flights, I think, I'm trying to think of it. I think I've only ever booked them through Virgin Atlantic and I've probably looked through Air France before.

Maybe I booked a Delta flight through Air France before. Never booked a Delta flight with Delta Mile. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. But now lots and lots of people are. I mean, we wrote about a sale this past week. It was what?

5,000 points each way to Hawaii from Seattle. 10,000 points for a trip to Hawaii. Yeah. I mean, it's suddenly, you know, it used to be that when people talked about transferring membership rewards to Delta, um, we'd be like, no, no, don't do that. But because there were almost always better options. Um, now at least there are some times where that probably is the best option. So, right. So, so, I mean, doesn't

this make sense though? I mean, it doesn't make sense that the airline would want you to use your miles to fly on that airline? I mean, isn't it in their best interest to make it that way so that they're giving you their, you know, spoiling inventory that nobody's buying anyway? Yeah, unclear. That sounds reasonable, but it's unclear to me when I've read about, like, how these airlines do these partner awards. And, you know, in general, it seems like they're paying very little to the partner airline. So, you know, when you use American Airlines miles to fly a partner airline, American Airlines pays them something, but not a lot. And so I would think that it would be an

American Airlines interest to encourage those awards because they don't have to actually service you for that flight, right? Right. They have to provide the money, but not any additional service. They don't have to worry about cancellations and dealing with all the stuff that goes on. That's an interesting argument. And I would argue American's another good example where there are, I think the best uses of American miles have nothing to do with flying American Airlines. It's just that in some situations for the first time, like, you know, now I say for the first time, really, it's been an ongoing trend that we're just kind of thinking about. It's been an ongoing trend for the last year or two. But in some cases, they're going to be your best bet for Flying American, which they never used to be. Right. Emirates is really the sort of poster program for my argument, really, because,

because, yes, I had written a couple posts about like alternate uses of Emirates miles, but the best of those have all disappeared. So all their partner awards now have changed to to uh distance-based and not very you know good distance-based award chart uh you're not going to get good value through through their partners anymore and so uh yeah i think there are some european football matches that maybe uh you could use them to get into that might be good value. But aside from that, I think it's really flying Emirates. And fortunately, because they stopped doing those crazy, crazy fuel surcharges that they used to do, it's actually a reasonably good deal and sometimes a great deal. Do you think that'll become a trend? I mean, you basically just argued a minute ago why airlines

should want you to use their miles for someone else's airline. But do you think, I mean, when we're looking at this right now, we're saying that this is kind of happening, is that going to become the trend? Are people going to follow the Emirates example, so to speak? Are airline programs going to do that? Where the only thing that really makes sense is redeeming your miles with them? Well, you know, despite what I said, the evidence goes the other way to what you're saying, right? Because we saw Delta recently devalued most of their partner awards,

meaning they made them much more expensive. And United typically does what Delta does. Yeah, and Virgin Atlantic drastically increased the price to fly Delta, except for they luckily rolled back the prices for flying across the Atlantic Ocean. But in other instances, yeah, an overnight devaluation, no notice. I was really disappointed with Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic customer service has always been no notice i was really disappointed with virgin atlantic virgin atlantic customer service has always been excellent i was really surprised that they did that with no notice

overnight middle point of the pandemic that was pretty garbage it really was so so what we're saying is not so much programs getting better or cheaper with flying their own programs, except in these cases are like specials, web specials, Delta flash sales, but as much as them raising the price of flying partners. So those sweet spots that used to be there, I mean, United used to have a tremendous number of sweet spot awards for flying others, but those all went away, I don't know,

four or five years ago, I think. So, yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like the evidence is totally against what I said, right? It seems like the programs are systematically going through and taking away the incentive to use them for partners. Some programs for sure are, but now I'll make the argument the other way and say, well, not the argument. I'll ask you,

do you think that that is more likely to be a US-based thing? And the reason I say that is, I look at it and I say, okay, so what are the airlines out there where the currency is, the best use of their currency is clearly not booking their own flights.

And so I think of Avianca Life Miles. The best uses of Avianca Life Miles have nothing to do with Avianca. And they may not even be bad for flying Avianca, to be honest with you. I don't really think about it very much because there's so many other uses that are ridiculously good uses of Life Miles.

Same thing with Turkish Miles and Smiles. By far, the best uses of Turkish Miles and Smiles have nothing to do with Turkish Airlines. So, I mean, are those two programs just going to be the outliers? Do you think that it's more likely that, I mean, are they going to change? Are we going to see something more like the U.S.-based programs? Or do you see the value continuing in those? many programs they partner with as transfer partners and sort of say, this tells me something about that program, that they're basically looking at their program as a revenue center.

They're selling their miles to whoever wants them. And so I think especially in the LifeMiles case, I think they know that having competitive award prices and not passing on fuel surcharges is what makes their miles attractive and is why they get so many sales when they sell their miles all the time for really cheap. And being a transfer partner with a number of programs is another way of selling their miles, right? Those banks pay them for those miles so they can do those transfers. So it'd be interesting to say, you know, look at, look at the programs that, you know, fewer are fewer transfer partners say, are they, are they operating differently?

So American airlines, Delta United each are, well, American doesn't have any, uh, major transfers, but, uh, Delta and United just one each, um, Virgin Atlantic. Well, that was, I was going to say, it's interesting because now I say, all right, well, you republished a post this week, the most promiscuous airline programs, the ones that that partner with the most different different currencies. And so the ones that partner with the most are, ironically, and, you know, to some degree anyway, are exactly the opposite of what you're saying. That's right. That's right. All right. So I don't know. It's interesting. Don't listen to what Greg says, episode. He says completely unsubstantiated.

I mean, not necessarily because you hit the next rung, the next rung of the programs that partner with the most transfer partners, and you get Aeromexico, and I get no idea what the best use of Aeromexico miles is. So we won't even talk about that. I don't think so. Uh, so, I mean, I guess they're looking at it as a, maybe somebody will transfer a mile to us. We partner with everybody. I don't think it has anything to do with selling them so cheaply that that's why all the programs are, you know, put them up as a transfer partner. Must be. Uh, but then we get Avianca, we get Qantas. And in both of those cases,

there are many situations where the best use of those miles is flying other airlines. So Avianca and Qantas, I think, you know, are probably examples that support what you're saying. And then Cathay Pacific would be the other one in that next rung. And so, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's, there are definitely situations where Cath Kathy Pacific miles would be good for

one world flights, but it's not, it's not the one that you think of as like the number one. Yeah. I don't, I don't think we're going to solve this. It's all interesting. We're not going to figure this out. No, we're not. No, we're not.

But it was an interesting, interesting thing to think about anyway. And I think probably the exciting thing is when you look at those four dream uses that you wrote about for the Brex points, I think the exciting thing about them is that all of those programs do partner with lots of different credit card programs. And so if you want to fly the most luxurious airlines out there, the most luxurious experiences, those dream experiences, it is easier to accumulate the miles for those. Now, I'm not saying easier to book them necessarily in all cases, but easier to accumulate the miles for those uses than it is for a lot of, I mean, it's easier for that than it is to accumulate American Airlines miles, right?

Yeah. By a long shot. I mean, you know, if you think about how many credit cards are out there that earn transferable currency. They're like American Express by themselves have probably like 20 or more cards where you could sign up and get a very big bonus. But you could sign up for Citi and Chase and Brex. Right, right.

Very easy to accumulate those miles. So you want to fly Emirates first class or business class? you want to fly emirates first class or business class you want to fly cafe first class or business class or singapore leftanza you know it's actually relatively easy to collect the points for those things so that's kind of exciting and interesting and one of the things that i think i really enjoy about the transfer partner game in the sweet spot game so that's kind of fun. Right. Right. And, uh, you know, reading your, your post about Emirates really made me kind of like wish Emirates, the Emirates seems to have flights all over the world, but they don't have that many to the U S right. Like we need, we need

more Emirates flights, more of, more, uh, more of these fifth freedom flights that go to different places around the world. So, you know, there's two to Europe from the U S and I'd love to see more of that kind of thing. Right. And you think there'd be a situation where it makes sense to stop in Africa to refuel, right? I mean, you know, I don't know why they wouldn't stop in Honolulu to refuel. Come on.

It'd be a good place, right? So you want to fly to Honolulu and be in New York? I think they should fly from Detroit. Fun times. All right. So I think that wraps up from Detroit. Fun times. All right. So I think that wraps up our main event, right? Yes, we're done with that. Wraps it up.

Wrap it up. Forget it. You didn't hear any of the things I said that made no sense at all, especially about using United for the excursionist. I personally flew. Help me now. Ethiopian. Ethiopian. Yep. Ethiopian. But you did fly United, though, to set that up. That's the thing. Like if you if if you want to really maximize the excursionist perk, unless you're in Japan to start out flying United. There you go. Thank you for saying it's going to be the best way to set that up. You're welcome. I do what I can. That's why I'm here.

All right. So then that brings us to the post-roast. It does. It does. Post-roast time. All right. All right. I'll go first.

I'm going to jump in this week. I'm ready. All right. So you wrote a post this week about your four dream uses of Brex Cash. Oh, did I? No, I don't think I did. You might have heard that. I don't remember that.

110,000 points, Brex, right? And so you wrote a great post about the different uses of the miles. And I think it's awesome to think of this huge 110,000 point bonus that you can get and all these great experiences you can have, except that lots of readers now are reporting ongoing, slow, ridiculous times with Brex in terms of getting their account usable. And I am one of those readers where I've been sitting here waiting for weeks now. I deposited money and my balance is still not available to use. And I'm hearing readers say that they signed up. It's been two weeks. It's been three weeks and they still can't even use their card. How are you going to write about Brex and give them the press and not call them out

for the fact that they are taking forever to approve people? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I have the solution for you. Just you need to communicate with Brex's IT department. So just Google for Brex it

and you'll find everything you need to know. So, I mean, I think that the notable thing here is that Brex looks awesome, but man, they got to get their stuff together. Because so for me, my situation, which I think parallels that of a number of readers, it was two weeks ago I signed up and it said that I was approved. And I have heard crickets from Brex in the time since. I haven't gotten a single email from Brex since the day that I was approved. And it said, hey, welcome to Brex.

You can start using your account. So forget about actually, you know, I take that back. I did get one email. I got the email congratulating me for earning the 20,000 points when I transferred money in from PayPal. So I've earned rewards. But when I chatted with support, I So I've earned rewards. But when I chatted with support, I found that my account is not actually approved yet. And again, it doesn't

seem like I'm the only one. It seems like there's quite a few readers now in that situation. So why didn't you call them out, Greg? Why didn't you say, hey, Brex, these are my dream uses. Now, would you let my readers get going and use their cards? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we, we could do that in a, in a follow-up post, but, but the truth is I don't want to, uh, get in the way of the three people working at Brex right now. We're working diligently, trying to get through all these things. And one email after another, oh boy. Um, I mean, I seriously, I don't know how many employees they have, but it can't be that many. And they are definitely suffering, you know, startup growing pains. And, you know, yeah, it's unfortunate.

But at the same time, like this, Rex costs you zero, you know. Well, sort of, except that I transferred money there that's locked up. It's my own fault, I guess. I shouldn't have transferred it until I guess I knew, except I would have thought, like, I don't know, with my situation, I would have thought that it was already a done deal. It said approved. I got the account number.

I was able to transfer the money in. Right, right. Anyway. Well, I'm still waiting personally on the final 10,000 points. So if you remember, the structure of the deal is 80,000 points for a $1,000 spend, 20,000 points for linking payroll, which we've learned means, or one of the ways of doing that is by adding the Brex bank account to your PayPal wallet and just validating it causes them to push in some change and that that triggers the 20,000

points doesn't even have to be a business paypal account it could be a personal one right and then the last 10,000 requires three thousand dollars spend which i satisfied like months ago now uh or at least a month ago i don't know how long ago and um and it clearly shows on my activity, the 3000. But when I go to the rewards tab, it says, and track your rewards, it says you spent $2,000. And it said that all this time, I, I online chatted with them weeks and weeks ago, and they said, Oh, yeah, we see it, it should, it should be resolved this weekend. And of course, it hasn't been contact them again, nothing yet. So anyway, so I'm not at all worried about any of that. Like it's all going to get resolved.

It's you're going to get your 110,000 points eventually. Um, your money's going to get unlocked eventually. I mean, I, I expect that that's the case, but it's a lot easier for you to say that since you were able to use the card and earn a bunch of points. And I, and the flip side, I understand the readers out there who are a little frustrated right now who are like, you know, I want to get going. And yeah, the time counter is counting down. Like the, the counter that says how long that I have to spend. And obviously I'm going to meet the spend really quickly, but it's counting down saying I've got, you know, only so many days left to, to meet the spend, quickly, but it's counting down saying I've got, you know, only so many days left to meet the spend to get the bonus points. And I can't even use the stupid card.

So, you know, and I think the bigger thing here is the total lack of communication from Brex because their messaging has all been approved, ready to go, start using the account. The little bit of messaging I've gotten, but zero communication since then. And, you know, I've done a lot of these little FinTech startup kind of things. We did the Betterment account recently. SoFi. There's a lot of these little things. Haven't run into a roadblock like this with anyone. So, you know, North One keeps throwing money my way. Like they just keep giving me money and it's not $1,100. So don't get me wrong. Obviously not quite as valuable a bonus, but when we talk about ease and speed, speed i mean like

it's just been a couple of days every time they've run a promotion yeah to get the money yeah no so i'm a little disappointed in brex from that perspective and you know like i don't know as though i like i'm i'm less hot on it until we start hearing more and more reader reports now all of what i've just said there i will also say that a reader commented on the blog this week to say that they emailed Brex support and, and two days later their account was finally unfrozen. So maybe that's the secret. I did email Brex support.

I haven't heard back yet, but maybe I will, maybe it'll all be good. Maybe by the time this publishes, I'll be off and running and spending on my Brex card, but that's why I wanted to roast you. I hope so. All right.

All right. Well, in exchange for that, I've got two roasts for you. Uh-oh. Two. Uh-oh. I'm sweating already. It's getting hot in here. All right. So roast number one. I think I even, I can predict at least one of the two. You probably can. You wrote a post called Combining Marriott awards certificates and paid nights in a single booking and um you wrote that and published it without apparently being aware that frequent miler had published a video a week or two before that that was basically the same thing put in video form.

In a very easy, quick, fast couple of minute video form. Right. That would have been much, much faster. Post that on social media, which is probably it already is. Which is what was done. And now granted, there was no, there was no blog posts that went along with that. So, you know, when you searched the frequentquent Miler blog and didn't come up with it, I totally get that you weren't aware of the video.

And so I went ahead and posted that. That makes total sense. So let's go on to roast number two. You wrote a very similar sounding post called Mixed Free Night Search Points and Pa nights with hyatt pay my way and pretty amazing right it it it's uh pretty amazing like some of the details in there um it's also kind of amazing that those two posts sound almost identical but anyway uh one's marriott one's hyatt right uh in the post you said i'm pretty sure hyatt pay my way is a brand new feature and uh so you went on to talk about this brand new feature without apparently having googled or searched the frequent miler website for pay my way because it of course is in our hyatt guide

it sure is It sure is. It sure is. And it's probably been there for a long time. It's been there a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. About that.

How have I never seen this? Right. Yeah. How have I never seen this? I mean, to be honest, like even though I put that in the guide a long time ago, you know, I never realized how powerful that feature was until we read that post from Million Mile Secrets about how you can basically get around the fact that some hotels won't let you book a short award stay.

They won't show any awards available, but if you book a longer stay, you can book it. And so this post showed like a trick where you could use this pay my way thing. Let's say you want a two night stay. Book two nights with points, the rest paid, and then later take off the paid nights. And that way you could always have done that before with award nights, but you needed the points in your account. Now you can do that even without the points in your account. So I think that's a really cool trick. It definitely is a really cool trick. Now I'm going to turn this into a reverse roast. I don't think that's allowed.

No, it is. Let's go to the judges here. No, I'm turning the flames on. I'm sending it back at you here. All right. Because there's a common denominator here. And you might say it's me, but I'm going to argue the common denominator differently here.

So we had a really good, useful Marriott video about a trick that people have been misunderstanding left and right and asking lots of questions about that there was no post on FrequentMiler about. And we have a really powerful use of the Hyatt search tool that would enable people to use multiple free night certificates at once. A question that again, I've heard many times before, how do I book a multi-night stay when I run into one of these places that requires two nights, but my free night certificate is only, I got to book them separately. I can only book one of them, or I can only book one night with the certificate. It's got to be separate. I can't put it in conjunction with points. I've gotten that question a number of times before.

How is there not a post to let people know about that? When I search pay my way on the FrequentMiler site, I definitely don't get the Hyatt Complete Guide. Now, if I Google FrequentMiler Hyatt pay my way, maybe I will. But when I put it in the search box at Hyatt, or I mean, excuse me, at FrequentMiler, how come I don't get a post on that, Greg?

You do it. Oh, well, there's not a post outside of the, frequent miler. How come I don't get a post on that, Greg? You do it. Oh, well, there's not a post outside of the, you mean outside of the, uh, the, I don't even get the guide. If I type in, if you put it in my way, I think those words are just too common. Um, maybe that's what it is. We should have a post on that, right? Yeah. You know, I'll talk to, I'll talk to our senior author about that.

That's, that's a major loss. We have a post. We have a post about that right now. Oh, that's right. So I put it in quotes, by the way. It's good I talked to him about it. I put Pay My Way in quotes on the FrequentMiler site. Complete guy doesn't come up.

Now, if I go to Google, oh, no, it does. It does. It's the fourth or fifth or sixth thing down there. So it is. Yeah, it is in there somewhere. But at any rate, I think that we that, that, that we should definitely have had a post and now we do. We do. Yes. And we have a post that says, I didn't realize I totally edited that. Maybe the first paragraph somewhere still says that it was new. We get into the mean

potatoes and it says, Oh, this isn't really new, but definitely a cool little workaround. So props to Million Mile Secrets for determining that workaround there and for making me aware of something that I definitely should have known because I should know everything in that high complete guide. So I'm roasting back. But truth is, I know that was my bad. So, all right right. So question of the week. Question of the week here. It was a long question that came in via email that had multi-different parts, but I'm going to take just one piece out of it because I think just the one piece is something worth talking about. So the person is asking about applying for cards and which card they should apply for. And so they brought up the IHG Premier Credit Card with the current bonus, which they said, and I believe was correct, is 140,000 points with the $89 annual fee. They were wondering if they should get that card. And they said, I must mention that I got the IHG Premier card in 2018. I earned the 100,000 bonus in January

of 2019 and canceled in October of 2019. If I'm reading the terms and conditions correctly, I should qualify for the 140,000 point bonus on the IHV Premier if I'm approved, right? And I'm going to answer that one before we go to the next part. Yes, because they last earned the bonus more than two years ago. So they would qualify for the bonus again. So definitely, yes, you could. Here's the question that I thought was interesting. But the the trick question will I not put myself on Chase's radar and have them cancel all of my credit cards if I essentially if I apply for the premiere again like just over two years after getting the bonus last time am I going to put myself on Chase's radar are they going to cancel all my credit cards I'm not an MS type but usually

I stop spending on a new credit card after earning the bonus. Are they going to get themselves on Chase's naughty list and get all of their credit cards canceled by applying for that IHG Premier card again? So I'm going to answer this in two parts. So first answer that directly. I'm going to say probably not because what we know or suspect, strongly suspect, of what puts people on Chase's sort of naughty list has more to do with, are you a credit risk? You know, different factors that would indicate that they might lose money on you because you run up bills and not pay them off

and skip town, basically. But we don't know for sure that um that's the only thing that'll get you on the naughty list and we and we don't know for sure that anything they've been doing in the past will necessarily you know could change in the future so that gets me to part number two which is My sort of philosophy of dealing with Chase cards is that I think your strategy with Chase ought to be around, one, dealing with the 524 rule, which is that you can only have, they won't let you get approved for a new card if you've signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months these are five cards for many issuers not just chase um dealing with that but also figuring out which chase cards you want to have and to hold long term and making sure you

get those and so like if if the ihg card was important to you, I would have said, don't cancel it in the first place. Now that's already done. But now we're at another stage where it's like, should I sign up for it again? Well, yeah, I would say look at Chase's portfolio and say, which ones do you want for long term? Go for those first and if i choose one of them if you're like i actually do want it yeah get it and probably just this one doing that one like that isn't going to be an issue but i don't think of chase anymore as a viable issuer to be like canceling and re-signing up every couple of years with a lot of different cards. Now some people might, you know, I think there's a case to be made with the, uh, Southwest companion

pass to, to juggle, uh, every other year with, with a, uh, with your partner, like who signs up and to try to keep in, in a companion pass land. But, um, that's, that's my kind of approach to chase overall. Interesting. That is not what I expected to hear you say. So yeah, I mean, I, what I expected to hear you say is they created the speed limit. They created the rule. They said you can't earn the bonus more than once every 24 months. I don't think that earning the bonus again, more than 24 months later is going to cause you a problem with chase at all. I mean, I greg said it could i don't know i mean it's not impossible that things could change tomorrow but i don't think that that is particularly risky behavior no i and i wasn't i guess i wasn't

meaning to imply that it was what i what what i'm meaning to say is that I don't think that's the best way of approaching chase credit cards in general. Because this sort of serial canceling and signing up, you're going to be using another 524 spot every time. And you're going to end up getting into a case, unless you just rarely ever do this, in which case you're fine. You're going to get in a situation where you're going to want a Chase card. You're not going to be able to get it. You can't get. Yeah. Right. Right. And the IHG Premier card to me is not worth two 524 slots. So, you know, I guess it's not really going to be because it'd be more than two years. But at any rate, yeah, I would I would have a hard time believing it's worth one of them because I think you're right. There's probably a better strategy. My thought,

actually, though, in reading this was that, OK, so this reader was afraid that Chase is going to close down all their credit cards for getting the bonus the second time. They're not, not a manufactured spender. They were worried they were going to get closed down just for opening the card again. And I thought to myself, man,

Chase owes a debt of thanks to Amex. Like that fear was something that didn't exist two or three years ago or four years ago. Like the, I don't think this question would have come in before Amex started up with their pop-ups and no soup for you and you can't get it again. And shutting people down that, and you know, MS too much or clawing back points and statement credits and things like,

cause like we haven't heard much of that from chase. No, but when, when they do shut people down, it is sometimes, it does seem to be triggered by them opening new cards. It's like that gets Chase looking at your account and then they say, oh, your history with us

looks like risky behavior. I mean, we're sort of assuming what's happening behind the scenes. That looks like risky behavior. And so we're going to actually shut you down. And so, so I think that might be where the fear comes from is, is some of that experience with chase shutdowns, but those are for people that are doing like cycling their limits over and

over. They're, they're doing a lot of behaviors. Most often that you're probably not doing in this case, this question you're right. You're probably not doing in this case. If you're asking that question, you're right. You're probably not doing, if you're asking it that way, anyway, you're probably not doing the other thing. Greg's written it like a couple of years ago. Greg wrote a post that's still relevant today.

Why chase shutdowns have increased and how to avoid them. And the main thing that you're, and you're kind of insinuating this here is the bust out risk. If they think that you're going to run up all your bills and then, you know, skip town to live on a beach somewhere and some secluded Island, then, then they might shut you down, but that's probably not the impression they're going to get when you open your new IHG. Right. Right. Probably safe. All right. So that brings us, I think to the end this week. So I want to thank everybody who's out there listening.

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