Frequent Miler on the Air - The best card for every occasion | Ep139 | 2-26-22

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

Which cards do we flex for grocery, gas, travel, and everywhere else? Greg and Nick discuss the cards they use for each category and why. 1:04 Giant Mailbag: About that Amex pop-up . . . 4:00 What crazy thing . . . did Qatar do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/qatar-airways-changes-qmiles-adios-hello-avios/ 8:54 Mattress Running the Numbers: Marriott drops award charts https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-ditches-award-chart-march-29th-top-properties-to-go-up-by-30k-certificate-top-off-coming-in-april/ 17:44 Main Event: Which is the best card to use? Which card is best for.... 26:30 Grocery 34:29 Gas 41:34 Dining 49:33 Travel 59:22 Warehouse stores 1:02:30 Online shopping 1:08:29 Everywhere else 1:22:34 Post roast 1:24:10 Question of the Week: Is it still worth upgrading to the Ritz card? If I do, am I eligible for a new cardmember bonus on the Marriott Boundless card? https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-card-eligible/ Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 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. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, the best card for every occasion. We're going to discuss which card to use where, how do you get the most rewards for every bit of your spend? And we probably aren't going to see eye to eye on every single one, are we? I mean, there's a good chance. There's a good chance we may not.

There'll be a little bit of debate, I hope. I hope so. I hope so. That's what makes it entertaining and informative, I think, because it's good to hear why people don't agree. There's not always a right answer to any of these things. Hopefully, I can correct the error of Greg's ways. That's right, because I'm always wrong. Nick's always right. Right, of course.

In some universe that I haven't been to yet. Let's go on to the giant mailbag. Today's mail comes from Heidi. And apologies to Heidi. I've edited your email a bit for brevity, but I've kept the gist of it. Heidi says, in your recent episode, and this is, she was referring to the episode where we talked about how to stay out of Amex pop up prison by spending on a bunch of different cards and whatnot. And she said, it surprised me. You didn't mention that the Amex pop up is not always universal. In other words, just because you get the pop up with one card application, that doesn't automatically mean you'll get the pop-up with all

cards. Now, another aside from me is that we did mention that first, what is pop-up prison? It's when MX decides they don't like you anymore because maybe you've been opening cards just for the signup bonus and then canceling them. And so you're not necessarily a good customer. And so they'll pop up a thing when you go to apply for a card and the pop-up will say, basically, you can apply, but you're not going to get a welcome bonus for this card. And well, then we all just like cancel out because what's the use of signing up for a card without the welcome bonus? There are sometimes uses, but you get the idea. And so we talked about ways of basically becoming a good customer so that hopefully wouldn't happen.

And in that conversation, I do remember talking about how business cards are different from personal cards in that you could get banned from one or the other without affecting the other. But Heidi's pointing out that it actually spans cards even within, for example, your personal cards. So she says, for what it's worth, here's my recent pop-up data point. In December, I applied for the Hilton Honors no fee card pop--up over the next few days. I tried again and got the pop-up each time frustrated with Amex and curious whether I was in pop-up jail for all cards. I tried the Rezzy platinum offer. That's the best, uh, offer for the Amex platinum card. And she did not get a pop-up. She was instantly approved. So good to know. Yeah, interesting. Very good intel.

So if you're getting that pop-up, you might just give it a shot on a different card. And luckily, right now, offers, well, right now, generally speaking, in the current times in which we live, the welcome offers on a lot of Amex cards have been really good. So even if you can't get the one you initially wanted,

you can still probably get something pretty good, if that's true, if you're able to get another card that doesn't have the pop-ups. It's not necessarily that you have to sacrifice a ton. You just may have to change plans a little bit. Right, right. All right. Very good.

Excellent. All right, so that brings us to what crazy thing did Cutter do this week? What did they do? How did they get crazy this week? So, you know, I wrote a post about how in March the whole loyalty world is turning topsy-turvy, but I didn't mention Cutter because they waited until after my post to announce that they're ditching their QMiles program. Their wholeiles program.

Their whole rewards program. Just gone. Instead of those miles, they're going to be issuing Avios, which is the currency used by British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia. And so now Cutter joins the team. Isn't that weird? It seems totally out of left field to me. I was so surprised by this news.

It's interesting, though, because Avios were already sort of a transferable currency in their own right. Usually we look to bank points. So we constantly recommend acquire bank points that are transferable to a lot of different airline and hotel programs that gives you the ultimate flexibility. It's rare that you see that with airline miles that you can transfer to other programs. But with Avios, at least with the three programs we just mentioned that are already Avios earning programs, you can move your points from one to the other. And so my assumption is that'll be true with Cutter as well. And that makes them more valuable because, you know, each program has its own sort of sweet spots. And so, you know, you don't like what price you're getting on British Airways.

You move your points to Iberia, for example, and book from there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's really intriguing. It's very interesting. It makes me wonder if we'll see this more. I mean, do you think, well, it's a hard question to answer because if I asked you last week, do you think that Qatar is going to throw away its award chart and become an obvious airline? You probably would have laughed and said, why would anybody ever think that? But I mean, do you think we'll see

consolidation? Is that something that just might happen with frequent flyer programs? This seems really weird. It's interesting because they're all in the One World program, One World Alliance. And One World program, One World Alliance. And One World recently, if I remember right, announced the ability to do upgrades, use whatever miles to upgrade within the One World Alliance. And I haven't had a chance of looking at that to see whether it's a good deal. My guess is no. But regardless, it shows One you know, one world trying to bring its, its Alliance kind of closer together and have more in common. And, and so I do kind of

wonder is, is obvious, are they, is whoever's running the obvious program, are they trying to position obvious as the one world currency of the future? Yeah, that would be, that would be bizarre. Cause that would mean, I mean, if, if really all one world programs move to it, which I don't really think will happen. But if they did, that would mean losing American Airlines miles as a thing. I don't see that happening. Alaska miles. I mean, it seems very unlikely, but I think it's particularly unlikely for the US based programs because those mileage programs are such a profit center for them. I don't know if that's the case with as many foreign programs. Certainly maybe, but I don't know. I think, for example, it probably is a major profit center for the Virgin Atlantics of the world.

But for Finnair, I don't know. Is Finnair Plus a big profit center for Finnair? I have no idea. And if it's not, then maybe joining the Avios program would make sense. I mean, who knows what will happen there, but not impossible. Okay. I have one more question about this. How do you pronounce Cutter? Well, you know, you search for how to pronounce Cutter on Google and you'll find our post on it. And it's a funny thing because there is no single right answer. I'm not even going to try it. There's different ways of pronouncing it. Read the post and then read the comments because they're

hilarious. You'll get people equally saying, I've lived in whatever, Qatar for 20 years and I know that it's pronounced Qatar. And then the next person saying, you know, I've been a flight attendant for a hundred years and I know it's Qatar. So, you know, it's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. And continues to be popular. So you're equally likely to have found a comment from within the last six months as you are like six years. So it's a fun one to check out. All right. So that's craziness, craziness, cutter, Qatar gutter, however it's pronounced craziness from you. Moving on. Let's talk about mattress running the numbers. And this week's mattress running the numbers is Marriott because Marriott has

dropped a bomb on us. They have. I mean, we knew it was coming, that award charts were going away, but they've given us some information about which hotels are going to be more expensive. Right, exactly. And so we know a little bit more now about what that's going to look like.

They gave us some information about what's going to happen in 2022. So in 2022, the rest of this year, most Marriott properties are not going to range beyond their current category bands. And what I mean by that is they will be somewhere between the off-peak and peak price based on the category they're in now. Now, keep in mind, those categories are going away entirely on March 29th. So it'll take two days for Marriott's computer system to completely eliminate the old categories. But between March 29th and March 30th, they will all go away. But properties, for the most part, are expected to remain between that, again,

off-peak and peak price based on their category level today for the rest of this year. Starting next year, the gloves are off and we don't know exactly what's going to happen. But that said, about 3% of the portfolio, 200 properties, are going to be potentially increasing by more than their current category bands. And so Marriott provided us a list of those 200 properties, some of which are going to increase by up to 5,000 points. Some will increase by up to 10,000 points, some 20 and some up to 30,000 points. Now in that list is all of the properties that you could possibly expect to be in the list. Basically, you know, every aspirational property that you've read about on a blog somewhere is probably on that list.

And I mean, I say that somewhat facetiously, but it's pretty close to accurate that they're almost all increasing beyond their current award bands. Now, in a lot of cases, actually, it was not as bad as I expected. Like, for instance, the St. Regis in the Maldives or Bora Bora or La Meridian, those types of properties in La Meridian, Maldives, I mean, the Gritty Palace in Venice, those places are slanted to go up by 20,000 points per night. So that's obviously a big increase. But the cash rates at those places are so exorbitantly high that it doesn't feel quite as painful, even though it hurts.

You know, it hurts me because I want to stay there. But just to be clear, so you're talking about some top end, what are currently category eight properties, which at peak pricing today cost 100,000 points per night. So now you're saying they're going to- They could cost- At the top end, they could cost up to 120,000. Exactly. Exactly. So 20%, I mean,000. Exactly. Exactly. So 20%, I mean, that's certainly not insignificant.

It's not necessarily out of line with what we've seen from Hyatt recently, though. Some properties going up by margins in that range. So 20%, I could probably live with at those top tier properties that often cost $1,500 or $2,000 per night. But what really surprised me was that there were a lot of properties in the list that aren't category eight. I counted, I think within the United States, I think it was 32 properties in Fairfield Inn, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, and Town Place Suites that are all scheduled to go up by either at least 10,000 or rather either up to 10,000 points per night or up to 20,000 points per night. So those properties

are going to be going up a fair amount. And in many cases, those are properties that are currently 35,000 points per night standard. So now if they go up 20,000 points on top of the peak price, it might cost you as many as 60,000 points. That's a pretty big difference. But more importantly, that hurts for free night certificates, because as you know, we've been expecting that we'll be able to top off free night certificates with points starting in early 2022. We now know that's not going to happen until after the award chart is gone. So starting in April at some point, you'll be able to add up to 15,000 points to a free

night certificate. Obviously not a coincidence that you can add up to 15,000 points and a number of properties where you might want to use your 35k certificates will increase by up to 20,000 points so that will put a lot of properties out of range of those 35,000 point free night certificates when there is high demand same is true for the 50k certificates and the category 6 properties that you would have hoped to have used them on so if you have have those certificates, look for uses now, look for a chance to use those for outsized value now. And I'm sure that we'll analyze that a bit more in the coming week here, but you definitely want to try to use those to maximum advantage while you can. On the flip side,

there's only 3% of the portfolio. So there's a lot of places where you may still be able to add points. Let's talk a bit about the ability to add up to 15,000 points to your free night certificate. We were told originally that it would be, that capability would be released early 2022. And so we hope that we'd have that ability before the categories went away so that we could use our certificates, book those hotels before they lose the category bounds and lock in those good deals. So should we do that?

Well, it'd be nice if you could, but... It would be nice. But you can't because it's going to happen after the award chart goes away. So you're not going to have that opportunity. You'll be able to top off starting in April. Though, like I said, the nice thing is that I say nice thing. I mean, I'm looking for the positive points here because there's obviously a lot of negative.

One positive point is that a large number of properties are not scheduled to increase beyond their current pricing bands. So anything, if you have a 35K free night certificate, the majority of properties within that 35K range, which is normally 30,000 off-peak, 35,000 standard, 40,000 peak, those will still be within use of your free night certificate because they're not going to increase for the majority of properties. Not going to increase by more than their current top tier band, top tier of their band, which is 40,000 points. And the next level up, which is currently 50,000 points standard and 40,000 off peak will be within reach when they're not peak priced also potentially, though, unfortunately, certainly in April, you may see some of those 50,000 point properties suddenly cost 52,000

points that you can't use a certificate that would not shop. So you probably won't get a chance to really maximize that as much as you might hope in the sense that the award chart will be gone by the time you're able to do it. But that's why I say, look for an opportunity now, see if you can find a good opportunity now, because I think those certificates we've said before, I think they're going to continue to be valuable after the award chart goes away. I think you're going to continue to get more than 85 bucks a year in value out of, you know. And at those times when using hotel points or certificates, it's often a really bad deal because you see that the hotel you want to book is only $110 a night or whatever. And so why use a 35K certificate? You're getting terrible value for that. But now, theoretically, during those off-peak times, you might be able to book a hotel that's even like a Category 8 today with a lower-level cert.

And so we'll see if that falls out. That's more likely to be true in 2023 because based on the wording, I expect that that list of 200 properties are the only ones that are going to change by more than their current category bands. So for instance, the category right now, even on the low end, on the low end is 70,000 points, not going to be less than 70,000 points this year. In the future, they say that they're going to work to make increases incremental and provide some times of year where you can get great value for your points still. I don't expect that that will actually mean less than whatever the off-peak price is today. I think it will be surprising. Unless, like you said, those situations where it's $100 a night, I don't know, maybe.

Maybe they will drop as time goes on and it becomes more and more dynamic. But for now, I was saying I think those $35K starts will continue to be valuable. However, I think you're more likely to get like $150, $200 in value out of a free night certificate in the future, which is double your money. So that's not bad. If you want to get like $300 or $400 a night in value out of your certificate, though, I think you got to look to try to find a good use of it before the award chart goes away. Yeah.

All right. Very good. All right. So that brings us then to the main event. Main event, the best card for every occasion. All right. So in a moment, we're going to start talking about what's the best card to use for your grocery shopping, your online shopping, et cetera. But first I want to bring up a kind of bigger topic, which is that points are not equal. So for example, if you see that your Hilton card earns six points per dollar at a grocery store and your city premier card only

earns three points per dollar, it does not mean that your Hilton card is the best card for your supermarket shopping because Hilton points are worth a lot less for most things. And it depends how you use them, which is the other part of what I want to bring up. So on average, for example, I've seen Hilton points only worth about 0.4 of a cent each on average. But in some cases you can get, you know, much higher, like double that value or even more if you know what you're doing. And so I refer to that as cherry picking awards. If you're someone who cherry picks awards and you know how much value you're likely to get, then it very well might be the right thing for you to do to use that card at a grocery store. Okay. So now stepping back

from that sort of view of not all points are worth the same, they're also not worth the same depending on your situation. So for example, we always talk about how valuable transferable points are. Amex membership rewards, Citi Thank You rewards, Chase Ultimate rewards, Capital One Miles, all transferable to a lot of partners. Super valuable. Okay. Let me now talk about Amex membership rewards. They're incredibly valuable, mostly for transferring to high value airline partners to book international business class, first class awards can get incredible value that way. Um, I have, thanks to pandemic causing me to cancel all kinds of flights and everything.

I am super flush with airline miles in a number of programs. So I don't have any zero near-term need to transfer membership rewards points to an airline program. Okay. And I'm also extremely flush with Amex membership rewards points because there've been so many incredible deals lately, especially last year to earn all kinds of multiples on your points. And I'm still working down one thing. My wife signed up for a card that got 10X for small businesses and dining.

We're still using that until the end of next month. So still have that front and center in the wallet for those things. card earns the most points for a given purchase, I'm not necessarily going to use that first over another card that earns Chase Ultimer Awards, Citi Thank You points, for example. I don't have any Capital One cards, so that's not an option for me. Sorry, Spot. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's a really good point that it varies depending on what it is that you need. And so there are reasons you might pick something that you need more imminently, especially if you have an award that you really want to book and need to book and you need some points for that particular award, then those points are going to be worth more to you than points that may theoretically be worth more money

or even cash back potentially. So that's a good point too. Although I want to caution that I always find some challenge in figuring out how much those things are worth to you. You mentioned cherry picking awards, and that's one thing that always sticks out in my mind because I'm an award cherry picker myself. I always love to cherry pick my awards and get fantastic value out of points. But I also try to be careful about not overvaluing points based on how I'm going to use them. Because Hilton is a perfect example of one where you might say, okay, on average, Hilton points are worth four tenths of a cent. So if you're getting six points per dollar, that's like 2.4% back towards a Hilton stay,

right? But maybe you're great at picking really awesome Hilton redemptions. Maybe you stay only at like the Conrad Bora Bora or Maldives or whatever. And you're like, well, I'm getting one cent or two cents or three cents per Hilton point in value. So I'm going to continue using my Hilton card. And if that gives you the joy of free, don't let me steal it. But on the flip side, you can often buy those points for half a cent each. And so if you're looking at a redemption that costs a thousand dollars a night or a hundred thousand points, what are you going to do? Can you really value your points at one cent each? Because you would never pay a thousand for that night. You would

pay $500 for the points. So it doesn't matter how much you redeem them for the points are worth $500 because Hilton so frequently sells their points for half a cent each and you can pull with up to 10 people. So you can get everybody in the family to buy whatever the maximum is and have as many Hilton points as you likely need. So I feel like it's a little bit of a wishy-washy place when you overvalue points by how you redeem them. Just a point I wanted to make there. That's a great point. Great point. And especially true with Hilton and IHG points, both of which frequently go on sale for about that half cent rate. Or even Marriott, they regularly sell their points at 1.25 cents

each. So that's another situation where I'll often say, if you're going to use them at a property for a stay that costs $2,000 cash or 100,000 points, are you going to say you got two cents per point in value? I don't think that's really genuine because you wouldn't pay $1,800 if your option was to use $1,800 or 100,000 points. Even if you had zero points to start, the smartest move would be to buy the points at 1.25 cents each and pay 1,250 for that stay rather than paying $1,800 in cash. So again, I think it's true across many programs anyway. But I think think that again, I don't want to take too much of the fun out of using the points because I do enjoy using the points.

I don't love thinking about it that way. I just try to be careful when I'm comparing what to use. No, it's a great point. Not all programs have like easily purchasable points at a good rate, but there are quite a few. And there are limits how many you can buy. Yes. Yep.

Yep. Yep. All right. Let's get into what's the best card for what? And keep in mind, if you don't spend much in a given category that we're talking about, it probably doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. No, no.

It's not going to make a big difference. Not at all. No, no. My wife was looking for which card to take to pay for the inspection on one of our vehicles just the other day. And I was like thinking, oh, well, it's going to be, it's probably going to code as a small business. Let me find the card that's still got some extra points or blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, wait a second, the inspection is 21 bucks. Those points aren't going to make any difference at all. Whatever credit card you have in your wallet, just pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I have this fond memory of, I was with a bunch of bloggers years ago who we were, we were out to lunch in New York city. And when, when the bill came, we all whipped out our, our Sapphire preferred was the, was the big restaurant card of the time

and to get two X, you know, and, and, and that was a big deal at the time. Um, but then the restaurant said cash only. And we're all like, ah. And then one of the people with us pointed out, you know, we each spent about 10 bucks. You're talking about 20 points. 20 cents worth of points there. Slow down. It's not a big deal. Not a big deal. Not a big deal.

Right. So this only really matters in categories where you're spending a bunch. I mean, I guess it matters to some extent, no matter what. I always feel like I want to maximize things, but I think it's important to keep that in perspective. I'm the same way with gas. I know some people, and I am a maximizer at heart, but I know some people really hunt out that gas station that costs 5 cents less a gallon. And I'm like, I'm going to put 10 gallons in. It's going to save me 50 cents. This one's right here. I'm just going to stop here and go here. So this is the same kind of thing with the credit cards that don't drive yourself crazy over using the right card for purchases that are going to create an insignificant number of points, you know, unless it becomes a significant number of those purchases.

Right. Right. All right. Okay. So grocery, what do you, what do you use for your grocery purchases, Nick? MX gold, mostly though, there are times when I, I just don't have it in my wallet and I use a suboptimal card, I have to admit, but the MX gold for four membership rewards points per dollar spent. Now, just like Greg, I sit in the same situation where now I'm suddenly finding myself very flush with membership rewards points, more so than I probably anticipate needing to be for a long time here. I don't have enough travel plans even like dreamt up yet to use them all. So I look at it and I'm not super excited about more membership rewards points, but it beats the return I'll get with anything else. And I look at it very much the same way

that I think Craig mentioned about this the other day, or maybe in his post on Friday, that you can look at it if you have the Schwab Platinum card, which in our case, both the gold card and the Schwab card are in my wife's name. So she's got both of those. Those points can be cashed out. They can be redeemed for a deposit to a Schwab account at a value of 1.1 cents per point. So that's like a return of 4.4% at the grocery store and up to $25,000 spend per year. That's good for grocery spending. So I'm happy with that right now. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of what I'm currently doing. And I'm saying kind of because I'm transitioning. So we just last month finished off a 10X deal on grocery and gas. And I haven't reshuffled my wallet yet because we've been traveling and I didn't prepare well. So, you know, it was shuffling around. So right now, yeah, I'm inclined to use the gold card for that, but I'm not that excited about it.

So what I think I'm going to do is look for, I mentioned in my post that I could use as many Hyatt points as I could get. I'm spending them like crazy these days. And so I want Chase Ultima awards points, which transfer to Hyatt points as I could get. I'm spending them like crazy these days. And so I want Chase Ultima Rewards points, which transfer to Hyatt. And so what I'm going to look for is when Chase Freedom has their 5X category bonus, quarterly bonus at grocery stores. I'm thinking that the groceries that I shop at a lot, I'll just go in and buy gift cards and they probably sell Whole Foods gift cards. And so if you shop at one of those stores where you can get the gift cards on Amazon, then you may be able to lock in your 5X just by buying those with the freedom card.

So that could be a really good strategy potentially. I'll also mention that I've used the VentureX somewhat at the grocery store. Now that seems really counterintuitive because VentureX just earns two points per dollar everywhere, but we've been working on the signup bonus spend. And so when I'm doing signup bonus spend, I like to pepper in some things that are more normal than potentially other purchases may be. So I will break that out at the grocery store sometimes, especially when I'm not spending a I will break that out at the grocery store sometimes, especially when I'm not spending a very significant amount of money at the grocery store anyway, just to get some regular purchases in there and build towards the signup bonus,

because that's always a good return on spend if you're working on a new signup bonus. Exactly. If your strategy is to just keep signing up for new cards for the big welcome bonuses and just spend on those. You'll earn a lot more points from those signup bonuses than we're talking about earning by getting a 3X here, 5X there. For sure, that's the best way. A lot of people don't like to do that, though. They like to have a more stable wallet and know what their go-to is for certain types of spend. And what I like to do is put labels on the cards that my wife carries so that she knows what to use where. I have finally started doing that as well. She actually loves that because she does not like when I get mad about what cards she

uses for a given purchase. So that helps protect her a bit. Same, same. I think it's even been a bigger deal this last year. Before this last year, I feel like my wife had a pretty good handle on what we wanted to use where, but when Amex started throwing out all those crazy bonuses or small business and restaurant at some point home furnishings and the plus four referral bonuses and blah, blah, blah, then it all of a sudden wasn't as intuitive necessarily which card she should use for which type of purchase anymore. So that really became important to label them. So I've been labeling now too. Very good. So my wife was in a little

boutique store recently and I had been waiting outside. Then I realized, oh, she doesn't have the 10X small business card with her. So I had to go in there and be like, hey, here you go. Use this. So that was fun. Don't get two points per dollar on this. So grocery, so we're both kind of on MX Gold right now. And even though Membership Awards isn't our goal. I'm surprised, though.

I'm surprised. Why not the City Premier for you? You're such a big fan of this choice privileges thing. I would think that three City points might be worth more to you than four membership rewards points. I actually would do that. I don't currently have the Premier card. Take it on to that prestige. Yeah.

Yeah. I might. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I could see myself product changing, um, it or a different card to the premier. If I can't get approved for, uh, for the premier, I'm hoping my, my wife can get approved for a new premier. We'll see. So there's still like an 80 K offer hanging out there. I think that for the premier, that's, that's not a, you know,

and then you'll, then you'll take the three X city points over the membership rewards points. Am I right? I think so. It's tough though, because if you think about the cash back potential of the membership rewards... I was trying to trap you. I was trying to lay the trap there for you to hop right in. You're right. So remember, I can get back 1.1 cent per membership reward points. So getting 4.4% cash back at grocery stores, is that better than 3x thank you points? If I choose the thank you points, it means paying over a penny each for my thank you points. I don't usually like to pay more than a penny each if I'm sort of buying, if you will, points. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. That's a very fringy thing because I know you like to use your city points now for choice

privileges, right? And so you get two choice privileges points for every city point. And so then you're like paying 4.4 cents essentially for six choice points potentially. And so that works out to be like 0.73 cents per choice point, which is, I guess, a little bit cheaper than you could buy them otherwise, probably. But you know, you got to do the math. Yeah. You know, I forgot to mention what I really ought to do is, is, uh, get the city custom cash and that's, that's what I need to do. So that card will give you five X in the category you

spend the most each billing cycle up to $500 spend. It would totally work for me to just get one of those, label it as grocery, use it only for grocery, get five extra on my groceries spend. And I, then I don't have to worry about the freedom card rotating categories and stuff. Just boom. Right. So that is actually what I will do, what I should do. And then even if I want it as cash, I can cash it out at a penny each. So that's 5% back. That's better than the gold card. There you go. There you go. Awesome. Very good. All right.

So that's, that's grocery. What's our next category. Next is gas. So again, the city custom cash, you could get one of those and spend up to $500 a month, get five X city.

Thank you. Points. Business gold card, the Amex business gold. You could get four X of course. Then there's the Wymex business gold. You could get 4X, of course. Then there's the Wyndham business earner reward. Wyndham rewards business earner card, something like that.

It has all those words in the name. It's an earner. It's an earner for sure. Because it earns eight points per dollar. Eight points per dollar. Eight Wyndham points per dollar. And a lot of listeners might be like, well, Wyndham points, I never stay at a Wyndham.

But of course, as we've talked about before, you can use them for the Casa vacation rentals. And if you find a great one bedroom vacation rental, it'll only cost you 13,500 points per night because the Wyndham earner card gives you 10% back or 10% off the 15,000 points per night rate. And that's a great deal. I mean, you could get incredible value for your Wyndham points that way. You can even also for two and three bedrooms, because it'll be, if you have a credit card,

13,500 points per bedroom. So you're looking at 27,000 points for a two bedroom unit or about 40,000 points for a three bedroom, which in some cases can be a great deal still. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so it's not unusual to get two cents per point value, especially considering that when you book with points, you don't have to pay all those taxes, the cleaning fees, all that stuff that jacks the cash rate way up,

especially for a short stay because otherwise those fees get spread out. And so you could get really fantastic value. You can, you can. Unfortunately, Vacasa's footprint is somewhat limited. That's the downside. So you have to look and see whether there's any Vacasa properties in the places you want to go. But if there are, that savings is really nice. Just this weekend, we were planning on booking a vacation rental and it was in a place where Vacasa didn't have any properties. And so we spent hours looking at Airbnb listings and Vrbo and blah, blah, blah, and settled on a place. And then once you added in all of the fees, the cleaning fees and the taxes and everything else,

we were like, ah, that gets ridiculously expensive for just a few days. And we could have done it. We could have used chase points, I guess, to erase it. But we finally decided, you know what? This is kind of silly. We're not going to do this. So we didn't. And that nice thing would have been if it were Vicasa, if Vicasa had a place there, we wouldn't have run into that experience. We would have found a place we wanted. And as long as it fits the price range, we don't know exactly, but we think it's about $350 a night per bedroom that Vicasa will let you use your points for. So that can be a great value. So the Wyndham card is a great card for gas. So is that what you're using, Greg? It is. I have switched my wallet again. I used to have a 10X MX membership rewards earner for gas last year. And now that that's no longer the case,

my Wyndham card made its way into my wallet. I got the Wyndham card, I think right before that 10X thing popped up. So it hasn't spent much time in my wallet. I got the Wyndham card, I think right before that 10X thing popped up. So it hasn't spent much time in my wallet to date, but it's back in my wallet. And I also signed up for Visa Savings Edge, which gives me an additional 2% cash back at, oh gosh, do you remember? Chevron. Chevron. Chevron gas stations. So that's a pretty good play. I think 8X rewards plus 2% back. It is.

Although, you know, I will say also that other gas stations have rewards programs that offer a similar return towards the, that gas station, you know, for instance, Speedway speedier rewards, the points, they're variable value depending on how you use them. So it's a little hard to quantify it, but roughly you get roughly 2% in value back out of that program. So it's not a Visa Savings Edge thing, and it's only something you're going to be able to use at Speedway. So it's not nearly as flexible as Visa Savings Edge Chevron thing you're talking about, but it's worth looking at programs like that sometimes because Cause they might have some, some decent value. So no doubt. And, and personally, my gas station spend has increased

significantly as of late. And so I have been trying to figure out the best thing to use. And I had been using the Wyndham card for my regular fill-ups though. I, I got such a low credit limit on the Wyndham card that it's just not entirely usable. It's kind of a pain in the butt. So I've been looking for other stuff to use. And the other thing that I've run into, and I wrote about this this week, is that between my wife and I, we don't have like tons of Wyndham points, but we have more Wyndham points than I've ever redeemed in my life at this point, which again, isn't saying a lot of Wyndham points, but it's enough that I'm not sure how much further I want to get invested in something where really to me,

the main use of Wyndham points for me is going to be the Casa rentals and that could change at any time. And so I don't know how heavily to get invested in our program that relies on such a niche value thing. So I'm a little hesitant to keep going on Wyndham Points right now, though they do have some hotels that could be decent values also. So maybe I'll use that some, but I've actually moved into using

the Chasing Cash card as of late, which seems crazy by comparison because Wyndham Points are easily worth around a penny a piece. And so to take what sounds like 2% cash back in place of 8% seems a little nutty. But in my case, we don't have nearly enough ultimate rewards points right now. We're very low on ultimate rewards points. I need more ultimate rewards points mostly because I need more Hyatt points while I still have globalist status. So I really

got to get on earning some more of those. So anytime office supply stores have their sales, I got my eyes on that. And the Incash earns two points per dollar at gas stations. So I've been using that, though it's very obviously arguable that I should be getting a 4% cash back card. If that's my aim, I could just get a card that earns 4% cash back and that would probably buy me Hyatt stays, at least in the realm of what I'm going to be able to use the points for. Right. What about, have you, have you looked in office supply stores for gas gift cards? I don't know if they regularly stock them, but that's another

option is to get earned 5X with your ink card buying gift cards at office supply stores. Yeah. I mean, that's a great strategy if I was mostly filling out my tank at the gas station. That would be a great strategy. So what you're saying is you're buying other things that you cannot buy. There's some other things at gas stations. I get it. That's also why your

credit limit makes a difference with your window. It's a problem with the window card. You can't buy too many of those other things that gas stations sell, hot dogs. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. All right. So let's talk about dining. What do you use to pay for restaurants and food delivery and so on?

Again, Amex Gold for the most part. And again, I'm looking at it as 4.4% back on that now because we don't really need more membership rewards points imminently. So that card and then that's the card we use when we're together. So if we're together, it's the gold card. If my wife and I are going somewhere separately, then usually one of us is carrying the gold card and one of us is carrying the Brex card because the Brex card also earns four points per dollar spent. It's only worth 4% if you're cashing out. So it's not quite as good that way. And they don't have quite as many transfer partners as Amex, though they have the transfer partners that I use most frequently with Amex.

So I'm fairly happy to earn 4X on that card on those rare occasions when my wife and I are dining separately for some reason. So it would be ideal for each of us to have our own gold card. I mentioned before that the gold card is my wife's. So she could add me as an authorized user and I can get my own gold card, but I don't really want the headache of adding it to the 524 account when I can just earn my four points per dollar with the Brex cards close enough. So I accept that trade-off. Gotcha. So do you not have the Capital One Saver or Saver One card?

No, and I don't think that we're likely to get approved for it because we both have a bunch of Capital One cards now. So I feel like it's highly unlikely that we could get it if we could, or if we could product change to it, which I have certainly tried to see if we could or if we could product change to it, which I have certainly tried to see if we could find a way to product change to it. And so far we haven't been able to,

I am hopeful that at some point we'll be able to, because then yes, I would totally use the Saver card because for Capital One points per dollar, I like Capital One's transfer partners. Again, they overlap with many of the membership rewards partners that I use most. So that's nice. And then on top of that, they have Turkish and they have Wyndham as transfer partners. So I would be totally happy with four points per dollar on a Saver card if I could get it. Right. And to clarify for people who might not know this, the Saver and Saver One cards both earn 4% cash back for grocery stores. And dining. I'm sorry, for dining, not grocery stores.

They earn 3% at grocery stores. But as Nick has written about in the past, and we've talked about on the show, if you also have a Capital One Miles earning card, like the Venture or the business cards, you can actually move your cash back, your pennies to your other account and turn them into miles in quotes so that then they become transferable points and you can transfer it to real airline miles, some hotel points, and also take advantage of when Capital One has transfer bonuses,

which in normal times has been pretty frequent. Yeah, definitely. And to be clear, that's a one-way street. You can move cash back to miles. You cannot move miles to cash back. So it only goes in that one direction, but it's nice. We've actually used the Spark Cash card some lately for various types of purchases and done that over using the Venture card because then we have the option. If we want cash, we can cash it out and take it as cash. If we need miles, we can transfer it over to the miles side and take advantage of it as miles. So I actually like that potential ability anyway with Capital One. So I would be happy with the Saver card for dining if we could get it. That's one of those big ifs. What about you though? What are you using?

Yeah. So I'm currently still using my old Citi Prestige card, which gets 5X for dining worldwide. And that's earning Citi thank you points, which as you pointed out, I've been liking lately because thank you points transfer one to two to choice points. So I'm getting basically 10 points per dollar, 10 choice points per dollar for dining. And I'm pretty satisfied with that. I have kind of an interesting situation here where my wife and I are traveling a lot. And so I'm spending a lot of points for hotels and I'm spending both Hyatt, which would be where I want to accumulate Chase Ultimate Awards and Choice, both at a pretty good clip. And so I do right now, I'm going to choose the 5X thank you points over 3X Chase Ultimate Awards, but it's close. It's close for you. And that makes sense. And I think it's worth mentioning either way, whichever way you go on that, that there are fee-free options that earn 4% back. There's a number of them now. So dining,

dining is a category where you really have to consider the cost of your points because like the U S bank altitude go card earns 4% cash back, no annual fee on dining. Same is true for, I think it's the new Orleans Pelican card or something. One of those new cardless cards. It's again, it's 4% dining with no limit on the dining purchases in either of those cases. And again, earned his cash back. So if you are earning five X points on your prestige card, it's coming at some cost. Now that's a pretty good deal. I would say that in that case, you're paying little enough for the points that it's worthwhile, but it's worth considering versus whatever else you're going to use. If you're going to use a card that only earns three points per dollar, like the, I don't know, the Sapphire Reserve, I guess, or one of the Freedom cards that earns three points per dollar, then you really have to

consider, okay, well, that's coming at a cost of 4%. So I'm paying, you know, one and a third cents per chase point. And is that a good deal? I mean, it might be if you're transferring to partners, you know, you're transferring to Hyatt and using them for much better value. It certainly can be a good deal, but it's not a slam dunk. Right, right. That's a great point.

I'm a buyer of Hyatt points at 1.3. I think once I deplete my ultimate rewards, you know, war chest enough to where I need them, I think I would be. So yes, I would not feel terrible using my Sapphire, a Sapphire preferred or reserve, both of which are in 3X everywhere and also internationally don't have foreign transaction fees, unlike the Freedom Cards, which also are in 3X dining. So yeah, I would be okay with that. But since I currently have a 5X dining, that's what I'm going to go with. And each time the annual fee comes up with the Prestige Card, I kind of reevaluate that and I call up to cancel and they offer me just enough. I'm not getting huge retention offers for that one, but because I'm getting $250 back each year from paying for travel and I need either the premier or the prestige.

So I'm going to be spending at least $95 for an annual fee in order to make my points transferable. They don't have to offer me a lot for me to say, all right, I'll keep it another year. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's a good point.

And also I want to point out that, you know, somebody may have caught the judgy tone that I had there and asking Greg, if you would pay 1.3 cents a point for his chase ultimate rewards points. And I'm sure that at least one of you is like, wait a second, you're talking about earning two ultimate rewards points per dollar at the gas station, instead of using a 4% cash back card, where are you giving Greg a hard time for it? And you're right. You're right. If you caught that. So I, I should, uh, I should wait back way to roast yourself on that one.

I did. I roasted myself a little bit. Okay. So, all right. So dining, you're using the prestige, and I'm using mostly the gold or the Brex card for four points. Right, right. Let's talk about travel now.

So travel is interesting because there are tons of cards that bonus particular types of travel. Like there are Amex cards, like platinum cards that'll give you 5X for flights, for example. But let's start with just general travel. There's only so many cards that will give you a bonus for all types of travel, whether it's hotels, flights, trains, cruises, you name it. What's your go-to there? You know, this is one where I imagine we'll probably split some. I don't spend much money on travel. I mostly use award flights and, you know, award stays. So there's not a lot of paid

travel for me. So I look at this as a category where I don't care that much about the number of points per dollar, because it's going to be in the overall scheme of things, an insignificant number of points. What I care about is travel protections. So almost all of our travel is booked on either my wife's Chase Sapphire Reserve or my Chase Ritz card. And the difference is if I'm traveling without the family, I'll do it on my Ritz card because if I need to make a claim for trip delay or that sort of thing, that means I'll make the phone call rather than my wife making the phone call potentially. So I'll use the Ritz card if I'm traveling without the family. But if all of us are traveling together, we'll use my wife's card.

I also do it that way so that I always know which card was used to book the trip. So if I end up in one of those situations where I get delayed or whatever, I'll know who it is that I have to call because I know that if it's just me, it's the Ritz card. If it's all of us, it's the Sapphire preferred every time. So I just try to keep it consistent. Now I'll mention that- Sapphire preferred or Sapphire reserved? I'm sorry if I misspoke on the reserve. Yes, the reserve. Absolutely. Because for the higher protections, we don't have a Sapphire preferred in my household. Now, all of that said, paid Marriott stays, I'm generally using a gift card for. So that is one situation where I sometimes pay, but I use a gift card because I've got this old capital one card it's worth looking around in your account

to see if you've got this hotel special offers section because that's not a bad redemption for your capital one points necessarily maybe not the best redemption now that they have so many transfer partners but that's something that i've used so i've been using that to pay for paid marriott say so i'm not even worried about a credit card for my you know now and then paid marriott stays. So that's my end of things. What about you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do, we do a fair amount of travel, you know, yes, we're, we're booking most things with points and miles, but, uh, it's not unusual for us to, to be booking a, uh, boutique hotel, you know, independent hotel. And we've done that several times recently.

In each case, I've been frustrated to find that the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal did not list those hotels, even though I was able to book through hotels.com and a bunch of other sites. I did hotels.com because they have that rewards program where after 10 nights, you get a free night, basically. So at least I'm getting something besides just the portal rewards for clicking through from a portal and booking. And yeah, I've been using mostly my Sapphire reserve as well um in the case of hotels i mean i don't know how often i need travel protections that usually comes up when booking flights and things but i'm happy to get you know 3x ultima awards for that booking and um you know like nick you know sometimes I'll use my Ritz card

usually for flight purchases. Um, and, and in those cases, I'm, I'm usually doing it because one, it has exactly the same, uh, travel protections as the Sapphire reserve, uh, to, um, it gets, I think six X Marriott points. Is that right? Yeah. For travel. So it's not a bad return. I wouldn't normally trade six, you know, three ultimate rewards points for six Marriott. I don't think that's a great return, but it's not horrible. And the other reason is that Ritz has that airline incidental fee credit, which so sometimes depending on what you buy, you might be able to get that reimbursed up to $300 per year. So, yeah, we actually have the same-ish answer, I think, for different reasons. Yeah, that is interesting. And I should correct one thing.

The Ritz card is six points per dollar at Marririott properties. It's three points per dollar on travel. Oh, okay. Right. Right. All right. So actually that Let's say I spent $500 at the sacrifice of what I could have earned three ultimate rewards points per dollar. So 1500 points, there's enough staples and office max gift card deals where I'm earning five points per dollar that I'm not terribly concerned with. Did I all, could I have earned a few? Cause I'll still earn three Marriott points per dollar on that travel. So I'll still earn 1500 Marriott points instead. So that offsets some of those lost ultimate rewards points. It's like, ah, I'm not going to waste too much brain power on the small. I'm not going to sweat the small stuff. Right, right, right. Would you, so suppose

you weren't flush with Amex points. Would you, when buying air, let's say you're buying a lot of airfare, just pretend you are. Would you use your Platinum card to get 5X or would you use your, let's say the Sapphire Reserve to get 3X? Well, so no, first of all, no, because Amex travel protections stink comparatively. Although they added, I guess they added some travel protections. Maybe they don't stink anymore maybe that's an outdated view that mx trained me to to to think of when i think of that uh so i don't think well i don't know i guess i'd have to look they don't stink anymore but they're not they're still not as good as uh chase's travel protections yeah so you see i think i prefer that because i'm unlikely to need to use the travel protections. However, at some point I'm going to need to use them. And that one time that I do, I feel like it probably outweighs the extra points that I could have earned. Although I don't know, would you argue the other way around that you'd rather just self-insure, so to speak, and earn the five X? No, I tend to just go through Chase just because I like that peace of mind knowing that I have those protections.

And I know that I hate paying for insurance. And so this is sort of a way I am paying for it by getting less points, but it doesn't feel like I'm paying for it. And I prefer that. What about shopping for flights through the Chase portal? So you get 5X instead of 3X. Well, that's where things get a little interesting. Yeah. So the shopping for flights through the Chase portal or the Capital One portal for five points per dollar with the VentureX. Either way, could be pretty interesting and appealing. The downside there is what happens if your flight gets canceled, which is something I never ever would have really thought hard about in years past because I just didn't have enough situations where I ever had a flight get canceled.

Now, after these last two years and the craziness that we've seen, that's more of a concern because if the flight ends up either getting canceled or you have to cancel it or whatever the case may be, you're going to end up with a credit that's held with ultimate rewards. And so you're going to have to call them in order to rebook and blah, blah, the headache there. Exactly, exactly, exactly.

I had bought some airfare for my niece and her husband at the beginning end of the pandemic through Chase Ultramarine. That was the only time I had done that. And of course those flights got canceled, got credit that I have to call them, you know, Chase to use them, but only when my niece and her husband are flying. It's just not even, yeah, it's, it's just not what I want to be spending my time doing. So yeah, I, I am not a fan of booking flights through those travel portals. I don't mind if I'm booking an independent hotel where I could get 10 X, I don't mind going that way. I just feel like there's less, there tend to be less issues with that kind of thing.

But again, as I mentioned with Chase, I'm not finding the properties I want. And so I'm frustrated with that portal, with that travel portal. Yeah. That's, I think that's a really good point. So yeah. Yeah. And I think that it's, it brings up a good point in general that when you're booking travel, you have to consider, I think even more so than ever before, a couple of things. Obviously, you want to book the flights you want or the hotels you want, but you want to also consider the path of least resistance when things go wrong. And is it worth two extra points per dollar given the potential headache you face if things

go wrong? I would just book direct and give them those two points per dollar. So that's, and that's, I think in general, these days, I'm even more inclined than ever before to book direct, to not have another entity between me and whoever it is that needs to give me my money back. Right. Right. All right. Let's, let's move on to warehouse stores. So Sam's club, Costco, that kind of thing. What should people use when shopping? A lot of people I know shop at Costco, for example, all the time. What should they use? Well, because it's only 2% back. I mean, if you want 2% back, you got lots of options for 2% back. Got to say double cash and earn yourself two points that you can transfer to partners. Now, I just said that and I don't know off the top of my head whether or not Costco takes

MasterCard. So that goes to show I live in a rural area with no Costco. I don't know. Do you know which credit cards Costco takes? You know, it's embarrassing. I don't remember off the top of my head either. They must not because the Costco is a visa issued by city. So they must not take master cards. I presume. So I guess the double cash is a bad example, but get yourself the

fidelity visa. That's a 2% cash back card that you could use in a Costco. And then you'd have cash back also. Uh, although I would probably rather have a transferable currency if you can get one. However, all that said, that's just a whole bunch of rambling because really what you want to use is the Altitude Reserve card probably because you can use Google Pay or Apple Pay, mobile payments at Costco, pay with your Altitude Reserve, earn three points per dollar, three US bank flex points, or I don't know, they call them flex points anymore. Three points per dollar. You can then use at a value of one and a half cents each towards travel with the real-time mobile rewards program. So that's the card that you would want because essentially you're getting an effective four and a half

percent back towards travel. Right. Right. And that's what I would do when shopping in those kind of places or even places like Walmart or any big box stores where I don't have a card that bonuses that spend. That's a great option. Yeah. Now, I will mention that. So, first of all, I don't shop very much at warehouse stores. So, I don't really follow a strong strategy on that. So first of all, I don't shop very much at warehouse stores, so I don't really follow a strong strategy on that. My strategy has been bank of America premium rewards when possible for 2.6, 2.5% back because I don't have the altitude reserve card and I don't spend that much at

warehouse clubs though. I now, and then we'll go to one. So, but so maybe the altitude reserve long-term might make sense if I were going to be spending a lot of those places. But I'm happy with 2.625% cash back. I will note, you mentioned Walmart and things like that, where you don't have that sort of an in-person category bonus. bonuses, the temporary, not the Freedom Card ones, but the co-branded ones where they'll bonus grocery on the Southwest card, for instance, or the Hyatt card or whatever else. I have found that my Walmart codes as grocery for those purchases, not for the Freedom. When the Freedom gives a quarterly bonus on grocery, it doesn't work at Walmart. But anytime they've run that on the co-branded credit cards with Marriott and Hyatt and whatnot, my Walmart has coded as grocery for that. So I'll use that. That's great to know. Fantastic. All right. What about online shopping? So just general, you want to buy something online? What's your go-to? You know, my go-to should be the City AT&T

Access More card, which is not available anymore. So it doesn't really do people a lot of good talking about it. But short version of the story is that card theoretically earns three points per dollar at online retail merchants. So you should earn three points, three city thank you points per dollar spent at online stores. And again, it earns thank you points, even though it's an AT&T card, it's really kind of weird. There's still an AT&T access card. I think that only earns two points per dollar or something, but I have the access more than earns three. So that would theoretically be my online shopping card, but not so much as of late, because I've run into so many situations where I expected to get 3X and I didn't, or I can't really figure out, did I get 3X? I got to

go through each transaction, blah, blah, blah. It's gotten kind of annoying. So really that card has gotten socked toward, just held on to for retention bonuses. And in the meantime, Amazon and Costco online, and I do shop online at Costco now and then, I've been using the point debit card. The point card debit card has been constantly offering five points per dollar, which is 5% cash back essentially at Amazon and Costco. And then it's up to a limit. It's like $1,000 a month usually in spend, but that fits within my needs. So I've been really happy with 5% of places like that. Nice, nice. So what about the Bank of America customized cash rewards card? And there's some other cards in Bank of America's portfolio that have similar earning structure. But basically, they'll give you 3% cash back in the category of your choice up to, what is it, $2,500 spend per quarter. And what's exciting about that is if you have platinum honors with Bank of America, you get that 75% bump. So you're getting 5.25% cash back

in an online online purchases in one of the categories you can select. So, yeah, that's, that's potentially a great deal, right? On 5.25% up to 2,500 per quarter. You know, I don't, we probably maybe exceed 2,500 over the course of the quarter, but, but maybe not, And it'd probably be pretty close. So that would probably be a really good choice in my household. So the thing you have to keep in mind with that is it's up to $2,500 in combined purchases between both whatever 3% category you choose and 2% at grocery. So you don't want to use it at grocery stores because that's going to count against your $2,500 cap for the 3% category. So make sure you're only using it for the chosen 3% category.

And it's a lot like the Citi Custom Cash where you just want to pick it for one category and just label that card and don't use it for anything else. Use other cards for other things. That would be a good choice. And so that's, I think a really good one. And that reminds me of another point that I'm going to tie to that. I'm going to just quickly hop back to the point debit card for a quick second. The other reason I've been using the point debit card a lot is because they've constantly had these access offers for online things where they give, I don't know, 15 points per dollar at Nike. At some point they had that and they have 10 points per dollar here, there, blah, blah, blah. And what's been nice there is you don't have to even card link that. That's just,

you'll see it in the app and then you can just use it and get that and also click through a shopping portal and stack that with other stuff. So that's been kind of nice with the point card also. But backing up to the point you just made about the customized cash card, they also have a business-y version of that, right? They have a business version and that earns a potential bonus, well, back in gas stations, right? Yes. I don't remember exactly how that structure works, but I think it's on up to $50,000 spend a year or something like that. So it has much higher limits. The trick is that getting platinum honors on the business side is harder. Meaning, you have to have $100,000 worth of business savings with Bank of America or with Merrill

Edge or Merrill Lynch. And so even're even you're like your 401k and all that kind of stuff that we've used to qualify on the personal side does not work on the business side. So, yeah, I mean, you could park a hundred K in their business checking account that doesn't earn any interest, but that's a huge waste. So you, yeah, yeah. So you can then with Merrill, like the thing that wouldn't be a waste is you can with Merrill open a investment account, a business investment account and put a hundred K in there and invest it with, you know, very low or no fees. And so that can be a really good deal. But applying for that business account, I know from experience, it's a big deal. So it's like applying for a mortgage, like you're buying a new house. I mean, there's that much paperwork involved. It's insane. So it's not for the faint of heart to go after that.

There you go. There you go. But if you've got a sizable business with a sizable amount of cash reserves, then it might be something that's worth looking at. If you've got a business where your sole proprietorship, it's probably not going to be in the realm, essentially is what you're telling me, in the realm of possibility, or at least not, not without great difficulty and, and leaps and bounds and hoops and things like that. But if you've got an established business and you've got a fair chunk of cash reserves or investments for that business, then, you know, it might be something interesting, right? It totally could be, especially if you, if your business requires spending a lot at guest stations, then you have some sort of shipping company or whatever you can do really

well with Bank of America. So what about everywhere else? So just all the things that we didn't just list, everybody needs a good backup card that gets good rewards just everywhere so that you're not worried about, is this thing going to classify as a, as a grocery store, as a diet, as a restaurant, whatever, just use this. And I know for example, you know, there's tons of 2% cash back cards at very least your backup, your everywhere else cards should be 2%, but you could actually do better. You could. Yeah. And there, there are so many now 2% cash back. I feel like for a little while, it was basically just the city double cash and the fidelity that were widely available and easy to get. But now there's so many.

Everybody's got a 2% cash back card now, it seems. So I say everybody, not the Chase's and Amex's of the world, but lots of smaller institutions do. No, you're forgetting Chase has their business. Well, that's true. Premier? Premier. I forget what it's called. It's unfortunately called a Chase Ink card.

And I say unfortunate because unlike all the other Chase Ink cards, while it still earns points that they call ultimate rewards points, you can't move them to another account and then transfer them to partners the way you can with the other Ink cards. And so it truly is a cashback card, 2% everywhere and up to 2.5% for, I guess, for big transactions is what it was. Right. So, all right. So 2% should be your floor. Now, a card that I feel like when it launched, we agreed it would be a great everywhere else card. Like the new king of everywhere else cards for people was the Blue Business Plus, right? Two transferable points per dollar on the first 50,000 spend per

year, then one X after that. And no annual fee, keeps your membership rewards points alive. Obviously, again, earns a good return everywhere. So is that the everywhere else card in your wallet? Should that be everybody's everywhere else card? It seems like a great solution. I mean, I still think it's a great one for many people. If membership rewards points are what you want to be earning, that's a very good choice. But then along came like Citi updated their double cash to make their points. At first it was you could convert them to thank you points. Now they earn thank you points directly.

And so that's uncapped. So you have two, two X everywhere, transferable points uncapped. And then Capital One changed their miles to become transferable. And so you could get two X everywhere with a Capital One card as well. Yeah, though then of course,

you're locked into an annual fee for whichever Capital One card, although the VentureX is such a good deal right now with a $300 annual travel credit and 10,000 points annually, that that's arguably a better deal than a card with no annual fee. So, all right. So lots of opportunities for two transferable points per dollar then too. So which 2X card are you using for your everywhere else spend, Greg? Yeah. Right now, not any of those. I will say that mere mortals should, I do think that the venture X is probably one of the best options for this category. But if you prefer cash back, of course, I know, Nick, this is your go-to is the Premier Rewards with Platinum Honors with Bank of America. So you get 2.62% everywhere. You could also do that with their new, what is it? Unlimited cash card. So you could do that with no fee. You could get the 2.6, 2% cash back

everywhere. Again, as long as you have a hundred K with, with bank of America, that card, I do have that. I do have the bank of America premium rewards for, for that purpose. I've recently pushed it back in my wallet or taken it out of my day-to-day wallet because I have the X1 card and I'm starting to flex that thing. Don't flex too hard, Greg. Don't flex too hard or you're going to be really sorry you didn't use it. You think it might snap? You know, it might. I don't know. It might buckle under the pressure sooner than one expects. I mean, we've heard lots of shutdown stories in the beginning of the X1 card. So you've used it some and you

haven't been shut down that's right um i've used it some and some is a good word there because you remember i've still been cruising along on mx promotional deals for quite a while so it took a back seat during all this time i i played with it a little bit when I got it, but I didn't really spend much on it. And now, now it, it actually moved physically into my wallet as my everywhere else card. And I'm a little disappointed.

It doesn't have tap to pay built in right now. And that's kind of just a little minor frustration, but not a big deal. It's funny. I've only used tap to pay. Like I could probably count on one hand how many times I don't usually use, even on terminals where it's there. I always just slide it in.

I don't know. I guess it's, I'm a creature of habit. And so I just slide in the chip. Well, you know, these days you can go to subways in major cities and just tap your card to get in and out and everything. That's very nice. Yeah. I've done that a lot in London. And my understanding is that's now enabled in New York City. So you can alternatively use like your Apple Pay or Samsung Pay to do the same thing. But I just find that a little bit, just enough more involved than just tapping a card. So I prefer that. But anyway, it doesn't really matter much.

Yeah. It's interesting when you mentioned it, it's just something I don't even think about with cards. So I was interested in how you use it. That makes sense. Yeah. So the X-Wing card is an interesting beast. And as I wrote in my post, I wouldn't be doing this most likely if this wasn't my career talking about rewards cards, because it's kind of complicated and it's not as sure of a thing as the Bank of America 2.62%. But what it does is by default, you're just getting 2x points from this thing on all your purchases. But if you spend $15,000 on the card per year, which I intend to do, then it moves to 3x. And theoretically, that should be retroactive as well. So my purchases from earlier in the year, once I hit that 15K threshold, I should get those extra points that I had lost.

And when you refer a friend, you can get 4X for the month after they accept the referral. And so up to 4X everywhere. And it actually gets a little better. They have this thing in the app that's called Boosts. And you're about to pay for something. You go into the app and you find things like it says, get an extra point per dollar on dining. Okay, I'll click that before I hand the waiter my card for a dining purchase, for example. And so that kind of, you know, not only makes it a little more rewarding and means you can get up to 5X on those kinds of purchases, but it's kind of, I found it kind of fun. Yeah. Gamifies it a little bit. It does. It does. It does. So that's my current thing. You know, as far as what are the points worth? They're worth only seven tenths of a point if i'm

remembering right if you cash them out i think that doesn't that vary though too i i feel like when it launched it was like it didn't say that somewhere and so it wasn't clear it didn't say it i didn't see any variability but but the the the better way to use it is there are certain types of purchases. There's a whole, actually a big list of merchants where if you spend money at those merchants, you could then erase those charges at one cent per point value. It has enough merchants on it that I shop at enough that I could use it once I accumulate enough points. For example, I mentioned buying things through hotels.com. I think they're on the list. I'll have to double check, but that would be an example where I might want to use this X1 card

for those types of purchases once I get enough points so I can erase those charges. And that would be neat. Yeah. I think that's a really interesting choice. I've been intrigued by the X1 card, quite intrigued, although hesitant to go after that. Not sure that that's really worth the slight, slight extra bump. Uh, you know, especially if you don't refer anybody else, then it's a pretty small bump over the premium rewards card, which certainly is my main go-to everywhere else card these days, the premium rewards card. Now, I was thinking to myself actually for a minute there, we were talking about 2% being the floor cash back. And I was thinking the Blue Business Plus, for those of us that have a Schwab Platinum or would consider getting a Schwab Platinum to cash points out, that's kind of like a 2.2% back card. So that

could potentially even as a cash back card, if you look at it that way, could be a good return on your spend. Especially if the Bank of America Premium Rewards card is not something in the realm of possibility for you, that's a really good alternative. Though when I say 2.2% cash back, the very next thing that comes to mind, of course, is the Nearsight debit card, which is also earning 2.2% cash back, at least for this year. So I feel like 2.2 should probably be your floor level these days in terms of what your cash back would be. If you're looking for a transferable currency, I think we agree. If you're looking for a transferable currency, I think probably the VentureX makes the most sense as an overall card because all the benefits that it comes with for what, to me anyway, is a negative annual net cost. So very

close to negative annual net cost. I think all of the extra benefits it has over the Blue Business Plus make it worth having that as your everywhere else card if you primarily want transferable points. But if you primarily want cash back, I feel like 2.2 should be your floor level right now. And yeah, you could get as much as 3% or more potentially. So don't be using one of those one and a half percent kind of cards, like your Freedom Unlimited. It theoretically sounds nice. And maybe if you're primarily transferring to Hyatt and you know you're going to use those points to good value, maybe the Freedom Unlimited does make sense for you there. But consider that you could be earning a significant amount more in cash back. Right, right. Yeah. And to me, I'll say that I also

included in my post, and I think it's a relevant point for me, that Hyatt points for me are even more valuable right now because I value suites so much. I have two young kids, four and one years old. And so a suite to me right now doesn't even seem like a luxury. It seems like a necessity. And so, you know, so when I'm comparing the value I'm getting for chase points, you know, with or higher points, rather, I guess, via chase, I am no longer looking only at the lowest cash rate, which is typically what I would compare against in the past, I would be like, okay, well, this I could book this place for $150. So I'm only getting X amount in value. But that's not holding true for me anymore now because I very highly value the ability to book into a suite. I can hope for a suite upgrade with another chain, but with Hyatt,

I can lock it in either with points or with a suite upgrade award. So that makes Hyatt points worth a little bit more to me than whatever your comparison point might be if you mostly just want to stay in a regular room, which I know a lot of people are totally happy with a regular room. I sure was until I had two small humans that don't have the same sleep schedule, uh, that have to stay with me. So, uh, so that to me makes Hyatt points a little bit more valuable. So again, that may be a defense for your freedom unlimited, but, uh, I would Actually, yeah. I think that's a really important point because look at your usage of things like Hyatt points and how valuable it is. I did that analysis recently, reevaluing the value of Hyatt points. And I was surprised that the median came out the same as it had before, 1.6 cents per point.

But what's really notable is the pick your own value chart that's in that post. Because if you look at the 80th percentile was, if I remember right, 2.3 cents per point. That means if you're doing just a moderate amount of cherry picking, that is finding the awards that are more valuable than others. So basically not using your Hyatt points for the situations where it's not as valuable, then you can pretty easily get 2.3 cents or more from those Hyatt points. And that's not even counting the fact that when you use your points, you don't pay resort fees. That's not included in that analysis. And you don't pay for parking if you're a globalist. If you're a globalist, you don't pay for parking on those awards.

You're getting a lot more value than sort of is demonstrated in that 2.3. And then you add on a top. I didn't look at suites at all. And suites can give incredible value as well. They can. And while I'm not going to value my points at the cost of a thousand dollar a night suite, that suite is definitely worth more to me than whatever a standard room costs. Because if I could upgrade to the suite for, you know, 50 bucks or a hundred bucks over the cost of the standard room, I would probably do it now. So it's worth something more than whatever the standard room is, even if not

the full cost. Yes, that's a great point. Okay. All right. So we agreed more than I expected we would. I feel like we're at least tolerating each other. Sorry to let down our listeners. We need to disagree more.

That's right. We'll try harder for next week. So I think that wraps that one up though, right? So I think we need to move into the post-roast. Post-roast time. Do you have a post-roast ready? Of course. You do.

Okay. So if you have one ready, I'm going to prepare for that by plugging in my laptop because my power is about to die. I just realized it wasn't plugged in. So I'm going, I'm going to listen really closely while you get started. There you go. All right. This is not a long one. So, Nick, you had a post that was called, If Cash is King, Is Credit the Answer? That was the title. What was that? Were you talking to me? What was that? Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to you. And so I went to read that post to find out how credit is the answer if cash is king. And you went on to talk about why debit is the answer, not credit.

Who did that? Why wasn't the title if cash is king, is debit the answer? What were you thinking? You know, that's a great question. I guess that could have been the title, but then who would have wanted to have read about that? I needed to plant the seed that there was something about credit cards in there. Because if I just made it about debit cards in the title, you wouldn't have clicked on it and read it. You'd have been like, I don't care about debit cards. But if I at least drew you in, then I could try to convince you that you should be considering debit cards more carefully. So that was my angle. There you go. So it was basically clickbait. Yeah, basically clickbait. Well, because I wanted to make the point and I didn't want you to ignore the point.

So I had to draw in. Credit is not the answer. Debit might be the answer. All right. Right, right, right. So that was my defense there. I do not have a post-roast prepared for Greg, which is good because my power cord was not in my bag. So I am going to move right into the question of the week with however much battery I've got left. Let's wrap this up quickly before our next laptop dies. So the question here came in via the email address. So we've been getting those emails at mailbag at frequentmiler.com. So I wanted to pull a question out of that mailbag today because we have been getting some good question of the week contenders. So question of the week this week comes in from Brian. Brian asks,

is it worth, is it still worth upgrading to the Ritz card from the Marriott Bonvoy bound list? If I already have titanium elite status, I'm really not sure what that had to do with it, Brian, but I tossed that in there anyway, if I did upgrade. So he's got the Marriott Bonvoy boundless right now. This is a better part of the question or a more relevant part of the question. I think, could I then immediately like maybe a week later apply for the chase Marriott Bonvoy boundless to get the new a hundred thousand points signup bonus, maybe while using player two's referral link. I haven't applied for the new bonus on a

Marriott card in over 20 years. You know, it may have been a different card back then, blah, blah, blah. So Brian's question is two tiered. A, is it worth upgrading to the Ritz card? And B, if he does that, would he be eligible to get the 100,000 point bonus on the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless right now if he hasn't gotten a bonus on that card in many years? Yeah. So the Ritz card, for many people, is definitely worth upgrading to. It does cost a lot more, but you get a 50K annual cert instead of a 35K annual cert. And you get $300 in airline incidental fee credits, which you have to call or secure message chase to get that credit. It's not

automatic the way it is with Amex Platinum cards, but it's still there. And so if you think you can make good use of that, those two things, the 50K cert, $300 credit is worth well more than the annual fee. You also get a fantastic version of, we think, of Priority Pass. And I say we think because there've been some confusion recently about whether that's true for new signer uppers. But anyway, you get a lot of good things i think it's worth it for most people um whether you could turn around and sign up for the boundless car right away i off the top my head i don't think so because most of the cards have rules about you know you can't have had a account for something like 90 days so go find our post on how to, are you eligible for Marriott card

and just see what the rules are for the card that you want. And you might have to wait 90 days or whatever the rule is before you can apply for it. Yeah. So see the link in the description, because it'll be down there below where you can read all about it and know exactly what the rules are, depending on which situation you have in terms of cards. I agree with Greg. I think the Ritz card is worth an upgrade if you value those other benefits a little bit or value those other benefits in a reasonable amount. I think it's worth it. To me, it's worth having. Though, of course, in my case, I'm kind of lucky I opened it many years ago and I've been grandfathered in. I recently got charged the annual fee again, and I'm only paying a $395 annual fee, which makes it all the more worth it for me. But even still at a little bit more,

I would probably be willing to pay a bit more because I think those 50K free night certificates, though less valuable in the future are still going to be worth a significant sum. And so just between that and the $300 annual travel credit, I feel like I'll easily get more than the cost of the annual fee. And then that priority pass membership, which I still have, and I recently got my new card in the mail. So at least it still comes as a benefit on the card for existing cardholders. So I assume for new cardholders, it would be the same thing since the card hasn't been available new for a long time. I can't imagine it's different. Like I said, I just got the new priority pass card in the mail a few weeks ago. So I'm very happy with the value of the

Ritz card. I think it's worth having. And a couple of the side benefits are not worth very much. The $100 credit on a two-night stay, not necessarily worth very much because you got to pay a higher rate. The club upgrade certs, it could be useful if you're going to pay the rack rate of the room, but if you're not going to pay the rack rate on a Ritz, they're not really all that worthwhile. Yeah. And it's, it's such a rare case where those are worth it. I wouldn't value those, but anyway. Okay. No. So hopefully that answers your question, Brian. Thank you guys very much for being out there with us today. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox, you want to go to frequentmiler.com

slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on all the various social medias. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're listening to this, watching this, et cetera, please do us a favor. Leave us a like, subscribe, enable notifications, leave us a comment or a review any and all of those things are much appreciated it helps the channel out so thank you very much for that and we will see you guys again soon all right and if you have any questions for us uh some feedback for us send it via email to mailbag at frequent miler.com see you next time. Bye.