Frequent Miler on the Air - The Nick is right 3 times episode. Cashing out points and hurrying vs waiting to get new cards.

Episode Date: March 28, 2020

Greg and Nick debate whether to cash out points rather than waiting to use them for travel. We also debate whether to sign up for cards now while great offers remain or wait for something better to maybe come along. Timestamps: 1:30: Coronavirus preparation 6:37 Reader feedback: is it time to cash out points? 10:53: How many points are "enough" per passenger before you consider cashing out? 14:38: Are airline miles safe in the current environment? Are there any we should burn right now? 21:54: What will be the impact of hotels in the aftermath of coronavirus? 25:18: Whoops! A disconnection leads to a moment of chatter about how to avoid this in the future. 27:13: Is this a good time to sign up for credit cards? 30:00: Co-brands 30:17: Cash back cards 30:33: Ink Cards 31:24: Nick disagrees: Travel offers won't increase 33:33: Greg agrees that Nick is partially right: Offers may not increase, but we may see the return of "try before you buy" or extra credits and reduced spend requirements. 36:57: Nick disagrees: Cash back offers may increase after all 40:35: Will the Ink no-fee cards see increased offers? 44:30: Where do we stand so far? 47:10: Should we be afraid of points being devalued because of the coronavirus crisis? 53:54: Greg's counter-argument against airline credit cards today. 55:26: Greg challenges Nick's assertion that travel cards are worth considering right now? 55:48: Greg admits that Nick is right. 59:05: Greg disconnects! 1:00:30: The ten second explanation of what Nick said while Greg was disconnected. 1:01:00: Are transferable currency cards worth considering now? One defintiely is! 1:04:50: Question of the week x 2.5. 1:06:00: First of 2.5 questions of the week: what counts as a direct deposit? 1:09:50: Second question of the week: Halfway to the Companion Pass. Abort now or continue? 1:11:26: Nick shows why Greg was totally wrong -- with a little help from Greg! 1:14:25: Related Southwest question: Should those with Southwest points look for ways to cash out now? 1:17:57: Greg admits Nick is right....AGAIN. 1::20:00: Greg needs an intervention about cashing out some points.

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. Today we're going to talk about whether or not it's a good time to sign up for credit cards. I made an argument in a blog post about saying basically it's not a great time unless this and that. So we'll get into that soon. First, I didn't say hello. How are you doing, Nick? I'm here. I'm here too, guys.

Don't worry. I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. It's been a crazy week and really a crazy couple of weeks. So the world has become so different in two or three weeks' time. It's amazing. And I feel like I felt like I saw some of it coming, but? It's just, it's amazing. And I feel like I, I felt like I saw some of it coming, but at the same time, it's still a shock. And so I got to imagine for people who didn't see any of it coming, so to speak, just, yeah, it is. It's

unbelievable. So, so I'm pretty good, but yeah. Wow. I think it was just the last episode maybe where I said, oh, I think people would be okay going to the mall to buy gift cards right that's just not happening obviously at least in most certainly in the states were in maybe it's still happening in some states but well nobody's gonna sign and Michigan they're all closed so I'm he's gonna sign right oh that's true Simon mall is closed nationwide. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, it's a totally different world. Did you prepare by watching, you know, any zombie apocalypse movies or TV shows as Walking Dead in your repertoire? You know, I watched Walking Dead years ago and I obviously didn't get all the way through it. I got through the first, I don't know, four seasons, maybe five seasons. So I do have at least somewhat of an idea of what to do when the

walkers start coming. But so far, they haven't at least well, I say that except I live in upstate New York. And so anybody who's read the news knows that a lot of New Yorkers have, you know, gone upstate, the ones that have homes, vacation homes and things like that have done the same thing I would do probably and, and left to go somewhere less populated. So that's, of course, caused a little bit of controversy at home. So I do have, yeah, I do have a little bit of knowledge of what to do. I don't have a crossbow. And I'm not a particularly good shot. So I may be in trouble if that zombie apocalypse comes true. So one of the things that was kind of glossed over on the show is how they kept their hair neat and trim. Because all the barbershops are all closed.

Right, right. What are you doing? Your hair looks neat. Do you have an in-home barber? I do have an in-home barber, but she's been off the last few weeks. So I definitely am in need of another trim. But the secret is to just trim it as much as you possibly can. And then you can go a while before people start to realize that your barber shops have all been closed.

Yeah, yeah. I was lucky. I got my haircut just a few weeks ago, so I'm good. But my wife is getting to where she's getting antsy about it. It's getting longer than she likes, but well, you know, I imagine that's happening to a lot of people. And in one way that I'm set for the zombie apocalypse is that I live at the end of a dead end road and there's like a little river you have to cross with

a little bit of a little bridge. So like I'm set to, to protect the homeland so to speak for a while are you going to knock out the bridge you know i could i i know i'm not going to because i do want to be able to get out but i want ups more importantly to be able to come in yeah just at least rig it with explosives and a detonator switch so that you you have an option at any time it could be done yeah that's right. So you got to get your wife, you got to order a set of clippers and get her going on that. Not that you don't look ravishing as always, but, uh, thank you very much. Digging a hole here. It's the boss. I just told him he needs a haircut. I mean, so, you know, it's, it's a little, but at the same time,

at the same time, you know, not, not so bad. Cause it's been's a little bit but at the same time at the same time you know not not so bad because it's been nice been home been with family and so uh nice in the sense that you know that part of it being able to spend more time with family is nice a family member of mine had posted at some point on uh on social media that they were looking forward to the unprecedented chance to spend a month at home with their you you know, his wife and kids, which, you know, on the one side for a lot of people who are out of work, that's still very stressful and difficult. But on the other side, it's, you know, at least if you're going to look for the bright side of it, that part is kind of nice, right? Yeah. You know, for me, my normal had been working from home while my wife went out to work and my son was at college.

And so now I actually have a lot more company at home while I'm working than normal. So it's kind of the opposite of what most people are experiencing. I'm experiencing more interaction, I think, even in person than I was before. But that's obviously unusual. Most people are the other side of that and looking for ways to connect. And so we're seeing a lot of people doing, we did this with some friends. We did some just online video, happy hours, grab a drink and meet up with a couple of you know, how did that go? It's fun Yeah, no, it went really well. We've done it a couple times now It's it's a good way to stay connected with people that you're used to going out with well

You stay in but at least get that that social interaction. Yeah, that's nice You know, I've seen a few groups of friends who've done things like that also online And I think that's a great way to connect with people and being able to take advantage of the technology we all have, you know, that that's certainly an asset in terms of this kind of really, really unprecedented event that has cut us off from each other. I, you know, I guess on the one hand, we're very lucky to be in the technological times we are right when you can face to face chat with people still even from home so so that part of it seriously could be able to do that makes all the difference yeah

yes yeah I can't imagine like no internet no you know what no way to connect other than the phone perhaps would be you know even worse for people that are stuck at home right now but but thankfully they are staying at home so hopefully it won't last as much longer as some people predict hopefully we'll be able to you to get through this. And if everybody is staying at home and taking advantage of those things. Yeah, we can hope. We can hope.

All right. Let's move on to feedback time. Okay. Reader feedback. Everybody loves reader feedback. Everybody loves it. And so does Steve. We have feedback from Steve today.

So this is one of the rare times where it's not one of our two names. Somebody else left us some feedback. That's great. That's we appreciate that, Steve. Thank you. Steve says, just listening to your pod from last week. I guess that's the cool way of talking about podcasts. A little bit.

I'm not, not nearly cool enough to know to call it a pod. No, I know. No, I didn't know. No, I know. He says, yes yes we are he says yes we are out here so and and still listening so if you remember last week i talked about how we didn't know if people would be listening because people had been listening on their drive to work or at the gym and so with people not doing either of those things, it was a little unsure, but Steve at least has left links,

so that's good news. Thank you, Steve. Tell your friends. He says, one topic idea I had for you guys was maybe to reassess whether it's worth cashing out points in light of the current economic downturn. Obviously, those who need the money should, but for many who have hordes of points and would not get to the end of their stockpile for years, especially with the

uncertain travel future, it may be worth it to cash some out and put in an index fund. I just figured it's going to be slow news for a while, so might as well share the idea. So I thought this was a really good comment question. So we have talked a little bit about why you might want to be signing up for cash back credit cards instead of points and miles credit cards. But this is a different one. This is saying you've got a huge pile of ultimate rewards or thank you rewards. And is it time to convert them, some of them, to one cent each and invest it? Because the alternative is they're sitting there doing nothing and certainly not gaining in value. Right. Right. What do you think?

Yeah. I mean, I almost wrote a post this week, and who knows, maybe I will yet, but about uses of points other than travel that don't suck. Because most of the time when you're redeeming points for things other than travel, the value is really poor. But every now and then, yeah, I've been mulling it around anyway. Because obviously, one of those options is to redeem points at one cent each. Sometimes you can redeem for gift cards. Sometimes that value might be a little bit better. So I definitely think it's something that's on people's minds. And yeah, when I look at it and you're from that standpoint that you've got millions of points

that you're not going to use anytime soon, I think you would be very smart to cash them out and invest them right now because of the fact that we're at such a market low point. I think I saw somebody on social media at some point say, hey, you want to buy stock in Microsoft at the 2016 price? You can do that right now. So whatever it was. And I bought a few shares of a few things in the last couple of weeks. And some of them, of course, I didn't buy at the very bottom for anything, but some of them were up like 20%, 25%, 30% over the last week here. And, you know, that's not necessarily going to last, but it's probably going to go up in the long run from where it is now anyway, I think. So even if it goes down some more, probably I have a better chance of that appreciating. And

if you have millions of points sitting in your account, those are not appreciating. So you're going to have time here, it seems to collect without burning any points probably for the next couple of months anyway. Or maybe you're going to plan some of next year's travel, but you're not going to burn as many points as you ordinarily would. So you've got plenty of time to earn those points back right now. Yeah, I think it is probably a good idea to cash out some. I wouldn't cash out everything, but cashing out some makes sense. And if you're in that situation with membership rewards points, then I think it really makes sense to open the Schwab Platinum card right now. Because with the Schwab Platinum, you can cash those points out at 1.25 cents each into your Schwab brokerage account. So you're getting even better than one cent each in

value. And then you can just invest that right from there. So I think that'd be a really smart play for anybody sitting on millions of points. Do you agree, disagree? No, I totally agree. What do you think? And I totally agree too that you don't want to get rid of all of them. You want enough so that when you're back to traveling, you have enough to do whatever you want, right?

So do you think we could come up, do you think we could agree to a rule of thumb? Like you should keep X number of points. That's a really good question. So I think you would have to come up with that as X number of points per passenger, right? Per person.

Cause if you've got a family of four or family of two or family of six, it's going to make a difference as to how many points you want to keep. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you want to keep, right? Yeah, yeah. So you want to come up with a number per passenger. And that's a really tough question because you want to be able to, I don't know, one of the things I enjoy about miles and points is knowing that, and I say tomorrow in the

general sense, not in the, you know, March 2020 sense. But I know that tomorrow I could get just about anywhere in the world with the points that I have. And I enjoy that sense of freedom, I guess it is, or also the sense that if there was a reason I needed to get somewhere, I know I could do it. So I want to have enough points to still maintain that feeling, but I definitely don't need an excess like millions. So I'm not sure, where is that? Well if, if, you know, let's say the new Emirates first that we suddenly saw that it's, it's wide open for award availability, which is hasn't been like hardly at all, right? You know, you want to know that you've got points there. So you could

jump on that and experience it, right? For sure. Even if you don't end up doing it, right? You just want to know that you could have the ability to have done it right right i could have been in that suite yeah that's right i agree so i i feel like you do want to keep a pretty healthy balance and and really want to probably be diversified with different currencies still um but in any one specific currency like i don't think a million points is necessary in any of them right no i agree uh's certainly not per certainly not per person yeah not per pass so I'm thinking maybe around 300,000 per per transferable points currency like like I wouldn't want less than 300k membership rewards per passenger or less than 300k thank you or so what are you basing that on

i sort of pulled that out of the air sky okay all right well yeah i don't know like yeah i don't know like i figure 85k gets you basically anywhere in business class on cathay pacific right isn't that the top end of their band with uh for one world uh right for business class that sounds right yeah so that's one way one way so round trip you're looking at 190 now 190 also would get you around the world one trip with ana like a pretty long one because 150 nice one gets you 20 000 miles around the world so 190 it gets you really far so i mean that would that would cover you or 170 actually that is i did the math wrong all right so you really far so i mean that would that would cover you or 170 actually that is i did the math wrong all right so you're thinking more like 200 ballpark ballpark yeah

yeah i think per passenger i think that's enough i could i could go with that i think yeah i mean you need some you need some access because you need hotels and that kind of thing but if you got multiple passengers then you know that extra 30 or 40 or 50K per passenger should help you cover that. So I feel like if you've got that much, 200 per person, I think you're okay. I don't know as though I would feel like I have to cash out everything but 200K,

but I think 200K per passenger leaves you pretty safe now. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's true. i mean if you're if you're someone though who's who's looking for international first class then that might be right a little bit tight especially for multiple people round trip kind of thing now what about airline miles like do you feel safe holding airline miles right now are you do want to still maintain? What alternative do you have? I mean, they're not worth squat for anything else. Get a lot of magazine subscriptions, I guess.

I mean, if Delta Sky Clubs were still open, you could go and drink those premium drinks at a good two cents per point value, which is one of the best uses of, of Delta SkyMiles, if you didn't know that, but. One of the highest value anyway. Right, right, right. Well, I'll give it to you to decide whether or not it's the best. Whether that's a good idea or not. Right. So yeah, no, I mean, I think you're, I think your, your airline miles, you, you're kind of stuck with them until until travel comes back are you nervous about that

are you worried at all i'm not are you um no because i'm not in the position where i have many of them in a particular airline but i feel for folks like i got an email just the other day from someone who had transferred points from i think membership rewards to maybe it was flying blue and booked a bunch of trips or booked a trip for a bunch of people anyway that uh it of course has been canceled now because of the travel ban so now he's stuck with all these flying blue miles that right necessarily want flying blue miles you just wanted those flights so uh so i feel like there's a lot of people that are stuck in that situation and if you are you know if you have your delta miles or united or american they're going to be okay they're going to get bailed out they're going to

be fine in the long run so i don't think those miles are going anywhere but i don't know if that's the case for every airline in every country so no you know especially some of these more niche options you know like i got some miles in Hainan Airlines right now that I figure are probably done, right? Those are gone. So bye-bye. See you later, unfortunately. And so, you know, if you're in one of those kinds of situations, I don't know. Do you just try and book something now?

Book something out of Europe hoping that EU26 261 business saves you when you know the airline goes under or something I don't know like is that gonna help you at all if you have a flight booked for next year I don't know I kind of doubt it I mean I think because I think if if if the airline didn't go under uh-huh I mean and we're talking about really under we're not talking about filing bankruptcy, but still carrying on the way airlines have done many times. We're talking about totally going under to where their miles are not worth anything. And so if you really knew that was going to happen, then yeah, maybe pre-booking something makes sense. But if you don't think you're likely to fly it, I don't,

I think that's just causing you aggravation down the road. Then when they don't go under, then you got to figure out how to cancel that flight and, and, uh, pay the change fee or not. Are there any transfer partners that come to mind that you would be particularly concerned about holding large numbers of miles, not because you're choosing to transfer them in, remember, but of course, because people have gotten their flights canceled. And so now they've got a bunch of life miles, or they get a bunch of flying blue, or they have a bunch of whatever it might be. Is there any particular one you would be concerned about? Yeah. I'm guessing your answer is going to be no, but I just brought the question out because it came to mind.

So one that, well, it's not a transfer partner. I mean, one that we know is likely to devalue, likely, we don't know for sure, but in about a year is Alaska. And so if you had, you know, maybe if you had gotten a lot from Marriott travel packages or something, that, that might be a concern. I have a concern with that, that I have, I'm sitting on a bunch that I got that, that way. And also through Virgin America when they merged into Alaska.

And so I don't know by the time I'm ready to use them, what will they be worth anything near what they are today is my guess is probably not. But on the other hand it doesn't when you have that many miles and points of different currencies it it doesn't really bother me that much like because i know i can turn to something else if that happens and they'll probably remain some good sweet spots with alaska miles even if the ones that we think of as the best ones right now, even if those go away. That's an interesting one to bring up actually, because I have a decent

chunk of Alaska miles because of travel packages also. And I used some of them last year and I was a little, I don't know, I wasn't unsure whether or not I wanted to use them because I've been holding onto them for that, you know, perfect Emirates redemption or something, even though the value isn't greater for a Japan Airlines first class flight, ideally. So I've been hanging on to some and I used some of them, but I said, OK, I'm going to save enough to fly a couple of passengers in first class or blah, blah, blah. So I do have a chunk there and I figured, OK, before they join One World, I'm going to book something. And now, of course, I'm not booking anything right now. So I guess it's going to make sense to keep an eye on availability as we move forward. The scary part is just, I have no idea what schedules are actually going to fly. I mean, I would think that by January, February, we're more or less back to

normal. But at the same time, I don't know what that looks like with airlines cutting like 80, 90% sometimes all of their flights right now. It's going to take a while to get back to regular schedules. Well, I don't know which airlines will ever go back to regular. Some of them, I'd be surprised if we don't see a number of airlines, a number of the ones that I wrote about this week about like flying first class because the first class awards are available in January and February of next year. I'll be surprised if we don't see some of them deciding there's no reason to put those jets back in the air because they're costing them too much and they're not getting enough first class passengers that are paying passengers. That's just my guess of what's gonna happen and so

that would be really unfortunate but there's already been an industry trend towards business class without first class like we see a lot of cafe flights that are entirely you know business class is the top end. And we're gonna so that's my prediction that we'll see more of that, unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's probably true. And I think, you know, even when this Coronavirus situation abates, and you know, when we've kind of gotten the handle on it, I think that it's going to take a little bit for people to feel confident in traveling again, even even when it becomes quote, unquote, safe, I think it's going to take a little bit for people to feel confident in traveling again, even when it becomes, quote unquote, safe. I think it's still going to be like a slower trickle back into everybody traveling in the same comfort that they did before anyway. So I wouldn't be surprised if

schedules also are reduced somewhat just because demand is going to be lower, not only for those first class passengers, but across the board, I think probably for a while. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know what we'll see, this should be interesting.

What do you think the impact will be on hotel points? Because hotels can't easily cut back capacity. Right. You know, so the big resorts and everything, you know, I fully expect we're going to see outrageously low cash prices. And probably they'll be slow to change their award categories. That won't happen as quickly as cash prices change. And so there's going to be a while where it's not going to make sense to use our points, I think. I think that's probably a very, very good take on the situation in terms of, you know, it's very observant.

I think that's really going to be the case. And I think that makes me happier about my situation with the Venture card and the fact that I got that ability to redeem towards Marriott gift cards for more value. But I think it also is going to make like the, the venture card and any other similar cards where you can redeem the points for travel. You know, Barclays ever wants to bring back their arrival. Plus I think that, you know,

now would be a good time for that because I think that those will become a better value for, for redeeming for hotels, of course, cash back also earning cash back and using that to pay for hotels will be good. I think there'll be some decent opportunities in terms of Marriott properties being off-peak or maybe the Hyatt properties being off-peak just because there's so little demand. So I think we might see some of that. But like you said, even at off-peak rates,

it's going to be too slow to catch up with the dip in prices. I think so. So one area where we might see some exciting opportunity is you wrote about Hyatt Privé. Right. And how you get $100 credit and free breakfast and all those great things that are like the Amex fine hotels and resorts might get more valuable, too, because these luxury properties might be routinely inexpensive to book. And at that point, those programs, to the extent that they keep them up, will be a really nice way to get a lot more for our money. Yeah, I think so. I think that they will be a particularly good value. And I also think, you know, we've all called the prestige fourth night free benefit kind of dead. And in the one sense, it has been because you can't earn loyalty points

and elite night credit and all that kind of thing. But if the cost of stays drops tremendously, maybe it'll be worth using that benefit and foregoing the loyalty benefits because you can just pay for breakfast, too, if it's cheap enough. So that kind of benefit might become valuable enough. Not as good as fine hotels and resorts or Hyatt Prevail, but in the right situations, that certainly may be worthwhile. And I also think award availability, whether it's on points, and I should mention, actually, what we're talking about, cash prices being low. Hilton points might become more interesting at that point because having Hilton points, usually the Hilton prices are tied to the cash prices. So the number of points required often anyways related to the cash prices. So there might be some good opportunities with Hilton points, with fifth night free so that might be good and i think airline award

availability is likely to be pretty good because there's going to be less competition for those seats for a while i think uh-oh he's rejoining there he is and here i am yeah all right switch my camera here it seems like it didn't switch so So I think the dots in the top, you might be able to. Yep. There you go. Am I? Okay, great. Because it hasn't changed on my side yet.

Did it change? Am I centered right now? What do you mean? My camera? Yeah, I am. Okay. So on my side, I'm still. That's weird that you can't see it.

No, I'm still seeing the other camera. So, but that's good. If I'm centered on your side at least one of the videos is going to come out well so right although although i have to say a lot of the time you've been blurry and choppy so the internet on one of our sides is not going well well it seems to be mine if i'm the one that got kicked out there so uh so my apologies hopefully the podcast folks won't know any different because it'll sound the same as it always does i've been wondering what can can we get you um can we get you the the t-mobile like 5g and and have you use that as

a hotspot would that work better than whatever internet yeah i mean i guess you'd have to look into whether the the coverage for 5g is where you tend to be because i've looked it up for here in ann arbor and they don't have it at all i'm sorry probably not at home yet um but i you know i do usually use t-mobile 4g although i noticed when i got disconnected there that my phone had connected to the wi-fi so i think it might have been sharing the wi-fi as a signal and the wi-fi is not as good as uh the 4g so um got it so anyway all that technical mumbo mumbo jumbo that most folks are probably not that interested in but i but the 5g might be a good idea though it might be a it might be a way to go if we get the service

in our area i'll have to take a look yeah yeah let me know about that okay all right um so so we've been rambling about various things but we had a topic for today which was whether or not this is a good time to sign up for rewards credit cards so i posted this morning relative to when we're producing this video is this morning. My thoughts on that. So a number of blogs have said, if you're going to sign up anytime soon, you should do it now because the offers are about to drop. That's the guess. And I agree with that sentiment. I do think that any promotions that the banks were readying, they're probably all on hold right now. And so once the current elevated offers run their cycle and the promotion's over, I think they'll drop back down to the normal sort of like, if you think about like Southwest cards, their sort of normal unpromoted rate tends to be about 40 000 points i think so i think we're

going to see most cards drop to those kind of sad 40k 50k depending on what they are um amounts and yeah but but i don't think that's going to last. I think that what's gonna happen is in a few months or six months, whenever it is, whenever we're all free to travel again, the travel providers who have credit card, credit cards, branded, co-branded credit cards, they're gonna be eager to get us back on the flights, in the hotels, on the trains, whatever. And so I think we're going to see some fantastic promotions at that

point. Now, I've argued before, and I still maintain this, I think that we're going to see a lot more promotions come directly from them. It'll be like, stay in our hotel, you know, stay in two different brands and get 25,000 points, things like that, that have nothing to do with credit cards. But I do also think that co-branded credit cards are likely to see increased offers.

I don't predict that for things like Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards necessarily, because that's just the bank deciding what to do. And, and, um, they've, you know, I, I think they, they've had pretty darn good offers up until now. I, I just don't see them going for those travel rewards cards, the hotel ones, the airline ones, because better things might be coming. I also pointed out, though, that if you need cash now, signing up for cash back cards now makes a lot of sense. I don't necessarily see those going up a lot in the future because of this whole thing, because

again, those tend to be the bank cards, not the travel cards. And I also pointed out that there's some cards like the Chase Inc cards where you could sign up now and even if the offers go up, you're not locked out of getting those. So the Chase Inc cards are not subject to those 24 month or 48 month rules that Chase has for other cards. So that's sort of a that's to be clear they

are subject to the 524 rule you can't have more you can't have opened more than five cards in the last 24 months to open but you can open the same card again in fewer than 24 months if assuming you're under 524 just so just to be clear if you want to get another in cash you got any cash card you want to get another one you don't necessarily have to wait 24 months to get the second one. But you do need to be under 524 when you apply. Right. Good point. So, okay. So you don't agree with me, right? No, no, I don't. I think you're wrong. I mean, it's tough. It's tough being in your spot because i know that you've made a few predictions this year and so far if we take a look back at your track record

of future predictions pretty much you've been on track to get each one proven wrong like within the next week so i'm thinking we're gonna see like a big decrease across the board like tomorrow kind of a thing if it it follows Greg's typical, no, that would not make sense. That would be sort of the opposite. You're taking both sides of it. So it's a little difficult to come up with one uniform thing. But here's the thing. So on the travel card side, what you're saying is the offers are likely to decrease and that later on, they're going to be desperate to get us back. And so the co-branded cards, the United Cards of the World and the Marriott cards and the Hilton cards,

things like that are going to increase their offers. But I'm going to say totally wrong on that. I'm going to go off camera for a second to blow my nose. Okay, that's good. Keep talking. Okay. Everybody appreciates that. Everybody watching anyway appreciates that.

The listeners probably don't mind either way. But at any rate, so listen, the cards like the Delta cards right now, they're like huge offers on the Delta cards. They're not going to get much better than where they are now. Or the United card, the business United card that's at 100,000 miles right now on the welcome offer. It is just, I can't see it getting any better than 100,000 miles when they want to bring people back in the fold. So I don't know what it is that they're going to do to improve that. By the same token, I look at the hotel cards and I mean, are we really going to see a Hilton card that gives more than the Aspire card does right now between 150,000 points, the free night certificate, the two $250 credits each year. I mean, what could they

possibly offer that's more than that? I just can't see what they're going to do in the Marriott cards. We've seen the 100k offers. I think they're at maybe 75k right now. So maybe we'll see 100k come back, but I can't imagine we're going to see much more than 100k Marriott points. I don't know, like what are these better offers going to look what are they gonna offer us to incentivize us to come back to those cards all right i'm gonna say something that's gonna sound contradictory oh okay i agree with you that we probably won't see higher offers but you're still wrong i'm still wrong okay you're still wrong and here's why me teacher what i think we're gonna see with the aspire card in particular, that's where it'll be particularly exciting. I think we'll see the $150K and no first year annual fee.

I think they're going to be eager to get new credit card holders into the fold. And I think having a big annual fee in the first year is, is a big dissuader to people trying it out. And, you know, that used to be very common, no first year annual fee on cards. And that slowly trickled away from us. Uh, I think we're going to see that come back. And, and so that'll be big for that one, uh, for others, what we'll see, so the Delta cards, for example, they dropped the $100 credit, the statement credit that they were giving us before for the reserve and the platinum cards. Something like that will probably come back. So, yes, they probably won't increase the number of miles because they're already at a point where it's like they probably just couldn't afford to do more of that. But I think they'll do things like no first year annual fee.

And that'll be pretty exciting for the Aspire, the Reserve, another $450 card. Platinum cards are, what, $250 now, I think. So having that fee waived will be huge as well. That's an interesting take. That's an interesting take because I think also you have to consider the fact that when you're looking at like 100,000 miles as the welcome bonus, as we've seen in a few cards, the United card, I think the Delta cards altogether, a couple of them are $100K after the first year, right? And the Southwest, one of the business cards right now is at 100k. Is there going to be a measurable difference for them if they make it 125k? Are they going to get more people to apply? I don't think there's going to be enough to justify any

additional cost. I don't think there's a number that's high enough that you're going to suddenly draw in a whole bunch of people that weren't going to come in at 100k anyway. So I don't think there's a lot they can do in terms of the welcome offer on at least a good bunch of people that weren't going to come in at 100k anyway so i don't think there's a lot they can do in terms of the welcome offer on at least a good handful of those travel related carts but right well go ahead no no no one other thing that might change is there's been a trend towards bigger and bigger minimum spend requirements so you have these like fifteen thousand dollar minimum spend requirements and that's also got to be a huge hurdle for the average person, especially during what's likely to be a tough recession. So maybe those will come down, and that would be very interesting as well.

That would, and I think that would be really maybe where we'll see it. Now you might draw me into an agreement because that, I think, is extremely likely. Some of the trend really over the last couple of years has been A, bigger welcome bonus spending requirements and B, longer term spending requirements. There have been a number of cards that have gone to spending X amount over the first six months or the first year. And I think cutting that back will make a difference, especially for people who suddenly find themselves in a totally different economic position than they anticipated being in three or four months ago. So I think that probably is a good point. But now I'm going to pivot to cash back because you said that the cash back offers, you know, if you're looking for cash, now is the time because they're unlikely to get better. And a logical part of me would say, well, that makes

sense. I mean, the banks know people want cash right now, so they know they probably don't have to offer a heck of a lot more and they'll still get people applying. But on the flip side, I thought it was pretty interesting that this week the referral offer, not the public offer, but the referral offer on the blue cash every day went up to like 225 bucks which the blue cash preferred the more expensive card offers like 250 so it's only 25 less for the card you know that has no annual fee so they increased the welcome offer at least for referrals not for the the the offers that they're marketing but at least for referrals they increase the offer to an amount that's higher than usual and almost as high as the next card up anyway.

Uh, and I wonder if maybe we will see some of that. I, I'm, I'm kind of surprised by it, but I thought that the timing was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.

Um, maybe, you know, I, I could imagine Amex is looking at, so you said it's a no fee one that it's a no fee one. Yeah. Yeah.

The better offer. I could see them looking at it and saying, where's our opportunity for growth? Well, right now it's in no fee cash back cards. That might be what they're saying. And so let's get people in the door right now and up the offer a bit to do that. So if that happens, will that not put some pressure on Citi to institute a welcome offer on the double cash card? Might be a good time to wait the double cash card out a little bit and pick that up if a welcome offer comes out. It's possible.

I think the point you make about the waived annual fee is a good one. I think that that certainly is going to be a hurdle, the cards that have an annual fee the first year. But I think that now we're discovering a point that is equally relevant, that cards that have no annual fee at all are probably going to be more appealing to people. And maybe we're going to see better offers on those as it becomes a more competitive environment, right? That could be. That's interesting. He just said I'm right for anybody who didn't catch that. He stumbled into a slightly good idea. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So, yeah, so that's interesting.

So, I mean, you can't take that one data point and necessarily extrapolate out, but it's an interesting indicator. So there's a possibility that waiting, particularly on the no- no fee cashback cards, might result in better offers down the road. I think they might get more competitive. I think those no fee cards might be more competitive. I also wouldn't be surprised to see depends on how bad of a recession this becomes, you know, it depends on how long this drags on, how bad things

become. If things don't get horribly bad, then perhaps those cards that offer 0% introductory rates will also become a little bit more competitive. Maybe they'll only look to compete on the time period where you get 0% APR, but maybe they'll try and compete on a welcome offer to go along with that. So I think there could be some opportunity there in terms of the welcome offers on some of those lower end cards. Now, are they worth the 524 slot? That's a whole nother argument altogether. I don't know as though I think they are.

But on the flip side, if you need the cash now, then of course they are. Or at least of course they're worth thinking about. There's a number of good chase cards that are worth it. There are some that are business cards, right? So those are ones that wouldn't count towards 524 um unless they're from capital but um so okay so cash back cards do you do you think that chase inc no fee cards are likely to see an increased increased offers i mean they're right now they're they've been for quite a while now five hundred dollars it's really fifty thousand points but they advertise it as five hundred dollars with not a lot of spend it can get better you know i think the key question

becomes what kind of financial situation most people end up in and what the bank thinks about that. Because, you know, there was the speculation that you quoted in the post about this topic where you said, you know, approvals may become harder to come by for business cards, especially as people go out of business. And, you know, certainly some of those people will default on money that they owed because they don't have a business now, you know, right, you know, like mine in New York state, where every business was forced to close, basically, that isn't an essential one. Suddenly, people went from making money every day to zero revenue, zero coming in to pay the rent and the various bills and expenses. And surely some of those folks are going to go out of business, or at least not have the money to cover the expenses in the short term. So is the bank going to take that and tighten up the belt?

Or are they going to take that and say, OK, well, we need to get some new customers in here now who are willing to start a business and try something and get a small business loan and that sort of thing. And they want to grab a credit card. I think that it's possible we could see an increase in offers there. I feel like chase tends to be a little bit more conservative than competitors in some ways obviously it seems like a an odd statement considering the fact that they debuted the csr with 100k but i think generally speaking we don't see as much movement in the welcome offers on the chase branded cards so is the co-branded cards that we see a lot of movement on we don't usually see much movement in the

welcome offers on the the chasebranded Ultimate Rewards cards. Yeah, but part of that might be, I mean, they're fantastic to begin with. Right. You don't see very many $500 offers out there for no-fee cards. There are a couple other ones, just Wells Fargo and I forget what the other one was. Oh, the Bank of America, but that's a temporary increased offer. Well, and the thing with the ink cards is that not only are the welcome offers good, but the cards themselves are good in the sense that the Unlimited offers one and a half points everywhere, which Chase points are valuable.

If you're looking at that as a cash back card, the cash back equivalent isn't necessarily so good. But if you're looking at it to use the points down the line, that's a great return on everyday spend. And then you look at the Inc. cash and you get 5X at your office supply stores and on telecom and things like that. And I mean, it's a great card to have in your wallet, especially with no annual fee. So I feel like those cards seem like no brainers. And in the past, I've always said I wouldn't advise somebody open one of those. Instead, I would tell them, go after the ink business preferred and earn the larger welcome bonus and then later on downgrade to one of those. Of course, as you noted, the public offer on that card now requires a lot of spend.

And that may turn some people off. Of course, as you also noted, the referral offer on that card right now is still only the 5k spend required. So you could still open that ink business preferred right now at the lower offer and then downgrade it down the, down the road to one of those no fee cards. But on the flip side, you've written in the past also about the fact that the no fee cards don't have the same requirements in terms of a, um, uh, the credit line that you get approved for. And so they're easier to get approved for easier to get approved for those. And so a $500 bonus on a card that's easier to get approved for and doesn't require a ton of spend and also offers a good ongoing rate of return. I think that those ink cards are well worth consideration for anybody who's under 524. Yeah. Okay. So we agree. Let's see where we're at with

the different areas, right? So chasing cards, if you think you could get approved for the business preferred 80K offer right now, or you could do enough spend easily to get the 100K offer, either way, that's a great one to go for now. That's always been a great one to go for. And always will be. And if you want the 80K one, do it now because we don't know how long that referral offer is going to last. And then you'll probably be stuck with the one that requires $15,000 spend. So we agree on that. I think we agree that if you would rather have one of the no-fee ink cards with the 50K offers, that that's totally legit to go for now because truthfully even again if we see a better offer on those later you're still not disqualified from getting that though they don't

have any 24 month or 48 month rules either and if that better offer comes out soon then chase has historically been pretty good about matching the new offers so great yeah it comes out in the next 90 days then send a secure message and say, hey, listen, I just applied for this and I see this better offer now. And Chase is usually pretty good about matching that. Right, right. Okay, so I think we're in agreement there.

And then with other no fee cashback cards, I think we're saying, or I'm gonna put words in our mouths because we didn't say this earlier, but I'm going to say if the current offer is less than $500, it probably makes sense to wait and see if it goes up. But I don't see the $500 offers going up from where they are, like the Wells Fargo or the Bank of America one. I don't see those going up. No, you're probably right about that. Now, I say you're probably right about that. One to keep in mind, don't sleep on it, is the Spark Cash card. Because while right now the offer, I think, is the standard $500 after $4,500 spend, I think, there have been times in the past where either targeted or publicly,

they've offered much higher cash back rates on that. And if you're looking for cash or the miles card, if you're looking for miles, but they've offered as much as what was it like $2,000 if you did 50k and spend and, and the targeted offers in the mail sometimes have been 1000 after 10k spend. So there've been some very big offers on that card but apart from that yeah i don't think you're we're going to see higher than 500 from anybody in terms of a cash back bonus i don't think okay all right so so cool we've come up with kind of rules now let's talk about those travel the airline and hotel cards for a minute well you know what but before we do before we pivot to that i'm going to ask you a tangentially related question about those points so i know we talked about cash back but we're talking about cards for a minute. You know what? But before we do, before we pivot to that, I'm going to ask you a tangentially related

question about those points. So I know we talked about cash back, but we're talking about ultimate rewards and that sort of thing. Do you have any fear of those points becoming devalued either from the bank end? We've seen, for example, recently here, a couple of loyalty programs like Best Western dropped the ability to redeem points for gift cards. And Southwest, I think, also now has dropped the ability to redeem your points for gift cards. So might we see any restrictions on those points in terms of whether it's redeeming

them for statement credits or redeeming them for partners? Are we going to see partners leave any of those transferable programs? Do you have any concern about that? I, I don't, but is that because I just haven't been thinking about it lately? I mean, that's all, that's always a concern in some ways, but on the, on the flip side, uh, every now and then we get thrown a bone with like a new transfer partner or a discovery of a great sweet spot for a program. Like you found all these great uses of Turkish miles that makes the transferable points in that case city points much more valuable.

And so I kind of feel like the trend over time has been up and down. And I don't know that this travel recession that we're going into is going to change that. Do you think there's a reason to think that this will cause this? I don't know. I mean, I asked the question because it came to mind. When I first reported this week that Bass Western points were not redeemable for gift cards. Somebody commented and said Southwest points aren't either. And when I initially went to my Southwest account, I saw that you could still redeem them for gift cards.

But later the same day, it seemed that they did cut that off indeed. But but when that report first came in, my first thought was, oh, well, I got to check the credit cards too and see, can you still redeem Chase points for gift cards and City points for gift cards? Is it like whatever company handles gift card fulfillment for a lot of these that stopped that all of a sudden, went out of business, stopped processing orders, sent all their people home to work from home and they just aren't doing it? I wasn't sure what the deal was there, but then it did make me wonder, you know, what changes might we see in terms of how you can redeem points long term from a recession? So no, I don't have an answer. It's just something that popped into my mind recently. And again, thinking about the people who've got points now stranded in airline programs that they didn't want to in the first place, I started to wonder, well, you know, what happens if that program drops out as a transfer partner well so you know I mean what I should have said when you

first asked us is yes the points are gonna be worth less because they always value of using cash it's gonna go up and so so yeah if you have this chase Sapphire Reserve you still have the 1.5 that you can book the travel so that that value won't go down but the value in transferring points to Hyatt or to United or whoever will reduce for a while, right? Right. That's true. I think we do know that. That's a good point.

But the thing you're saying about the gift cards, this is interesting because my guess of why that's happening is this is like the great depression run on the banks that people are looking at their points programs their southwest their best western and others and saying these are worth nothing to me now how can i just cash them out right now the way to cash them out is to find a way to buy toilet paper with value, but is to get gift cards. And, and so they were probably seeing people doing that. And, and my guess is the accountants just said, we can't afford to, to do this right now. You know, that, yeah, for sure. People holding on to those points. Yeah, I mean, I thought that for sure with Best Western particularly because it's a relatively minor player in all of this. And if they've gone from however many millions in revenue they must do in the average day or week or whatever it is to all of a sudden like almost zero revenue, then, yeah, I mean, I could see where they just didn't want to send that money out. They couldn't keep bleeding money on that and paying salaries and everything else. So it did make sense to me that maybe they would cut it off for that. But then, like you said, the whole run on the bank kind of thing, is that going to happen more and more with other issuers that don't want to or other loyalty programs that don't want to allow

that. So I wouldn't be surprised short term if hotels in general, stop doing the redemptions for like Marriott moments or gift cards or that sort of thing. It just makes sense to me that they wouldn't want to send cash out the door. Well, again, I think it'll be gift cards that they'll stop because moments is still something you can't really dump all your points into moments and hope to get anything out of that unless you are really great at scheduling the far, far future, right? Right. Gift cards are probably the one, the key one. Like gift cards, you know, at least there's some value to you no matter what.

You've got something that you could buy other stuff with once you get those and and there's also tangible cost to the hotel program or the airline program to get you those gift cards they have to buy them at whatever rate they buy them in order to get them to you so it costs them so and theoretically for chase and theoretically with chase and city maybe that's a cheaper redemption for them than a statement credit i guess i think so i think so i think so that's why i don't think we'll see it with certainly not with chase where you can just, everybody can just redeem the points for one cent each.

With Citi, you know, those without the prestige card have to kind of trick the system into giving one cent cash each. So I can imagine a situation where there's a run on gift cards with them. And Amex too, I can imagine a situation where there's a run on gift cards with them and, um,

Amex too, because people don't necessarily know about the Schwab platinum, uh, way of getting, getting points out. So, so I think that's possible. I think we're much more likely though,

to see more airlines and hotels do the same thing as, as what Southwest did and Southwest and Northwestern. So, yeah. So, so, all right. So you're not particularly worried about chase points or Amex membership Southwest and Northwestern. Okay. So, yeah. So, all right. So you're not particularly worried about Chase Points or Amex membership rewards, that sort of thing.

So we've determined that cash back, maybe wait and see if the offers go up. But something that's like at $500 now is probably not going to go up much. So that would be a safe level to apply for now if you're looking for cash back. The lower offers, you may wait and see if they increase a little bit, especially on the cards with no annual fee. So, all right, we agree generally on that. So then airline cards. Right. So you were arguing, I said wait on the airline cards. And I should mention that one of the reasons for waiting is not, which I mentioned in the post, but I didn't yet mention here. It's not just that offers might go up, but that the value of having the card is not there right now. So a lot of these travel cards offer free check bags. They offer,

you know, lounge access. They offer a lot of things that are great when you could use them. None of us can use them. We don't know when we'll be able to use them so why start the clock ticking right now unless you think the offers are going to go down and stay down and i think that i think that there's a good chance that the offers on like the united card for instance any car that's at a hundred thousand airline miles or 100,000 or more hotel points, I think that those are not likely to go up. So I feel like those might be worth considering now, especially if you want to earn some of those points to book some of those first class or business class sweet spots that Greg has been writing about that are available for next year. Right now, we're seeing decent

availability on lots of carriers for awards next year. As we already mentioned, a little uncertain as to what the schedules will be. So you may have to be able to be adaptable and adjust plans if flights get canceled. But you could get a great quick infusion of points. So you may not get great benefits right now, but you may position yourself to get a great flight later on if you pick up that bonus now. All right. So let's say hypothetically all right your husband your cousin esmeralda comes to you and says says you know what i've i've got some free time you've been talking about credit cards i'm going to sign up for some credit cards are you

going to recommend the united card or what were the other ones you mentioned that have been? Southwest is 100K. Aspire is 150. A great time to pick up Southwest points. Ezzy. Well, Ezzy. I'm going to come back to the Southwest points. So I'll leave that one. But is it a great time for United or Hilton or whatever else? I mean, is it a great time to have them right now? No.

Is it a good time to pick them up so that you can book travel for next year? Maybe. Because I don't think that you're going to get more points in the long run from cards that are 100k or over, I would say, for a welcome bonus right now. You're not going to see better than that, probably, because I don't think there's enough incremental benefit for them to increase the welcome offer. The only thing that might get better is maybe they will reduce the annual fee or eliminate the annual fee for the first year. So your gamble right now or reduce the spend requirement for both. But the gamble then becomes, okay, so $95 gamble, for instance, on an airline card that's offering 100,000 miles maybe right now.

To me, I think it's worth the gamble because I think that it's likely that the number of miles are going to go down for a while. And somebody brought up a point actually that by some measures, you're better off getting that clock ticking right now because we don't know how long this whole thing is going to last. So if you've got to wait 24 months until your next welcome bonus and you get that bonus in right now, then get that clock started for the next 24 months until your next welcome bonus and you get that bonus in right now then get that clock started for the next 24 months to pick up the next card you know at some point after the recession is over uh i don't know what do you think you think still wait on the airline cards oh boy so okay all right so is is it really 100k for a $95 card?

But is that with 15K spend required? I don't know. I said 95. And to be honest with you, off the top of my head, I can't remember whether or not the United Business Card was 95. I think it is. But I always have to look. I don't memorize each one of them. So I'd have to look.

So, no, I can't recall, to be honest with you. Okay. Well, I mean, so I think you're right. to look so no i can't recall to be honest with you okay well i mean i all right so i i think you're right so i've always been a big proponent of go after the low-hanging fruit and so if there's a 100k offer especially for a business card that's not going to add your 524 and you're already under 524 you're currently under 524 there's not much harm to picking that up because you're right. I don't see that offer going up. And there's a really good chance that if you wait, I'm sure that offer will come back and maybe it'll come back with lower spend requirement or

no first year annual fee. So it'll be slightly better. But chances are good that if at some random time you come back to it and want to sign up, it won't be as high as 100K at that random time because that's an occasional promotion, not a standard type of thing. So... I'll agree with you. Standard offers don't go... Here's where I can agree. Here's where I can extend the olive branch. I can agree. It's not worth applying for any standard offer on a travel card. And when I say any standard, I'm a little hesitant to say that because I feel like the Aspire card may still be worth it. But on the flip side, the point you make about waiving the annual fee in the first year is

a really good one. So I guess I would say, yeah, waiting on any standard offer is good, like the Southwest 40K offers or like a 50k airline offer I definitely would not bother with that right now because they're gonna have to work harder than that to get your business When they're back in business so to speak so I definitely think I would leave those Completely off the table say no not gonna bother and you know what if the issuers tighten up approvals in the long run You can't get those cards. Oh well because those are pretty poor offers to consider when you know what? If the issuers tighten up approvals in the long run, you can't get those cards. Oh, well, because those are pretty poor offers to consider when you know that those co-brands are going to have to be working hard for the business in the long run. That's a gamble worth taking, waiting to see what happens there.

So I'll agree with you on that. Uh-oh. Did I lose you again? Is that me or you? I don't hear you. So oh yep there you are okay so this time i dropped off bummer i don't know that's okay hopefully people heard what i said you didn't but everybody else did it depends how we publish this i guess i guess yeah i mean we might end up i think we're gonna have to publish your recording of the video

if we want to get that. Which is too bad because anybody watching my recording is going to see me totally off center because I have a webcam plugged in and Greg is seeing me on the webcam. But you guys on the recording are seeing me on the camera over here.

So why don't you just, why don't you just in case give us the 10 second version of what you just said. Okay, the 10 second version of what I just said is I don't you just, why don't you just in case, give us the 10 second version of what you just said. Okay. The 10 second version of what I just said is I don't think it's worth considering any of the standard welcome offers right now. So a 40 K 50 K kind of a airline offer or like a 75 K hotel offer. Yes. 10 seconds. Oh, 10 seconds. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not worth it. Agreed with Greg. Sorry. I didn't realize what the answer was. Agreed with Greg on that. All right. Cool.

So, okay. So that covers our cash back and that covers our airlines. And so then your transferable currency offers worth it, not worth it right now. Not going to get much better you said certainly on the ink cards yeah and I don't think so this is kind of similar that that with the standard offers like the the chase Sapphire preferred and reserve the city prestige and premiere they're all at their kind of standard offers. I think it could go either way. If you want the cards, get them. If you don't want them, wait. Because I am not anticipating big changes there.

Although what we have seen with City during change times is they sometimes just remove those signup offers altogether. So maybe with Citi, if you want one of those cards, maybe this is a good time to get it. I don't know. What do you think? Because one problem with Citi, their thank you cards, you start a 48 month clock. So if you get that Citi Premier 60 offer now and i'm wrong you know greg's wrong and next thing you hear is there's 120k city prestige offer you're gonna hate greg because you're gonna have to wait 48 months from when you earn the bonus the day the bonus hit yeah i mean that's a great point but uh the highest we've seen so far on either of those cards, correct me if I'm wrong,

was a 75 K offer on the prestige. That was like, I don't know, a year ago or more than a year ago. It was 75 K for $7,500 spend. That's the highest we've seen on a thank you card, right? I think that's true.

Yeah. I don't remember any higher ones we've seen. So I don't know how much higher than that it's going to be i don't think we're going to see 120k offer maybe city could do 100k but i don't even see that coming because they've waffled between offering like 50 or 60k and offering nothing for like the last several years and so right now they're offering the 50 and 60k bonuses on those cards i think and i don't think that it's likely going to get much better and i think that you are totally right i will totally agree with

you so everybody take a note right now screaming lincoln's writing a note in the the uh the time stamps here he's going to say hey nick admitted greg was totally right i think greg is totally right that there is a chance that one or both of those cards lose the welcome bonus all together for a while so i think now is the time if you want both of those cards lose the welcome bonus altogether for a while. So I think now is the time if you want the thank you cards. So I should have had that in my post. I didn't think of it when I was writing it. You should have. Now or never on the thank you card, I think. I think you're right. And I think it's a good enough chance that it's not worth gambling and hoping that maybe it gets better. I think it's more likely

to get worse. Right. And for those who don't know, so the Premier, the $95 Premier card is the 60K offer. The, what, $495 Prestige card is only a 50K offer. Go for the Premier. Even if you want the Prestige long term, you could upgrade to the Prestige. And, most likely you'll keep the same credit card number. It won't reset the clock on your 48 month thing of being able to get another, uh, welcome offer. So, uh, that's the way to go with that one. I agree. I think we're more likely to see a welcome offer introduced again on the double cash. Uh, but I think we're more likely to see the welcome offers on the prestige and premier disappear. So yeah, get the premier now yeah all right there okay so so we're in agreement on those things we totally agree all right sort of partially totally i'm totally agree and disagree anyway totally agree in part yeah you

know exactly more agree than disagree so that's good that's it's good for my employment and and for your happiness you're coming along very good very good so that probably brings us to the question of the week which i said i was going to come back to southwest and i am in a second but i actually have two and a half questions for question of the week it's kind of like a double two and a half yeah two and a half questions it is you know and i asked the supervisor of the question of the week department if that was okay and i got approval from the supervisor he gave you approval for that but i'm sick burn for anybody who didn't catch what greg was saying there he was suggesting that my wife was the the uh the the manager of the or the supervisor of the question of the week department was i wrong i didn't even run these by her which

i know is a mistake. I shouldn't have said that out loud. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this one. So there's two and a half questions. I get to cheat like that because, hey, I get to make those decisions. So one of them, the reason that there's two and a half is because the first question is really a softball question, but it's something that we're not going to probably talk about in the headline of a post, even though it's come up before in posts and Okay. And it's relevant to many people. So it's a softball question, easy question. And I'll talk about it if you don't want to.

But I think that it's one worth mentioning for people out there who are looking for some extra cash. So Stuart, is it? Backalchuk, I guess. Stuart Backalchuk. Stuart writes on the post actually about those credit card bonuses, says this is a little off topic, but here goes. Wells Fargo has a great offer for opening a checking account, but has a very high direct deposit stipulation. Do you know what Wells

considers a direct deposit that counts towards the 4K direct deposit stipulation? Thanks. Well, I mean, you should definitely answer this because you've answered this exact question before, I believe, when you talked about your SoFi account. So why don't you? Yep. So I think we did mention it probably on a podcast recently, but it's worth repeating here that quite a few of the bank account bonuses, and I'm talking checking account bonuses that require a direct deposit don't really require a direct deposit. They say they do, but often a transfer from another bank account will trigger the direct deposit requirement. And Wells Fargo in particular, I happen to know did because I did, I had direct deposit going in, but I also sent some money in

from another account and the welcome offer on that account posted the day after a transfer from one of my other accounts that completed the requirements. So I know that it was my deposit rather than the direct deposit that triggered it. So, again, the point here is that, yes, a transfer from another bank often triggers it. And if you want to figure out what triggers the welcome offer on a checking account bonus, go to Doctor of Credit. They maintain the resources on that. So you go to Doctor of Credit and their bank account bonuses page and every bank account bonus that they list, they list a link to data points as to what qualifies as a direct deposit. And again, if you look at the terms, it's going to say you got to have a direct deposit of your pay or social security or whatever else. But if you're suddenly out of work or you're not making enough in order to meet the deposit

requirements on that one, then that can be a really good resource transferring over money from another account and looking at doctor of credit for data points because most of them work, but not necessarily from every bank. So with Wells Fargo, I know there were some banks where it was successful and some where it wasn't off the top of my head. I think the one that I used was Capital One. I think I moved money from a Capital One 360 account into Wells Fargo. I had this memory of a SoFi where you talked about moving money from SoFi to- And I did that also. Yeah. I opened an account with a Northeast regional bank called M&T Bank a few months ago also, and they had a $500 direct deposit requirement was all it was

there. And I moved money from my SoFi money account, or I'm sorry, rather my SoFi investing account. I took $500 from that. I had 500 cash in my SoFi investing account that wasn't invested. And I moved that, did like an ACH push from my SoFi account to the M&T account. And that triggered the bonus the next day, I got the $250 bonus for that account. So there are lots of different banks out there. I was addressing Wells particularly because that was the question here, because I know it does work with Wells Fargo because I did that bonus a couple of months ago. So I definitely know for sure on that one, also on M&T, also on a number of other ones that I've done over the years. So yeah, if you want to

go after some easy money via bank account bonuses, you can often just move your own money around from your own accounts and trigger the direct deposit requirements. It's not going to work with every bank and every issuer. So you got to look through the data points of doctor of credit for that. So go to doctor of credit, tell them Greg and Nick sent you to get treated, right? That's right. That's right. So that that was my my half question sort of so the the two questions like a full question to me so now i'm kind of worried okay all right well so let me let me back up because now i get to scroll a little bit to where i had the other question but i thought it was a good one about uh southwest in fact because we talked

about southwest before and i said that i would come back to Southwest. Let me just quickly find my... There we go. So this was the question from Brands, which also came up on that same post today, related to the topic we've been talking about, but a little bit different. So Brands says, I applied for one of the Chase Southwest personal cards with the 75K miles offer in early february with the intent to apply for the southwest business card to get the companion pass i'll probably still apply for the business card at some point this year but that companion pass is worthless for me now dot dot dot so if you're in that situation where you are halfway to a companion pass what do you do do you apply for another card now do you wait for next year i would totally apply for the other one now why um because i'm sure we don't know what southwest is going to do

yet but i i'll bet you anything that they'll make your your companion pass last longer than you know it would normally and and probably what they'll do is give you, what we all hope they'll do is give you a whole nother year. And so, I mean, that would be an amazingly generous thing for them to do. But I think that's not at all improbable. And so I would totally gamble on that chance that you're going to get, you know, not just, let's say travel reopens. I'm going to just pick a date, let's say in September or something. So you get a few months this year with your companion pass, you get all of next year and

hopefully all of the year after that. That's what, that's what, if I was in your position, I would get that other card. Now, here's why you got to be glad that there's two of us on this show, Brands, because I am not going to steer you wrong. Nick's going to tell you why I was totally wrong. I can tell you why Greg was totally wrong, and this is why you got to ask at least two people. So Greg is totally wrong on this one, and I wish he was right. But no, I think it's bad advice, and this is why.

And I think that it was the obvious answer. It was the first answer that I came up with was the same one as Greg. And I think that that's the clear, obvious answer. Yeah, Southwest is probably going to do something customer-friendly with that companion pass, but we don't know what it is. And there's at least a decent chance that you're not going to make use of it at all this year. So whatever you get out of it this year is probably a wash. I say wait until next year because if you apply for that business card,

for instance, right now that one of the Southwest business cards is offering 100k welcome offer with 25k spend required. So with just that one card, you earn enough points for a companion pass. I don't think that that offer is not going to be around later this year. I think that maybe it'll go away for a little while, but I think it's at least very likely that that offer comes back or some sort of an offer where you can trigger a companion pass with just one card is likely to come back late this year in time for you to earn enough points for the companion pass in January of next year and know that you have a companion pass that's valid for two years. So rather than gamble, because Southwest might only extend those, let's say they extend them three months or five months or six months, then right now earning it today is going to give

you a pass through mid-2022. Whereas if you wait until January to earn it, you know you got it through the end of 2022. Not only that, when you said I was wrong, here's what I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to say that it's equally likely that Southwest will cut in half the requirement for the companion pass. Or that happens. In which case, your one card is enough, probably. I can't remember what the scenario was. How many points do you have? Highly possible.

Highly possible. And that would be an awesome solution, wouldn't it? That would be, that would be, that would, that would make a lot of sense for them to do it that way, I think. So in two out of three scenarios, you're better off not listening to Greg's first suggestion. That's right. I agree with you this time. Two out of three scenarios, disagree with Greg's first scenario. So I, I, the one exception, the one exception I'd say is if you're in a situation where you expect you're going to be over 524 and so you won't be able to get any Southwest cards later,

then you might want to just grab it now. Yeah, in that case, I would agree. But other than that, I'd say, yeah, Nick is two out of three right on this one. at that screaming lincoln's note i was right twice today twice two times rarely i did say it happens even for a broken clock twice a day huh so the broken clock has done okay today all right you've got one more question though let's see well here's my half question so that another hour or maybe this is a full, I guess, because I said the Wells Fargo is a half. Who's keeping track? So the related question is sort of should people who have Southwest points right now and aren't going to get the companion pass right now,

should they be thinking about if well, I was going to say redeeming them for gift cards, right? But of course now you can't, but if that were to come back, I saw this week, you can redeem Southwest points when you can redeem them for gift cards for about one cent each. Is it worth just cashing out Southwest points if you're not going to get to the companion pass now and you're not going to get any value out of the companion pass I don't know is it worth cashing them out at one cent each only if only if you're so spooked by this whole thing that you don't think you're gonna be traveling right I mean the the Southwest points are still because of a weird quirk and how they're they're done they're still worth usually about one and a half cents each sometimes more depending on what you're booking. And so that's a big drop in value by getting only one cent value each. So I think it kind of goes

back to actually the feedback that I read in the beginning. Does it make sense to cash things out and invest them? But gift cards, you can't invest in most cases. I'm assuming these are not visa gift cards that you can buy money orders with or anything like that. So yeah, I'd say, you know, yes, cash them out for gift cards if you're like, I'm done with travel forever. But if you think you're likely to be back on a Southwest flight next year, then save your points and travel and enjoy it. All right, Screaming Lincolns, get ready for time number three. Are you ready for this? Screaming Lincolns is the person who does the timestamps.

Get ready to say that Nick is right again. Does Nick disagree with me? Well, you know, disagree is a strong word. I don't know if I disagree, but you can't do it right now because they took away the capability. So maybe it's not even worth discussing. But on the flip side, it definitely got me thinking when I saw this from brands and I thought, well, okay, so he signed up for an offer that required, what, $2,000 or $3,000 spend and he's got 75,000 points now. I think it really kind of depends on what you think you're going to do in terms of flying over the next couple of

years. Because I look at that 75,000 points and I say, well, $750 in gift cards, if you can get them for places that are useful to you, because I saw lots of restaurants and I didn't go through the entire list, see everything that was in there, but there were enough stores that probably most people would be able to feel like they got close to cash value. $750 is a good bonus for two or $3,000 in spend like versus a cash back card. That's, that's a pretty good bonus. So that's excellent. I think actually it might be worth considering that on some of those, those offers like the Southwest offer, especially if you got stuck in that limbo where now you're like, Oh man, I'm like, am I going to bother opening another card for the companion pass? I think Greg is right that there is a chance that they'll reduce the number of points required for it or that they'll extend it. So I don't necessarily

think I'd give up on Southwest, but maybe you're in the boat where you're like, listen, I've got, you know, respiratory problems already. I've got some of those underlying conditions that make me nervous. I don't think I'm going to fly for a while. There's another chance to get another bonus in the future, maybe $750 now, bird in the hand beats two in two in the bush i don't know maybe you go ahead and cash that out if that opportunity comes back all right i'm just being contradictory at this point aren't i well not really i mean you you're making a really good point and and uh i'm tempted to say you're right but i don't think i could say that the third time today. I think that there's a chance that one card will get you to the Companion Pass again in the future.

So I think that it's less bad than I would normally say. Listen, we're not the kind of people who would ever normally tell you to cash out your airline miles at one cent each. So I don't think anybody listening expects Frequent Miler to be the blog that tells you to cash those out. So I'm not really telling you that I think that that's usually a good idea. Usually I would say you want to be able to get one and a half cents value each. I have no idea what Southwest schedule and root network and everything is going to look like when we come out of this. If you could actually get $750 out of those points today, I think it's at least worth considering that. You can't right now but if that comes back it's maybe worth considering for some people nick has a really good point there and and in fact now let's let's tie all this together in the beginning we talked feedback

we said we came up with an art we said we said more than 200 000 or 300 000 ultimate rewards points transferable points you should be thinking about withdrawing the extra as cash and investing it now that was advice we gave yet i have no personal inclination to actually follow that advice do you to cash out the points when you're over yeah you know i more and more i do have some of that. Yeah. Yeah, especially because I've been investing a bit over the last year here, and I've been looking at the market every day, multiple times a day, and thinking about it a little

bit more and seeing other people in my social network, too, who've done some of this cashing out and thinking, you know, if you do have those really big balances, yeah, I would be inclined to do so, though. But to be honest, I spent a lot of points last year, and my balances aren't at that know if you do have those really big balances yeah i would be inclined to do so though but to be honest i spent a lot of points last year and my balances aren't at that point where i feel like i have enough per passenger right now so i'm working on it though and if i get to that point then i think i might consider cash okay all right yeah yeah it's one of these for me it makes total logical sense i should do it you should i agree but i have this like emotional attachment

it's really hard to do really hard to do you know you see if i got up to the millions of points in one particular currency like two three million points in one currency it would not be emotionally difficult for me it would be like okay done putting that in a vanguard fund right now right right i'll try okay we'll try well we'll some. You're gonna have to have an intervention or something. I mean, there's only so many times you can go to Necker Island in one year, Greg. So consider how many times am I going to do that? If I'm not going to, then I should put some of those in a fund somewhere and let them grow a little bit. I don't know. I mean, I have an attachment to my points too. I like the idea of being able to totally make sense. I should do it. I'm not arguing that,

but you're not, I should do it. That's okay. Probably won't. I'm not going to judge you for that. Hey, okay. I don't know.

An intervention might be fun though. Okay. It might be. Well, we should do that in a future episode. Okay. All right. We'll do.

All right. All right. All right. So it's a goodbye. That's right. It is time to say the goodbye song. So I want to thank everybody for being out there with us today. If you'd like to hear more about what we've been talking about, you can go to the frequent miler.com forward slash subscribe, and you can check out all the different posts that we've been writing. You can subscribe to our email newsletter, get into our Facebook group, find out where you can find us on social media. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe. Bye, everyone. Thank you very much.

All right.