Frequent Miler on the Air - The single best $250 credit card wallet for point collectors | Ep186 | 1-21-23

Episode Date: January 21, 2023

What's the strongest transferable points wallet you can muster with just a $250 budget for annual fees? Will Greg or Nick come up with the killer combo -- and can yours beat theirs? 00:00 Intro 00:59 Giant Mailbag 03:32 What crazy thing . . . did Capital One do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/can-the-premier-collection-really-compete-with-fine-hotels-resorts-and-the-sort/ 09:03 Mattress running the numbers: A potentially lucrative Wyndham promotion https://frequentmiler.com/decent-wyndham-all-inclusive-promo-earn-5x-points-get-100-property-credit/ 14:06 Main Event: The single-best $250 wallet for point collectors 18:15 Nick's gas station card 18:39 Greg's gas station card 19:12 Greg's grocery cards 20:20 Nick's grocery cards 22:10  Nick's dining card 22:43 Greg's dining card 23:45 Greg's travel card 24:10 Nick's travel card 25:23 Nick's phone and Internet 26:10 Greg's phone and Internet card 27:14 Greg's everywhere else card 28:00 Nick's everywhere else card 28:56 All of the extra cards 33:55 Question of the Week: What's the best card to pay for a $100K cruise? What about $150K in taxes?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, the single best $250 credit card wallet for point collectors. That's a mouthful, but today's show is going to be really fun. I'm really looking forward to this. This is going to be unlike how we usually do things. Nick and I each independently, about 15 minutes before recording the show, came up with our list of cards that would go into a wallet where the maximum annual fee is $250. And we don't know what each other has in our wallets. We're going to be revealing the cards sort of one by one.

We'll get into the details of how the reveal is going to go when we get to the main event, but it's going to be fun. So stick around for that section. And first, of course, we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Brett. And Brett had a piece of information for us. He said, in the December Radisson America newsletter, it had the following paragraph. More places to use points in 2023. The New Year promises new and exciting travel options for Radisson Rewards Americas members. Watch for new opportunities to use your points for award nights at over 7,000 Choice hotel brands globally. Thank you for choosing us for your blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I'm not going to read the rest.

So this was interesting because it could mean – so know, Choice bought Radisson Americas, and we're hoping that they'll convert all our Radisson points to Choice points. And this could mean that. I mean, that would be a way to use your Radisson points at Choice Hotels if they do that. It could also mean that they're going to add choice hotels to Radisson's award search, which would be kind of unfortunate because that might indicate that they're going to move towards Radisson America's rewards program, which is not as lucrative for the point holder as choices. And I don't know. Do you have any reactions to that, Nick? You know, I think I'm still looking. I can just look for those opportunities.

And my first reaction is, yep, still looking, Radisson. Yeah, no, I don't really think that you can read much into their marketing material at this point. I don't know what to expect or what's going to happen. I mean, I'm still hopeful. And in fact, one of the things I had earmarked for question of the week this week was, is there any update on when you'll be able to use Radisson points of choice or choice points of Radisson or if they're going to convert or combine or whatever? And I included that or I had that shortlisted because we've gotten that question a number of times and

I haven't heard anything. I don't think anybody has heard anything yet. So yeah, I don't know. I still I feel very lukewarm on what's going to happen there. Yeah. Yeah. We don't heard anything. I don't think anybody has heard anything yet. So, yeah, I don't know. I still feel very lukewarm on what's going to happen there. Yeah. Yeah, we don't know anything. So an announcement that something's going to happen, though, that's in itself. Well, I guess it doesn't really mean something's going to happen. They intend for something to happen in 2023. Whether it really does or not, we'll see.

But it'll be interesting of course we'll report it when something does happen okay uh let's move on to uh what crazy thing did capital one do this week so capital capital one this week kind of it seems like soft launch the premier collection now if you don't remember they announced a few months back that they're launching this Premier Collection for VentureX cardholders. It's basically an MX Vine Hotels and Resorts competitor. Chase has had a similar program, Luxury Hotel Collection, I think is what it was called. And there are other things, Virtuoso, other similar preferred partner booking programs

and platforms. So Capital One was doing basically the same thing it sounded like, you know, $100 experience credit on property, maybe an upgrade and late checkout, free breakfast for two each day, same types of benefits, you know, a little weaker maybe. And so anyway, they launched it this week and it seems like it just isn't ready for prime time. I have to say that if I were launching this, I wouldn't have done it yet because it's just not ready yet. The tool seems weak. So, you know, for instance, they're not represented in nearly as many places as competitors like fine hotels and resorts or chase luxury hotel collection,

which if they're building something from the ground up might be understandable. And you could forgive the fact that they're not located in as many cities where they don't have as many properties. And in fact, you might even find that to be a positive because they have a lot of properties that I haven't seen before in those other tools. So if you're looking for a breath of fresh air, it might be in there. And some of the hotels that are in there on the flip side, if you're looking for a breath of fresh air, it might be in there in some of the hotels that are in there. On the flip side, if you're looking for properties where you don't have a lot of name recognition, again, well, I guess that might be a good thing for you. For me, I kind of like to have heard of the hotels before in general, but at the same time, I guess that's going to vary based on your preferences. There aren't a lot of big chains in there, but more importantly,

some of the difficulties are that A, when you go to search, the search tool just isn't put together very well. It seems like the programming was not quite finished yet. city in Santorini, and it came up with no results. And then I started to type in Greece, and if I had gotten all the way to Greece, I think it would have come up with no results. But when I got the GREE and it auto-completed Greek islands, which isn't a search I ever would have performed, but wouldn't you know it, there's four different hotels in Ea on Santorini. So you wouldn't have found them if you had searched in the ways that I would typically search. And that was not at all the only location where that became an issue. There's also a lot of hotels that show up in the tool but have no available dates. And I searched, in some cases, dozens of dates over the course of the year just to

try to find any date or set of dates where there was availability and there was none. So it seems to me like maybe they're still in the process of onboarding those hotels and just haven't finalized what's going on there yet. So all of that seemed a little, again, just unfinished. And then the thing that bothered me, I think, the most is that the $100 experience credit we know from fine hotels and resorts and Chase Luxury Hotel Collection varies. Sometimes you can use it for dining. Sometimes it's only for spa services. Sometimes it's like a limo pickup at the airport or a dinner at the hotel.

Well, with Capital One, it mentions the $100 experience credit in a couple of places. But you won't notice unless you scroll all the way to the bottom and you find the tiny little print at the bottom that you then have to expand in order to read that it says, in short, to paraphrase, if you want to know what's included in the credit you can either reach out to the hotel directly or find out a check-in so they don't tell you what it's going to be so there's no recourse if you got there and the hotel's like yeah we've got this marked up bottle of wine for you that i have a vague memory i'm not sure i'm remembering it right but when they first uh revealed their plans to do this, I think they said that dining was always going to be an option, something like that.

I remember them touting that it wasn't. They don't say that in the fine print now. I totally believe that. I'm just saying that I think they promised it was going to be more usable than Amex's version, but it sounds like they're not there yet. So it'll be interesting to see, like, is the crazy thing simply that they released it to the website before it was really ready and they're planning on doing a lot more? Or is this really what they're going to launch with?

And then that would be crazier, I'd say, than an accidental release. It would be. Because I mean, I can forgive the fact that, A, it probably takes forever to collect all that information. MX has had years to collect which hotels are going to offer which benefits and maintain that and build up whatever tech is necessary for that. So I can understand that it probably takes a lot to get with all know, with all of these different brands and hotels and whatnot, and figure out what they're going to offer for their hundred dollar experience credit, get it communicated back, get the copy person writing it and the coding person to put it in the website and blah, blah, blah. And how are we going to update that? There's a lot of

different ins and outs and I can appreciate that, but to not list it at all and just be like, okay, well, you'll find out when you get there, might and it basically says it might be dining it might be spa it might be something else it's like very much it could be this or it could be that or it could be another thing but you'll find out when you find out so all right well so capital one made it to our crazy this week what's what's next on our agenda today mattress running the numbers so this week's mattress running the numbers, we have a potentially lucrative Wyndham promotion. Yeah. So Wyndham is out with an all-inclusive promotion for the Ultra brand.

So Ultra is their all-inclusive or an all-inclusive brand from Wyndham. I don't know if they have more than one. But the promo lets you earn five times the points for your stay, plus get $100 property credit during your stay. So just to explain what five times points means mathematically, normally you get 10 points per dollar with Wyndham. So theoretically, that means you'll earn 50 points per dollar with this day. And I'm guessing you know why I'm saying theoretically. Well, 50 points per dollar seems quite generous since we, you know, do value Wyndham points. I don't know.

I didn't check the reasonable redemption value, but just like my, you know, thumb in the wind, so to speak, measurement is usually about one cent per point. So that'd be like getting, what, 50 cents back? It'd be about getting 50% of your stay back if you value the amount of penny each. Yeah. So that seems overly generous, doesn't it? Yeah. And keep in mind that Wyndham has a history of doing portal promotions where they advertise 5x points and they've never ever delivered 5x like they have some multiple that is not consistent but it's never exactly five points five times

the normal points that you get so um Wyndham's ability to do math, we've talked about before on past shows, is suspect. I don't know how many points per dollar you'd really get with this promotion. Nobody does. Nobody ever does with Wyndham, right? I mean, like if anybody from like,

I don't know, whatever government agencies regulate finances for these major corporations is listening, you might want to look at Wyndham's books because they can't do any math. Who knows what's going on there? Because yeah, it never works out right. So I would not go into this expecting 50. I mean, they'll give you five times something, whether that's five times one or two. It might be a fraction. It might be a fraction. Five times, we just don't know. Right.

That said, it'll probably be a bigger than usual number. Bigger than usual. That's what you can count on with Wyndham. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. All right. So if they really give you 5X points, $100 property credit,

and you want to stay at one of, I think there's only three all-inclusive ultra brands right now. They're all in Mexico. If you want to stay at one of them, what do you think? Is it worth going out of your way for this promo? Going out of your way? No, I wouldn't go out of my way because I have no idea what you're really going to end up with. I'm sure it will be more than usual, like you said. I mean, Wyndham doesn't completely lie. It's just never clear. So, yeah, I wouldn't go out of my way because who knows what you're going to get. I mean, like, it sounds funny and it sounds like we're joking and we're being lighthearted about it's never exactly 10 times what I spent before shipping, after shipping, with tax, without tax, with this fee or that. You can never figure it out.

It doesn't ever quite line up. So I wouldn't have a lot of faith in it being 50 points per dollar. Now, that said, as crazy as that kind of sounds, that wouldn't be unheard of. It would be unheard of, but not outlandishly unheard of it would be unheard of but not like outlandishly unheard of in hilton world right don't you sometimes see 44 points per dollar from hilton maybe we've even seen 54 and when i say that i mean with like paying with the card and the you know hotel right right because they have like you know sometimes like triple point promo and when you add in the points per dollar from the card. Now, in this case, if you're getting 50X and paying with the Wyndham card, you're getting a lot more than 50 points per dollar.

So, you know, it would be pretty a huge rebate. It wouldn't be worth doing just for the mattress run, like because you're not going to get more value back than what you started unless you count the value of the stay itself. But still, that could be a great rebate on a potentially nice stay. I have no idea if these resorts are good, but if they are, it could be good. So, hey, if anyone does this, if anyone listening actually does this, please let us know how many points you actually get. Is it actually 50 times? Is it some other number? Let us know. Mail it to email it to mailbag at frequent miler dot com.

We look forward to hearing what your results are. And it could make not only the mailbag, but the what crazy thing recap of a future show. Both. Absolutely. All right. So I guess that brings us, I think, to the main event, right? Yeah. We're going to skip awards book this week because we've got a great main event that we just can't wait to get to. Today's main event, the single best $250 credit card wallet for point collectors. So I'm going to explain what we're doing here and then we'll get into this. So here's the rules.

Nick and I each had to separately come up with an ideal wallet, but there were some rules. You can only pick cards where the rewards are transferable to like airline and hotel programs. And it could be that they're indirectly transferable to like airline and hotel programs. And it could be that they're indirectly transferable. For example, Capital One's cashback cards, you can move them to a card that earns miles and then transfer them. And so those are okay, as long as you include in your wallet, a miles earning Capital One card, right? And you can't cheat by saying, oh, my spouse has a miles card. So it doesn't count. The other thing, I guess I should have started this upfront. The total annual fees can't exceed $250. So the idea for this was generated from

post Nick wrote about the Amex Gold card and whether he was going to dump it or not that's 250 annual fee card um you can't use rebates to lessen the um annual fee so for example you can't say i'm going to pick the sapphire reserve 550 card because it is a 300 rebate that's not allowed in this game um and uh yeah i think that's that's the rules right so those are the rules and then what we're going to do is we are going to tell each other um one by one uh which card we'll use for different categories of spend so for example we'll say what will you use at gas stations what we'll use at grocery stores and we're gonna switch the order So for example, we'll say, what will you use at gas stations? What we'll use at grocery stores. And we're going to switch the order. Like for example, Nick will say first, what we'll use at gas stations. Then I will, then I'll say what I'll use at grocery stores and he will. And we

don't know what each other's going to do, but to keep each other honest right now, we are going to email each other our list of cards. Hold on. You have a game time swap in, so don't hit send yet. Okay, I won't hit send yet. Go ahead, keep explaining. Next, doing a last second swap. We're going to email it to each other, not read the emails yet, but it's a way of keeping us honest because I imagine that as we go, one of us is going to say, oh, I forgot about that card.

I should have had it in my wallet. And we might be tempted if we didn't do this email to kind of slip it in and pretend that we already had it. So we're not going to be able to do that. Are you ready to email? No, I'm not. Hold on a second. I just came up with one. You're still working on that? No, not yet. Okay. So I think I'm done. All right. I just needed to make a last mention because I forgot that I had made a change that changed my annual fee outlook. So, all right.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, keep in mind, listeners, that we came up with this game about 15 minutes before we started recording the show. Scrambled to put together our notes. And I think, in a way, that makes this more fun. I mean, we're both susceptible to having major misses. And so it should be fun for you to be like, well, why didn't you include, you know, card A, B, or C? For sure. All right. Okay. I'm ready to email. I'm ready. I'm hitting send now. Go. All right. There you go. I'm not

going to read my email. Not looking. No cheating here. All right. Right. You look like you're looking at your screen, though. Yeah, well, that's where I kept my notes of what I'm going to do. So I have to bring up my sent mail. Whoops. That was bad planning on my part.

Bring up my sent mail and not look at the other thing. Okay. I've got it. All right. Let's get started. Nick, what are you going to use at gas stations, it earns two points per dollar ordinarily. But if I do 30 transactions a month, which I'll have to make sure that I do, that I'd earn three acts at gas stations with the Everyday Preferred. It's a $95 annual fee. All right. So Nick, right out of the gate, spent $95 of his $250. I'm going to use the Citi Premier card, which also earns three acts exit gas stations, doesn't require any particular spend to get there. And it's also $95. So we both right out of the gate.

$95 cards. $95. Yeah. All right. All right. So it makes me wonder about the rest of the strategy here. I'm kind of curious to hear what else you're going to have going on if you started with that. Same. I'm pretty surprised by your pick. But okay. The next category is grocery

stores. I'm going to use the fee-free city custom cash for the first $500 in spend each billing cycle. That'll give me five points per dollar. It does require a city premier card to make the points transferable, but I already picked that as my gas category. So I've got that. And you're going to be surprised what I'm going to move to for my spend when I exceed $500. You probably think I'm going to switch to my Premier card. But no, I'm going to switch to the Saver One fee-free card, which earns three points per dollar, 3% back at grocery stores. And I'm also going to have, sort of in my wallet, I won't really carry it around, but the fee-free Spark Miles Select card

from Capital One, that way my Saver One points will be transferable to Miles and Hotel Points. Smart play, smart play. So I mentioned that I made a change right before we hopped in, and that was to add the everyday preferred. So I tossed that in the first line in the gas and I didn't put it in here, but I assumed it was implied that I would use that card for the first $6,000 per year in grocery spend, because of course it earns three points per dollar. And with the 50% bonus, it would earn 4.5. So again, that's 4.5 membership rewards, points per dollar, as long as I do those 30 transactions, which now that I'm using it on gas and grocery, I think should make that a little bit easier.

But once I exceed the 6,000, because I surely will at the grocery store, I also have the Saver 1 on my list. So I think that was a smart play from Greg. I'm going to say it was a smart play from Greg because if he had a very city-centric strategy, I was going to tear him apart on a poor set of transfer partners. So he opened up some better transfer partners. Now, what I particularly like about the Saver One play is that, like Greg said, you can get a fee-free card with it. I had listed the Venture One card, which is just basically the consumer version of a Miles card that enables transfers to partners with no annual fees. So I could have the Saver One and the Venture One card and still transfer to all of Capital One's partners. Now, what I like about my strategy

so far over Craig's is that Capital One's transfer partners and Amex's transfer partners play together really well. There are very few gaps when you have those two together. You're getting just about all of the best airline programs out there. Now, you've got a decent combo with Citi and Capital One, and you have some overlap with like Turkish. You're missing some of the Amex's strengths, Greg. Yeah, yeah. And I should note my notes said I would have either the Venture one or the Spark Mile Select. I simplified things when I was talking, but yes. I have to admit, I totally forgot about the Spark Mile Select.

Either one makes your points transferable, so that's cool. All right, let's move on to dining. What do you have for dining? Saver 1, 3X. So that's, again, 3X category on the Saver 1. The Saver 1, again, is the annual fee-free version of the Saver. There's a Saver with a $95 fee, but I didn't pick that one. I picked the Saver 1, which only earns 3X. If you read my post this week, you'll see that I said in there that I

would probably carry that over the saver card because I don't find the saver card to be worth $95 for just 1% more and dining in the other associated categories. So saver one. All right. So my pick is really the reason I came up with this whole idea of emailing each other, because this is one I think you're going to say, oh, I forgot all about that. I'm going to use built to get three points per dollar, because that'll give me better transfer partners and different transfer partners like American Airlines that you don't have from other cards. And it'll give me the ability to earn points for rent as well. So there's that extra gimme from the bill card. That's right. And if you only rent it, I would find that to be a

brilliant strategy. Otherwise, you're going to have to eat your way to a good American Airlines award over the course of the next few years, probably. But Hey, I don't know, maybe you eat a lot more than, than I would imagine you eat. And so maybe you will get yourself a, you know, business class across the Pacific and, you know, the next year or two, but all right. So, so the bill card is also fee free. So I think we're both still at $95, right? We are. Yep. Both at 95 bucks. All right. Let's get to travel. My pick for travel expenses is the Inc.

Business Preferred, $95 to get three points per dollar for all travel. I'm kind of surprised that you didn't go with your city premier and pick something else here. You're trying to dip your toes in all of the currencies you can. That makes some sense with your built card pick. Well, so my pick for travel was the MX Green card, which earns 3x on most types of travel. It's a select travel and select transit, but surely hotels and flights are going to be included in that 3x. And then, of course, I want to mention with this, this wasn't listed as one of our categories, but the Saver One card, which we both have, also covers entertainment. And that's worth mentioning because somebody commented just the other day on a post to say that a lot of times

tour companies code as entertainment rather than as travel. And Greg mentioned that he had spent money on a cruise, a ferry cruise, sort of a crew, you know, overnight cruise in New Zealand, and it didn't code as travel. And I wonder if it may have coded as entertainment on a Capital One card for 3X. So I would mix that in when I think entertainment is what's going to be triggered by the travel item. Otherwise, Amex Green Card, which has $150 annual fee. So boom, I'm out of annual fee. Maxed out. Unless you could find a $5 annual fee card.

Right. All right. So Nick is at $245. That's right. If I'm doing the math right, I'm at $190. The next category is phone and internet. What are you going to use to pay for those? I'm going to use the Blue Business Plus. Now, originally, when I started devising this strategy, I had the Windermere business card in for gas and for this, figuring that that played really nicely with my Capital One strategy since it earns 8x on gas and 5x on office supply stores. And I figured, oh, that works well since I'm earning Capital One points.

But then Greg reminded me of the rules that they have to be transferable currencies. And so that's why I kind of threw things up in the air for me a few minutes before we started. So I'm going to go with the Blue Business Plus for 2x. That makes so much sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted to pick the Wyndham card for gas as well, but couldn't do it. Right. Okay, you're going to get 2X. 2X. I'm going to get the Inc. Cash card. Of course. I think business cash earned 5X.

It has no annual fee, and it's transferable because I have the Inc. business preferred for travel. Well played. Well played. Thanks. And I felt like this category was important to discuss, not because people spend a lot of in office supplies stores normally, but we write all the time about, you know, fee free visa gift cards at Staples and discount on discounted gift cards at office depot. And also you can, at staples, you can buy all kinds of gift cards,

both online and in person for different stores and get five points per dollar. Well, I could get five points per dollar for all those things. Nick can get two points per dollar, but maybe, maybe, maybe get some extra if there's a good MX offer available.

So maybe, okay. Thanks for the consolation prize there. Threw me a ball there. Maybe you'll get an Amex offer, Nick. Good luck. The next category is what's your everywhere else card? So for the categories not listed, what card do you whip out?

And I think it's my turn to go first. I'm going to use the Amex Blue Business Plus card to get two points per dollar for my first 50K of spend. And if I happen to exceed that, I'll switch to my double cash, Citi double cash to get two points per dollar as well, but that's uncapped. So with my strategy, as Nick sort of pointed out, I'm kind of playing the field. So I've got points from City, I've got points from Chase, I've got points from Capital One, and I've got points from Bill. So I've really got pretty much the whole gamut. What do you have for your everywhere else? Well played. My goodness, Greg, really outplayed me here. Well, of course,

I've got the Blue Business Plus also for 2X on the first 50K and spend every year. I wouldn't naturally have more than 50K in everywhere else spend per year usually. So that would cover me in terms of my everywhere else spend. But I have to admit, I'm liking Greg's strategy. I knew the double cash was coming for sure there. I didn't see him grabbing the Blue Business Plus, but it makes sense because you don't need any Amex cards with an annual fee in order for the points to be transferable. So it makes sense that you would have that card in there to diversify your point strategy. It's a great idea. Thanks. Thanks.

It also gives me, of course, opportunities to get Amex offers. It gives me also the ability to do the racket and shopping portal and get membership rewards points from that. So there's a lot of reasons no annual fee, but they do have transferable points. And do you have like a short list of what you would? Yeah, it's real short. Yeah. Okay. Nothing else. Is that right? Well, because I can't, right? Because I, so with Capital One, there's nothing else that would matter, right? And so there's no other fee-free cards that offer anything. And with Amex, there's nothing, again, any better than what I already have. So I was stuck without anything else. I was going to mention the entertainment category on the Saver One here, but I already did.

That one thing I didn't mention, but again, it applies to both of us so far, is the Saver One is also a MasterCard, I believe. So that's something going for it in terms of being able to link it up with Simply Miles for American Airlines offers. And also I think there's, well, no, that's that for that. I should mention though, on Greg's side with the Inc. business preferred, he also gets access to Visa Savings Edge. So there's another way to save a little bit, potentially on some lodging. If you're staying in a Wyndham property, for instance, I believe they have a little discount through that. So, all right, here's where you list off all of the other cards that you're going to have to just bury me in this competition. Go ahead. Yeah. So of course I'm going to get the rewards plus fee-free card from city because that'll give me a 10% rebate on rewards, uh to up to 100 000 points uh redeemed each year um i'm gonna get the

amex everyday card just because i can and it'll give me access to more will give me access to more amex offers because some amex offers are targeted specifically to personal cards and so far i only have a business card so that's the reason for that. Fair enough. I'm going to get the Chase Freedom Flex card so that I have access to 5X rotating categories, 3X drugstore. And I'm going to get the Business Unlimited card because I can. And I can also then product change it to an ink cache

to get more capacity of 5X. And finally, I'm going to get the Freedom Unlimited just in case I ever want to earn one and a half ultimate rewards points per dollar. Just for good measure. Just to toss one more. You know, it is amazing to look at that wallet. I mean, you know, like all laughter aside, that is quite a wallet and quite a lot of earning power with very little in it. I feel like we often talk about things like the Amex Platinum card and

the Chase Sapphire Reserve and all these cards with higher annual fees, but my goodness, with 250 bucks, that is a killer wallet. Yeah. Yeah. And it actually came in under $290 for the wallet I just described. Now, is it realistic to sign up for all those cards? I mean, I guess I actually personally have probably almost all of them except for the Capital One ones. But, you know, so I guess you could get them over time. You wouldn't be able to get them all at once. That would be a hard sell to the credit card companies. Right. Right. But I mean, that would cover most of the categories in which most people are ever

going to spend much and and be a decent amount of points each year, probably, you know, between the in cash, which you covered how you could strategically end up with two of those for more bandwidth at 5x and the uncapped 3x on the saver one at grocery stores i mean my goodness you could generate a fair amount of points every year just on those two cards and then you know everything else will just kind of fall into place right yeah yeah so i like it um we'll we'll publish it somewhere on the on the uh web as well uh maybe in the saturday post the the actual pics that we each did so that people can reference them.

Yeah, I think that was darn good. I want to see somebody beat Craig. I want to see somebody with a better strategy than Craig had. So if you've got a different combo for your wallet, again, up to $250 in annual fees, have to be transferable points. And if you need another card in order to transfer them, you got to account for that card. But if you got something better,

I'm very curious to hear it because wow, that was pretty darn good. Yeah, I you know what, it occurs to me, I forgot to mention one thing that that for my everywhere else, I would probably use built on the first day of each month because they have that double points thing or whatever. So I'd get at least two points per dollar with the built card on those days. Very good. All right. Yeah. Excellent. Wow. Wow. He's just like rubbing salt in the wound over here with the other. He's like, rent a do that. Right. Yeah. Here's a little bit more. Yeah. Six XN restaurants the other. He's like, yeah, we're rent a, we do that. Right. Yeah. Here's a little bit more. Yeah. Six X on restaurants. Yeah. That's okay. Well, very good. Greg had a great strategy there. All right. I think that brings us then to this week's question of the week. Am I right? Yep. So this week's question of the week came in from a reader

via email at the mailbag at frequent miler.com email address from a reader who is planning to take a round the world cruise. And so this cruise is going to be quite expensive, a hundred thousand dollars for this round the world year long cruise, I think. And, uh, and so she says she doesn't know which credit card to use. She can add a new card to her portfolio. Uh, and she listed out cards that she has and points balances that she has to kind of give an idea of what she's got. But I'm really curious, Greg, if you had a very large expense like this, like $100,000 cruise, what card would you use and what things would come into mind in terms of deciding?

Because maybe it's not clear which one exactly, but what are some things you would consider in determining what the best card is? And I asked that both A, for this specific example of the cruise. And also we had a similar question come in via Frequent Miler Insiders this week with someone who had a large tax burden, $150,000 and wanted to know the card strategy for that. And so I'm curious, A, what you would use for the expensive, long around the world cruise, and B, if your strategy would differ and how, if you had a large tax burden like that. And so I'm curious, A, what you would use for the expensive, long around the world cruise, and B, if your strategy would differ and how, if you had a large tax burden like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So if we don't consider things like welcome bonuses and short-term promos where you might be getting an extra point per dollar on a card or something like that. Don't consider any of that. I think I would use the Sapphire Reserve card and get three points per dollar for travel and also great trip protections. Like I almost feel like

if you're going to be spending that much on a cruise, it's worth getting the Sapphire Reserve if you don't already have it. So you can get that combination of three points per dollar valuable to my rewards points and great trip protections. So that was my initial thought. And then here was my hesitation with that. I thought to myself, yeah, I'm going to spend a hundred grand on a cruise. I want to protect it as well as possible. So that was my first thought. My second thought was, well, whoever charges a hundred thousand dollars for a cruise must include some sort of protection, right? So I thought maybe you already have some sort of travel protection built into it, but more importantly, the Sapphire reserve travel protection caps out at $20,000 a person. So if you're talking about a hundred thousand dollars for two people, you're only really going to be protected for $40,000 worth of expenses with the Sapphire Reserve.

So I would probably only want to put, again, if it's for two people, $40,000 of that on a Sapphire Reserve. Then, I don't know, I guess, what happens if you pay for $40,000 with Player 2's Sapphire Reserve or Ritz card or something? I don't know. Does that work? Well, let me ask you. So, I mean, I think what you just argued is good reason maybe to pay for travel insurance if it's not included in the 100K, but wouldn't you still use the Sapphire Reserve if you're not? But my first thought, even before thinking of the Savaro Reserve is I would look at all those big, especially business card offers right now, like the business platinum that requires 15K spend, the ink unlimited and the ink cash that both require, what is it? 6K spend each. And get as many of those as possible, especially with Amex, like you're likely to get an offer for another one as soon as you do the first one. And I have to imagine that any company that's charging $100,000 would gladly take your payments in small increments, you know, 6K at a time, whatever. So you could get so many welcome bonuses with that spend and it would be worth paying for

the insurance separately agreed right agree i mean yeah and all that sure you could totally clean up yeah so like i mean obviously it depends somewhat on how many cards you're willing to open but like greg said i mean you like if you're willing to open 10 different cards then you could earn a phenomenal amount of points and end up with thousands of dollars back on this $100,000 cruise. I mean, and that's I'm not exaggerating at all. I mean, you're going to probably exceed $10,000 worth of rewards back. I think easily. Yeah.

I mean, if you averaged 100,000 points per card, which I think is probably a low estimate, because remember, you're also earning points from the spend, not just the bonus. I think you're going to have over a million points easily by the time you make that spend. Yeah. Right. So I think that'd be a great strategy.

The other thing, if you're not looking to open many cards, if you really, if that doesn't appeal to you, the other thing, since this reader did mention they have until June to figure this out. So the other thing I would consider is hanging around and waiting to see when Capital One increases the bonus on the Spark Miles card and the Spark Cash card, because those bonuses sometimes go to $3,000 or 300,000 points after 50 K spend in the first six months. So if you were to get one or both of those cards and, and put the, you know,

divide the a hundred thousand dollar charge over just those two cards, then you'd be looking at potentially, you know, $6,000 or more worth of, you know, points. That's a great point. Yep.

So that'd be another strategy. How about for taxes? Would it differ at all if you had taxes? I mean, I agree with you probably with the cruise. It would just be worth paying for the travel insurance at that point. Yeah. I mean, taxes is a little different because you do have to pay the, you know, around 2% fee, but still it's worth it for signup bonuses. The other thing with taxes is you're

limited to a total of six payments using the credit card processing companies because two per credit card processor. So that could limit it in some ways, but still, I think overall, I would do the same thing of get as many big welcome bonuses as possible. Yeah. Somebody reached out to me to ask me about the best card to pay taxes with over the Christmas holiday season. I said, I get the business platinum card. And if it's more than 15K, I'd get the business platinum card to start. I mean, in the 150,000 points that you can frequently or easily get with that or targeted offers that may even be better. So that was my first thought

with that too. The other thing with the six payments via the official payment processors is obviously a limitation, but if you're earning welcome bonuses, it might be worth using a service like Plastic Plastique, however you pronounce it. Even though the fee is like around 3% now, that will be worth it if you're earning a welcome bonus that's potentially worth 10% or 20% or more, depending on what the spending requirements and bonuses on the card that you're opening. That's right. That's right. Totally true. And with both of these, the amount spent on the fees counts towards the spend required for the signup bonus too. So just keep that in mind that, for example, if you need to spend $15,000 in order to meet the signup bonus, you have to spend, let's say, 2% less than that on taxes. And then the extra fee will get you

up to that $15,000. So obviously do the math ahead of time. Make sure that works out. And yeah, that should work for you. All right. So there's some strategies for the big spenders out there. Unfortunately, we are out of time. If you've enjoyed today's show and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again. That's frequent miler.com slash subscribe. You can follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group. I should have said this at the beginning, but wherever you're listening to this or watching this, give us a like a thumbs up, leave us some feedback. We always love to hear from you. Leave a comment. If you've got a question,, etc. If you have a question you'd like to be considered

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