Frequent Miler on the Air - The single best rewards program | Ep142 | 3-19-22

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

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 Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the single best rewards program. We're going to debate what the best rewards program is, but we're not going to be talking about things like American Airlines loyalty program or Deltas or Uniteds because we're not talking about. Not only are they not the best, we're not really talking about loyalty programs. And I think that would be a really good discussion for us to have is which program has the best loyalty program. So where they incentivize you to be a repeat customer. But we're talking more rewards, like the points you get,

which what are the best, you know, type of points. And it's going to be a spirited debate, I think. I think so. I think we'll disagree about this. We're going to not agree. I agree with you that we're not going to agree. Good. We agree to disagree already. We haven't even gotten started yet. That's right. That's right. All right. Of course,

first we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Joseph. Joseph says, you've helped me earn thousands in discounts, vacations, and tax savings as I got my small business running during the last year. The best is yet to come. Thank you. And thank you for all your clear and transparent affiliate slash referral links with your articles. You've also helped me create another problem. Now I have cards I keep in a wallet, cards I travel with, cards I keep on my desk, et cetera. Surely you must have a preferred physical wallet, cardholder, business cardholder, or some other organization system. He goes on to describe what he's doing right now. But I thought it might be fun just really briefly for us to just say, how do we deal with this?

Yeah, total disorganization. That's how we deal with it. Absolutely. I have a wallet that I carry, but I'm not carrying right now. And then I have a wallet that I keep in my backpack that's got cards that I think I might need, but they're not like they're kind of nonsensical. And then I have my wife's two debit cards that I've been searching for for days right now to try to find like a loader point debit card to do something with that. And literally I spent the last three days looking for these two debit cards

that I have no idea where they are. So yeah, Greg should share his organization. Greg Fossum, So I have way too many cards to carry with me at all times. So I have a binder that has those plastic inserts that have business card holders in the plastic. And I use those as credit card holders. And so I put them all in not quite alphabetical order, but by bank in alphabetical order. So Chase comes before Citibank and Bank of America comes before both of those because D comes before C. And C is for cookie. Welcome to my world, Greg. Love it. Love it. It's been a few years for that. For me, with my son, it is 22. So I haven't done much C is for cookie in the past, I don't know, two or three years.

Lucky man you are. So I have that binder, but I kind of ran out of room in it. So even though I could add more of those plastic inserts, it's one of those- So now you've got binders full of cards. It's a zip closed binder. So I have two of these binders, one for all the Amex cards and one for everything else. And so that's my binders full of cards. Then I have a wallet that I call my travel wallet, and that stays in my backpack at all times. I've written about that. So you could Google Frequent Miler travel wallet to see what kind of stuff is in there. But basically there are cards like hotel cards, like my Marriott hotel cards that I never use except when checking in at a Marriott. That's the only time I ever use them. And so they stay in my travel wallet, like my priority pass card. When, when do I need priority pass card?

Only when I'm traveling. So at least I always know that's with me then. And then finally, of course, I have my wallet that I actually carry around. And that's the one I try to, I periodically change up what cards are in there. I try to have, you know, a go-to card for dining. I go to card for grocery, go-to card for dining, a go-to card for grocery, a go-to card for gas, and an everywhere else card. Sometimes there's some other combination that needs to be in there. And sometimes it's fewer because maybe sometimes one card fulfills multiple

of those purposes. Hello, Curve. Hello, Curve. Yep. I finally got that working, by the way. Very good. Yeah, look out world. I got an email letting me know that I should apply via my link to activate my 10%. So I'm not so sure that it's going to work out for those that listened in last week about my wife using my link for it. Not so sure it's going to actually work because it seems to think I haven't applied. I don't know because when I finally got working my back and forth with customer support, I asked them, am I going to still get 10%? Because I wasn't sure after sort of having to keep reapplying in a way to get it

working. And they replied that, yes, that I was all set for 10%. And then after that conversation, I got the same email you're talking about that said, don't forget to apply because you're qualified for the 10%. So hopefully that's just an automated thing that everyone gets. Great, great. Good to hear that. By the way, I should mention that I mentioned kind of in passing that I keep a wallet in my backpack.

And it's worth mentioning that, yeah, I keep a lot of those things in my backpack all the time. Like Greg said, the wallet in the backpack, I joked about it being disorganized and it is somewhat, but it's a, one of those, like I think Ridge is one of the companies that makes these flat ones. Or I think the one I have is tribe. It was like a Kickstarter or something, but it's one of these wallets. It's basically like an elastic band. So all the cards just lie flat against each other. So you can put a fair number in there. So my priority pass for my Ritz card is in there. My AAA card is in there. My AARP card is in there. So I keep like all of those things that I'm only going to use when I travel, like Greg said, and then my Marriott gift cards, because I have some Marriott gift cards,

and that all stays in that wallet that just is permanently tucked away in a pocket in my backpack that I don't open except when I'm traveling. So I think it's smart to have that type of a thing. And the binders full of stuff. I mean, you're going to have to do that one way or another. I have one of those binders. It's all old cards that are like done and I haven't thrown out. So I should probably throw them out, but I kind of feel like someday I'm going to want a picture of all of these cards. Right. So maybe, maybe not. It's in a file cabinet. Yeah. Yeah. But if you, if you do, if you do my technique of having a binder full of your active cards, just don't forget that when you get a replacement, because there's a new expiration date or whatever,

go find that old one, cut it up and replace it with a new one. So now here's a separate question for you. Do you have some way to access your card numbers when you're not at home? I mean, I know some people keep spreadsheets and that sort of thing. What do you do? Because if you're out, you're somewhere, you're away, you need one of those cards. What do you do? I do. I have a Google spreadsheet where I keep all of my primary credit cards, credit card numbers, all the information I need in there. I use two-factor authentication on my Google Sheets so that hopefully nobody can break into it. But that's been invaluable as a way to get access to those when shopping online. It's not just when I'm away. I mean, when I'm shopping online,

I often want to pull out a card that's in a binder, and it's much easier than pulling it out of the binder. Right, except you don't want to pull out the binder. Yeah, just pull out the card without the binder. That'd be great. Yeah, exactly. So similar situation here. All right, so good question. I think that was a smart question.

All right, so that, I think, brings us to what crazy thing did Caesar's Rewards do this week? Yeah, so what is Caesar's rewards do this week? Yeah. So what is Caesar's rewards up to? I see a lot of people all upset that they lost their diamond status, but I'm still sitting pretty on my diamond status. What's going on? Yeah. You and my wife both. Just the way we were hoping. I'm being facetious there that she's got the diamond status and I don't. And I say that facetiously because she doesn't want to make the phone calls to do the things that one might want to do if you've got diamond status, like booking your free Atlantis day, which I was trying to do.

And then over the last couple of days, they have downgraded me. So what happened was those of us who had Caesar's status like last year, let's say, and then matched back to Wyndham status or received our Wyndham status via some sort of a match at some point, and then tried to match that back to Caesars. We were initially upgraded to diamond status as expected, and it has been the case for years. You've been able to match back and forth. However, Caesars apparently decided that they were done with that. They were sick of letting people match back and forth. And rather than send out an announcement and say, okay, you know,

it was fun while it lasted, but this is your final year of diamond status. You're not going to get a celebration dinner, but blah, blah, blah. Rather than that, instead, they just went ahead and forcibly downgraded everyone from diamond to gold who was in that situation and then sent an email saying, oops, we upgraded you to diamond by mistake, which I think was the tackiest, worst way they could have possibly handled it. And I think that's not only because I'm a little bit burned here, but also just it was a poor way to handle it. But some people like you still have diamond status.

How's that? Yeah. So we have a theory about that. So, um, both my wife and I and your wife, right. Have the Wyndham earner business card. That's the one that comes with Wyndham, uh, top tier status. And that officially does match to Caesar's diamond. So if you're, if you're matching based on having the card as opposed to having matched from something else to Wyndham diamond in the past, then theoretically you are eligible. So that's probably why I and your wife haven't lost our diamond. It doesn't explain why my wife hasn't yet got her diamond status. We tried matching her at the same time as I matched myself back to diamond. And she's just been sitting at gold status since attempting that match.

And I have sort of a theory that it's sort of like the same thing that happened with them sort of accidentally matching people and then downgrading them. They like, there've been a whole bunch of changes there in how they do these matches. I think some that legitimately should have been matched got caught up in that and didn't get upgraded. And theoretically we should get an email saying, oops, we accidentally didn't upgrade you when we should have been matched, got caught up in that and didn't get upgraded. Theoretically, we should get an email saying, oops, we accidentally didn't upgrade you when we should have, but I don't expect that to happen. We'll wait a bit and see what happens. We did resubmit for my wife to see if it'll happen now that the wave of upgrades and downgrades

has already passed. We'll see. Right. Which, you know, I tried to book the Atlanta stay last week. And when they went to verify my Caesar status, they told me they weren't able to verify that it was diamond, even though it had already been diamond for, I don't know, at least a week at that point. Uh, so maybe that should have been my first clue that something was going on behind the scenes. Uh, but yeah, it was disappointing when I got downgraded. However, I will say this. Caesars had upgraded me to diamond. And one of the diamond benefits I wrote about recently is that you get a monthly $20 free that at the sports book of the Caesars

sports book. If you live in a state with the online sports book, and there are quite a few states now where online sports books are legal. And so I have been using the Caesars sports book app. And lo and behold, I had my free $20 free bet that showed up while I still had diamond status last week. Now they've downgraded me to gold, but my $20 free bet was still there. And since I was a little extra bitter at Caesars, I decided to bet on a really long shot. So I want everybody to help me root for Providence to win the NCAA championship. So my free $20 battle would be $2,000 on Caesar's dime that I can then go and do something with to thumb my nose at Caesar's reward.

That would be a great story until they retroactively take away your $20. Right, right, right. Which I kind of worried about when I was like, oh, this isn't even going to settle for a month. I don't know. Is this going to be a problem? But yeah, we'll see. So anyway, that's my story with Caesar's rewards a month. I don't know. Is this going to be a problem? But yeah, we'll see. So anyway,

that's my story with Caesars rewards. Okay. That's pretty fun. That's pretty fun. All right. I think it's time for mattress running the numbers. What do we have this week? This week's mattress running the numbers is a U S mint coin deal. It's already done by the time you're listening to this, but it's worth talking about. I think probably because these mint deals come around now and then. So this week, there is a set of coins or quite a few coins

actually going out for sale. And there are resellers or buyers clubs willing to buy these sets at pre-negotiated prices where they tell you exactly how much commission they'll give you for ordering and shipping them a set of coins. So again, the way this kind of works is US Mint releases a collectible coin. You click around when the collectible coin becomes eligible for sale. They only allow one per household, but obviously some collectors would like more or the price is expected to go up because collectors are interested. So buyers clubs will pay you to order it and then ship it to them. And so Steven, I think, wrote the post this week about the current deal. And the kind of headline deal this time around is a set of four coins that costs about $5,300. And PFS is paying $165 commission on top.

I've seen some higher numbers from other buyers clubs. So my question is, A, is it worth it? I mean, $5,300 in essentially gold you're buying for somebody else for $165 profit. Is that worth it, Greg? Yeah. So the cool thing is you get to use a credit card to buy these. And so that's like plenty to meet a lot of different credit cards, minimum spend requirements. Or if you're just looking to, you know, spend more,

maybe you're trying to get a big spend bonus, like the Hyatt credit card, you're trying to meet the $15,000 spend to get the free night, those kinds of things. This would get a big chunk of it just with that one purchase. And you actually earn a cash profit on top. I mean, it's,

it seems like a no-brainer. There are some reasons I'm not going for it. Actually, the main reason I'm not going for it is that I have a lot of upcoming travel plans. And I think it's extremely likely that whenever this $5,000 coin set shows up at my door, I'm not going to be there. I can't, you know, yes, I can ask whoever's there to bring it in, but you know, what if, what if I don't coordinate right and they open it because then you lose the ability to send it in and get that guaranteed sale. So, you know, it doesn't quite work for me. The other thing in the past, I've been hesitant because the website has been terrible.

Can you speak to that at all? Is that still a problem? You know, that's a good question, because the last mint deal that I did, the website changed pretty significantly. And then I got locked out of my account and they seemed to not want to let me buy any more coins, though I have a family member who is still able to order. But long ago, what would happen is these coin deals go live usually at noon on a Thursday. And so coin deal goes live and the site completely crashes. It's a pain to

add it to your cart. And then if you get it in your cart, the whole checkout process just keeps failing. And there's a lot of refreshing involved. And typically, like if a coin sale went live at noon, it wouldn't be shocking if you weren't able to get an order through until 1235 or 1240 sometimes. I mean, sometimes you get lucky and get an order through sooner, but you would have to be willing to sit there and refresh and fight with the Mint site, hoping that an order will go through. And it might not. I mean, it may sell out before you're able to fight your way through. So that's long been a frustration. The Mint has made a number of significant changes to their

site. And so nowadays, it actually doesn't favor the person sitting there refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. In fact, it'll lock you out if you try to do that. So they've got some new software now that'll lock you out if you're behaving too much like a machine that's trying to buy these coins. So you have to kind of be more patient and methodical now and a little bit slower. And it also helps to be kind of prepared. Like one of the things that I've done for these is that I'll make sure that I'm logged into a Google account on the browser that I'm using that only has one credit card stored and it's the card that I want to use for the deal

because it tends to auto-populate faster than the Mint site. You can save a credit card payment method on the Mint site, but getting it to actually select from the dropdown menu is like a nightmare the way the website functions. So So instead getting Google to pre-fill it for you is much more reliable, but you know, all that stuff means there's some gymnastics involved essentially. And so you have to be willing to bend and flip and twirl and whatever else, and accept the fact that you might do all that bending and flipping and twirling for knots. So if you're willing to do that, I mean, for me, I don't know, usually for me, I'll do 20 or 30 minutes of

twirling for $165. You know, like that's, that's enough incentive for me most of the time to be able to take part in these. And there are some buyers to be clear that are paying even more. So that to me, isn't a big barrier, but for some people it's too much of an annoyance. And if you don't have the patience for that, stay away from the mint deals. But the other thing to mention here is that there is some risk, of course, you know, these are, I mean, you're buying gold that's getting shipped to you through the mail or UPS or FedEx or whatever. And then you're going to have to send that gold to somebody else. And so, you know, that's, there's some inherent risk there, A, that something gets lost along the way or damaged, so, you know, that's, there's some inherent risk there. A,

that something gets lost along the way or damaged. B, obviously that it gets stolen. C, that the buyer's club takes your gold and, you know, runs off to a beach somewhere and, and lives happily ever after with your gold. Now, I don't think that's a big enough risk to keep me away because I have enough positive experience with the buyers clubs that I've used. But it certainly would give me pause if I were new to this. And so, you know, I always say don't get in over your head and don't do one of these deals that's more than you can afford to lose. Right, right. So in the past, we've often had much smaller deals like $500 or even less.

And those are kind of, I think, easier to dip your toe in. And $5,000 is quite a lot for most people to say, I'm going to dip my toe in this one. But at the same time, I mean, it's very attractive to have over $5,000 of easy credit card spend right off the bat, plus a profit is really nice so yeah all right so it's it's it's mainly a yes uh but with caution i guess exactly there you go all right okay so then that brings us to the main event it does what is the single best rewards program now let's just cut right past the Deltas and Uniteds and so on, because we've already said a million times that the best rewards programs are transferable points. That's what we're talking about today is what really, what's the best points program that

offers transferable points so that you could transfer to the best airlines and hotel programs for your needs. So that's what we're going to be debating. We're going to talk about it in different categories because there's not really necessarily a single best for all needs. So we're going to start with sort of the biggest, most, maybe most important thing, which is the transfer partners that each program has. So we're talking about Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bilt, that's the program that rewards you for paying rent, and Brex, which is a business credit card thing. Preston Pysh, Citi, Business Credit Card. a business credit card thing. Business credit card thing. I don't know.

It's the best way to describe it. Yes, business credit card thing. So those are the programs that we're going to be comparing. And now if we talk about the transfer partners that each has, we're not going to list all of them because that would be boring.

We're going to instead talk about different categories. So we're going to debate which one has the best hotel transfer partners, which has the best transfer partners for domestic flying within the US and which has the best for international live flat type of luxury flights. So let's go. Let's start with the easy one. Hotels. Who has the best hotels? Best hotels. Easy breezy city. I wasn't expecting you to go there.

All right. So I'm going to say city. Why do you say that? Because city has Wyndham Rewards, which we all know those can be used to book Picasso vacation rentals for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. Or if you've got the window business card, then for only 13,500 points per bedroom per night, you can get yourself some fantastic one bedroom places for 13,500 city points a night. And they have choice privileges. And we all know that preferred hotels is the

preferred way to redeem points and miles for hotel states. I mean, Greg has had a few excellent ones lately, and they not only transfer to choice privileges, but they transfer one to two. So you double your money, double your fun, double your double mint gum or whatever that is. So you end up earning even more if you're using the double cash card, then you're earning two points per dollar and then transferring the choice.

So you're really earning like four choice points per dollar. Am I right, Craig? That part's true. And to go a little further, I wouldn't necessarily say preferred hotels is the best way to redeem your Choice points. It is a good way, especially when you're transferring one to two, if you can get past the horrific booking process. But there are good values within the Choice program as well. So Choice has, for example, their Ascend collection, which are independent sort of boutique hotels for the most part. And there are some really nice ones there and you'll get even better value than you will with the preferred hotels when you're doing that. Nordic Choice is sort of a subset of the Choice program, and you can get astronomical value there. And the nice thing with both of those is it's easy. You

can just book it online and- Relatively easy, because you can only book 100 days in advance. So that's a big hangout with the Choice privileges program. It is a big downside. But, and that downside of the choice. But but, you know, and I was being moderately facetious because I know Greg is going to disagree, but only moderately because the other piece of this is going to be that it's very easy to get decent return with city cards. You get a number of different city cards that are in good return for whether it's gas or grocery or dining or travel or everywhere else. And then you could use that as cash back because if you really want to stay at a Marriott or a Hilton

or a Radisson, you're probably better off with cash back anyway. So I think that Citi has the right balance here of a couple of niche programs where you can get big outsized value and otherwise decent cash back on popular bonus categories, which I think is more helpful for hotels. So just going into this program, I was ready to, I was expecting Nick to say something else for hotels. And I was getting ready to, to bring in city as, as the devil's advocate as the best. So I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to instead say you city can't be the best program. If it doesn't have transfers to Hyatt, Hyatt's that good. I, and that's been my experience more and more lately. The more I've been traveling lately, the more I've been finding Hyatt's and not just Hyatt's, but great value Hyatt's in the places I want to be.

And, uh, both Chase and Built transfer one-to-one to Hyatt. Either one of them is really great for hotels if Hyatt meets your needs. But obviously that's, as Nick was alluding to with the cashback strategy, it's not a complete solution. But still, if I had to give up transfers to Choice and Wyndham from Citi versus giving up any Hyatt option, I would give up the Choice and Wyndham. Yeah. It's probably fair. It's probably fair. And you know, there's the footprint limitation is the big issue, but like you said, when you travel a decent amount anyway, I feel like it's hard to not stumble on lots of opportunities to get great value out of a chase points for Hyatt specifically, you know, just,

just yesterday, somebody reached out mentioning they had final four tickets and, you know, wondering if anybody was interested and I wasn't sure whether or not we would be, but know, just, just yesterday, somebody reached out and mentioned they had final four tickets and, you know, wondering if anybody was interested and I wasn't sure whether or not we would be, but I was like, you know, I wonder if I can even get a hotel in new Orleans during the final four. Right. Right. Sure. So I looked at the major programs and of course, nobody had awards days except for a Hyatt property, a category four Hyatt property that was $600 a night or 12,000 points a night. Right. So, and I didn't book it because I'm not going to go, but, uh, but I looked at it and I said, my goodness, I'd get free parking because you know, I, it gives you free parking. So I'd get free parking and I would all, I think anyway,

I'm pretty sure, you know, I should, I should say, I don't know if that was a, an SLH property or something like that. It was an odd name, but I assume I would get free parking and free breakfast as a globalist, both of which would be nice and obviously a $600 a night room for 12,000 points. Not that it's a $600 a night hotel, but the situation is such that Hyatt doesn't play as many games with award inventory as other programs do during high demand periods. That's not to say there aren't, there is individual Hyatts that play a lot of games. That play a lot of games. Don't get us wrong. No, no, no, I'm not. Yeah. But I'm just saying that they are tend to be better than most other programs. Certainly far from perfect, but okay. So I played devil's advocate a little bit with city, but probably I would concede that you want a program that's got

Hyatt as a transfer partner of Hyatt comes close to meeting your needs. So, all right. And I should say, I don't value Chase's other hotel transfer partners, transfers to IHG and to Marriott one-to-one because in my experience, both of those are worth, tend to be, not always, but tend to be worth less than a penny each. So, I'd rather cash out and book my hotel stays than transfer to those programs most of the time. So in my opinion, Built and Chase are the best for hotel programs. City, I'd say actually close second, surprisingly, because of that one to two with choice. But it's a fairly niche thing. But because it also has Wyndham, which is a great option. Yep. There you go.

Okay. Let's go into domestic flights. So who do you like best for domestic flights? This is kind of tough because I'm tempted, of course, to lean towards someone that has Turkish miles and smiles as a transfer partner. So I would be tempted to lean towards a city or a Capital One. Although I think maybe I got to give the nod to Built at this point for domestic, not even maybe, I think I have to give the nod to Bilt at this point for domestic awards, because not only do they have Turkish, which of course I'm mentioning, because if you can actually get it to book, then you can book United flights for 7,500 points each way,

domestic flights, that is within the United States for 7,500 points each way in economy or 12,5 each way in business class. It's a challenge to book with Turkish and there's some challenges after the fact, but that's a great value and they have that. But then in addition to that, and perhaps better for a lot of people, they have both American and United Airlines as transfer partners, which is just like mind blowing that there's new rewards currency

that's designed around rewarding people for rent, has two of the major U.S. programs that seemed to have been relatively exclusive in the past. So amazing to see that happening here. And because they partner with American and United, the nice thing, of course, is that you can take advantage of those web special type things or the extra savers or because things are dynamically priced. sometimes you're going to find the best deal available via American or United and those flights won't be available to partners necessarily. Yeah, no, exactly. All three of the major US programs, and I'm going to even

throw in Air Canada as another one, which also supports all four of, supports, um, all four of them. Now, if I, if I go that way, have better pricing and, and better availability for, for their own flights, then that they, then what they allow for, uh, partners to book. So you can't use, you know, partner miles to book any of these four when they don't release partner, uh partner saver award availability. And more and more, it's hard to find that saver award availability. On the flip side, they frequently have actually very good deals on their own flights because they dynamically price them. And it's true for, again, it's true for all four. You log in and

it's super easy, right? You log into whatever program it is, or don't even have to log in, just do a query on their website to see what the award costs. And often you'll find cheap flights domestically, especially for economy. So a program that supports multiple of the major domestic partners, I think is really important. Unbelievable that BILT supports American United and Air Canada. And Emirates for JetBlue Mint. You can book Mint. There's others. There's other, yeah. And Air France for Delta. For Delta. Right. Right. So, I mean, and those things, again, are going to be a little bit more, I don't know, variable and in terms of their value to you. But the value of having access to having one point that can become an American Airlines mile or United mile or perhaps a Turkish or Air Canada mile that just can't be overstated. That's really, really good flexibility. Right, right. Now, if you need or want a program that transfers to JetBlue, you're currently out of luck, I believe, with Bilt. You are. If you want Southwest,

then you've got to go with Chase, right? If you want Delta, you've got to go with Chase, right? If you want Delta, you've got to go with Amex. And unfortunately, Amex does a weird thing, which is when you transfer to a U.S.-based program, not a foreign program, but a U.S.-based program, they charge a little excise tax for that transfer, which makes no sense to me at all. But there you go. Not at all. Nobody else does that. Uh, I guess they do it cause they can,

can, can, uh, I mean, but that reduces the value a little bit of the ability to transfer to Delta, you know, but it's there. And again, they're,

they're the only one that has that. So, so they, they do have a, so both chase and, and, and Amex have an argument for being like the best for domestic, but I have to give it to Bill. Yeah. I got to give it to Bill too. And I'm going to, I'm going to predict here.

I would be very surprised if Bill doesn't add JetBlue at some point. I feel like JetBlue matches their image. It matches, you know, the type of customers that they're going after. And, and I just think that JetBlue seems like a natural fit for them. And they partner with so many other programs. I can't imagine that JetBlue isn't open to the idea. So I would be not at all surprised if they end up adding JetBlue at some point here. And if they do, that's just going to be another feather in the cap for them. I think that they're just going to get better rather than any worse. Preston Pyshko, MD, PhD Great. All right, cool. Let's talk about international

Y-flat. So business class, first class, awards. Who do you want to go with to get the best of those? Adam Draper, MD, PhD Hands down, membership rewards. Not even close. Not even close. Preston Pyshko, MD, PhD Really? Adam Draper, MD, PhD MX membership rewards. Done. Yeah. I mean, there's so many incredible values and some of them, many of them can be accessed by other currencies, but most other currencies cannot access all of them the way that Amex can. So yeah, I would say Amex membership rewards because you've got a lot of great sweet spots. You've got Virgin Atlantic to fly Delta to and from Europe, flatbed seats for 50,000 points each way when you find saver availability. You've got Iberia Avios. If you live on the East Coast during off-peak times,

you can fly flatbed business class to Spain for 34,000 miles each way. If you live in New York, you can fly using LifeMiles, Avianca LifeMiles. You can fly between New York and Lisbon, Portugal for 35,000 points each way or one way. So I do need to jump in and say almost all the ones you've mentioned so far are programs that most of the other transferable currencies have as well. Yeah, well, but they don't all have. Yeah, that's the thing. They don't all have.

And so they have all of those that some others have, but many of them don't have all of them. And then on top of that, of course, you've got ANA, which has incredible values if you want to fly flatbed to and from actually anywhere, really. But certainly between the United States and Japan, Asia, Australia, great deals on ANA and their around the world chart is amazing. Cathay Pacific Asian Miles, another great one that, again, they share with some programs, but few programs have as many strengths as they do. So I think membership rewards points is just far and above other programs in terms of its value. Aeroplan can be good in some situations. Singapore for flying Singapore. I don't know. What do you think, Greg? Do you think something

different? You don't want to disagree with me here? Well, so at the risk of sounding like a built fanboy, what Amex does not have is American Airlines and no one else has it besides built. And American Airlines has things like the ability to book Cutter business class. So the Q suites, which are considered some of the best business class flights that you could get and very, very good pricing. I mean, to be able to fly all the way to South Africa for, I think it's 75,000 miles one way on in Q suites is just tremendous. And they still have, it's true. They don't have ANA, but you know, they still have like air Canada for, for great star Alliance awards. They still have, um, air France while everybody has air France for sky sky team awards.

So, um, I'll fight your fight for you. And they have Turkish and Turkish has some incredible star Alliance rates. I mean, you're talking 45,000 each way to Europe, but then like, I think it's 47,000 each way to the middle East or 49 and parts of Africa are still under 50,000 each way, uh, India and, uh, Nepal, I think are 55,000 each way in business class. So Turkish has some really, really good sweet spots also. And, and Bill Tess that so. Right. And Amex doesn't. And the other thing is, so, so I've been, I've been less high on ANA lately. Not, not because, I mean, they have incredible sweet spots, but, you know, and I've talked about

this before that I hate the fact that their miles expire after three years, unless there's a global pandemic. And I hate that you have to book round trip. It makes it, or around the world, it just makes it really, really difficult to find good uses for those miles before they expire. And so, you know, also the fact that it takes several days for the transfer to happen. So, you know, you might find a word space and then by the time the transfer is done, it's not there. All those reasons are why I kind of like ANA, sorry, Air Canada better for some things. So, yeah, so I'm kind of leaning towards Bilt. Amex, though, has a strong position in this as well.

I agree with you there. Something I caught in my throat. Now I can't even talk. Woo! Well, while Nick's unable to talk, we'll move on to the next topic. No, before you do though, before you do, I'm going to say Capital One also has a really strong set of partners. So I think Capital One is another one that can compete, but I'll agree with you. I'll agree to agree. Built is quite good. All right. What's the next topic? All right. Let's, let's move off of

transfer partners. So, um, we have now the ability to earn points. So, you know, it's one thing to say, you know, built has great transfer partners, but at least this thing stand right now, there's no welcome bonus that you could earn for getting the credit. You can't actually, as we're recording this, you can't actually get the card that comes with built at all, but, um, you know, that'll change very soon. And at least right. You know, we haven't heard of a welcome bonus yet. Um, they do have some good, you know, category bonuses, like three X for, I think, dining, 2X for something else. I can't remember what they are, but-

Yeah, it's 3X dining and 2X travel. Okay. But that really, really pales, in my opinion, compared to how many points you can earn in the Chase ecosystem, in the Amex ecosystem, in the Citi ecosystem, and so on. Well, that's true. If you already were earning points for rent or you don't rent, if you rent, I think it kind of depends on how much you pay in rent, because, you know, if you pay, let's say, $1,500 a month in rent,

which I think is probably low for most cities, we're looking at what, 18,000 points per year. So I mean, that might be what I mean, if you're earning an extra point or two per dollar spent, that might be nine to $18,000 worth of spend that you're kind of earning an extra point on in the sense that you're earning those rent rewards points that you wouldn't have earned otherwise. So and if your rent is particularly expensive, or even moderate, $2,500 a month, for instance, you're looking at even more points that kind of make up for some of the extra points

you don't get on other cards. Now, it doesn't make up for the signup bonuses. So that's still a big issue for Built, I think, that I really think they need to solve. And of course, not only do they not have a signup bonus on that card, but when you look at other issuers, you have multiple cards you can earn signup bonuses on. So forget about category bonuses, just those signup bonuses really add up. They sure do. And also referral bonuses, you know, with most of the others, you can get some pretty big amounts of points by referring others. And we've talked before about how you can often refer back and forth between a significant other and yourself so that you're both earning both welcome bonuses and referral bonuses with these other programs. There's nothing like that with Built.

So in my opinion, Built is at the bottom as far as earning power. Now, you did mention, I mean, it has that unique ability to earn rewards when paying rent, but it's still because that's the only thing going on. And because it doesn't have a 2x everywhere or even a 1.5x everywhere for spend option, which the others all do. I'm going to put it at the bottom for that. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty fair. I think that that's an area they really need to address, and I hope that they do. I certainly have my fingers crossed for that. All right, so earning points. So what's the best for earning points then? You think Amex top and then Chase and then Citi?

Is that? So, yeah, I mean, wow. Amex is definitely at the top i mean because they they just have been showering points for so long they have so many cards that earn membership rewards so you're eligible for tons and tons of of welcome bonuses um they have all these great referral bonuses all the time you know i don't think there's any doubt about that. Right. They also have category bonuses across their different cards. So, so they're really, really strong. City, sorry, Chase has got to be next with signup bonuses because you can, you can, you

know, sign up for three different versions of ink cards that all earn ultimate rewards points that can be moved around. And I specifically said that because there's a fourth one that earns ultimate rewards points that can't be moved. And so let's forget about that one. And then there's multiple freedom cards, there's the Sapphire. And so lots of cards you could sign up for and get the welcome bonuses they have some great category bonuses with 5x office supply and 3x drugstore and so on and so on so um they're probably next because city doesn't have much in the way of welcome bonuses they've got a couple here and there but not not a lot going on. They're pretty strong, though, with the category bonus side, with what you can earn from spend, right?

Because you start with a double cash as your everywhere else cards. You're getting two points per dollar in everywhere that doesn't earn a category bonus. And you go up from there with like 3X in lots of categories with the Premier card. You get 5X with lots of categories with the custom cash card. So very, very strong with category bonuses, but less with welcome bonuses. Well, so wait then. So which is on top here between Citi and Capital One? Because Capital One, you can easily earn two points per dollar everywhere.

You can also earn more because you have to keep in mind, of course, that the cash back cards, the Capital One cash back cards earn cash back. But if you also have a miles earning card, you can convert that cash back to miles at one cent per mile. So essentially, if you got the saver card that earns four percent dining, it really earns four points per dollar dining. Right. And then, of course, it really earns four points per dollar dining. Right. And then, of course, you have all those signup bonuses, all the cashback signup bonuses that

can be converted over to miles. And the Spark cards sometimes come with monster signup bonuses. We just saw those bonuses and that were good for $3,000, $3,500 if you're targeted for the $3,500 offer, which could be 300,000 or 350,000 miles rather. So I feel like Capital One, there's more opportunities to earn points than Citi. Preston Pysh, I think you're right. Jeff Ross, MD, I think you're right. Yeah. Preston Pysh, Yeah. So yeah, so Citi is down close to the bottom from this point of view.

We didn't talk about Brex because they do have a nice signup bonus for those who have a sort of incorporated or LLC business. And then they have some category bonuses that are pretty strong. They do. They have Forex on Dining. And so the Forex on D dining, I've used mine. The thing with Brax is they've got a good set of transfer partners. And for a card with no annual fee that earns four transferable points on dining, it's not bad. It's not a bad option. But they don't have access to any really unique partners. Their partners are

basically partners that are partners with everybody. So you don't get a lot of unique value proposition from them over, for example, using the MX Gold card for dining. And so that's why I feel like we don't talk as much here about Brex, even though they've got a decent number of partners. It's not a bad option,

just not particularly exciting. Certainly not at 1X. I mean, it's not worth using the card at one X. Right. Right. And they don't have, they don't have a one and a half X or two X option at all. One card, you know, so similar problem with, with built there in that sense. Yeah. And you're not going to get referral bonuses or anything like that. So, all right. So, I think we agree on all that, it sounds like. I think so. I think so. Once I set you straight on city. Let's talk about alternate redemption options. So, what I mean here is we know that Chase,

if you have the Sapphire Reserve card, is very strong in that you can get one and a half cents per point value in two different ways. One is by booking travel through the Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal. The other way is by using your card to pay for things within a category covered by Chase's Pay Yourself Back program. So those are alternate ways other than transfer partners of getting value from your points. Is anyone else even worth talking about? Oh, that's a loaded question. So maybe not, but I find the valuation of Chase Points for their ability to book travel through the travel portal questionable, dubious, perhaps, because Chase is worth that much

if you're booking flights generally, because flights are usually the same price everywhere these days. Usually, not always, but usually the same price everywhere. When it comes to hotels, they are rarely the same price everywhere. And so if you happen to find that unicorn situation where the Chase Alternate Rewards Portal happens to have the very best price for the hotel that you're looking to book, well, great. Then I guess count yourself lucky as getting your 1.25 or one and a half cents per point in value. But if that's not the case, you're not really getting one and a half cents out of your points or 1.25 cents. So questionable. It's worth one

and a half cents towards flights and worth perhaps more than a penny towards hotels, perhaps depending on your situation. Okay, good. And we know you can also get one and a half, tiny bit above one and a half for flights. If you have the business platinum card, it's not all flights. If you're booking economy, it's only with the airline that you picked as your preferred carrier. But if you're booking like business class, then it's any airline. And that comes in the form of a rebate. So you have to pay the full points as if they're worth a penny each, then you get a rebate that makes them worth

slightly over one and a half. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, I was going to mention a couple other places where you could get slightly better value with other ways of redeeming points. Okay. Well, so I'm going to throw a curveball in here, one that we haven't talked about at all yet, but for good value alternate redemption options, I think you'll be ready to talk about this one. Discover. Discover sometimes offers good ways to get more value out of your rewards, right? I mean, you've written about that. David Sherman That's true, but Discover is not on the map here. We're talking about transferable points programs.

But since you brought it up, I'll just mention that Discover does let you take your cash back and redeem it for gift cards, merchant gift cards at better than one cent per point value. So they give you a, if you redeem a hundred dollars worth of Discover cash back, you might get $120 gift card, for example. So that's pretty good. If you have a need for any of those merchant gift cards that are on there, I've done that myself a number of times. I think it's a really good way to redeem that cash back. Now, some of the programs, Citi and Chase, sometimes have discounts on the gift cards. So you get a similar kind of dynamic, but that's only when they happen to have those discounts and you happen to need those gift cards. So I don't really think about those much. And Amex, forget about it because most of their gift cards are less than a penny per point value.

So don't even waste your time looking at those. Horrible. And when I mentioned that Chase is not really quite one and a half cents for hotels, if you shop around a lot of times, blah, blah. Amex is horrible for hotels in general. I mean, yes. So you generally, apart from fine hotels and resorts, where you can get like one cent per point, otherwise it's just not. And again, that one cent per point is still just as dubious. So yeah, I think Chase obviously has the best alternate redemption options.

And they've run things in addition to the pay yourself back, right? Like the Apple thing now and then that they've run. I don't even know if that's like the pay yourself back, right? The be able to be able to redeem for Apple products. I think that's directly through Chase. And sometimes they toss those on sale too. So you can tell I'm not an Apple guy

because I can't remember the details exactly. But they do occasionally offer good value for redeeming the points. All right. So I can't remember. Does Build have some kind of thing where you could pay your mortgage or some kind of thing for better than one cent? I don't think it's better than one cent.

I think you can pay that mortgage. No, it's slow down. There's rent rewards, rent rewards. As you pay your rent once, once that each, or I think maybe, well, no, I think that's it. Rent rewards. I think at this point you can just do rent. And then I think you may also be able to, no, I'm not. I think you're very confident. You can redeem built points for some unique things in the app, like artwork. They do these limited run pieces of art and you can redeem points for some of those things and maybe get yourself a first edition from some

artists that's up and coming and, you know, blows up and becomes worth a lot of money. So if that's your thing, if you're into cool modern art, then it might be a good way to redeem your points. I don't know. All right. All right. But still, I think we agree. Chase wins that category. Point management. Let's talk about... So when a program makes it easy to move points to other people, when it makes it easy to keep points alive forever, that's what we want, right? I mean, so let me give an example of what I don't like is Citibank.

So Citi, yes, you can transfer your points to other people unless you have the custom cash card, which doesn't allow that. But when you have another card and you do transfer it to other people, then it expires after what, 90 days, something like that. And so it has to be used right away. And worse, if you have a card that earn points. So even if you have, let's say you've got three different cards that are in city thank you points and you've combined them all so that all the points are in one pool, then you decide, oh, I want to cancel my city premier card because I'm not really getting value out of that anymore. If you cancel that, all the points that were earned on the premier card will go away. I mean, that's like, there's nothing you can do to stop that from happening

other than spending them or don't cancel the card. You could downgrade to a no-fee card. That's the option Citi wants, Greg. Right, right, right. So I hate that. So that's why I consider that the far end of the gold standard is. Exactly. The full gold standard is Citibank. Yeah. So I think that I would love to be able to make an argument for somebody else being better at this, but I think far and away, it's got to be Chase again, right?

I mean, Chase makes it really, really simple. As long as you don't cancel a card, it's got to be Chase again, right? I mean, Chase makes it really, really simple. As long as you don't cancel a card while it's still got points on it, I guess. I don't know. I guess there's an argument to be made for Amex. So I'll say Chase and maybe you'll argue Amex. I think Chase is the best because it makes it very easy online to transfer points between the cards that you have. So from one card to another to take advantage of perhaps an elevated redemption level on a different card. And also between you and one other person in your household or a co-business owner on one of your ink cards. So super easy. My wife and I move points back and forth between our Chase Ultimate Rewards accounts all the time. And it's very simple. It takes a couple of clicks, a few minutes. So I think that's got to be the easiest system. The problem here, the hang up here is if you try to cancel a card that has the points on it, because we had a reader not thinking that their points were going to stay alive and

they didn't they lost them all and eventually they actually did get chased to give back amazingly but uh but that's not something that i would count on right right so in chase's case you you can simply move your points to another card that you're not going to cancel and then cancel your card but it's on you to remember to move your points out of the card you're about to cancel. With Amex, you don't have to do that because all your points are automatically pooled. But Amex has the very big downside of they don't let you move your points as membership rewards points to somebody else. So that to me is a big downside. Capital One has a fantastic ability to move your points to anybody. Yeah. I mean, that is really nice. And so my first thought actually, when this topic came up was Capital One, because you can move them to anybody else that's got a Capital One miles

earning card. It doesn't have to be a spouse or live in your household or anybody. You can transfer them to anybody and there's no limits. You can do as many as you want. I mean, and I've asked that almost every time I've been on the phone. Is there any limit to this per year, per person? No, no limit is what they tell me every time. And I haven't found it yet if there is one. So that's really nice. What I don't like is you got to call. So that's kind of a pain.

I don't know. Like, yeah, it's not such a big deal for me, but my wife's got some capital one cards. And so when she wants to move her points to my card, that means she has to call and explain to her what we're trying to do. And so that just adds an extra layer of complexity that I don't like as much as Chase's system, but it's super nice to be able to do that. Right. I mean, right, right, right. Hmm. Okay. Well or chase or maybe maybe the answer here is built built really simple they just got one card so like your points are alive as long as you keep the built card right but yeah as far as we know i don't think you can move the points to another

person so yeah yeah i mean um i don't think they're really sort of on the board in this not not for anything i was being facetious there with it. No, I know you were. One card's in Brexit. And same thing with Brexit. Yeah. I mean, they're not really on the board because there's not really an ecosystem to talk about moving points from one to another and talk about what happens if you cancel one but keep the other card open. But I don't think in either case you can move points from another person.

So, you know, it's kind of interesting. I think that in a way, Capital One probably has the friendliest program for that because you can move points to anyone else. But if you can't do any of that online, that is very, very annoying. Well, and there's another but here. So what we didn't talk about with this, but I guess we probably should have, you touched on it very briefly, is that Amex, for instance,

will allow you to transfer points to the loyalty program of an authorized user, an additional cardholder on one of your accounts, provided they've been an additional cardholder, I think for three months, right? Is that the rule? It's got 90 days before you can transfer to their loyalty programs. Capital one doesn't have that functionality. You can only transfer it to the primary card holders, loyalty programs.

So if the person who's loyalty program, you want the points to end up in doesn't have a capital one miles earning card, then you're out of luck on that. Whereas Amex allows you to do that. Chase also, I think allows you to transfer to the loyalty programs of an authorized user, right? They do. They do. All right. You know, I wasn't thinking Chase when we started this topic,

but you've kind of semi-convinced me. I believe you do now with Chase in order to set up a target to move your points to someone else. I think you have to call to set that up, right? I have to now. But once it's set up, you can do it online. So it's not hard at all. All right. Wow. Surprise winner there.

So do we have an overall winner? So we like Chase for point management. We like Chase for alternate redemption options. We like Amex for earning points. We were a bit split about international luxury flights between Amex and Built. We were split on, well, no, I think we agreed on domestic that we like built for transfer partners best. Hotel awards, again, we like built in Chase because of the high transfer. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Chase in there. Although I'll say like, for instance, the good value alternate redemption options doesn't matter much to me because I'm generally not going to redeem for those alternate. I guess it's always nice to have options, to have backup options, but it's not particularly important to me because that's not how I'm going to redeem most of my points. And we didn't mention, and now I'm realizing, duh, we should have mentioned a good

alternate redemption option for Amexes with the Schwab card, being able to cash out your points with the Schwab card at 1.1 cent each. Should have mentioned that. But at any rate, that piece isn't particularly valuable to me. So I kind of throw that one right out the window. And I value the ability to earn points more than anything else, because if I can't earn enough points to redeem for something, it really doesn't matter, right? I mean, so I value Amex over everything else right now because they've been handing out points like candy. And so that makes it really easy for me to fly a family of four somewhere if I can find the availability because the points are on hand.

And I also know that I can replenish the points pretty easily. So I don't feel bad about redeeming them. And even if it happened to be a little bit suboptimal, which luckily for me, I haven't even run into that situation. But I think that the ability to earn points in mass and then earn more of them and replace the points you've used matters the most to me. And the second most would be good international I-flat options. And I was more on the Amex bandwagon there. Even though you make great arguments for built, built is not, I'm not going to be able to earn enough built points to make a difference in my life. So that's true. So I go with Amex, but I bet maybe you're going to disagree. What do you think? I know. I mean, I think you made a great argument about the ability to earn points in great quantities. You know, I go back to, I love my Hyatt Redemptions. And so, boy, I've said Chase before, and so it has a good

combination of ability to earn a lot of points and redeem for Hyatt as well as other things. And so, wow. If I had to pick one, I might still be on Chase, but I'd hate to have to only pick one. So here's- I'm lucky that I don't have to. I'm going to toss a question here, a little curveball, so to speak. Let's say that you get the built card and use that as your dining card. And so you can earn 3X dining and transfer to Hyatt all day long. Do you still need Chase?

Probably because I don't think I do enough. Yeah. Yeah. I've been, I've been spending Hyatt points like they're like, you know, it's just been washing down the drain. And, and that's a really bad analogy because I've been getting great value and, but I've just been spending them like crazy. I've been traveling a lot and I've loved it. And I love having the ability to get great value. And I said at the start of the program, we weren't going to talk about loyalty programs, but it's hard not to tie it in here because Hyatt has a fantastic loyalty program. If you're top tier elite, which I am, and being able to depend on some great perks, like the free parking on awards days, like the

free breakfast, like the no resort fees and things like that. That's really good. And so, yeah. It is. It is. And I would like to use some other points. In fact, we're going to be in New York City when this publishes, probably speaking of the New York Travel and Adventure Show. So if you're in New York, by the way, if you listen to this this weekend, March 19th and 20th, we will be at the Javits Center speaking both Saturday and Sunday. So anyway, we're going to go to New York this weekend. And when I'm looking at hotel options, Hyatt is just far and above my best option.

I had another trip coming up to New York soon too. And I'd like to use some other things. Like I've got all these Marriott free night certificates and suite upgrade awards and I got Radisson points and blah, blah, blah. But it's hard to justify because I know if I stay at a Hyatt, I'll get free parking, which bam, right off the bat saves me 40, 50, 60, $80 a night, depending on where I'm going to park. And I'm going to drive a minivan. So it's oversized. People charge me more for it, blah, blah, blah. So that's great value. Then I'm going to get free breakfast. I know. And then 4 PM checkout on, you know, at the end of the weekend. And I'm going to need that because my son naps and he's going to be napping at checkout time. So being

able to lock in a 4 PM checkout huge. So yeah, I agree with you. That makes Hyatt that much more desirable right now. I can't get enough Hyatt points. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Very good. So, I think we're up to post-roast time. The post-roast. All right.

Do you have anything for me? I don't have a post-roast this week. Do you? Someone didn't do his homework. I know. I didn't. Just a really short one. You wrote a post called finding the

hidden secrets of manufactured spending. Guilty. And I tried to find the hidden secrets in your post, but I failed. And I put that on you, buddy. You know, it's the old adage, the old, you know, give men a fish, she eats for a day, teach men to fish, he eats for a lifetime, right? So I'm trying to teach you to fish, Greg. I just want my fish. Give me my fish, man. I'm hungry. You know where the hidden secrets of MS are. If you're reading for that, then, you know, I could have saved you a few minutes of workation time. Could have enjoyed the, you know, the sunshine a little bit more. I'm sure you put some hints in if you reverse the letters of every fourth word or something. Every fourth word. That was it. Somebody's going to go there and sit there. Yeah, please don't do that. You're going to

be wasting your time. I think there's more value in recognizing the patterns. So that was the point of the post. There's more value in recognizing, okay, this worked before. So, hey, here's this new thing. And is there something similar here to what worked before at other places, and you're gonna run into a lot of places where no, nothing's gonna work. But now and then, you know, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And you may stumble upon those things that people aren't going to write about. And they aren't going to tell me about because they don't want me to write. Absolutely true. And really the hidden secret is not a secret. It's you need to make friends so you can work together to find the best deals that are local to your area. And you need to experiment, try things out. You see something new and you wonder, oh, I wonder if I can load this

prepaid card with a credit card. Try it. See what happens. Right. There's so many of those things that repeat and in slightly different ways sometimes. And that load with a prepaid card with a credit card is an example we give because that's always something that comes to mind. But that's not the only thing that I pointed to in the post. And if you go through the post, you may see other things that you'd be like, oh, I wonder if there's anything else sort of cut from the same thread, but a little bit different. I tried to link to a number of dead deals that would hopefully get the wheels spinning for people that are looking for those. I think so. Yeah. All right. No, it was good.

So then question of the week, I think. So the question of the week came in via the email address. And what's that email address again, Greg, that people can send questions to? Mailbag. Mailbag at frequentmiler.com. That's it. So question of the week this week. My wife and I are not so young anymore, and I have just retired from my 50-year career. We've amassed plenty of miles and points, particularly over the last couple of years without traveling.

How about doing a post about how to preserve miles and points in case of a death? And more importantly, how to plan for this in advance. I know I would turn in my grave if the banks, hotels, airlines took back all the fruits of years of playing this game. I'm going to skip around here and paraphrase a little bit. And so it said, if one of us dies suddenly, which programs allow transfers to a spouse and at what cost? If both spouses die suddenly, what happens to the miles and points? What should we put in our wills? What about our trust? Should we create a joint account for JetBluePoints or Avios or pull things together? What should we do? Which programs can be cashed out if that's the optimal redemption? What advice do you have here, Craig? What do you do

when you're trying to plan for the future with all these miles and points that are worth a lot, right? Yeah. Don't do what I do, which is I haven't been very proactive, but I think you wrote a post about this a couple of years ago, maybe. So I would start by going back and reading that. I think it's planning for a points and miles afterlife or something like that. That sounds right. That sounds right. So the good news is some programs like Amex Membership Rewards, even though they don't typically allow you to move points from one person to another, they do make an exception upon death, but it's not necessarily easy process.

The executor has to initiate the transfer, but it's not necessarily easy process. So the executor has to initiate the transfer, but it theoretically can be done. And in the case of loyalty programs like Delta, United, and so on, if they don't have an option for moving the points after death. I recommend, this isn't what the loyalty programs want me to say, but, but, you know, make it possible so that your, whoever inherits your estate can actually just log onto your account and use those miles to book for themselves or for others in the family. there's, there's no reason I'll let those, uh, those miles go away. Right. And, you know, so in my case, we, we recently gone through this process of creating a will and, and, and planning a little bit for that. And as we were in the process,

a friend of mine was doing the same kind of thing. And they actually called me up one day and said, uh, listen, you know, my sister's going to be the executor of my estate. But I'm wondering if you'd be willing to be a co-executor because got all these miles and points and she has no idea what to do with them. And so I said, OK, yeah, that's that's fine. And I asked him to do the same for me because he's familiar enough with all of this stuff that I said, oh, that's actually a really good idea. So so my family knows that if and when something happens, I think probably they would call Greg first. But, you know, that aside, that Evan will be or my friend, I should have said it will be an executor in my estate. So so that's I think it's useful to have someone that is familiar.

Now, I say that and there's a reader who has written in a few times or written about this topic a few times who has said that, you know, she simplified things because her kids asked her to, she had a lot of different points in different programs and her kids weren't interested in learning how to do all this stuff. Didn't want to have to log into a million different programs. So she kept it very simple with just a few programs or has anyway in the last, however many years she plans for that. So, you know, that's certainly something to consider, which ones are the easiest for moving points around and whatnot. And my wife, of course, knows that if something were to happen to me that, you know, there are points to transfer and things to do right away before anything else happens.

So before she calls the ambulance, she should make sure she transfers my points the way they need to be transferred. So, you know, and I've told my wife, you know, call Nick. We'll take care of it. So hopefully that won't be what what everybody listening decides to tell. Probably not. So anyway, but I think it's right. Right.

Don't do that. Anyway, but I think it's also worth mentioning here, though, that we're talking about these kind of ways around it. But one of the things that's kind of frustrating about miles and points is that you don't really own them, right? I mean, they're not really yours. And so that's one of the things that kind of, I think, is problematic about the way, like, for instance, referral bonuses, you pay taxes on those. I don't mind paying my fair share and the points are worth more to me than what I pay in taxes on them. So it doesn't really bother me from that perspective, but from the flip side, they're not even really mine. And if something happens to me, technically by the letter of the program details, they just evaporate into space. And so it seems that they aren't worth anything

potentially. So you really do need to plan for it a little bit because none of these programs officially have a system where you can transfer the points. A lot of them will make exceptions and be nice in that case. But if you're relying on somebody's nicety, well, I don't, I don't like to rely on that as much. And so having a plan for what you're going to do and who's going to do it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. And, and, you know, a word wallet. I mean, I, so, so I have all of our programs, um, all the loyalty programs, all the points programs, except for the bank ones. I don't keep them in word wallet, but you can, uh, in a word wallet

so that, you know, worst case, my wife can get onto AwardWallet and see what all the balances are. And even on the desktop version, click through, it auto-logs you into the program. And so she could, you know, log in and try to figure out what to do from there. So I don't know. I mean, personally, I don't know what I'd do without AwardW word wallet in general, because I have so many points in so many different programs. But I have to imagine that would be a huge, huge benefit to someone who's taking over in a state of points and miles and trying to figure out what to do with it. Good point. Good point. All right.

Well, my friends, I think that brings us to the end, which is kind of fitting. On theme, on topic. On topic right there. So if you've enjoyed what you've been hearing about today and you'd like to get our posts in your inbox each day, all you got to do or each week or each whatever, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. That's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on social media. We're on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube,

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with your friends and family and those folks who you want to manage your miles and points after you're gone. Absolutely. Bye, everybody.