Frequent Miler on the Air - US Bank Altitude Connect | Card Talk Ep8 | 10-3-24

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Card Talk, the show where we help you decide if this credit card belongs in your collection. In today's Card Talk, we're going to talk about the U.S. Bank Altitude Connect card. I never thought I would be kind of excited about a no-fee cashback card. So this is not really a points-earning card in that the points are best used for cashback card. So this is not really a points earning card in that the points are best used for cashback. Yeah, but it does have some pretty unique, interesting features. So first of all, not necessarily unique, but it's got no annual fee, as Greg said. Also, no foreign transaction fee. So this is one you can use worldwide. The earning rate is actually pretty good on this. So you earn 4x, so essentially 4% back, and we'll talk more about that in a second,

Starting point is 00:00:51 on travel, gas stations, and electric vehicle charging. It excludes discount stores, super centers, and wholesale clubs, though. So if you've been getting your gas at Costco or Walmart or something like that, those are excluded according to the terms. 2X on takeout, food delivery, et cetera, et cetera. That's not too exciting. That's pretty pedestrian since there are lots of 2% cash back cards. Also 2X on dining and grocery and streaming services. Again, you can get 2% back on a bunch of other cards out there. So really this one's most interesting for at first it's 4% categories. Again, travel, gas stations gas stations and ev charging but then it's also got some cool perks right it does and that's where it gets kind of surprising and and somewhat exciting um so it has a standard suite of travel protections first of

Starting point is 00:01:37 all so that's pretty good um but uh where it gets really, it has four free visits to Priority Pass each year that it comes with. And the reason, I mean, there's two reasons that's exciting. One, obviously, if you don't already have Priority Pass, I mean, this is a free way to get into Priority Pass lounges four times a year or with four people once per year, that kind of thing. But also, if you have a Priority Pass membership from Capital One or Chase or Amex, those versions of Priority Pass don't get you restaurant visits for free, Priority Pass qualifying restaurants and um these will so this would be a great like tag on to uh to one of those so we've talked in the past about how the u.s bank altitude reserve card gives you eight of these passes um but that's a much more expensive card uh and here you're getting four for free so that's pretty i think that's pretty darn cool

Starting point is 00:02:44 it is it's great you know and to be free. So I think that's pretty darn cool. It is. It's great. And to be clear, some of those cards that we mentioned, some of those other issuers used to have priority pass that came with restaurant visits. So if you visited a restaurant in the past, you're like, wait, no, mine does include it. But things have changed over time, and it doesn't anymore if it's from one of those issuers that Greg mentioned.

Starting point is 00:03:02 Most likely at Capital One, there are some business cards that still the existing cardholders who have the master card versions may still have restaurant visits but most anyway don't I don't believe so so anyway the four visits that's great or one visit with three guests and yourself that's also great so that's nice I like having that as an option on a card with no annual fee, but that's not it. That's not the only thing. This card also comes with up to $100 in credit for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, lots of cards offer that, but not many fee-free cards do.

Starting point is 00:03:36 There are a couple out there. So that's a nice benefit. And then also it has this thing called GigSky that is a benefit through November 15th of 2025, which it's advertised as stay connected in over 125 countries with complimentary GigSky global mobile data plans. I haven't dug that much into this, but I went to the website where you could sign up if you have the card and it looks like and again i'm not sure about this but it looks like if you have a newish phone that allows e-sims that this uh this has an app and will somehow set up an e-sim for you when you travel abroad and then you get a certain amount of um roaming data for free and then i think you pay after after using that amount of roaming data for free and then I think you pay after using that amount of roaming data. So that could be pretty darn cool. I know personally I have AT&T and I usually just go ahead and pay the standard fee when roaming to uh pretty much unlimited internet um when traveling but the fee

Starting point is 00:04:48 went up a little bit recently went up from 10 to 12 dollars per day and uh you know if uh if you don't need like your phone number like people texting you with your phone number and things like that then uh setting up the GigSky could be a really nice alternative for a short visit. Yeah, it could. Certainly. I think that's a great benefit, you know, or if you just want to have something you can kind of use for the kids or something along those lines, just as data. I mean, certainly some use cases for it here. So that's cool. I remember I looked into this when I read about it a while back too, but now I can't remember any more details. I thought it was not a lot of data. I thought

Starting point is 00:05:29 it was something like a gigabyte, but I could be wrong. So it's worth looking into the details there if that sounds appealing to you. But I mean, for a card with no annual fee to have not only 4% travel and gas stations, which is good. I mean, that's a good rate for cash back on those types of purchases, but then also to have the four free complimentary or the four complimentary priority pass lounge visits that can include restaurants. And so if it's a restaurant, then you get $28 in credit per person. So right there, you're talking more than a hundred dollars off the bill at a priority pass restaurant. If you're bringing the whole family, you know, and a hundred dollars in global entry TSA pre-check, this is

Starting point is 00:06:06 a great deal for somebody who doesn't want to have annual fees. For somebody who's very annual fee averse, this card could really fit in. Now, there is a catch. And the catch is that in order to get one cent per point value when you're cashing out, you have to have a US bank bank account. So I haven't looked deep into like, doesn't matter what type of bank account, but I'm assuming any standard checking or savings account would be fine. So that's not a huge hurdle, but it's something you need to know. Yeah. And the potential challenge there could be getting a checking account with U.S. Bank if you live in a state or a savings account, I think for that matter, if you live in a state that does not have U.S. Bank branches.

Starting point is 00:06:51 Now, if you get the credit card first, maybe you'll be able to open the bank account just by virtue of having a relationship, an existing relationship with the bank. But I know that in the past anyway, people who live in states where U.S. Bank doesn't have a presence have had difficulty getting approved for a checking or savings account. The workaround for that for a long time has been creating an online brokerage account. You can create a free self-directed brokerage account and that is not geographically restricted. So you can do that. Once you have that, then you can go ahead and open a checking account. It's no big deal. So if you run into a hurdle with that, again, I don't know that you would once you have the credit card, maybe only before you have a credit card. But if you

Starting point is 00:07:29 do, that's a potential workaround to be able to get a checking or savings account so that you can redeem your points for one cent each. Apparently, also, you can redeem those points for one cent each through the US Bank Travel Portal or Real-Time Mobile Rewards. So you do have some options for redeeming at one cent per point, which is nice. So, I mean, overall, this is pretty interesting. You're going to have it in your wallet, Greg? I don't have immediate plans to get it, but it's something I'm seeing more like, my son should get this. Why shouldn't he have a priority pass for the few times he might need it and even that gig sky thing. So I think for a lot of people, it makes total sense.

Starting point is 00:08:07 And yeah, I mean, a good deal there. I do want to warn anyone who thinks, you know, oh, it'd be a good companion to the altitude reserve card. Even though they're both called altitude cards, you can't move your points from the altitude connect to the altitude reserve, which you might want to do to make the points worth more if you could, but you can't move your points from the altitude connect to the altitude reserve,

Starting point is 00:08:25 which you might want to do to make the points worth more if you could, but you can't. So that's a good, good, good safety tip there. One final thing I want to mention, I was hoping that maybe you would jump on the product change option. So this is a card that I agree with Greg, I wouldn't run out to get because the welcome bonus, the intro bonus is not big enough to attract me to it. Because I'm not annual fee averse, if I were, then I may consider it. But however, all that said, I used to have a club Carlson card back in the day, they became a Radisson card that became an altitude go card that I don't really use. But I keep it around because it's an old account. And it's got no annual fee, I could see changing product changing calling us bank because they will usually let you product

Starting point is 00:09:10 change between their different products. So I could see calling us bank and product changing to an altitude connect just for those four free restaurant visits. I fly through a couple of airports now, now that, uh, there, there's a new lounge or there's a rather a restaurant at BWI that you can access when you're flying Southwest. So it's near the Southwest gates. And so that's great because I could use my priority pass visit there when I'm flying through BWI. So I could see product changing just for the four restaurant visits from the priority pass there, even though I don't need the TSA pre-check or global entry. Yeah, actually, you make a great point. Maybe I will do that after all. We'll see. If you want more information about this card, don't forget, you can find a direct link to our

Starting point is 00:09:54 site in the show notes. Just expand the description box to find a link to our site. That's frequent myler.com. You can join our email list at frequent myler.com slash subscribe, and we'll see you next time.

Frequent Miler on the Air - US Bank Altitude Connect | Card Talk Ep8 | 10-3-24

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