Frequent Miler on the Air - What are the best hotel keeper cards...and more | Ask Us Anything Ep64 | 1-31-24

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

In addition to our regular weekly podcast, we also host an Ask Us Anything Live on YouTube once a month where the Frequent Miler team answers listener questions about points, miles, rewards cards, and whatever else comes to mind. This episode (64) was streamed live on Jan 31, 2024 and can be viewed in full here: Frequent Miler Live: Ask Us Anything   Here are all the questions asked during this episode (with timestamps) (00:44) - Should Nick upgrade his Aviator card?  (04:12) - Would you advise to get United Club card and pay the annual fee with 30k points? Is it a good deal?  (06:03) -Just got my first Amex a BLUE BUSSINESS PLUS. how do I avoid pop up jail when I’m ready to apply to other Amex cards  (07:27) - Chase and Barclays have declined me due to too many credit checks. How do you work around this?  (09:38) - What are the best hotel keeper cards currently? (14:32) - ​What is a reasonable cost to upgrade from economy to business on a transatlantic flight?  (16:36) - I have the Bonvoy Boundless, planning on getting the Brilliant, and then upgrading the Boundless to the Ritz-Carlton. What is the best timing for upgrading and applying to get all the free night certs?  (19:34) - Does it make sense to transfer Chase points to Marriott to top up free night certificates?  (22:06) - Would you hold off on getting American Airlines cards, given your prediction that a devaluation is coming soon?  (27:18) - This question is for everyone. If you could live anywhere in the U.S., or the world for that matter, based solely on travel hocking opportunities, where would you live?  (31:58)- What's your prediction on Wells Fargo transfer partners, there was a leak that WF autograph Journey is getting 5x on hotels, 4x on airlines, 3x on travel and dining with $95 annual fee  (33:19) - Is it worth spending $15K on your Hyatt card through Plastiq to get a free night certificate?  (34:29) - Will Chase not approve my SouthWest Performance Business card if I didn’t put any post-sign-up-bonus spend on my SouthWest Premier Business card I got a few months ago?  (35:09) - How do I keep my Delta Platinum status or get to Diamond this year  (36:30) - ​Has Bilt changed the game with their 150% transfer bonuses regarding the rule of thumb against doing speculative transfers? (42:30) - What credit card would you recommended to maximize hotel award redemption for a family of five? (45:59) - With all AMEX Platinums being part of the same family and can only get one sign up bonus for this family, are there any strategies or benefits to getting more than one AMEX Platinums (of any version)? (48:43) - How is Greg dealing with Detroit Lion loss to the San Francisco 49ers? Which city has best airline and hotel redemption to Vegas? (53:00)- ​I'd love to hear some hotel tips from things Stephen has learned from his 50 state road trip. I'm planning a month long road trip and would love tips on maximizing value of points

This is not your usual Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is our Ask Us Anything live session, recorded and brought to you in podcast format. Once a month, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on YouTube to answer your questions. Ask us questions about points, miles, credit cards, airline and hotel loyalty programs. We don't know what's coming next and neither do you. Enjoy. I like it. This is our monthly live brought to you not live on a podcast welcome to frequent miler ask us anything our new podcast episode

while while carrie's preparing to uh read us some questions from the audience let's ask around here uh the team members should nick really upgrade his aviator card so nick about upgrading your your what 95 99 i think i think 99 aviator red card to the 199 aviator silver card so i wrote a post about that because my wife and I both got the upgrade offers. We just opened our Aviator Red like three months ago. So I was surprised to see an upgrade offer already. The Aviator Silver, of course, is a card invitation only. You can't apply for it. You have to product change to it from an Aviator Red card. And it comes with a few additional benefits on top of the Aviator Red free check bag for more people if you're traveling with a large group. But really, the key benefits are a $25 daily food and beverage credit. So if you fly American

every day, you can get $25 back every day for food and beverage online, $50 Wi-Fi credit. And when you do the $20,000 spend threshold, instead of getting a companion pass for one person for $99 plus taxes, you get a companion pass that allows you to bring two people for $99 plus taxes. You get the companion pass that allows you to bring two people for $99 each plus the taxes. And then at 20,000, 40,000 and 50,000 spend, you get an additional 5,000 loyalty points. So I can upgrade. I've already done about $8,000 spend so far on the card. So another 12,000, if I upgrade another 12,000 spend would get me an extra companion certificate or an extra passenger on a companion certificate plus 5,000 loyalty points. What do you think?

Should I upgrade? I guess it depends how much you want elite status. If you're going to be spending and how much you plan to get it by spending on a credit card, because if you are going to be getting it from spending on a credit card, it seems to me like a good idea to get that extra, what, 25% of your spend in the beginning anyway? Yeah. Yeah. Now that's what it comes out to, 25%, 25%, then more than 25% because the third spend threshold only requires another 10,000 spend. So it's actually 50% on that. So you think if I'm going after status, yes.

I should mention, by the way, that when you upgrade, you don't pay the $199 annual fee right away. You actually don't pay that fee until your next anniversary date. So for me, it would be eight months of essentially, it wouldn't cost me anything to upgrade to the silver. Is that the case if you've had it for more than a year, though? Yes. I just assumed that was only in the first year, but even in your second year, then, oh, well, that's actually a pretty good deal. Yeah. So I learned that reading the Flyer talk thread. I was not aware of that either. But I found that some people that got an upgrade offer

right after anniversary basically got a full year of the silver for free because it wouldn't actually be charged again until the following year's annual fee. That seems like a good tip in general, right? Like wait till after your annual fee, either that or like soon after you signed up in the beginning. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Go ahead, Stephen. And that $25 a day food and beverage credit will be really useful on your Southwest flights that you'll be taking. Well, that's the problem. I do mostly fly Southwest domestically, as Steven knows. So a questionable value as to,

do I really need American airlines elite status and the $25 food and beverage credit? I'm probably only going to fly American once, maybe once to use the companion certificates really is it. All right. Can I shuffle us along to our reader viewer questions? All right. So first question, we're sticking to the credit card theme. Would you advise to get United Club Card and pay annual fee with 30,000 points? Is it a good deal?

We're going to send that to steven let's say so if that's the club card that has a 525 annual fee then redeeming 30 000 points for that you're not actually getting terrible value there um whether or not it's worth actually because it sounds like you haven't actually got the card yeah you're considering getting the card and deciding whether to redeem your miles for that. I guess it depends on what kind of value you'd end up getting from the card as a result of that. So you get the United Club membership and some other things. So, I mean, if you're flying United frequently, then it certainly seems like that could be worth it. And yeah, you're certainly not getting bad value.

You could get better value by using your miles towards flights. But yeah, you're certainly not going to be booed at for using 30,000 miles for a $525 annual fee, I don't think. Anyone want to boo at Stephen's response? No, I agree. response no i i agree i mean it seems like a good deal uh if you travel united enough um or actually any star alliance carrier enough to where you would get benefit from the uh being able to get in the club and so if you think about it like spending 30 000 United miles a year to have club access. If you go just six times, that's 5k miles per, you know, per time, which I imagine would not feel like very much if you got good value out of that. So, um, yeah, I think that makes sense. All right. Blue proof. All right. Next is Nick. Just got my first Amex A Blue Business Plus.

How do I avoid pop-up jail when I'm ready to apply to other Amex cards? Well, I'm assuming that's your first Amex card. I think you're very unlikely to have any problems with pop-up jail for a long time. Actually, I've had a lot of Amex cards and I've opened a bunch of business platinums and business golds, and I've never seen the pop-up apart from trying to apply for a card I already had. So I've never had a problem with it. And I've done lots of different bonuses and authorized user bonuses and retention bonuses

and whatever else. It's a mystery as to who gets the pop-up and why. But if the only card you have is a no annual fee Amex card, that's got a relatively low welcome bonus. I can't imagine you're doing anything that would discourage Amex from giving you another welcome bonus. In general, I think the things that people think lead to getting the pop-up is opening lots of cards for the welcome bonuses, never spending again, and then closing them. So like, you know, if you open a platinum card and a gold card and a green card and you spend to meet the welcome bonus and that's it, don't spend again. And then

at the year mark, you cancel it. If you do that again and again and again, perhaps that leads to the pop-up. Some people think, I don't know. I guess I don't close enough Amex cards to have run into that. Anybody have any other thoughts about that? Yeah. Nope. All right. We're going to move it along then. Greg, Chase and Barclays have declined me due to too many credit checks. How do you work around this? Well, first of all, when they tell you that that's the reason they declined you, there's no way to know if that's really the reason that they always have to give you a reason, but there's no rule that it has to be the right reason. And it seems like it rarely is. So how do you work around it? It's hard to say because we don't know what's really the problem. Um, but if, if the issue really is too many credit checks, I mean, the, the obvious thing

is to not do things that would cause a hard pull on your credit for a while and then try again. Yeah. But it's worth mentioning that if you've found anybody who's gotten approved with more pulls, then it's not the credit checks that is the thing holding you back. Like, you know, it might be, if you already have some other chase cards, maybe it's just a matter of the fact that you've hit what they call their max exposure for you, the maximum amount of credit line they're going to give you. So then you might, it might be as simple as just calling. I don't know if you've called reconsideration. If you haven't called the reconsideration line, ask them to reconsider your application. And if you have other chase business cards, let's say, and you're trying to open a business card, say, well, I don't

actually need more credit, but I'd be happy to shift some of the credit line from my ink plus card to my, or my ink, whatever card to this card or that sort of thing. And often that that's enough, that'll do it oftentimes to get approved. So keep that in mind too. But yeah, these algorithms are Experian and TransUnion and Equifax, they exist because they have these complicated algorithms. They can't be reduced to an answer that simple. If they could, there'd be nothing for them to sell to the banks. So keep in mind that whatever reason you get, it's probably not that simple. Yeah, that's a good point. Before we move on in our questions, please like this video if you are watching live. I don't know if you can like it from a podcast. I guess if you're listening to the podcast,

you can like the podcast. That's right. But if you're watching it on YouTube dead or not live, you can still like it. Well, then you should call 911 if you need assistance of that kind. Post-life. All right.

Steven, what are the best hotel keeper cards currently? Hotel keeper card. I mean, I keep all my hotel cards. So I guess, let's see. IHG Premier. If you have an IHG Select card that you can no longer apply for new, then that's a fantastic one

because that's a $49 annual fee. Wyndham Business Owner card. That gives you points every year that more than basically offsets the annual fee I feel like, is it the owner plus does something similar? I forget my wife got that fairly recently but

hasn't been used yet, I feel like one of their other ones with an annual fee comes with points but I can't remember quite how much that offsets the Hilton Aspire card can give really good value. The World of Hire card, the personal one, because of the annual three-night certificate.

Let's see, like the Marriott ones, certainly if you can get better value from the three-night certificates that you get with those. So I'd say pretty much every hotel chain like even choice ones if you've already got it it's worth keeping it um or certainly at least a no annual fee one um is worth keeping because it has no annual fee so it doesn't do any harm having that so yeah i'd say the hotel credit cards like once you actually have them they're designed pretty well to encourage you to just maintain um the annual fee every year and paying

that because you're getting some kind of good value and even the Hilton surpass card as well even though that doesn't come with an annual three-night certificate you can spend 15,000 and get a three-night certificate and the recent changes I realized the other day are actually quite beneficial for us because whenever we need a one-night stay somewhere I pretty much always avoid Hilton places because we're traveling with our dog and they always charge you like 50 or 75 dollar um pet fee for the night which is um pretty high compared to some other places but with the surpass card if you pay with that it comes with the 50 dollar um credit every quarter now and so that can pretty

much offset a pet fee so that's actually made it more likely that we'll end up staying with Hilton at times um I mean ours is probably a niche scenario for that because I guess like not everyone needs a one-night stay with their dog but I guess there are people out there and so that $50 credit um actually has some kind of value for us now whereas and so it's made the surpass card a keeper for me even more so than in the past can i modify the question and and maybe i'll ask greg sure so i'm gonna agree with steven that almost every hotel card could be a keeper card but is there in the sense that if the benefits outweigh the fee then it makes sense to keep it right is there a hotel card that's worth spending on is there a keeper

card hotel card to spend on what would would be the card, if any, that you would spend? I guess it depends. I think it depends on what kind of, what you're after. So like with Hyatt, because you can spend your way to Globalist, it might be worth putting spend on that. If you want IHG Diamond status, it might be worth putting spend on their card. Do you guys spend on any of your...

When you're on a business card, it's worth paying for gas at 8x or utilities at 5x. But I can't think of one off the top of my head where if all you want is points and you're not concentrating all your spend into a category uh bonus like one that just makes sense like because it used to be right way back when the sbg card was considered one of the best cards just put all your spend on but i can't think of a hotel card like that right now where i'd say that i mean wasn't that part because they transferred didn't they yeah so is that true for any hotel cards anymore yeah marriott points still transfer to airlines but it's not the earning on the regular earning based on spend is not the same it's not a similar rate doesn't give you a similar ratio in the starwood card you see

and also nowadays there's so many cards that earn better than one mile per dollar that the starwood card probably wouldn't stand out anymore right right so that's the thing back then back then it earned it only earned one point per dollar but it earned one starwood point per dollar which transferred 20 000 points to 25 000 airline miles and so it was like earning 1.25 miles per dollar which at the time was more than you could get anywhere else for unbonus spend and i kind of agree one property back then was what three thousand points was it something like that yeah yeah and so only three thousand yeah three k of spend could get you a free hotel night whereas that generally won't be the case with any of the other cards good old days um yeah so

sounds like there are many worth keeping maybe all of them but not necessarily worth spending on for points um all right uh nick what is a reasonable cost to upgrade from economy to business on a transatlantic flight i have no idea because i really wouldn't consider doing it so i i i'm not a good person to answer this generally i shouldn't say i wouldn't consider doing it. So I'm not a good person to answer this. I shouldn't say I wouldn't consider it. Generally, it's going to cost enough, I know, that I would probably rather just be booking an award flight. So I don't know. Greg, maybe you have a better handle on that. Well, yeah, it's hard to say because sometimes there are benefits to having like the cash economy flight and then upgrade. And in some cases, like I think with British Airways and maybe Virgin, like the if you do it right.

And I don't have experience with this, but that the point priced upgrade isn't necessarily terrible. But what's considered a good read i mean i guess i would look at it as like i'd want it to be less than it would cost to just book the business class outright with points you know and then hopefully it's enough less that it makes sense and yeah so partly depend on if um if i was flying from the west coast or the east coast from the east coast i wouldn't bother just because it's such a short flight from the west coast it might be more worth it because then you're getting a few more hours in the air something to be aware of is that sometimes when you check in online like 24 hours before they'll give you some kind of upgrade offer um where you can pay that i know the united does it and other um

airlines um probably do too however you need to be really careful with that because sometimes they'll give you an upgrade offer but it's only for one leg of your flight and so if you're not on a um direction non-stop routing and you've got like some kind of connection somewhere you might say oh like they're willing to upgrade me to first class for 300 bucks but it's the domestic side that you're going to be upgrading to first class rather than international like so just be super careful with that because it's easy to get caught out with that good safety tip yeah that would be a huge bummer um all right greg i have the bonvoy bound list planning on getting a brilliant and then upgrading to the bound list to the ritz carlton what is the best timing for upgrading and applying to get all the free night certs to get all the free nights or um

yeah because if you upgraded the wrong time you won't get like you'll because it changes your anniversary date right so if you upgrade that just before your anniversary like two like a month before your anniversary then you're going to miss that year's boundless is that how is that how that works okay i can't remember yeah i'm pretty sure that's how it works right yeah because you had encountered that and like you got lucky because you got the 35k cert and then you happened to get the 85K cert. Yeah. And I don't know. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Well, I do know how it happened for me, but I don't know that it's repeatable. Based on like two data points I read somewhere of people getting both. What I did was I looked at the date that my free night certificates had posted for the last few years. And I found that in my Marriott account. And they posted on the same date each of the last several years. And so seven days before that, I upgraded to the Ritz card. And I did that because, like I said, I saw two other data points of people who had this work. And so I thought, well, it's possible. There's probably a lag, right, between when Chase tells Marriott, yeah, this person kept their card and when Chase actually or when my brother Marriott, yeah, he's kept the card and I'll get the boundless certificate and then also get the RIT certificate as though, you know, since I upgraded just before my anniversary date. Again,

it's very unscientific, but what I did was I did it a week before the data that it's normally issued. And I got both the, actually it wasn't the boundless. It was, well, whatever the $95 card is or whatever. I got both of the 35K certificate and the 85K certificate, but I don't think that's something you can count on working. It's something you can try. So what would be the safest way to do it? Well, the safest way to do it would be wait until after your 35K certificate posts and then upgrade,

and you're going to wait a year before you get the 85K cert, but then you'll know you're not going to miss one. So that'd be your safest bet. I was gambling and I knew I was gambling because the worst case scenario for me was that I upgrade a little too early and I don't get either one because my anniversary date changes to a few days sooner than normal. If I had done it too early and I wouldn't get another certificate until a year later so so i was gambling at not getting any certificate at all when i did that but you know every now and then i roll the dice all right uh steven uh does it make sense to transfer chase points to marriott to top up three night certificates it's it would be a painful option um that sounds like a no for multiple it is for like

for the vast majority of the time it's gonna be a no um however if you're like 1 000 or 2 000 points short or something like that of a really desirable redemption then sure like 1 or 2 000 chase points is is like a fairly small drop in the bucket and so it's not a big issue if you're going to be transferring like tens of thousands of points then no like i wouldn't be um particularly keen on doing that especially because mario often sells their points for less than a penny a point and so if you can buy it for less than a penny a point then why would you um transfer chase points because then it effectively means you're redeeming chase points for less than a penny a point which is very poor value however if it's a like urgent

booking that you need to do um then possibly um no but either way i i would still like double check to um see like how much mario points cost normally because i can't remember what their normal cost is because it might just make more sense just to buy. It's 1.25 normally. Well, wait, why did I, why did I say no? Why did I cut you off when you said if it's an urgent booking, nobody know chase points do not transfer instantly to Marriott. Believe it or not.

Like you wouldn't know because you never do it. Right. I did it once and I learned the hard way and then I Googled it and i was like oh my goodness are you kidding me they don't transfer instantly so uh so if you're in that situation where you need them right away that's not the way to get them uh believe it or not which blows my mind because chase points transfer instantly like almost everybody else weird but anyway so yeah um if i was going to transfer any points i'd be more likely to do membership rewards just because i've got more of those um or like i feel like i would much rather use chase points to transfer to hyatt then i wouldn't um necessarily like worry as much about um mx points but either way i think i'd be even more likely just to buy the points that i need

oh you know what i So I found some other data points that said that it was instant because I was curious, but then several other people had said more than 48 hours. So I wonder if you could transfer instantly to United and then instantly transfer United to Marriott. Good question. Oh man. This exhausts me to think about. All right. Nick, would you hold off? I'm going to adapt this question because I'm curious about it, too. Would you hold off on getting American Airlines cards, given your prediction that a devaluation is coming soon? And then in general, I'm curious, does your prediction typically impact your card application strategy at all?

Like when you think something's going to devalue? Well, okay. So I mostly apply for transferable currency cards. So then I'm really not worried about devaluation of any specific program for the most part, because the whole idea of collecting a transferable currency is that you're kind of insulated a bit from that since you have so many different options. If one program devalues, then you transfer to some other program. Does it influence, though, my decision?

I mean, it's a good question about applying for an American card if I think that devaluation is coming. I mean, yeah, I would probably only apply for a card like an American Airlines card if I had a relatively near term use in mind for the miles. Americans, a weird situation, though, because there are a number of good award chart sweet spots. You know, I think this is what I'd say to this. I think and watch me be wrong. Knock on wood. I think American will probably give some notice before they change award prices. So I think you're probably safe getting an American Airlines card now.

Because in the past, anyway, when American has changed award prices on partners, they've always announced that in advance, as far as I recall. So I would think that there's going to be enough notice that you'll have a chance to redeem at current levels. And since the Barclays Aviator card, for instance, is a bonus after like one purchase, then it's not like you're gonna have to wait a long time in order to earn the points. So you'll have a near term chance to use them, I think. So I don't think I'd be worried about getting American Airlines miles right now. In fact, I think now is probably the time,

as long as you think you're going to use them sometime this year, because I would imagine within the next year, there's going to be some sort of a devaluation. And speaking of the Aviator card, if you are interested in getting that, it might be worth applying tonight because the bonus might be ending tonight. The landing page doesn't mention an end date of January 31st, but there had been mentions elsewhere. And so I don't know if it's on the page where you'll get the referral link saying that it's going to be ending that date. But if you are interested, then you probably want to reply in the next like two and a half hours. And if you're watching this afterwards or listening to this as the podcast,

check out our Best Offers page because we have the Best Off one there and you'll be able to see whether or not that's true or not. And let us know. One thing, I want to just jump in and say something about the American Airlines devaluation. What we're expecting to happen is partner awards will change and for the worse. American Airlines long ago, well, long ago, previously ditched their award charts for their own flights. And that was probably on average a big devaluation, but it's more of a lottery now. So you spin the wheel and see what the award costs for an American

Airlines flight. And sometimes it's a really good price. Sometimes it's a bad price now, which are partner awards like to fly cutter for 70,000 points or 75,000 points all the way to like South Africa, for example, then yeah, that is probably going to change. So you'd want to plan on booking that sooner rather than later if you're going to sign up soon for an American Airlines card. But I think, am I right in saying that if you're going to collect individual airline miles of any sort, those should be the ones you're probably looking to use first. So I'd rather use that than use a transferable currency if I have the airline miles, because those could change value at any time, whereas the transferable currency is more likely to hold similar value

or devalue slowly, whereas an airline currency could devalue, any individual one could devalue overnight. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, with transferable points, think about things like Air France lowering their award prices to Europe from the US. All of our transferable currencies transfer one-to-one. So all those transferable points kind of went up in value when that happened, which is unusual to be fair. But still, if you had transferred first to a program that we would have told you was more valuable, other than Air France, you would have lost out on that increase in value. Yeah. And so I feel like that's my long-term hold. Like I'd long-term

hold the transferable points for things like that. And individual airline points, if I'm getting that bonus, it's probably to use it sooner than later. You kind of burn them when you have them. Burn them and burn them. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. All right. I love this question. This is for everyone. We're going to start with Greg. If you could live anywhere in the U.S. or the world, for that matter, based solely on the travel hacking opportunities, where would you live? I suppose the assumption is you get to keep your U.S. social security number and all of that. Yeah.

Well, there's two completely separate sides to it. There's the earning and the redeeming side to it. So on the redeeming side, I think New York City or maybe London. Well, no, London's bad because it has the fuel surcharges, but New York City is probably as good as I can think of for having as many premium cabin opportunities flying out of it as anywhere else in the world. For earning, though, I mean, depending on how you earn points, it might not matter where you live. But if you go around buying gift cards and and and redeeming them for money orders and all that sort of stuff then there are probably places that that make sense to live that are very very far from new york city but i don't know

which places are best for that so i'm not gonna speculate so this has been top of my mind because my wife and i have been like considering where we should move to once the road trip is over and a kind of key part for me has been in terms of the earning side of things where would be easiest especially when it comes to gift card deals and things like that um and so Cincinnati is a good place for that because it's the home of Kroger there's an absolutely ton of Kroger stores they have my stores as well um and Mayo can be a really good place for gift card deals so that's actually um one of the best places in the country i'd say i am in that respect um texas seems to be like the best place of all i i haven't been particularly keen on moving to texas so we've like ruled that out basically but in terms of just gift card

opportunities that's best because depending on where you live then you've got kroger you have like all the safeway albertsons brands um but best of all is H-E-B. That's a grocery store that's only in. Which is just amazing anyway. Incredibly prevalent. But they have so many amazing gift card deals there that that's a fantastic place. But yeah, in terms of finding award availability and things like that, like Greg said, New York, even somewhere like New Jersey could be really good as well. Just because then you're depending on where you are in New Jersey, then you could be within an hour or so of New York city, but also an hour away is Philadelphia, which is an American airlines hub.

So that could be useful. And then you also relatively close to DC as well. And that's only like an hour and a half, two hour drive or something like that. So you may not be too keen on living in new jersey but um it's actually a fantastic place to be centrally located to some pretty cool cities so let's start with new jersey let's start with new jersey yeah and this this was a hypothetical question for everyone except for steven yeah all right now this is a very real question for steven that's a great answer you know you know what we forgot actually nick hasn't answered yet oh that's okay i don't have it i don't have an answer it's interesting well we forgot about things like las vegas for all the status matching opportunities and for at least it used to be

fantastic for uh hotel elite night earnings and you know so things like that so yeah just depends what you're after is there an angle for like cheap mattress running that's not really a thing anymore i guess what were you saying steven um oh well actually that's something else um texas has going for it is that there's so many like category one higher um properties out there that it shouldn't be too hard finding ones that are off peak at some point um especially somewhere like houston i think they have like so many like um category one higher places and higher houses and stuff like that but the west coast could be that are off-peak at some point, especially somewhere like Houston. I think they have so many Category 1 hire places and hire houses and stuff like that. But the West Coast could be good

if you're more interested in visiting Asia or Australia or something like that. You might have a better chance of getting premium cabins from that country too. And Chicago as well is a decent city somewhat, sort of in the middle of the country. Stephen, you can't pick every city, buddy. You can't i kind of think uh you don't even want to see the spreadsheet that i set up in like long list yellow everywhere oh no i do i do want to see that spreadsheet i'm

going to see that in a post uh like this video if you want to see steven's spreadsheet on where the best travel homes are and if you think H-E-B is the best grocery store. All right. Are we good on that? I think so. I think Stephen kind of covered the whole country. He did. He did. That's good news for everyone. Okay. Now we are at Greg. What's your prediction on, I think WF is Wells Fargo, is that right? Yes. On Wells Fargo transfer partners. There was a leak that Wells Fargo autograph journey is getting 5X on hotels, 4X on airlines, 3X on travel and dining with $95 annual fee. So what's your prediction is that they will be one-to-one transfers, but that most of the transfer partners probably won't be what we consider the strongest of them. So I bet we're going to see things like Aeromexico and Hawaiian, which could be good if the Alaska purchase goes through.

Maybe JetBlue. Yeah, well, maybe. Although, who is it? Is it American? I mean, American Express that doesn't do one-to-one? Yeah, that's true. Because they're more expensive, I guess. Yeah, true. So anyway, I'm not going to speculate on all of them. But that's what I expect is sort of the lower end ones and the ones that everybody has like air france and um what was that virgin virgin yeah yeah

all right are we good on that uh if so steven is it worth spending 15K on your Hyatt card through plastic to get a free night certificate? I don't actually use plastic, but I've always assumed it was plastique, but like plastique. Oh, I don't know. I've always said plastic, but it could be plastique. Yeah, or plastique. For those listening, it's P-L-A-S-T-I-Q that we're talking about. Right. It's a bill payment service.

For the fees that you would pay, I don't think it's necessarily going to be worth it. points the certificate and if you really need the elite night credits that all together and the milestone rewards that you might earn along the way um depending on where you're at that might be worth it but oh but just purely for the three night certificate then i wouldn't know yeah i mean at three percent that's 450 bucks Like you'd have to really on it for 400. That's a good illustration. All right, Nick, will Chase not approve my Southwest preferred business if I don't put any post signup bonus spend on my Southwest premier business I got a few months ago? Yeah. So we're talking about the Southwest performance business actually, and the Southwest premier business. I don't really think one's

going to have much bearing on the other. So no, I don't think that's going to cause you any problems. I think whether or not Chase is going to approve you is not going to have anything to do with that. They may or may not, but nothing to do with the fact that you didn't put spend on the other one. All right. Very good. Greg, how do I keep my Delta Platinum status or get to Diamond this year? Yeah. That's a whole long show on its own. But real quick, this year, you're going to be able to get medallion qualifying dollars, MQDs, just by having the Delta Platinum card or Delta Reserve card. Each one that you have of those cards will get you 2,500 MQDs. So if you actually had the Platinum and the uh personal and the platinum and reserve business these are the delta guards not the generic platinum guards um then uh you you have 10 000

mqds right there that's like spending ten thousand dollars on delta flights so that would get you to gold status and then of course any or natural spend on delta will get you further um so that will give you a big leg up this year and do we we do have a recent podcast episode kind of about that right semi-recent maybe or post um probably okay uh we'll link it if we find it. We do. Okay, great. Okay, Steven. Has Bilt changed the game with their 150% transfer bonuses

regarding the rule of thumb against doing speculative transfers? Has that changed? Sort of, yeah. I mean, like, if I had a whole ton of Bilt points, then I feel like making a speculative transfer, if you have platinum status and so can transfer 150%. And even if you don't, even if you're just transferring a 75%, it can be worth a punt on that because the devaluation would have to be pretty bad to make that a poor redemption ultimately. Um i'd say that i wouldn't necessarily want to be making

a speculative transfer is the fact that they've been running so many different good bonuses for so many different airlines i don't i would hate to speculatively transfer to take about one good one when there could potentially be an even better transfer partner um that they do this on in the future because they did the 100 transfer bonus to hawaiian there's like wow 100 like that's amazing we may never see something like this again and so it's like well even though hawaiian's not amazing value maybe we should go like transfer to hawaiian and then they come out with um one to air france and it's like okay that's actually really sweet. Why not like bonus?

Why not transfer all your points then? And then they come out with one to Air France. It's like, well, that could even be quite much more value. So let's do it to that. And then it's like, where does this stop? So it's, I mean, if I had a whole ton of built points, I think I'd have analysis paralysis, just not knowing it all out in one go for a fantastic one

in fear that they do something absolutely crazy like hired or American or something like that I I highly highly doubt that we would ever see a 150% transfer bonus to American or hired but imagine if they did like a 75% bonus to hire or something like that for the top tier people. I think I'd probably prefer 75% bonus to hire than 150% bonus to AeroPlan. Like not necessarily it would all depend on kind of like what other points you have at your disposal. But yeah, like they're running so many decent transfer bonuses that, yeah, it's just hard to know which one to actually jump on if you have a whole ton of them. Sounds like a good problem. All right.

I want to just add something to which is that I think it not only does change the game as far as like what you should do speculatively, but it also it makes us rethink what types of awards make sense to book. So for example, um, you know, I transferred all my built points to air France to get the a hundred percent bonus. And luckily I've already earned some more. So, so I'm about to do that, uh, the rest of them to aeroplan, but, um, the, uh, air France, like frequently, even if they don't have the lowest 50,000 point award flights to Europe available when I want to go, sometimes they have 90,000 point or 100,000 point. And if you think about it, that's still, since I got 150% transfer bonus, it's a flight like that, it still costs me less than 50,000 built points. So it's, uh, it's pretty cool. So let me ask you real, real quick follow-up. So

I, I think it's super unrealistic, right? That we're ever going to see 150% bonus to like an American airlines or a Hyatt or United. So that, you know, if we can agree to that that that's very like unicorn like unlikely to happen and recognizing that built has made some unicorn things happen i don't think that that's going to be it uh what is the partner like if you were to speculatively transfer all your points to airplane tomorrow what's the partner that would make you regret that decision if they ran if the the next if the march rent day is a different partner which partner would make you regret that decision if they ran if the the next if the march rent day is a different partner which partner would make you regret having speculatively transferred your points to aeroplane and you're saying not counting hyatt american or united not counting any because i i think it's

like beyond is like smaller than a zero percent chance i can't think of any partners that would make me regret that i can't either that's why that's make me regret that. I can't either. That's why all my points are going to Aeroplan tomorrow. Okay, so here's one thing, though. A year ago, if someone had said to you on February 1st, 2024, Bill will offer a 150% transfer bonus to Aeroplan, how hard would you have laughed and would you have literally split?

Oh, yeah. I'm completely disbelieving the fact that they would do any kind of crazy, amazing transfer bonus to Hyatt or American, but I would never have thought they'd offer 150% to Airway Plan just because that's such great value. So.

Yeah. I think it's the economics of it though, because like American and Hyatt don't have to sell the points cheaply to built or anybody else. Right. Whereas a foreign airline program, they need to, they want to tap into the American market, right? I mean, they want to get people transferring to their points so they can make money from this lucrative business of selling airline miles. American doesn't need that. They already have that with City and Barclays.

Whereas Aeroplan wants to get a, you know, a horror or an Avianca Life Miles wants to get a piece of the American market. So I could see it happening with Avianca. I imagine that I'm sure that it'll happen to Hilton at some point. But, know, if they Hilton, they don't have Hilton yet. If they added Hilton, I'm sure it would happen to them or to Marriott, but we're not going to see it. I don't think to. I think it's just too expensive probably to happen, but you're right. I mean, they have definitely done some impossible stuff. So who knows?

People did ask if you guys are transferring tomorrow and sounds like that's a yes. Transferring to an airplane. Yes. Sounds like a yes transferring to an airplane yes sounds like a yes all right uh i think we're at nick um what credit card would you recommend to maximize hotel award redemptions for a family of five um a good cash back card so that you can book vacation rentals um i guess i guess well with that said i guess the windham business earners so that you can book vacation rentals. I guess, well, with that said, I guess the Wyndham business earners so that you can book the Casas. It's really tough for five people.

There just aren't very many chains that frequently have rooms to accommodate that many. I guess the two-part answer is either the Wyndham program so that you can book the Casa, but your risk there is that if that partnership ever falters, then you're kind of in trouble. The reason I mentioned that, if you're not familiar, is because Wyndham and Vacasa have a partnership. And you can book Vacasa Vacation Rentals, which is like an Airbnb competitor, for 15,000 Wyndham points per person per night. And if you've got the Wyndham Business Owner Card, you get a 10% discount. Per room. Oh, I'm sorry.

Per room. Yes, I'm sorry. Per room. Yes, I misspoke. And if you have the Wyndham business earner card or any of the Wyndham earner cards, actually get a 10% discount. So you only pay 13,500 points per bedroom per night. There is a cap on that. We think about $350 a night all in. Anyway, so that would be a good to book suites with points. And so if you can book a suite that accommodates five people, then that could work out because that's one of the few programs where you can consistently get reasonably good value for points. Those suites have to be available and they have to accommodate five, which is not common, especially if you're going to Europe. And forget about it. There's just that's not going to be a good option.

You're going to be booking two rooms at least. I was going to throw out a couple of other things is that depending on if you're traveling domestically or overseas, if you're traveling domestically, higher places can be very good for that. Just because you can often get rooms with two queen beds and a sofa bed. So you can sleep five or six people in there fairly comfortably because higher place rooms are like a better size than most um of your

standard kind of like holiday and express type rooms and so getting some kind of ink card where you're earning 5x um could be worth it for picking up transferable points for them it could potentially be actually i've got three in total so there's that one there's um marriott similar kind of thing with residence in and town place suites residence in in particular you can often get um book with points into a one-bedroom suite or get somewhere with like two green beds and a sofa bed so it's a similar kind of thing for that another option depends on how long you're going to be staying for and this could be more useful for international travel particularly is an ihg premier card because that gives you every fourth night three on award stays you might not be able to fit five people in a room however they sell their points so frequently for half a cent a point

and you can get fantastic value um with ihg points that if you're staying in four night increments you could book two rooms and buy the points and you can often actually get a really decent that way which is what we did um with some friends when we went to Paris. We did that and redeemed like points that we bought and it worked out much better than just paying for an Airbnb outright. That's a great out of the box solution. But also what Nick had said as well, like for cash for an Airbnb are fantastic options when you've got that many

people too. Question, Stephen, can you get the fourth night free on two like two reservations at the same hotel same four nights yes you can there you go yeah it has to be done with a separate reservation but yeah you can still get one um one award working at a time but yes good cool all right greg um with all the mx platinums being part of the same family and can only get one sign up bonus per family i guess or for this family are there any strategies or benefits to getting more than one mx platinum of any version okay so i think the question is is saying like so if you've already

gotten your sign up bonus because you got one of the Platinums, either the regular Platinum or the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab one, then the question is, is it worth, is there any scenario where it makes sense to get one of the other kinds as well? I guess one thing I can think of off the top of my head is, well, all right, I can think of two things. If you have more membership rewards points than you know what to do with, and you want to be able to cash them out at a good rate, and you don't have the Schwab Platinum card, it could make sense to pick that up because that will let you cash out points at 1.1 cent each. The other possibility is if you uh would you you might be better off with the morgan stanley card because that offers one um free authorized user platinum card uh with it uh whereas the other two don't have that free authorized user platinum card with it, whereas the other two don't have that free authorized user platinum card. So if you're like in a two player household and you just want one

platinum annual fee, but you want both people to get into lounges and everything, then you could just switch to the Morgan Stanley. I wouldn't say necessarily keep the original platinum card, but that could be a reason to get like the morgan stanley card even without the bonus all right and um one other quick thing i'd add if you've only got a morgan stanley or schwab platinum at the moment it might be worth getting a regular platinum card if you don't have any other cards that earn membership rewards because then if you ever refer anyone um to an amex card it means that you would be earning like twenty thousand twenty five thirty thousand membership rewards rather than a hundred dollars a time which is what you get um when referring from uh schwab cards so that's just another option

so that's kind of again a niche kind of thing um but it could be worth bearing in mind depending on what other cards you can refer from finally to be clear on the business side you might be able to get more than one business platinum we've i mean i've got a few myself and so does my wife so i've been able to get approved again even though we already have one so on the business side they seem to be slightly more lax on that all right those are all good tips um okay another one for greg how How are you dealing with the Detroit lions lost to the San Francisco 49ers? So the funny thing here is while, while I've become a bit of a lions fan lately, I'm very fair weather fan. Nick is, Nick is actually the big lions fan on our team.

He's been lions with the lions since like the 80s so he's been he's been holding on uh for for his whole life waiting for the lions right right and they were up 24 7 at halftime my goodness oh i can't believe it so how are you holding up nick not well not I was, I was all excited. I was like, wow, I'm finally going to see it. I mean, I stuck with the lions through the Owen 16 season. Like, I mean, I've, I've been with the lions long, long time, which I've often said that I'm, I like the Detroit lions, which means I don't really like football.

Uh, but I finally was able to say that, you know, the Lions were good. And I'm excited about the future. I think they're going to be decent in the future. But yeah. This person has a part B to their question. So I found out during the second playoff game that a really, really fun way to experience a Detroit Lions game is to be flying from somewhere else to Detroit right when the game starts. So we were in Florida. We boarded the plane right about when the Lions game started. cat in the whole airplane pretty much turned on the

satellite tv on the little like uh seat back entertainment center and throughout the flight whenever something good happened for the lions you'd hear everybody cheering and when something bad happened here groans and it was like the most fun flight of it well that is pretty cool flight of course right yes yes fair enough i think i saw that on instagram that was fun um so this questioner has a part b which i think is well suited for nick um which city has the best airline and hotel redemption to vegas i mean airline redemption domestic stuff i don't feel like there's one that's necessarily going to be the best it's going to depend on the day and what what awards available. I mean, Turkish miles and smiles,

if you can find United award availability is going to be 7,500 points from anywhere in the US, but that's if you can find space that United has released to partners, which is a big if these days. So otherwise your best bet is going to be using United miles to fly United or America miles to fly American or Southwest points to fly Southwest southwest so there's not a one good answer i don't think for airline for hotel redemptions in las vegas uh hilton points because you can use or hilton free night certificates if you have them uh excuse me for uh they've got a few options that resorts world you have crockford's you have the hilton and you have uh the conrad there and then there's also a Waldorf Astoria farther down the strip. So you got a number of options for your Hilton free night certificates.

I recommend Conrad or Crockford's at Resorts World or the Waldorf. So, yeah, I mean, I think those are probably the best these days because you up for like the casino loyalty programs because rooms not during the Super Bowl can often be cheap when you just book directly with MGM or directly with Caesars. If you get the Windermere business card, then you won't pay a resort fee at Caesars because you can match the diamond status. So you can use that to your advantage, too. And then with Hilton, then it's also a good opportunity to use the Hilton Aspire resort credit as well, just because so many of the properties out in Vegas are clusters resorts. So if you have a hard time using that credit, then there you go. All right. So I have one last question picked out, but before we go to that one, I want to address somebody else's question. So earlier in the episode, we plugged this as something the entire team comes to, and then somebody said's tim so uh i think you know we we all come when we can but we won't always all be here

especially for those podcasters listening uh it won't always be all five of us um but as often as we can so last question even this has the opportunity to be a really big question. So I'm going to make you pick your one favorite tip here. I'd love to hear some hotel tips from things Stephen has learned from his 50 state road trip. I'm planning a month long road trip and would love tips on maximizing value of points. I think that deserves a whole post. But can you think of one like top tip for our last question here ah that's tough um one tip diversify your points just because in some places you'll find higher will have the best redemption others hilton others ihg others choice um others windham others marriott um and so

um yeah i'd say have a good range of points just because that's helped us be a lot more flexible with our plans and continue to get good redemptions rather than being forced to redeem like far too many points for a mediocre hotel when you've got a better option available. All right. I mean, we still have two more minutes left if you want to pick a second tip. How about a question 19? Do we have any other questions? I'm just trying to think. On the same topic, what would you, if you could only pick one hotel program to do what you did, like, would it be? Oh, I bet. I bet I know. Would it be Hyatt?

Yeah. like would it be oh i bet i bet i know would it be hyatt okay so if this had been the first like couple of years of our road trip i'd probably say hyatt um just because we stayed in so many um category one properties back then and um it was often the case that people always said like there's never a category there's um not always a higher way you need it there always pretty much was whenever we needed one and quite often there'd be like category one um nowadays i'd almost be leaning it's a toss-up between hired and ihg now um just because we have like so many more ihg stays like pretty much all award days just because um you can consistently get much better value by redeeming points um than you can with paid stays so um yeah i'd struggle to only pick one and i think i'd probably still go with hyatt just because then it's easy to get globalist status

um but i'm gonna cheat and pick two so so i do love myself we get from ihg plus um ihg has so many more properties available that are um that have kitchens in them like candlewood suites and state bridge suites and that's helpful especially because we have a dog and because both of those extended state vans are always pet friendly so that's helpful too that's the steven we know and love uh pick one and he refuses and picks two all right that brings us to the end i think that wraps it up i guess uh we're all who anyone who's listening on the podcast about to hear our outro music right i guess so which i have to create but you'll find out so kavi's just about to sing for us so nope no it actually is usually my twin sister who sings in our some of our little side tracks so pretend to be her and sing us no can't

do that nope that's against twin codes so can't do that all right bye everybody bye bye Bye-bye.