Frequent Miler on the Air - What is the best two card combo? | Ep99 | 5-22-21

Episode Date: May 22, 2021

1:00 Giant Mailbag: Loading....loading.... 2:39 What crazy thing...did Cardless do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/manchester-united-card-500-after-3k-spend-currently-doesnt-add-to-5-24/ 5:57 Mattress Running the Numbers: Should anyone mattress run the Choice Privileges stay twice, get 8K points promo? https://frequentmiler.com/choice-hotels-promo-stay-twice-earn-minimum-8000-points-redeem-for-50-gift-card/ 8:28 Main Event: What is the best 2-card combo? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-keeps-crushing-it-now-3-grocery-and-more-on-both-savor-and-savorone/ https://frequentmiler.com/C1VR/ https://frequentmiler.com/C1SVO/ https://frequentmiler.com/typremier/ https://frequentmiler.com/dc/ https://frequentmiler.com/amxgoldcard/ https://frequentmiler.com/amxbbp/ https://frequentmiler.com/csr/ https://frequentmiler.com/cfu/ 41:47 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/save-money-earn-elite-nights-10-off-marriott-homes-villas-with-anniversary-sale/ https://frequentmiler.com/forced-to-adventure-due-to-free-night-certs-on-my-mind/ https://frequentmiler.com/radisson-finally-extends-e-certificate-expiration-to-12-31-21/ 47:24 Question of the Week: Are there new Amex application rules? Why am I getting the pop-up? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications! To join our email list, go to: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event what's the best two card combo nick and i are going to discuss uh the the pair the the credit card duos that that get you the best bang for your buck and there's a new game in town. So we're looking forward to getting into that. Wait for those listening who, who caught the giggle from Greg, but not, I didn't understand why, cause you're not watching it on video. I was doing my best one, two combo here as you know, showing off my boxing skills. So I was hoping that, yeah, I was hoping that the, the technical team would,

would sort of somehow insert a like footnote into the podcast so that they would get why I was giggling. There you go. Okay. All right. So since our team isn't up to snuff doing that kind of thing, instead we had Nick explain it. So giant mailbag time, which I can't show because of the stupid Zoom background. Anyway, got some feedback going on. That's perfect because this is the reader feedback segment.

I didn't even plan that. All right, here's my giant mail. Mike Chicago. It doesn't say Mike from Chicago. It's Mike Chicago. Hey, guys. This issue started about a week ago. Whenever I go to the FM website, it apparently loads the page about seven times.

In other words, if I right-click the browser's back arrow, I see the same FM page. That means Frequent Miler page. Typically seven times. Yeah. Mike Chicago, I want you to imagine how many times per day greg and i go to frequent miler.com and now multiply that by seven and you'll know how many times our computers have loaded the page too oh my goodness right yes sorry that seemed it seemed to be uh some kind of bug that that as far as we could tell, only appeared in Chrome and Microsoft's Edge. And it was so frustrating. But

the tech team at Boarding Area finally figured it out. I still don't know what exactly was causing it, but really weird behavior. I don't either. And I wasn't running into it on other blogs initially. But then, like after a few days, I ran into it on a couple of other boarding area blogs. So it wasn't just us. But, yeah, I don't understand what caused it. Sorry about that, Mike. I'm glad that I think we have that all worked out now because that was annoying for me, too. Yeah, for sure.

All right. All right. So then what crazy thing did Cardless do this week? Wait, what is Cardless? What is who is cardless cardless a there's a new who is cardless like it's like somebody i feel bad for is cardless right right there's an there's a new startup that is creating or delivering marketing credit cards, and they're called Cardless. And so I wrote...

Somebody spent way too much on the marketing budget for that, like to come up with that name. So, yeah. So I wrote a post about a deal that has since expired, but still it's for a Manchester United card. That's a whole nother crazy thing. It's like marketing a Manchester United card. That's a whole nother crazy thing is like marketing a Manchester United card to an American audience. I mean, I'm sure there are a few fans here, but come on anyway, that aside,

I assumed that this credit card was literally cardless, like a virtual card that goes into your Apple pay or Samsung pay or whatever. I mean, that's a reasonable assumption, right? I mean, they're called cardless. But you know what happens when you make assumptions, right? Right. So I took one for the team and signed up for the cart because I figured

at the time it had a $500 sign-up bonus and I figured, what the heck? I'm going to try out this cardless thing. For the cardless cart. The cardless card. And I found out, it said, I would get my physical card in a week or whatever. Yeah.

Cardless card is not cardless after all. Not at all. Not at all. I mean, do you get a virtual card? Can you load it to like Apple Pay or something initially? Well, that was kind of surprising to me. So they only let people with Apple products right now apply for the card because they do have an Apple app, but I didn't see an option to load it into Apple Pay.

I mean, there might be one, but I haven't seen it. And so, yeah, you can see your card number on the app so you can use it online which i've done but so you have to have an apple phone and you have to want a card from a bank called cardless and you have to not want to use apple pay at least not initially because you're not going to get the cardless version of the cardless card right and then and then you have to either be a fan of manchester united or uh the the cleveland cavaliers which is the their other card they have so far um and you have to really niche you really have to want pretty pretty minuscule rewards as well unfortunately i it sounds like they're trying to do some innovative things there, but at least this thing stand right now. It's, it's kind of silly.

So. And the signup bonus on the Cavaliers card for a hot minute was good, but then it went back to spend a thousand dollars and get a free Jersey. So, I mean, we're talking like, you know, the Walmart credit card sign up and get a bottle of soda kind of a thing. I mean, I guess it's more than a bottle of soda, but. I think you can sign up for the manchester card and also get a jersey if you'd like jersey yeah so yeah all right that's

your if that's your thing okay this card this is not cardless after all but that's enough of that onto mattress running the numbers so this week choice privileges is out with their repeat promotion that comes around a couple times a year. And so once again, it's here, stay two times, get 8,000 Choice Privileges points. Right. So can we just replay what we said last time this came up? You know, I would talk to the audio visual technical team, but I think that they're not going to go back through and look for it. So give us a quick rundown, Greg. Okay, so Choice has this kind of bizarre way of doing their bonuses where instead of just saying you're going to get 8,000 bonus points after two stays, they say you're going to get up to 8,000 bonus points because what we're really going to

do is say, we're going to calculate how many points you got naturally your base points, and then add additional points to get you up to 8,000 points total. Steven Pepper pointed out in his post about this that it's actually completely impossible to get 8,000 bonus points because you're always going to get at least a few base points. And yeah, I mean, you know, if you're going to stay at choice anyway, why not? Go for it. Sign up for it, assuming there's a registration for this.

There is a registration, I think, yeah. Yeah, so register, but I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be mattress running per se. I wouldn't be signing, I wouldn't be going to Choice hotels just to get these 8,000 points. And even if it was an 8,000 point bonus, Greg recently did the, what are choice points worth post and determine that the reasonable redemption value of choice privileges points is 0.68 cents each. So that's less than seven tenths of a cent, seven tenths of a cent times 8,000 points of no math whiz here. But I think that that seven times eight is 56. So $56 is what you're going to get back after two stays total. Like, yeah. So, so 56, it's not bad.

I mean, if you had two $40 stays, which is the minimum that will trigger the promotion, it's a great rebate, but you wouldn't do it just for that rebate, obviously. Exactly. Because you have to spend at least $80 to get this 56 back. So it's not that that would be as ridiculous as calling your company cardless. If you actually deliver cards, it's working for somebody, right? I mean, that's what choice is thinking.

They're like, Hey, they can call themselves cardless. We can get away with this. Why not? All right. So choice, you know, thumbs down on the mattress, Ryan thumbs up. If you're staying in a choice hotel register, I mean, sure. Yeah. If you're not sure you might stay at a choice, it might as well register and get your register. Yeah. yeah yeah don't go out of your way all right that brings us then to the main event we're just buzzing right along yeah the main event is uh what is the best two card combo so i think i think we should describe why there's a new player in town here.

And yeah, so it has to do with a couple things, right? One thing is the discovery. It's not new, but it's a discovery that Capital One cashback can be moved from a cashback card to a miles earning card and then it becomes transferable miles so that's that's one piece of it right and the other piece who knows why that's been secret for so long right i mean that's something that i say secret obviously some people knew i think most people didn't know and i mean that's a selling point for city that you can do that with the double cash card capital one's been allowing it but like not letting anybody know crazy thing right right yeah uh so so anyway so that makes it possible to have these combos where you you can combine multiple cards and uh you know

use the one that's best for each each situation and get higher. And the other news is that these saver cards, which used to reward you mostly for dining and help me here. Entertainment. And entertainment. Now added 3X for grocery, right? 3% back for all grocery purchases. And what is it?

3% or 4% back for streaming, I think it is. Yeah, if you have the saver card with the $95 annual fee, it's 4% streaming. If you have the saver one card, the no annual fee version, it's 3% on streaming, but both cards get 3% on grocery and yeah, and keep their dining and other entertainment bonuses. So yeah, I mean, the news here is 3X Grocery. So 3% cash back. First of all, 3% cash back at grocery stores uncapped is already not bad, right? I mean, it's not the best return you'll get on grocery spend,

but without a cap, I think it's the best you'll do. As far as I know, anyway, for cash back. Right, for cash back, it's yeah, exactly. It's equal to the best that's out there. And the other ones that are 3% are these sort of fringe cards that you've probably never heard of that you may or may not be eligible for, depending on where you live or whatever. But this is better than cashback because if you marry it with a venture card, for example, then you have the ability to have miles. And as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, now those miles are worth more because you could transfer them one-to-one to some airline and hotel partners, as well as to some new partners like Turkish that are super valuable. So the combination of the venture, which has 2X everywhere, and the saver card.

Now you've got 3% grocery and either 3 or 4X dining, depending on which version of the saver card you have. Makes for a really compelling combo. It sure does. It makes for a really compelling combo because you're earning, again, if you're transferring to the one-to-one partners, you're earning three or four miles per dollar at the grocery store uncapped. I mean, hello, that's pretty good. And we'll talk about the other option.

You're earning three, three miles per dollar. Oh, three. I'm sorry, three. I'm sorry. Three or four was dining. Yes. Three at the grocery store. Either way.

Thank you very much for the correction there. So, I mean, that's already a really strong return. The fact that you can do that with no annual fee on the Saver One card is pretty notable. And some people, they got the Saver card when it first launched. When the Saver card, the 4% dining and entertainment card, when that first launched, it had no annual fee. And to my knowledge, those people who signed up for it then still have no annual fee. So great deal for them because they're getting- Fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. But for this discussion, let's assume we're talking about the no fee saver. So we're talking about 3X grocery, 3X dining with that card, 2X everywhere else with the Venture. Also, that combination has a really great feature, which is no foreign transaction fees with either of those cards, I believe.

Right. No, no foreign transaction fees on either, including the no fee saver one. So your 3X dining and grocery abroad, also no foreign transaction fees. And so for $95 total, you pay 95 bucks for the venture card, and you can have the saver one that has no annual fee, 95 bucks total, you get 2x worldwide base, and 3x dining, entertainment, and grocery. Again, I say worldwide. Who knows if some random country somewhere, whether or not the grocery store

is actually going to code 3X. Don't get angry at me if it doesn't code as grocery. People ask all the time, is this going to code as grocery? And whatever country, somewhere, I have no idea if it's going to code as grocery in some random country. But generally speaking, 3X worldwide

in those categories with no foreign transaction fees. So, nice deal. Nice deal. I mean, that's a good combo, right, Craig? It's a great combo. But this is not the only $95 combo that has 3X at grocery stores, right? It is not because Citi has the Citi Premier. And then, of course, you can combo that with a double cash. So the city premier gives you three X at grocery stores and also three X

restaurants, three X gas, three X hotel airline, and most travel agencies. So the premier card has really strong three X earnings. It's got a couple more three X categories in fact, and then you still have that two X base rate with the double cash because the double cash earns the double cash earns 2% cash back. But you can convert that to thank you points and instead call that two thank you points per dollar.

So whichever is more beneficial for your needs in the moment, you have either of those different options. So that's a pretty interesting combo. Is that better than the Capital One combo in your mind? And why or why not? What do you think? So, yeah, i wouldn't put it alone as better uh although it kind of depends because if you spend a lot certainly in city in the premier's other 3x categories then it could be better for sure but um when it when it becomes arguably better is when you toss in that rewards plus card.

I know we're supposed to be talking about card duos, not trios, but the no fee rewards plus card gives you that 10% rebate on redemptions, which really sort of pumps up the value of the city thank you points. And so that's something that maybe gives Citi the edge if you're willing to go to a three-card combo. But with a two-card combo, with Citi, when you go international, you are only going to be earning 1x for most purchases because you don't want to use your double cash. It has foreign transaction fees. So you leave that one at home when you go international. If you're paying everything with a city premier, you know, yes, you'll be getting three X for dining and gas and things, but not for, you know, miscellaneous other non-categorized things. Right. You know, yeah, that's not the only reason why I think I would prefer the capital one combo. I mean, there's some good reasons there, and there's some good reasons to like the City combo.

I think particularly with the Rewards Plus card, like you said, 10% back on the first 100,000 points you redeem each year. That makes the rewards worth a little bit more. However, well, I should say, and City's transfer partners are all one-to-one versus Capital One, it's got a variety. So it's simpler on the city side because you know you're paying one mile per dollar no matter which partner you want to use. However,

Capital One's got a few distinct advantages. First of all, Citi has no hotel partners. Capital One has three, one of which is Wyndham, which we've talked a lot about the Vicasa rentals lately, so I'm not going to rehash that, but there's some good value to be had there. Second, Capital One has 16 transfer partners for airlines and Citi only has 12. And Capital One's got most of the good ones. And then they also have some good partners from other, I say from other programs, partners that you perhaps know better from Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards. They seem to take kind of, in general, the best partners from each program, maybe not quite in every case, but a lot of the better partners anyway. So Capital One's got a good, unique mix of partners. So I think that's a particular strength. And the last thing that I like about the Capital One combo over the Citi combo is that the three acts at the grocery

store is cash back. And so what I like about that is that now on the Citi side, I guess now you can redeem the thank you points at once. You can. So I guess that's perhaps a move point now. Before that development, I guess, is where my mind was. I was thinking to myself, you have the option of using it as a 3% back. All right. Hold on to that for a host roast later on.

Host roast later on. All right. Let it go. All right. Keep going then. Well, let me add one more thing that's in favor of Capital One. And this is, you know, kind of thinking into the future, which is that Capital One's been on this trajectory of getting better and better. And Citi's been pretty stagnant for a while, I think, for a lot of things.

So, you know, if you're going to bet on which one is going to be the better program a year from now, I would bet on Capital One at this point. All in on Capital One at this point. I mean, they're opening the Capital One lounges, Dallas and Dulles. And I don't know, there's a third one, isn't there? Dallas, Dulles. I thought there were only two so far, but I could be wrong. I don't know. But anyway, so maybe there are only two, but they're beginning Capital One lounges. So that's exciting news. That's something that I look forward to seeing how those work out.

We don't know what the access policy is going to be yet in terms of what cards, but it seems like they constantly are coming out with new stuff, different types of ways to redeem points, different transfer partners. So yeah, I totally agree with you. The Capital One is making an effort

to be competitive and Citi is making like zero, zero. They took away benefits on their cards like two years ago now and haven't replaced them with anything and just don't seem to be making any effort to have new bonuses or anything. So Citi, you're sleeping out there.

On the other hand, Citi cards are much easier to get. Anyone can get the two Citi cards in the combo. We're all three. Yeah. You know, on the other hand, city cards are much easier to get, you know, anyone could get the two city cards in the combo. We're all three. I'd be very surprised if anyone has too much trouble obtaining them, but, but capital one, it can be, it can be really tough. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It stinks that more people aren't able to get capital one cards. I said in the post that, you know, the people that are most enthusiastic about rewards and would be the most enthusiastic about the Capital One cards

are the people who are least likely to be able to get them because Capital One just doesn't seem to want to approve a lot of people. And I was excited when you got approved, Greg, for the Venture card, because I thought, oh, okay, maybe they finally are getting it

and realizing that there's a segment of customers here that they do want. But then it turned out that that isn't necessarily the case because we got plenty of people, some people that got approved, but plenty of people also that totally did. Well, I mean, so I think they eased up a bit, but not as much as we had hoped is the story. It's also possible that some of the things that you put in the application,

like with regards to, are you going to carry a balance or whatnot, you know, might influence their approval decisions. We don't know, but, but, you know, if you answer in ways that are where they think you're most more likely to be a good customer, like, so earning them, you know, interest payments or whatever, it's possible that they'll be more likely to, to, to, to, you know, approve you. Okay. So, all right. So that's two of the combos, but I think we're both kind of leaning towards the, the, the capital one combo despite it being harder to get. Now, another one is that,

that we really like is the Amex gold card and the Blue Business Plus card. So the Blue Business Plus is sort of like the Citi Double Cash in that it does have foreign transaction fees, and it also earns 2X everywhere, 2X membership rewards points everywhere on the first $50,000 of spend each year. So that's like a great card to have as you're like everywhere else card, everywhere else within the United States card. And the, the Amex gold is a $250 card,

but it has all kinds of statement credits that you can get back. And it has a Forex dining worldwide, Forex groceries, U.S. groceries up to $25,000 spend per year. And so, you know, those categories beat out the categories we were talking about. I mean, at least for dining and grocery, it beats out what we're talking about for the other two. Yeah, it sure does. And there's a cap on it, but the cap is pretty high. Whereas some of the other Amex cards that have grocery bonuses cap them relatively low, like $6,000 a year.

The gold card caps at $25,000 a year. And that's as much as most people are eating at the grocery store. It leaves a little bit of room for plastic consumables on top of that. So you've got enough space to be able to earn a decent amount of points. I mean, you're talking 100,000 points a year at the grocery store, potentially with the gold card. So that's pretty cool if you're going to try to earn as many points with the Capital One card.

It's going to cost you quite a bit more spend, like 33 grand in spend. So that's definitely an advantage. Plus, Amex has much better transfer partners overall. Well, Capital One has access to a couple that Amex doesn't have. The notable ones to me would be Turkish and Wyndham. Amex basically has all the other good Capital One transfer partners covered. Plus they got a couple more. ANA in particular is just an amazing transfer partner for Amex membership rewards.

So that really gives a strong edge to Amex. However, if the statement credits don't do much for you on the gold card, then you're talking about a $250 a year card. And so depending on how much value you get out of those statement credits. And remember, that card used to have an airline incidental credit, but doesn't anymore for new applicants. So for new applicants, the statement credits are $10 a month, Grubhub, or a few restaurants, few select restaurants, or box.com, and then $10 a month Uber, which could be Uber Eats. So that's nice, but I have to make an effort. I mean, if you can use them all, and you sort of would use those services, then, yeah, that's $240 back each year of the $250. So you could argue that the net is cheaper than the other combos we're talking about in those situations.

Yeah. But you're right. You know, I have found, while I do use my Uber Eats credits every month, I don't always use the Grubhub. I've often found... Neither. I don't either. Well, yeah. I mean, I order in quite a bit. So like I could, but it seems like I'm so often,

maybe because I have so many platinum cards as well, I'm so often trying to use up my Uber Eats credits that the Grubhub thing is just not working for me. cards as well. I'm so often trying to use up my Uber eats credits that, you know, the, uh, the Grubhub thing is, is, is just not working for me. You know, and $10 just feels like a coupon. I feel like these, these delivery services run coupons all the time that are worth like 10 bucks. So if you can stack it with a coupon, great. You know, I guess that's, that's all well and good, but otherwise it just doesn't feel compelling enough. It's not going to get me dinner. It's not compelling enough because it's not going to stack with anything else. Whereas,

like you said, on the Uber Eats side, if you got a platinum card and the gold card or a couple of platinum cards in your household or something, then you can have enough that it feels like it's all right, it's worth ordering dinner tonight because I'm going to get most of it back. But in my case, obviously, it's different because I don't have access to those services at home. I do when I'm traveling. And now I'm finally getting out a bit more. But I still, I feel like I'm making an effort to use them. I'm trying to make an effort to remember to use those credits.

And I don't always. And so I find that annoying. I don't really love those credits. Me too. Me too. It's kind of like, you know, I wrote a post just the other day about the free night certificates that all the credit cards give you, all the hotel credit cards give you, and how I used to find them more annoying than useful. But I'm trying to see them now as more of like a kick in the pants to go out and adventure. And it's kind of fun and exciting, I think, to think about where can I go? And this is sort of forcing me to go places,

but $10 a month is not enough to make anything feel like an adventure. No, it got me firehouse subs tonight, Greg. I mean, I was like, I ate a sub today, which I mean, great. I like subs, you know, I'm a sub eater. I like subs now and then, but I don't get excited about that benefit on the gold card necessarily. It's more like a burden. I have to remember to use it every month. So I don't really love that from the gold card. I like the 4X, but yeah, so I don't know. The MX combo is definitely, I think by most measures, better because you're earning more points and they're, to me, more valuable points. However, a couple of key drawbacks, key drawback, number one,

obviously annual fee key drawback. Number two, show me the money. Where's the cash. If you want cash, if you need cash, if you've got to be able to pay for other stuff, when you travel or you want to pay for a room because the cash rates are low, you just don't have that on the Amex side. If you want to turn those points into cash, you're either a going to get a horrible rate for it, or B, you got to open a Schwab Platinum in order to cash out. So that's kind of a bummer. So if you like to have cash in your pocket also,

or have the option to go back and forth between the two different things, which we have with the City Combo and the Capital One Combo, you don't get that with the bmx combo that's right that's right um so yeah so it's tough for me to to say that i you know for some reason i i just love my amex points but at the same time i i think you're right about that, that especially here's the thing, people who don't know how to use transfer partners to get great value. Good. There's no way you're going to get even OK value out of your adult, out of your Amex points, because Amex tries to encourage you to like pay off statement chargers at some ridiculously low value or to, of course they all do this. They all try to get you to use points to buy things on amazon.com at a terrible value. And so, you know,

I think people that are accumulating all these points and don't know about transfer partners, don't know how to make them work for you are going to be getting real bad value. Whereas as you said, with the other two, we've talked about, at least you have the option, just cash it out and you'll get the full one cent per point value, which is way better than what the banks try to get you to do. Right. And if you want to book a hotel or whatever else, and you try to book it through Amex and use your points, just like what you're saying with everything else, just you can get bad value. So, yeah, that's the downside there.

That's kind of an oddity with Amex. That the only way to kind of get outsized value from your points for travel is to book certain airfares and you have to have certain cards. you have to have like a business platinum or business gold in order to get a rebate on those points and you they make it very complicated they clearly are not all that interested in you getting outside value for travel when using your points don't know why okay uh next next combo we're going to talk about is the sapphire reserve chase sapphire reserve plus the chase freedom unlimited whoa sapphire reserve you're on a 550 dollar i thought we were getting a little rich on the gold now we're going way up way up yeah all right we started with two

we started with two banks with 95 combos combos, moved up to $250. Now we're breaking the bank. Now we're breaking the bank. $550. $550. But of course, the Savaree Reserve has that $300 travel credit. So you could sort of think of it as a $250 card. So it's roughly comparable to the gold card if you didn't get any rebates on the gold

card right right right right there's a few ifs there there are there's pretty big ifs yeah some pretty big so so basically this is the most expensive combo can we agree there this is probably the most expensive it's why it's absolutely the most expensive combo but it has some really nice features to it uh such, such as you, you have some unique categories with the freedom unlimited you cause you have three X drugstore. Um, no other cards have that outside of the chase line that I, that I can think of no transferable points for sure. Uh, you have three X restaurants with either card. You have 1.5X everywhere with the Freedom Unlimited. So when you're not in one of these categories,

use the Freedom Unlimited as long as you're within the United States because that card does have a foreign transaction fee. And then of course, the Saffir Reserve, 3X dining and all travel. So this is like taxis, airfare, hotels, you name it, you don't have to worry about is this really one of the categories of travel, like with the city premier where it's specific things now, it's just going to work if most likely as travel. So those are the categories.

The other thing it has, which the others don't have or no longer have, is a way to get outsized value from your points other than transferring to partners. So Chase has two ways to do that with the Sapphire Reserve. One is to book travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal. And if you pay with points, you get one and a half cents per point value buying airfare or whatever. So a $600 flight, instead of it costing you 60,000 points, which it would with these other guys, it would cost you, what, 40,000 points with the Sapphire Reserve.

So that's pretty good. That's big. That's big. That's excellent. Right. Certainly beats what Amex will charge you for that same $600 flight. It sure does.

Like 8,000 points or something ridiculous like that. And then Chase also has the pay yourself back feature, which lets you in certain categories of spend, when you pay for things within those categories, you can go in and erase those charges using points and you get a value of one and a half cents each. So it's kind of like Capital One's points eraser. I mean, charge eraser, whatever it's called, but this one gives you one and a half cents per point value when you have the Sapphire Reserve to do it. So that, of course, we've talked many times on the

show about how nice that is as long as you spend within whatever categories they're doing. So this one is potentially more, it's certainly like, has a potential to be more rewarding for per point than the other guys, if you're not going to be transferring to partners. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I think if you don't intend to transfer to partners, we don't intend to master the transfer partner game, then this is the best combination in terms of my cash perspective. I can agree. This is the best combination, even though it's more expensive. You know, I think it's, it's probably the best deal.

And this year in particular, you've got the, the travel credit, I believe is still triggered at grocery stores and restaurants because maybe it's not restaurants. I know grocery stores. Grocery dining and home improvement, I think. There you go. So, so very easy to use the $300 travel credit, even if you're not traveling this year, this year, it also has the $60 DoorDash benefit. So 60 bucks back at DoorDash. So if you value that, again, if you're a person who orders delivery, then that's 360 back essentially. So you're talking about a net 190 out of pocket for points that are going to be worth significantly more towards travel or

whatever your chosen categories are. Now, the downside here is you don't get a good grocery store bonus. You're not going to get one X or one and a half with a Freedom Unlimited, one and a half X at the grocery store. So not terribly exciting that you can turn that into essentially two and a quarter percent cash back, 2.25% cash back by transferring the points you earn on the Freedom Unlimited to the Sapphire Reserve. So that's not bad. It's just not quite as good as the 3% that we were talking about before with Capital One. So it depends on how much you spend on groceries, that might make a difference to you. Right, right. Or if you shop, if you do all your grocery shopping at Walgreens,

then you're still going to get your 3X because it's going to give you the drugstore bonus. Funny you should mention that because you know how Google tracks where you are and every now and then you might get a notification. If you have an Android phone anyway, every now and then you might get a notification if you have an Android phone anyway every now and then you might get a notification saying somebody has a question maybe you can answer so that happened to me one day not that long ago where it popped up and it said somebody has a question about the pharmacy in my town and okay maybe you can answer so I clicked on it and the question on Google was can you get cocaine here and did you answer and tell them where to get cocaine here? Did you answer and tell them where to get cocaine?

I did not, but I was like, maybe there's a lot more 3X opportunity there than I ever realized. So I don't know, maybe Walgreens is carrying all sorts of stuff that people are buying. Coming next week, what's the best card combo for druggies? I have no idea, but somebody wanted to know. So anyway, but so 3X Pharmacy is certainly, and we're laughing, but not a bad bonus category to have. And if you're looking for a bonus category for the purposes of generating points with things like gift cards and whatnot, then it probably doesn't make a big difference to you, whether you're buying those at the grocery store or at the pharmacy, right? So maybe that evens out if you're someone who's just looking to manufacture points. And in fact, it's better

on the Capital One side, since you can redeem those at one and a half cents each with the Sapphire Reserve card. So then you're looking at four and a half percent, essentially, pharmacy. So an even better deal. So I think the Chase combo is probably the best, like you said, for anybody who's not going to try to master transfer partners. And I know that there are people out there who are like, Hyatt, Hyatt, Hyatt. And I know I like Hyatt too. But, you know, the thing about Hyatt is this. A lot of people love Hyatt, and that's one of the major values of Ultimate Rewards.

So apart from how well you can do from a cashback perspective, like we were talking about a minute ago, the additional advantage is that Hyatt offers fantastic value usually for their points. So if you transfer to Hyatt, you can often book a really nice hotel for a not so really big number of points. However, you recently did the math and you determined the reasonable redemption value of Hyatt points to be about what 1.65% or 0.65 cents rather, I believe. So, so if you're talking 1.65 cents per point, then, you know, if you're using the Capital One Venture, you're earning essentially 2% back, right? So basically better than one Hyatt point on all your spending, 1.4 Hyatt points, essentially on all your spending. You should just be using the Venture

Card and then using the Venture Card to erase the charges when you pay the cash rate at your Hyatt hotel and also earning Hyatt points on that cash rate because you don't account for those in your point values, right, Greg? So venture card is a better option, isn't it? But the Freedom Unlimited is getting one and a half Hyatt points per dollar spent. Did you forget that detail? No, I didn't. So yeah, no, Chase Campo is i think probably if you're if you're willing to go with the sapphire reserve it's probably the best now when i wrote my post about or i mentioned how i felt like capital one has one of the best two card combos i was thinking of it from the perspective of the post i wrote recently where i was talking about the best you can do for about

100 bucks so for somebody who doesn't want to lay out the five 50 for the Sapphire reserve, which I mean, let's be real. There are people listening. A lot of people listening to this show who are enthusiastic about credit cards and think, Oh yeah, it makes sense to spend 550 bucks. I'm going to get 300 back, but there's a lot of people out there who you tell them the credit card costs $550 a year. And they're going to be like, what are you crazy? No way. And so for all of those people,

I think capital one combo is still a really good combo. a year and they're going to be like, what, are you crazy? No way. And so for all of those people, I think Capital One Combo is still a really good combo. I absolutely agree. I think if you don't want to lay out much, they are the combo to beat. Or if you're going to be spending a lot of time and a lot of money overseas or internationally, you're not going to get 2x everywhere from any other transferable currency that's the truth and so so that that you know makes it great on on the high end the chase thing a couple other things we didn't mention but i think are notable is that chase has the best travel protections built into their card so you know if you travel a lot uh paying for your travel and getting 3x but also getting all those protections is a really good thing. And also it has priority pass, which is, you know, arguably getting better in a number of ways.

Now I can, at my local airport, the DTW, I could get a scalp or foot massage for 10 minutes. Wow, look at that. I didn't know they added that. That's exciting news. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll come visit now. It's called something like Be Relax or something that Priority Pass is now covering at two airports so far, and they're going to expand others, I think. So, you know, of course, in addition to lounges as well.

Definitely, when it comes to benefits, ancillary benefits, I would say much better. You've got those things. You've got, you mentioned the benefits in terms of the travel benefits, but the travel insurance benefits really are huge. I mean, whenever I'm going to book a flight, I am typically thinking first about travel insurance protections.

And that might seem silly because how often do you actually use them? But the few times that I've had to use them, it's been really valuable to have. So I always want to have that, the trip delay, trip cancellation. So those things are good. Obviously the primary CDW on your rental car is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yes, if you're traveling a lot and you can lay out the money, I think the Chase Combo is absolutely the best one. If you're traveling so much that you're going to be abroad all the time, then perhaps Capital One makes more sense,

but you'd have to really do the math on how much you're going to spend for that. So, so I think, I think we're in agreement. We would take the Chase Combo. Probably both of us would take the Chase Combo for us, but for a lot of people, I would probably recommend the Capital One Combo because it's not a lot of money outlay and you're still going to get pretty solid value without having to work too, too hard at it. Right, right. Now, I was all ready to answer you. You were supposed to talk about how Chase's airline transfer partners are not as good. Oh, they are. They definitely

are. No. And that was I mean, that was going through my mind when we were talking about transfer partners. Capital One's got Chase just slaughtered in terms of the, the right, right. But, but don't forget air Canada is coming as a transfer partner to chase. So at least chase is getting better. That's true.

That's true. And that's a positive development because air plan is definitely one of the strengths I would say right now, if capital one, they have arrow plan, but yeah, once of Capital One, that they have Aeroplan. But yeah, once Chase gets it, that's huge. Because Chase, obviously, if you're willing to expand beyond the two-card combo,

then you start talking about, well, the Chase ain't cash, earns five points per dollar at office stores and stuff like that. So five Aeroplan miles per dollar spent and things like that. I mean, then we're talking a whole different ballgame here.

So Chase is definitely heating up in that regard, too, which, again, really just highlights how Citi is falling way behind here. They're just not making any effort. Right. You know, they blew our socks off when they added the double cash

being able to transfer to thank you points. And I think that was kind of the the last big hurrah that we heard of them. Right. And around the same time they took away all the card benefits from all the cards yeah yeah yeah i don't know they're yeah

card list is coming for you city benefitless benefitless yeah benefitless cards so all right well that's i think that's pretty interesting and of course, if you're interested in adding more cards, Greg has a number of posts written, right, about the super combos, which probably need to be updated now. Yeah, I think I'm going to do one very soon, if not by the time people listen to this, an update to the best credit card combos. And it's time to insert Capital One into there.

I think so. All right. Well, I think that then brings us next to insert Capital One into there. I think so. So, all right. Well, I think that then brings us next to the post-roast. Post-roast time. So, Greg, are you prepared this week to roast me? I am, sort of. Sort of. I'm not sure this is really a roast as much as I thought it was very important to bring this to readers' attention.

I think probably people, I'm betting that most readers who see a post by you that says Marriott Homes and Villas has a 10% off deal going on, that they don't read everything in the post, including captions on your images. They might not. But i do sometimes that's occasionally this time you did so you had you had uh an image of of the the email the the promotion for marriott and it showed it showed some like this gorgeous looking house and it listed at like $75 per night. And the caption under this said, somehow I doubt that particular home in Texas is going for $75 a night.

But if I'm wrong about that, the food for the barbecue is on me. So did you find it? Did you find it? If you're listening to this, everybody, you got to pull up that post, take a look at the picture of that house, find it for $75 or less, and then call Nick on it because hopefully you're going to be having

a really big barbecue. And invite everybody to invest in that house. Nick's going to reimburse all that 3X earning you're going to do buying the barbecue food at the grocery store. I'm looking forward to that. I spent a few minutes trying to find it. I did find several nice looking houses in that town for $75 or less per night, but not that one.

That one seemed like it, like 75 seemed generous. It seemed like a judge. It'd be a very generous offer. Somebody who are letting you stay there for $75 a night. I, you know, I was going to say that if that place is really $75 a night and start forwarding my mail, because I'll be there. Well, we don't know what it looks like on the inside. We don't, that's true.

But who knows right okay all right so now we're going to flip this around and i'm going to say all right greg you wrote a post this week yes about how you have these free night certificates and you're asking readers to help send you on an adventure and give you suggestions you're going through the different free night certificates you have and trying to get feedback from people about things to do and places to go and adventures you can have with your free night certificates and my roast for you this week greg is how could you not include my radisson certificates in there so that somebody can tell me what to do with these things could you not help a brother out here greg and just like ask everyone

where do i use these radisson starts yeah yeah they extended them they extended them all the way to the end of the year so i mean i thought I was going to basically like use things on fire and lose them now I got them until the end of the year but that's still a problem I mean a number of the ones I was talking about are till the end of the year so it's it this is not a bad time to start planning your your you know early winter travel right and right yeah yeah, no, I, I think, um, getting feedback from readers, we got some great feedback for, you know, I talked about Hyatt. I talked about Marriott. I talked about IHG and we got great suggestions from all three of them. That's why on a Friday I, I published a, uh, best, best, um, Hyatt's to use your category one to four search, just using all that feedback I get from readers.

And I'm going to do the same. I just haven't had a chance to yet. I mean, it's a lot to go through. I'm going to do it with Marriott. I'm going to do with IHG, but I'd like to do it with Radisson. I'd like to do it with Hilton as well. So we need to get, we need to get feedback from readers about those two. Maybe you should write something. We do. I mean, cause somebody, somebody already gave the tip that there's this really nice country and in

suites in montana that you know i did look up the pictures and i was like oh it does look nicer than your average country and in suites and right montana why not but i don't know where are the other hidden gems in the radisson because normally i would look to use those either a i've used them at the radisson blue mall of america in the past i've been happy with that. Cause you're, you know, right there in the mall and I don't know, maybe I'll plan a trip to Minneapolis and go to the mall and gas and not top of my list this year. Now it seems, but maybe I will. I don't know. But beyond that, it's like, I assumed I would use them in New York city.

Not sure I'm going to go to New York city this year. So I don't know where to use those things. So anybody, anybody has any suggestions, like I said, let us know where to use those things. So anybody, anybody has any suggestions, like I said, let us know where to use the Radisson certificates. You can come in on this and let me know. Of course the, you know, the Radisson blue in Chicago, of course, is very nice, but we always have the problem that there's so many other nice hotels as

well. And, and you know, so, so. Yeah. You know, and a number of readers talked about the Chicago athletic association, the Hyatt looks, looks great., so. Yeah. You know, and, and, and a number of readers talked about the Chicago athletic association, the Hyatt looks, looks great. Looks great. Yeah. My issue. I had heard of it, but I had never looked into it, but look at the figures.

I've seen it in the search results and just always kind of skip past it because it didn't sound exciting to me, but I should have clicked on it. Cause it looks awesome. My issue with Chicago is that I usually stay with friends when i go there you guys that live there so i don't usually end up staying in hotels but that chicago athletic association i may need to make an exception on my next trip to chicago because that definitely looks cool reddish and blue i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna make it there in chicago i know everybody loves it understandable where else tell me where else guys tell me where yeah yeah please

do let us know all right So that brings us then to the question of the week. And so this week's question came in via email. So John said, hello, Greg, Nick, or Steven. I tried to apply for the Amex Hilton no fee card today. They have the decent 130,000 point welcome bonus right now on the no fee Hilton card. Also, he said the pop-up screen came out, said that I was not eligible. I have only three Amex cards, Hilton Surpass, Marriott Business, and the Green Business card at this moment. And I've never had the regular Hilton no fee card before. I'm well below 524. I only applied for two to three cards in the past two years. Is Amex having some new policy that since you already had the Hilton Surpass card with

a $95 annual fee, you're not eligible for the no fee Hilton card anymore. In addition to the once in a lifetime policy. I don't remember anybody else reporting a similar experience. Thank you, John. So John got the pop up. He's only had only opened like two, three cards in the last two years. Only has three Amex cards got the pop up anyway.

What gives Greg? Yeah, we get variations on this question all the time. So Amex has two forms of their pop up. One of them is that you've had this card before, so you're not eligible. And but that's pretty clear from the wording in it. The other one is like, you're not eligible. We're not going to tell you why. We just don't really like you at the moment. And it's not, it's not because you had the Hilton surpass.

It's not because you're over 524. It's not, you know, we don't know what it is, but, but what we do know is, is some people believe that putting spend on the Amex cards you have will, like over time, will get Amex to like you again. And so you regularly put spend on and, you know, keep trying the application because it doesn't hurt to try, get the pop-up and stop. You know, there's no event, you know, nothing is on your record about having done that. So you keep trying until finally they like you again because of regular spend. I actually just had sort of a variation of that happen with my Delta Platinum card.

I was jealous of my wife was getting got the upgrade offer 60,000 miles plus $300 cash back to upgrade to the Delta Reserve card. So that $300 makes up for the difference in annual fee between the two cards. And 60,000 miles is just icing on the cake. I mean, you did have to spend, I think it was 4,000 or something like that, but good deal because there's no credit pull. You don't have a new account. You don't have to worry about the fact that we have too many credit cards already with Amex. It all works. So anyway, I wasn't getting that offer.

I even checked with Amex. They were like, no, there's no offer. I started putting spend on that card and boom, just today, it said you're qualified for this offer. Learn more. I clicked it. It was the same offer my wife has.

So I'm looking forward to doing that one too. So anecdotally, putting some spend on your existing Amex cards often seems to help the pop-up go away. There's been a theory lately about referral links and perhaps using a referral link, you're more likely to get the pop-up. And unfortunately, some of the best offers have been referral offers for the last couple of years

on a lot of Amex cards. So sometimes the best offer possible is a referral offer. But if you're getting the pop-up and you've tried putting spend on your other card, that's where I would start, by putting some spend on your existing Amex cards. But if you're still getting the pop-up after doing that for three or six months,

then I would think, well, I don't know, maybe it's the link you're using. So then try opening up a different link for the card or something. So that may be another possibility, but I'm hopeful that that's just anecdotally weird thing. Yeah, it's hard to know.

I mean, I proved in my own family that it's not a a hundred percent true in that the, the converse isn't true. You know, if, if you don't use a referral link, you're not, you can, you can still get the pop-up. I know that because my son was trying to get a card and, and we're like, Oh, okay, let's avoid the referral link, but no, still got the pop-up. Still got the pop-up. I know that because my son was trying to get a card and we're like, oh, okay, let's avoid the referral link, but no, still got the pop-up. Still got the pop-up. So you may still get the pop-up, John, even if you try and go with some other link. But it's worth a try. It's worth a try perhaps, especially if you want to be able to get that increased offer right now, then maybe you want to try it out and see if that helps you. But yeah, there's no new rule or anything it's just amex has been less friendly i guess they just don't like some folks or whatever nobody really knows exactly what

i mean it'd be kind of nice if the if the pop-up said something like you know we don't particularly like you right now because you're not spending anything on the card so you're not a good customer to us but if you become a good customer, then we'll change our mind, but it doesn't say anything like that. It doesn't. So best of luck with it with that, John. All right. I think that brings us to the end. I want to thank you guys for being out there listening with us this week. If you enjoyed what we've been talking about, you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox each day. You want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

You can join our email list, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, join the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching this, hit the subscribe button, ding the notification bell and leave us a like, a comment, a thumbs up, et cetera. We love to hear from readers. Maybe you'll get featured on a future reader feedback segment. So thank you guys very much once again, and we will see you all again next week. And I'll leave you with this. Don't forget to make Nick buy you a barbecue. Find it. Buy all the food for the barbecue. Food's on him. You just have to find

that house. Take care, everyone. Bye, everybody.