Frequent Miler on the Air - What's in Our Wallets? (Jan 2025) | Coffee Break Ep42 | 1-21-25

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Greg and Nick have a LOT of cards between the two of them and they can't possibly carry all of them in their real-life physical wallets. What happens instead is that they tend to rotate the cards in their wallets based on what the current bonuses are, whether or not there are cards they're trying to reach a spend requirement on...and...whether or not they can find the physical card. In this episode, they'll cover the major real-life spend categories and which cards they're carrying for those purposes. (01:19) - Which cards do Greg and Nick carry for Grocery spend? Learn more about the Savor card here. (02:06) - Learn more about the Amex Gold card here. (03:31) - Which cards do we carry around for Gas? Learn more about the Wyndham Business Earner Card here. (04:09) - Learn more about the Amex Business Gold card here. (05:24) - Which cards do we carry around for dining? (08:28) - Which cards do we carry around for Travel? Learn more about the Sapphire Reserve card here. (12:27) - Which cards do we carry around for Pharmacy? Learn more about the Chase Freedom Unlimited card here. (14:30) - Which cards do we carry for spend everywhere else? Learn more about the Bank Of America Premium Rewards card here. (16:50) - Learn more about the Bank Of America Unlimited Cash Rewards here. Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. What's in our wallets? 2025 edition. So today we're going to talk about what cards are in our wallets. Of course, Greg and I have lots and lots of credit cards between the two of us and our Player 2s in our household, maybe player threes or whatever. So between the two of us, I'm sure we have well over 100 credit cards. But which ones are actually in our wallets day to day? What do we carry around? What are we using right now?

If you've wondered that before, well, we're going to talk about it today. Yeah, and we're specifically saying what's in our wallets right now because it does change over time. I mean, the different card benefits change. And so maybe, you know, if suddenly one card is now earning better rewards at gas stations or grocery stores, we're going to switch to that. And sometimes it's just more circumstantial, like when someone can't find a particular card, they might have to put a different one in their wallet. So let's get into that. What we're going to do is talk about this sort of category by category, major categories

of spend when we're out and about, we're at a grocery store, we're at a gas station, what do we whip out in those situations? So let's start with the grocery store. Nick, what do you pull out at the grocery store to pay for your groceries? So I've, believe it or not, been using the Capital One Saver card. Now, it would make more sense probably for me to use an Amex Gold card because that card earns four points per dollar. And I do have an Amex Gold card. It earns four points per dollar on the first 25K spend each year. But I've been using the Saver card more and more lately because I've been using it for

a variety of different things. So it's been in my wallet. And it's 3X. And Capital One has a couple of partners that Amex doesn't have. And I don't earn as many Capital One points every year as I do Amex points. So I've been happy to earn some 3X with no annual fee with my Capital One Saver card as of late. So that's the one I've been using lately at the grocery store, the Saver card. Yeah.

And I've been using my wife's Amex gold card, getting four membership rewards points per dollar. I love getting those transferable points and it's so easy. And we don't tend to spend over 25 grand at grocery stores per year. So that isn't really an issue for us. Yeah, and I should have mentioned,

I kind of glossed over this. So the saver card that I mentioned, so the Amex Gold card that Greg's talking about earns four membership rewards points per dollar spent, as we've said, the saver card actually earns 3% back at grocery stores. But I guess what I failed to mention there is that if you also have a Capital One card that earns miles, you can move your rewards from the cash back side to miles. One cent is one mile. So when I'm earning 3% back, I can convert those to three capital one miles. I can transfer them over to one of my miles cards, like my Venture One, or I have both a Venture One and my wife has a Venture X. And so we can transfer on to partners from there. And you can actually move

the rewards from person to person. So I could move my saver cash back to my wife's VentureX if she wanted to transfer them on to a partner. And so I like the increased flexibility because it's really easy to get the one cent per point in value. Now on the MX side, you can also redeem at one cent per point if you have a business platinum and a business checking account, etc. So there are ways to get one cent per point on the MX side as well. But but this, the reason I like the saver in part is because of that flexibility. I could keep it as cash back or I could move it as miles. There you go. All right.

What about gas? What are you using at the gas station, Greg? I always whip out the trusty Wyndham business earner card, which is that slightly under $100 card that gives you 14,000 points each year just automatically just for paying. 15. 15,000. Sorry, 15,000 points each year just for paying the annual fee. So since points are worth around a penny each, that's like a benefit right there.

But it also gives you eight points per dollar at gas stations. And so there's no other card that has as big of a gas station rebate as the Wyndham business earner card. So, of course, I'm not using it. Greg's totally right. Lately, I've been using the Amex business gold card at gas stations. The business gold card earns four points per dollar in the two categories in which you spend the most each billing cycle on up to, what is it, $150,000 a year? $150,000 or is it $50,000? I can't recall off the top of my head.

I don't spend enough to hit the cap on on that whichever it is um so I've been using the business gold card lately for gas for four points per dollar I've been gas and dining have been my two categories in which I'm spending the most on the business gold card so uh so I've been using it for gas lately but why right because I have a wind burner business card also and I agree with Greg that's the best card to use for gas stations well if you read my post about what's in my wallet, then you'll know that I misplaced my wind and burner business card somewhere at home. It's here at home. I just can't seem to find it. And so, so I haven't had it. So I've had the business gold card because I had been too lazy to call up Barclays and get a replacement card. And I said in the post that hopefully writing

this in the post is going to give me the kick in the pants I need in order to call and request a replacement card. And it apparently didn't because I still haven't done that. But hopefully after we record this, I will get a replacement card for my wind and burner business card because that is unequivocally the best card to use at the gas station. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe people will comment on the video and with little emojis that are kicking you in the pants.

That'd be fun. Maybe. All right. Dining, when you get hungry, what do you reach for, Craig? Yeah. So my first go-to is my City Prestige card. It earns five points per dollar at dining worldwide. It earns City thank you points, which are transferable to a number of airline programs and some hotel programs that had really good ratio, like one to two to choice and one to four to preferred hotels. So I really like earning those thank you points for those reasons. Unfortunately, for anyone listening who doesn't have the prestige card, it's no longer available

new. It hasn't been for a long time. And you can't play games like getting a different city card and product changing to it. They don't do that. There is another card I sometimes whip out at restaurants, but it's pretty rare, is the Amex Gold card, the same one I use at the grocery stores, because it gives you $50 back on spend at Resi restaurants twice a year. And so if I'm at a restaurant that's listed on the Resi platform, I don't have to, you know, make a reservation through Resi. I just need to use that card at the Resi restaurant. I get $50 back. So that's worth more than getting 5X plus it gets 4X for that dining spend. Yeah, I'm going to come back to that in just a second. So hold that thought on the Resi thing. So what I've been using is the Amex Business Gold card. Like I said, it earns 4x on the top two

spend categories each month and my top two have been gas and dining. So I've been using the business gold card lately. That's the one that's been in my wallet. However, I do also have the Amex consumer gold as does my wife. And so we each have the 4x and we have been making sure to use that at the at a resi restaurant once every six months. Now that's a benefit, which by the way, a lot of restaurants on Rezzy probably sell a gift card. If you walk in, I know I've been able to do that anyway at places that we go to enough to make sure I get one so that I use up the benefit during the time period.

What I'm curious about here, now Greg mentioned if you just dine at a Rezzy restaurant, you get the $50 back. You don't need to make your reservation through Rezzy. This weekend, I'm gonna eat at a restaurant that is on the in-kind platform. And if you've followed our posts, there's a lot of ways to get great discounts on in-kind, you can often buy gift cards for in-kind at a nice discount. And so I'm going to dine in an in-kind restaurant. And I have a bunch of referral credit and credit that I bought in my account already. So that's going

to cover the restaurant tab. But the tip you have to pay with a credit card. And so we've had a credit card saved in there to pay the tip. But I'm interested to find out if I pay the tip on my Amex Gold card, because it's a restaurant that's on Resi, will I get the $50 back if I'm paying through in-kind? I don't know. Do you know, Greg? I definitely do not know. That's a great question. So I look forward to finding out whether I can, because that'd be a great stack if it works. I think you can get 20% back at restaurants most of the time, even if you're just paying with a credit card through in-kind. So if you're able to get 20% back, plus get that $50 because it's a resi restaurant, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah, that would be,

that'd be a sweet stack. So let's see. I look forward to hearing your report on that. All right. What about travel? So if you're buying airfare, you're spending at hotels. Now, I know that like at some hotels, if it happens to be a Marriott and you have a Marriott card, you might use a Marriott card before that specific one. But in general, if you don't have like a specific card for that specific hotel, and you're you're booking travel, it could be airfare, trains, boats, you know, what do you what do you use? Yeah, usually I'm using the altitude reserve these days. For a long time, I was using the Chase Reds card. But then with some changes in the travel insurance and whatnot, I've actually switched over to mostly using the altitude reserve

card for my travel, It earns 3x. And then if I redeem those points through U.S. Bank real-time mobile rewards, then I get 1.5 cents per point. So essentially, it's kind of like getting 4.5% back on all travel. It's got good travel protections, not best in class, but good travel protections anyway on the Altitude Reserve. And so I very frequently use that. And again, that 3x there is not reliant on using mobile pay.

That's just a bonus category on the card. So I actually carry the physical card in my wallet to pay at a hotel when I check out. So I find that one to be a good choice for travel. I do still carry the Ritz card in my wallet, the Chase Ritz Carlton card. And I carry that because the card has $300 in incidental fees each year, airline incidental fees, which are really easy to trigger lots of different things work for it. I carry the physical card because I'll often end up in a situation where like I have to pay for Wi Fi on the airplane. And so I'll use that card because I know I can easily get that reimbursed towards the $300. So I do tend to carry that to pay for little travel incidentals and also sometimes to test travel incidentals to see okay, this isn't

exactly what I want necessarily, but let's see if that works. And so I'll use it now and then to see what might work. What about you? What do you carry for travel? Yeah, for me, it's pretty simple. The Chase Sapphire Reserve, I get 3X on all spend. And then I use the points usually to transfer to Hyatt because Hyatt has such valuable award redemptions. Although very, very occasionally I use the ability to book travel and get one and a half

cents per point value from booking travel through Chase Travel. But I find I can get better value than that transferring to Hyatt. Yeah, that's a great point. If I spent more money on travel, I know it probably seems like I spend a lot of money on travel because I travel a lot, but I don't really spend that much because most of it is award travel. So if I spend more money on travel, I would probably be using a Sapphire Reserve also and transferring to Hyatt. The reason I don't mind using the Altitude Reserve is I don't spend a ton on travel. I spend enough to earn

something, but not enough that's going to be a consequential amount of points for me transferring to partners. And I like to look at my altitude reserve points as like my rental car reserve. So I'll use those to redeem for rental cars, because there's no real good way to redeem for rental cars. And this is one where I can pay for the rental car directly with the rental company so I can book the best deal possible and still get one and a half cents per point. So that's sort of like my rental car reserve since I don't spend a ton, but enough to get a free, quote unquote, free rental car now and then. So that's it.

And I love that the Altitude Reserve, it has that real-time mobile rewards, which what that is is when you set it up to text you anytime you pay for travel, and then it texts you that you can redeem your points for travel. And I'm saying that because if you redeem for pay for travel and then it texts you that you can redeem your points for travel and and i'm saying that because if you redeem for anything besides travel the points are only worth what a penny each i think um but if you redeem for travel points are worth one and a half cents each

and and it's fun like i love you know like if i'm taking an uber or something getting a text saying do you want to redeem what seems like a very tiny number of points for this trip? And, and it, there's just something fun about it, you know, put away the calculators and everything about like, are you getting the best possible, like, uh, you know, value for your points. Um, and in that case you are, but, um, you know, it's just fun. And I, I like that, that kind of pop up, get it, get it free, it free experience. Some joy of free there. Some joy of free for sure. Exactly.

Next up, pharmacy. Now, this is one that probably not a lot of people spend a ton of money at, but I have been spending a lot of money at the pharmacy lately because I have two young kids and they get sick quite a bit and I need to buy things. And I also just happen to live close to a pharmacy and not close to a lot of other things. So oftentimes it just ends up being a matter of convenience popping up to Walgreens to buy something. I was telling Greg, before we recorded, I went through the drive-thru the other day, and the person at the drive-thru looked at me, typed in the computer and said, you're here for antibiotics for both your kids,

right? I don't know her, but she knew who I was. That's how often I'm going to Walgreens. So I'm using my Chase Freedom Unlimited because, of course, that card earns three points per dollar at drugstores. So I'm getting three points per dollar at Walgreens with that card now. And I hadn't yet, but should by the time I get done with this, link my Walgreens and link the card with Built because then I would earn some additional Built points when I'm spending money at Walgreens. And like I said, lately, it's been adding up. And I've said, wow, I should have earned some more Built points. Right. So for those who don't know, Built Rewards, it's been adding up and I've said, wow, I should have earned some more built points. Right.

So for those who don't know, Built Rewards, it's a rewards program you could join. They do have a credit card, but you don't need the credit card in order to join Built Rewards. And you could get rewards for things like linking your credit. When you link your credit cards to your Built Rewards wallet, you could get rewards at Walgreens. You could also get rewards at a whole bunch of different restaurants. And they're expanding to more and more of these, what they call neighborhood rewards programs, where you just get rewards just doing your normal thing. And those points are really cool because they transfer to a lot of valuable programs, including Hyatt and Alaska Airlines. So I really like getting those points without doing anything extra other than linking your credit card. Yeah. And I think you get a hundred

points per prescription that you refill. And I just recently had a number of prescriptions to fill and I realized afterwards, this is ridiculous. I should have had four or 500 points that I could transfer to a partner if I had just linked to that up. So I'm going to get that linked up. So that's my pharmacy card. I don't know. So neck needs a kick in the pants. I'm getting that linked up as well. I'm going to be pretty sore by the time this is all done. All right. So what about everywhere else when you're out and about spending, you run into a situation where you got to pay for something? What do you use everywhere else? Yeah. If I'm in a situation where I can pay with my Apple Pay, then I use my Altitude Reserve card. Gets three points per dollar for all Apple Pay spend, including if I'm buying something online, like on my phone,

I could just hit the Apple Pay to pay for it often. Not always, but often. And that's cool to get three points per dollar for all of that. And for everywhere else, I use my Bank of America premium rewards card because I have platinum preferred honors, which gives me a 75% bump in how rewarding the card is. So it gives me basically comes down to 2.62% cashback everywhere. That's not as good as if I had that new US Bank Smartly card and the 4% cashback that's possible. However, the nice thing with this is there's no foreign transaction fee. So I can keep my same backup everywhere else card in this case when I'm traveling internationally as I do locally. So that's what I do there.

I also use the Altitude Reserve for most of my everywhere else stuff with Google Pay. I'm not an Apple user. I'm an Android user, but works fine with Google Pay also when you're paying in person. So anytime I'm in person, I'm usually tapping my phone. And Greg mentioned internationally, and I find that this actually is great for international use because tap to pay is so ubiquitous in most of the rest of the world that I mean, even when I'm at small vendors in like a market, usually they take tap to pay and I can tap my phone and pay with the altitude reserve and not pay a foreign transaction fee and earn my three points per dollar. Unfortunately, using the Google Pay button on a website, the way that Greg just described with Apple Pay, has not ever coded as

3x for me. And most of the data points I've heard have been negative on that where you're, you know, you're on a website, there's a button to check out with Google Pay, I never earned the 3x mobile wallet on that. I think we have an old iPad sitting around the house somewhere. So I really need to get that set up with Apple Pay, I think. And then I would use that online for a lot more purchases. So I'm not an Apple user, but I'm going to have to see if I can get Apple Pay set up because I've heard data points of that working a lot of places online. So that would be really nice. And then the other card that I carry in my wallet for in-person spend when I can't tap

is the Bank of America Unlimited Cash Rewards card. Same as Greg. I still have Bank of America Platinum Honors or Preferred Rewards status there with Bank of America for now anyway. I'm going to lose that at some point, but I haven't yet. So I'm still earning 2.625% cash back on that card. Now that does have a foreign transaction fee, so I wouldn't want to use it overseas. But domestically, I'll use that in person from time to time as well, because that's a good return. So if I can't tap to pay, that's a good backup solution. I've occasionally I've been carrying the Amex Blue Business Plus because I needed some more

membership rewards points. But I'm at a point now where I don't think I really need to continue focusing on more membership rewards points as much. And I've got that business goal that I've been overusing a little bit too. So mostly unlimited rewards and of course, the altitude reserve. So that's the stuff that's in our wallet right now. And of course we also have travel wallets and the travel wallet, you know, carry things like a priority pass and maybe a platinum card for lounge access, et cetera. Those are things that are not always in our day-to-day walk around wallet. We've got plenty of other cards that offer free night certificates each year and various benefits that don't make it into the everywhere as we walk around type wallet. A hundred percent true.

All right, Nick, I think we're going to make it in time, but if we go over 20 minutes, which card should I use to pay people back? I don't know if there's an Apple Pay button, so I guess you're going to be stuck with the Bank of America premium rewards. Bank of America. All right.