Frequent Miler on the Air - What’s the single best card for your "player two"? | Ask us Anything Ep87 | 6-3-26

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

How has SAS Eurobonus award availability been in the months since the Million Mile Madness challenge? What’s the single best card for your "player two"? We answered these questions and more on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on June 3rd, 2026.(00:38) - How many backup flights do you have booked at any one time, and how many fees does that incur? (04:43) - Has Greg tried/considered applying for a Discover card as a way to get “in” with Capital One since he has been unable to get approved for Capital One cards in the past? (06:05) - ​How has SAS Eurobonus award availability been in the months since the Million Mile Madness challenge? Any regrets? Learn more about the Million Mile Madness challenge here.(09:15) - ​​Given all the hotel devaluations which now includes Hyatt, which hotel points would you recommend accumulating? Seems every chain wants lots of points for a room. Learn about the decreased Hilton point value here(16:01) - What’s a single best card for "P2" (player two)? (23:24) - Should Chase Rapid Reward credit card holders EVER book something above Choice fares if you don't care about the multiplier? (26:11) - How do you redeem Bilt cash for grub hub, walgreens and the $25 dining? (32:47) - Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card annual fee just posted today but still haven’t received the free night certificate. I was planning to downgrade to surpass, when can I expect it, if it takes more than 30 days will I still get annual fee refund? (34:36) - ​​I want to fly Cathay Pacific First Class between Chicago and Hong Kong, either way or both works. I’m extremely flexible and can probably come up with enough points in any currency. How do I find it? Find our "Which award search tool is best?" resource here(36:57) - ​I'm applying for my first mortgage soon. While my credit score is fine, I'm a bit worried about having to explain my long laundry list of credit card accounts thanks to this crazy hobby. Should I be? (41:24) - ​​So what are your favorite choices for virtually undiscovered islands similar to Koh Kood that lack the crowds but still have things to do (50:38) - What airline programs should be avoided due to poor customer service? I try to book when flights come out, which means there are often schedule changes that can be a problem/opportunity.Subscribe and FollowVisit 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 – “swappin’ back n’ forth” by up @ night Mentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkFrequent Miler's Best Offers Pagehttps://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyscape.com. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the Frequent Myler team answers your questions live. Welcome to Frequent Milers. Ask Us Anything Where you can ask us literally anything you want. Now, of course, we probably won't answer if it's a really crazy question. But we might. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a like, a thumbs up. subscribe, enable notifications.

That way you'll find out the next time we go live a month from now because we do this the first Wednesday of every month. So if you're listening to this in podcast form, come out to YouTube. First Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. Eastern. I think Stephen has a question to get us kicked off, right? I do indeed. And this one's actually for you, Nick. So we had a comment on the Ask Us Anything Post saying,

Nick always talks about traveling with his entire family and talks about having backup flights and backups to his backup flights. He's curious to know how many backups. flight he has booked at any one time and how much in taxes and fees he's paying for the flights that might be canceled and refunded. It seems like he might easily have thousands of dollars tied up in these backup flights. Is that true? That's a really good question. And it's true. We talk about backup flights all the time. The short answer is no, I don't have thousands of dollars tied up in taxes and fees because when I'm booking backup flights, I'm on the flights that

are the backups, the ones that I don't actually intend to take. I prioritize using Miles in a program where A, they don't charge surcharges, and B, where there's free changes and free cancellations. So, very real world example, we've got a month-long trip planned to Europe, and there's going to be a family memorial now, and we don't know exactly when that's going to be. And so I've made a guesstimate of when we think it might happen, because I think it might be in the middle of this. And so I used American Airlines miles to book a backup flight for a time when I think we can probably get to Europe if we have to cancel the first couple of weeks of the trip. And I did that because departing the United States, the taxes and fees are just $5.60 a person and it's freely cancelable.

I actually, I think maybe I wrote about it because I mentioned in the post where I wrote about it, I believe, that I booked actually a daytime economy class flight because my American Airlines platinum status made it possible to pick main cabin economy for all five of us going in this trip. So that's why I did that. And with Southwest, it's the same thing. I'm not paying high taxes and fees. Now, I don't generally have as many backups booked coming home because for me, the coming home part is usually not as time sensitive because obviously I have a very flexible situation here with frequent my work can get done from somewhere else. if we get stuck somewhere for a couple of days, if the kids miss a day or two of school,

I'm not going to lose too much sleep over that. So if I were booking backups departing in a foreign country, that'd be more of an issue because the taxes, just the flat taxes, forget about any surcharges, are often going to be something over $100 a person. So in the situations where I've had to book those, yes, there are times when I've had a few hundred dollars tied up in a backup flight here or there, but that's much rarer because I don't usually worry as much about backups for the flights home. So usually it's $5.60 a person each way.

And I couldn't tell you exactly how much I have tied up in those right now. But that's not a significant enough amount for me to fret too much about how much of that is tied up there. The peace of mind is worth more. All right. Thanks. Can I ask a follow up real quick for Nick? If you have a backup to a backup, does that then become a front up? Or how does that like, what do you?

Backup squared. Yeah, it's a back. No, though. Is that like multiplying? too negative? Like, how does that work? You'd get a double negative there. Yeah, yeah. No, actually, I did recently run into this, though, where there was an Air France, KLM itinerary that would be a perfect backup, but I don't want to tie up the $300 a person times five people

in that backup. So, so actually, getting back to the original question, like, there was I was like, oh, man, that would be a great backup plan, but I don't want to tie up $1,500 in the backup plan until then. So I do avoid those. There are times where I look at that and I'll say, yeah, it's not a good backup plan for me. Yeah. And in that case, you'd also have a cancellation fee if you don't use that. And how much does that come into, factor in? Yeah, and that does. I mean, it's 70 euros a person with Air France Calum Flying Blues. That's 350 euros. I would lose if the backup gets, you know, if the plan goes off as originally planned. And so that's not a good backup to me. And that's obviously it was Greg's point there. And I agree. All right. Next question is going to be

for Greg. Greg, have you tried or considered applying for a Discover card as a way to get in with Capital One since you have been unable to get approved for Capital One cards in the past? Yeah. So a little background for those who don't know. I actually didn't have trouble getting approved for a card. I got approved for a venture card a number of years ago. And, And pretty much as soon as I got the earned the sign-up bonus for it, they canceled my account. And I haven't tried to get another Capital One card since then for myself. But my wife got the Venture X card, added me as an authorized user. And a couple months after doing that, they closed down that authorized user card.

But they left her account fine. So I haven't touched Capital One directly, but my wife's VentureX card is still up and running fine. So we do have access to that. I have had a Discover card for years. So with Capital One buying Discover, yeah, there's a chance that I will have a Capital One card soon. I think there's a better chance that my Discover card will get canceled soon. But we'll see. Thanks.

We can hope. We're rooting for you, Greg. All right. Stephen, you did the SaaS challenge. I did do the SAS Challenge, yes. Okay, great. How has the SAS Euro bonus award availability been in the month since the Million Mile Challenge? Any regrets? Certainly no regrets. Availability hasn't been amazing when I've checked. Thankfully, SeatS.O has a really useful tool for finding business class availability for SAS. And so that's what I always check. it completely depends on which routes as well because some I feel like from LAX or something I don't know if I've ever really seen any business class availability from the west coast but from the east coast there's usually like a little bit more but it's kind of weird it feels like they have they make availability close in like not kind of like straight away tomorrow but a week away and then for like a week after that you might find availability or something like that and then at a random time in like five or six months time, there'll be like a week or two's worth of availability in business class and then that's it and everything else is astronomically prices like a million

miles or like 600,000 miles or something ridiculous like that where you're just never going to redeem for that. We haven't been able to use them though and I'm going to be coming back to the US for the Chicago, what's it called again, the Chicago Points Travel Festival. So it used to be the Chicago Seven Arts Chicago Points Travel Festival now in October. And my wife and I are both going to be flying back to the US for that. And we managed to find availability on ideal dates that we needed using SAS miles. So we're going to be, we need to position ourselves to Copenhagen for that. But yeah, we're going to be flying back in business class using those.

And so it is out there, but it's kind of hard unless you have a fair bit of flexibility. All right. Yeah. Can I ask a quick follow question? How is, do you have you looked at all? Stephen, is Euro bonus, what's Euro bonus like for domestic European travel? Is it useful? Is there value there? I feel like it's not overly useful.

The problem that I'm encountering is that if I'm wanting to fly from the UK to like Copenhagen or Oslo or Stockholm and then back to the US, because I'm departing the UK, then the taxes and fees are much higher if there's like business class availability. And so that's not particularly worth it at all. I forget what the taxes and fees are just for entry Europe travel. I feel like it's not an amazing option because... Well, because of the taxes and fees, I don't think they're like crazy high, but that along with how many miles you need.

And again, I can't remember exactly how many it is. I want to say it's like $15,000 or something. And it starts a 10. Starts a 10. Oh, okay. Yeah, when I've had a look, yeah, I feel like it is. It's been like 15,000 for the routes that I've been looking at. And it's not been a particularly appealing option in the end.

So I've not really looked at it for that, especially because it would mean have to like connect fire like Copenhagen or Stockholm or something, unless that's my actual destination. Then it's just not really worth it. All right. Thanks for speaking to that. Tim, given all the hotel devaluations, which now includes Hyatt, which hotel points would you recommend accumulating? Seems every chain wants lots of points for a room. That is true. And it hasn't necessarily been an encouraging last few months for hotel redemptions.

We just did our Hilton reasonable redemption values where we effectively figure out the point at which, the point of the point of the point, the point, the point, the point, value at which half of the possible redemptions that you might find for Hilton or above it and half are below it, so like the midpoint for Hilton redemptions. And it's down to like 0.35 points out, like just over a third ascent a point, which is a 27% drop in two years, which is crazy. Hyatt, after years and years of being right around 1.8, 1.9 cents for that same number, I'm almost, it's just, it just dropped slightly before, but now with this recent devaluation, it's almost certainly going to get closer to 1.5. So that's about a 20% drop. Marriott has held steady, but a lot of the high-end hotels that Marriott has, those sort of aspirational properties, have gone through the roof where they're like technically not a bad value based on what our reasonable redemption value is for them. But they're an insane amount of points. So and then in the meantime, Greg and I both used to love city thank you points for its ability to transfer one to two to choice privileges and especially wonderful.

for it at preferred hotels and resorts where you could get some great value from. Well, city just knocked those down to one to one to one point five for choice and one to two. So 50% cut for preferred hotels and resorts, which makes it much less interesting. So you look at the whole landscape and it's like, well, what's left? And I and everybody else should chime in too after this because I'm curious what you guys would think. But first off, let me say that just because Hyatt is less valuable doesn't mean it's not valuable. And I think that especially when you're talking about earning, if you're talking about earning hotel points through transferable currencies, which is probably, you know, we like transferable currencies because you retain a lot of flexibility

in terms of where you can put your points. You can just transfer points as you need them as opposed to accumulating, like you're saying, this question. Really, Hyatt is the only place that offers good value still via its one-to-one transfers from built and chase ultimate rewards. And even a one and a half cents a point, that's still, you know, given that half of the possible redemptions you might make for Hyatt are above that, there's still some opportunity for very good value for your transferable points through Hyatt. Now, what will happen over the next 15 months is how it gets more and more into this funky 40 slot chart that it has, you know, we could see some further evaluation. But for the moment, I mean, Hyatt is still valuable. The program that I'm

most interested in now that I wasn't say a year and a half ago is a core. And part of that is because, so the way a core has a completely different way of doing their redemptions than any other hotel program. A, you can get any room. You can add breakfast to the room. You can add any, anything that's available for cash, you can buy, you can get with points. And the way that they do it is they peg their points at two euro cents a point, which because the dollar has fallen significantly against the euro over the last year, means that each point is worth around 2.3, 2.4 cents. Now, the bummer is that most programs only transfer to a quart 1 to 2, and the best of them, which is built. And who else is it? Is it built in a rove that are, that are like effectively 1 to 1 third, 1 to 2 thirds points or 3 to 2? But effectively, the best you can get is three to two.

There are some transfer bonuses that made them make them more interesting. But what I really like about a core is that you can get anything you want. You want a suite, you can pay for it. You want breakfast included, you can pay for it. And what is even more appealing that I think I've slept on in the past is whenever there's a cash sale, which happens a lot, there's also an award sale. So when it's 30% off cash fares, anything that's discounted is now 30% off award bookings as well because you're still, you're just redeeming points against that cash value.

And I've been able to kind of find some pretty fun discoveries where it's like, okay, I'm getting like over three cents per point on my core points, which at that point, transferring three to two doesn't feel terrible, especially since I know I'm getting exactly the room without having to worry about elite status or anything like that that I want. So I'm just curious. The problem is that Rokor has a really bad U.S. footprint, much better in Canada, much better internationally. But I'm kind of, I'm intrigued.

And they have these different subscription models that I want to kind of dive into a little bit as well. But that's the program that I think is most intriguing now, simply because it feels much more stable. Tim, I'm confused about what you said. about getting three cents per point value when the point value is fixed with a core no so what i'm saying is that when there's a cash sale so like based i shouldn't say three cents per point value i mean i should say that like once you factor in the award sale what the normal cash price would be like so let's say

there's a three hundred dollar night property that's three hundred dollars a night for the entire year and i shouldn't have phrased it that way so thank you for for catching that and there's a 30% award sale or 30% off cash sale for a given period of time. I can now use those points for what would normally be a $300 room during the rest of the time. And those points, I get effectively or not 30% to about 26% or 25% more out of my points based on redeeming it for that room. So like, so that $300 room goes down to $210. What would have cost me, I'm trying to do the math on the fly here, but what would have cost me like 15,000 points now costs me around 10.5,000 points. So that never happens, though, with other programs. If there's a cash sale, that point price

doesn't change based on the cash sale. And I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to get at, is that by following the cash sales, you actually, your points can go much further towards the same properties where that doesn't really happen with other programs, I guess is the point that I'm trying to make, as opposed to the three cents per point of the value. That makes more sense, yeah. All right. So this next question is going to be an all-play, but I'm going to start with Greg.

And there's different ways that you can interpret this question. So that's why I'm curious to see however in response. What's the single best card for Player 2? And then explain why you've picked the one you've picked, starting with Greg. Sure. So Player 2 is usually a spouse or significant other that, is maybe not as much into the game as player one as you are if you're watching this.

And so I think the ideal card for player two is one that's where the reward structure is just really simple. And so player two doesn't have to think about which of these 17 cards am I going to use at this particular store I'm shopping at? And so my pick is the Venture X card. It gets 2x for all spend transferable points, and plus it gets, has $300 of travel credits each year

and 10,000 bonus points each year that you renew, which together more than offset the $3.95 annual fee. And so, you know, it's really easy to use those rewards. and you know that player two is always getting good value from their spend. They're getting that solid 2X for everything they do. And they get, oh, they get lounge access. They get Capital One lounge access as well as priority pass. Cool. All right.

Nick, how about you, different answer and why? Definitely. Ventrex is a good answer, but it's not the best answer. What a contrarian. The best answer is the built palladium card, whether they have their own or you just make them an authorized user. if you have a built palladium card because it's super easy. It's two points, sort of like Greg said, everywhere,

except if you use your built cash for the accelerators, it's three points everywhere. That's the card my wife is using absolutely everywhere, because even if she uses it at a place where you could have gotten four points per dollar, it's not a huge loss. And if she uses it at a place where she would have gotten one point per dollar, it's a huge win. So at three points per dollar using the accelerators for at least up to the $25,000 spend,

I think it's really easy to get fantastic. value. If we only transfer those to like high it, as, as Tim said, for an average value of one and a half cents, they've got the best, I think, collection of transfer partners, airline and hotel partners combined, best collection there. If we happen to catch a transfer bonus, then it's going to be far outsized value. And if you value the built cash at anything, and it's worth something because it gets you to the next accelerator at the very least, the first few times you use it. And if you're able to use it for a transfer bonus and get a higher bonus or whatever. There's plenty of ways or even if you're using it just for some of the small Walgreens and lift and whatnot.

It's worth something. So you're getting the three points per dollar plus something else, whatever that is. I don't know. I think that that's just so easy for player two. They don't have to think about it. And I never have to feel like I'm sacrificing much. Like if we could have gotten four points three dollars at the grocery store, but we got three. However, we got three points on, you know, my wife, I don't know, went to go close shopping for the kids. And It's great. I'm pretty happy at those things. So that's my answer.

Bill Palladium, sticking with it. All right. Steven, different answer? I do have a different answer. So, like, first of all, I'd want to find out what their partner is spending money on because that could affect it. Because if they're spending money in a certain area, then it makes sense to find out what that is in case it's something that would be bonused. But I think a somewhat safe card to assume that they would be spending money in is a city strata premier card. because that earns three extra grocery stores, three X on gas, three X on dining, three X on flights

and hotels, which is probably going to cover a reasonable amount of what someone is going to be spending money on, like from day to day, if it's not like some kind of like niche spending opportunity. Plus, that only has a $95 annual fee. The card the Greg picked is $395. The one Nick picked is $495. And if you just want one card for your partner to use, chances are they're not really, really into the points of miles game. So they may not be keen on having a card that costs hundreds and hundreds of bucks, whereas 95 bucks might be a bit of an easier sale, especially if they're backing up points even more quickly than just a 2x card.

I will say the authorized user card and the palladium is 95. So if you're just adding to Ms. Nate U, it's only an additional 95 or which are already paid. And they get their own priority pass for that 95. I'm just saying. I'm really taking notes. All right, Tim, how about you? So I would probably split the difference between Nick and Stephen a little bit.

And I was going to ask the same question of Nick. And I knew he would come back with the same. It's like, well, that's $495 card. Are you, how is your player two making back the $495 fee? But then I knew he had come back with a $95 authorized user thing with the same as the premier. So here we are. Or they just tap to pay.

You don't even pay the 95. I'm going to say, first of all, let me congratulate Stephen for the first part of his answer being I'm going to ask my wife what she needs. Good for you. Good player one, player two, both. But the, what I would, so for years and my wife and I, we have a three-card rule where she says, you can give me any three cards and expect me to use them appropriately, but no more than three. So, and I'm saying this because it's changed recently, because I know the question is one card. And so for years,

like effectively, the, the kind of the bedrock of her car. part of her wallet has been the strata premier for the three x categories and then the double cash to back that up now we just changed one of her double cash cards to a custom cash because that's going away and we wanted some extra five x capacity and she had two of them and there was some repeatable bills on there and she said well what do you want me to change these bills to and i said well go ahead and put the bill card on there as opposed to her of the double cash so how However, to Stephen's point, I will also say that that is because she's using my built palladium card and I'm not having to either pay for an extra authorized user nor am I having

to pay for an additional $495 card and trying to figure out how to offset that $495 fee on a second card. So I would say within a certain structure, I would agree with or the structure I would agree with Nick within a certain structure, I could be tempted by Stephen's answer as well. And Tim, what if your spouse only shopped at office supply stores? Well, let me tell you, Greg. First of all, I would be thrilled. Married well.

Very, very well. So really the right answer here isn't which card. It's you need to find a different player, too, who shops exclusively in 5x stores. Just be one of those guys that's hanging around the office supply store looking for a day. Oh, man. I think that's the correct answer. On that note, I'm going to move us along. Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin.

He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah, well, your cousin ought to go to frequentmiler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet, you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. All right. Nick, should Chase Rapid Reward credit card holders ever book something above choice fairs if you don't care about the multiplier? Maybe. So really, I think I'm going to reward your question.

question. I know you asked it this way, but I'm going to say the question should be, should card holders ever book something higher than basic, really? And the reason I say that is because if you've got a card, you get standard seat selection at the time of booking. And that's the main thing that you're missing with basics. So you already got that and you're not going to be the last to board. You'll be in group five if you've got a card. So then the question becomes, okay, well, why would I book anything higher than BASIC? And so there's a few answers. So choice you might book, as you probably know, since you framed the question this way, you might book choice so that you can get a free same day change to another flight. That's the reason to pick choice.

So if you aren't particularly happy with the flight that you booked from the get-go and you want the opportunity to change after midnight on the day of departure, then you want that. Choice preferred, I don't really see any good reason to book a choice preferred fare. That one, is the kind of weird one to me, I probably wouldn't bother with that. Choice extra, you might want to book if you really care about extra legroom seats because that one includes extra legroom seats at the time of booking. So if extra legroom seats make the difference for you, then you might consider choice extra. Now personally, for the difference in price between a basic and a choice extra, I probably wouldn't be considering choice extra. I'd just be rolling the dice on getting the

extra legroom at check-in, although I will say my streak was great at the beginning when they first started offering the extra legroom seating as far as getting it as a card holder at 48 hours prior to departure. And I'm striking out now. So they're finding the right price point, apparently, to get people to buy it because it's much harder now at the 48-hour mark to get those extra legroom seats than it was when they launched back in whatever it was January or February. So I could see someone saying, I really want that for one reason or another, and that's why you might consider choice extra. As you identified, if you don't care about the multiplier, I can't see any reason to pick choice preferred, particularly if you've got the Southwest Rapid Rewards priority or the performance business card, because those cards include either standard or preferred seating at the time of booking. That's another benefit of choice preferred that you can pick preferred seating, which is the front half of the plane at the time of booking.

And so if you have one of those premium Southwest cards, then there's no reason to choose choice preferred, in my opinion. All right. Anyone have anything to add or shall we move on? All right. Stephen, how do you redeem built cash for Grubhub, Walgreens, and the $25 dining? I'm going to throw this to the other three guys because I think that they all have built cards and I don't have a built card.

So I don't have any built cash to redeem that. So who would like to take that one? Let's send it to Tim. So I'm to say I'm a little confused, or I'm not saying I'm confused. I don't know if they're asking how do you actually redeem built cash for these things? Or if you're saying how do you do those redemptions? Why don't we answer it as like how do you use those credits as opposed to a tutorial, which we're not going to do on this show? Right, right.

So I don't use a $25 dining at all because I. can't because there's no place for me to use it in my little small town that's outside of Seattle. And it's not, it's just for 25 bucks a month. It's just not worth it for me to, there's so many dining credits out there. It's just not worth it for me to try to figure out how to go into Seattle and use it. It's just not worth it. So I don't use that one. I don't use Grubhub since they made it a discount code because now that it's a discount code, you can't use, combine it with other discount codes that are oftentimes more valuable than what that $10, I think it's $10 a month would be. And if somebody else has a good idea, please jump in after this.

The Walgreens, I buy a $10 gift certificate and I sell it for right now. It's about $8. And so I turn the $10 into $8 real dollars, simply because I don't ever shop at Walgreens. Greg and Nick, you guys want to chime in with what you do with your credits? I'll say mine is the same as Tim, except that with Walgreens, I do just keep them for if I am going to Walgreens. There's several in town. So it's not unusual. And I use it as, as, you know, intended to get $10 off at Walgreens.

I haven't bothered with the credits at all. Not even the hotel credit. I haven't even used the hotel credit yet. So now I'm just using my built cash for the accelerator right now. And if a transfer bonus comes up where I can use it for good value, great. If I'm going to Walgreens, then I'll consider redeeming for that. but they close the Walgreens near me, so it's not a place I go regularly anymore. So I don't anticipate using any of those.

If it works out, great, I'll use it. But I'm not making any effort. So speaking of the hotel credits, I just used mine yesterday. And I was really surprised to find it. It was a three-night stay for like about $700 total, which is before using the credits, which was almost exactly what other sites charged. So that surprised me because when I looked in the past, built had been more expensive.

And I was able to take off, you know, $200 using the Palladium cards, hotel credit, plus another $100 using built cash. So, you know, just $400 for a $700 booking was a good deal. Yeah. I had an actual similar thing that just happened where I, whenever I compare built at built hotels to anything else, the rates are always higher and it doesn't make any sense and it reminded me of great for years just had this hotel at the end of bay harbor where he was like where he went and used his

certain marriott certificate every year because it was a great value and and there's this one native american it's on a reservation this native american run hotel that's right on the olympic coast that my wife and i like to go to and i found that it was like the one hotel in all of Washington, that the built hotel, it's like the same rate. Wow. So I'm like, oh, hey, we could do two nights. Lucky. You could do two nights here every six months.

That's fine. So I just did the same thing. So, I mean, they're out there, I guess, is the key. Nick, I have a question for you, though. So whenever you say you're just using it for the accelerator, do you only think you're going to spend the 25K where you would max out your accelerator? And if not, then what would you do beyond the accelerator? once your accelerators run out of,

when it run out of juice. Yeah, probably we will continue past the accelerator, I assume. And so when that happens and it won't be that far off, really, soon will be just, I don't know, $7 or $8,000 away from having maxed out the accelerators. So then I don't know. I assume that I will find a two-night hotel stay eventually where I can use $100. I mean, I say eventually we got, what, 27 days left? as we record this to use the first half of the year.

So I assume I will use $100 in built cash along with the $200 credit for this half of the year and the same for the second half of the year. So I assume I use $200 in built cash that way. And there will probably come a time when I use Walgreens. I hope to be able to use it for Black Lane at some point. But again, stars need to align. And I don't even know if they've actually enabled the Black Lane yet. Have they? I don't think so.

right? And for transfer bonus because I anticipate before the end of the year, there'll be a transfer bonus that we want to be able to take advantage of. And I will use built cash to accelerate for that, however much we're able to. So that will almost definitely be a thing. If they ever enable the blade redemption, I'd be interested in trying it at once if I get a chance. But I'm not, I'm not committing to doing that. It's like, it's really like, if the situation, if the stars, the line and I'm able to great. So it's not a major focus to me. Like I said, the built cash is worth something, but not a ton to me necessarily. Even if I get a little bit, though, if I get those things, the $100 for each half of the year and I use it a couple of times for one of those other things,

great. That's good enough for me. I'm just amazed at how confusing built cash sounded in the beginning. Now you guys are just rattling off, you know, the accelerators. Well, and I'm amazed at how if you, if somebody who didn't know anything about Bill, just listen to that last 10 minutes or so, they would be like, yeah, it'd be like, what? I mean, that's exactly why I'm saying that, which is why I'm not putting P2 in that situation. Right. I know. You guys were just driving them. It doesn't need to redeem any of it. To use the card. Yeah, it sounds plenty of confusing to me, but if all they have to do is spend money, that's the easy part. Yeah, that's the easy part.

Stephen, we'll give you a redo question. Aspire annual fee just posted today, but still haven't received the free night search. I was planning to downgrid to surpass when can I expect it. If it takes more than 30 days, will I still get the annual fee refund? So the certificates normally take like two to three months to arrive after renewal, because they basically want to make sure that they're not giving you a certificate. you get that regardless, like once it's been awarded. And so that way they don't want you to get the certificate before you pay the annual fee,

cancel your card, and then they're out there. So they do it like several weeks beyond after it's too late to be able to cancel your card. However, you do still have options because you can wait until you get the annual fee, and then you can downgrade to a surpass since you're not wanting to cancel it. And what Amex will do is they'll prorate your annual fee, and so they'll deduct a huge chunk of it if you're doing it fairly soon after renewal, and then you will be charged a prorated annual fee for the surpass card. And so that way it certainly seems like that's going to be worthwhile,

because the value you'll get from the three-night certificate is probably going to far exceed however much the additional prorated amount is for having the aspire card. Plus, since we're in June, like late June, that probably means that, you're not going to be getting the certificate until July, in which case at that point, you'll be able to use another set of $200 credits, Hilton result credit. So if you can use that quickly before you downgrade the surpass card and possibly any other benefits before those go away and you downgrade. So, yeah, so I would say it doesn't sound like you're in a particularly bad situation.

It just means you've got to wait an extra few weeks to downgrade your card. All right, thank you. Greg, I want to fly Cathay Pacific first class between Chicago and Hong Kong. Either way or both works. I'm extremely flexible and can probably come up with enough points in any currency, but how do I find it? Okay, so Cathay Pacific first class, that's a tough get, especially if you're going to try to book it with partner miles. So if you have points, if you have transferable points that transfer,

to Cathay, you might have better luck by looking directly with Cathay Pacific. The downside of that is that the not very few tools, very few award search tools, actually search Cathay Pacific's real inventory. If I remember right, there's one that I found that actually did, even though a few sort of, like if you look at what programs they say they support, there were several that said they supported Cathay Pacific, but when I last did my post on which award search tools are best, I only found one that actually supported it. And so check out that post and see which, which tool that is. And then what I would do is I would use that tool to set up alerts for any time Cathay Pacific first class shows up. All right. Next up. I could do a follow up on that as

well as great so Greg if you were going to fly if you were going to fly to Hong Kong if you wanted to experience Cathay Pacific or Kathy specific Cathay Pacific first class to Hong Kong would you only look for Chicago no I'd look at whatever routes they they fly from North America to to Hong Kong where they fly first class yeah yeah so you know I've talked before about using I use flight connections to look at what routes are available and you could filter it to Cathay Pacific to see all their routes like visually. But also if you have the, I think you need the pro version to do this, but it's really inexpensive, then you can also, so you could filter not just to Cathay Pacific,

but also to first class cabin. So it'll filter to only the routes where there is a first class on Cathay Pacific and then you could see what those are. All right. Tim. I'm applying for my first mortgage soon. While my credit score is fine, I'm a bit worried about having to explain my long laundry list of credit card accounts. Thanks to this crazy hobby. Should I be? So first of all, let me do the traditional disclaimer that says that we are not financial

advisors and you should not take any of our advice as such. That said, I have never, since I've started doing credit cards, I mean, the biggest thing is going to be your credit score. And my credit score now is way higher after several years of doing credit cards than it was beforehand. The only time that I ever got in trouble from a credit card was when I went to buy my first home and realized that right before I got married and went on a four-month honeymoon, I applied for a Nordstrom card. And then the bill got lost for a $60 bill and it killed my credit. And so I would advise not doing that. However, when it comes to, the only thing that I am aware of that some people do, and I think it makes sense,

just because it's such an important, it's such an important transaction, is to hold off on applying for new cards for, say, six to nine months beforehand so that you don't have like seven or eight new credit inquiries on your report beforehand. But that said, even though that's kind of the conventional wisdom, I have never heard an actual, and a story of somebody who has had trouble on their mortgage application because of credit cards. I mean, unless they, like, that was in the hobby. Has anybody else ever, like, has anybody ever actually heard of an issue with that where people got ended up on a higher rate or?

I did see someone commented, I think it was on like one of our posts recently, that they were, I think, a real estate agent. And they had a client who, um, was literally an astronaut. And when he went up into space, and while he was up in space, they were in the process of closing on a home. And the astronauts' wife ended up buying a whole bunch of furniture for their new home, maxing out a credit card.

And apparently that affected their credit utilization and affected their credit support enough that they weren't able to close on the mortgage. And so they ended up losing that house and ended up having to go with a second choice like a year later. And so even though, and the person commenting said, like, even though their client was able to say, I was literally not on earth. Like, it wasn't possible. So, like, that's the only case I've heard like that. I think the bigger potential issue isn't necessarily that you'll get declined.

It's that you might end up paying a higher interest rate. Because if you have all these hard inquiries, then your credit score, might only drop like a few points for each one or something like that, but those might add up enough to push you into a different band for interest pricing. And so if that's the case over the course of, like, if it's going to be a 30-year mortgage, you could end up paying like thousands of thousands of bucks extra in interest. And so that would probably be my personal bigger concern rather than like not necessarily qualifying for the mortgage as a result of getting a new credit card. So, yeah. So your advice would be sort of the same thing as to like, it would be to avoid.

applying for new credit cards for several months before the mortgage. I did. Before the mortgage origination. Yeah. I mean, I guess one potential workaround would be to focus on Amex business cards because I don't think Amex tends to do a hard pool of your credit. And if it's a business card,

it's not going to show up on your credit report. Then that's probably a safer way. If you're still wanting to earn some kind of welcome offers in the meantime just because you've kind of got that edge that you really have to scratch and getting like a new card and working on, like, especially if you've got a lot of spin coming up or something like that, then it could make sense to get a business platinum or something like that because of all the cost you're going to incur with moving and things like that. So that would be one possible thing that would be much safe and just applying for a whole bunch

of personal credit cards. But definitely don't go to space then and forget to. Yeah, I think that's the moral of the story. That's pretty. Go to space and, yeah, don't space out like that. All right, Nick. Actually, this is going to be an all-play, but we'll start with Nick. What are your favorite choices for virtually undiscovered islands similar to Kocood, which I haven't heard of, case in point, I guess, that lack the crowds but still have things to do.

So what's everyone's favorite undiscovered island? I think the ones I've been to have been discovered, so I don't know as though I have a favorite undiscovered. Yeah, I mean, I love island destinations, but, and I've been to some that are less, less touristed, but not what I would classify as undiscovered. So I don't think I have a good answer here. How about how about where you got your, I can't remember what it was called, but at 40K far away. Neway, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Neway was very interesting.

And I think the fact that you can get there with Miles makes it really intriguing. So Greg's mentioning Newey, when we did our first team challenge, that's where I ended up. It's a very small island nation in the South Pacific. I think the population is something like 1,600 people, but everybody says that that's a little bit overblown because there's a lot of people that don't actually live there full time. So it's very small. There's two flights in each week. So two flights in, two flights out. So the airport's only open part time.

So like the equivalent of the TSA guy was also the guitar. player at our resort. You know, so it was very small, not a lot of two. There's one resort on the island. You do like apartments or that kind of thing also. But once you're there, you're, you're there until, you know, for three or four days, potentially depending on when you fly in. Boarding passes were handwritten and everything. So, you know, it's like they're working off of a printed out manifest and stuff like that. So it's definitely a unique experience. And it's really cool because there's no rivers that run into the sea. So there's no like no pollution really in the water, no sediment or anything. So the water is incredibly clear. So you can see forever. Like,

when you go out into the deep ocean, you can see the rays of sunshine that just seem like they're going forever. It's not like it doesn't get dark real quick like it usually does. So, you know, if you find some dolphins or whatever, you'll see them swimming away for a really long time. And we did. So it was cool from that perspective. It's very different. You know, it's not, uh, there's one resort. It's not particularly posh. The like the hot water wasn't work. for a couple of days we were there. And, you know, so it's, it's not the world's most comfortable island experience. And, you know, your food options are pretty limited.

We did go to the New York pizza shop, believe it or not in New I, don't recommend it. But, uh, but anyway, I mean, so, so that's why I'm like, I'm kind of, would I fly all the way there from New York to see New I? I don't know. I mean, it depends on your appetite for discovery. I'm really glad I went. I had a great time there. Um, but it, I,

There's not maybe enough to do, I think, for somebody unless you like to explore. I mean, there were some cool caves and stuff. So there were some things to see. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dissing New A, by any stretch. But it depends on what your expectations are, I think. Does that pizza place take built cash? You know, they do have New York in the name, so it's possible.

But, yeah, New York, New York pizza anyway, was not my favorite. I'll say that out loud. So sorry New York pizza. Stephen, how about you? I mean, I don't tend to look for like quiet islands as a like general destination or anything like that. But what I would say is like, are you, is this person looking for a quiet vacation where they're kind of on an island where they can like go for a walk along the beach and things like that and have it not be crazy busy? Or are they just wanting a beach vacation? Because if they want the former thing, I'd say like maybe look at Scotland.

because you have the inner Heverdees, you've got the Outer Hebrides, you've got the Shetland Islands, you've got various other islands and things like that. And quite a few of them are fairly sparsely populated. Like the Arles Sky is a beautiful place. If you go there in the summer, it's absolutely heaving and stuff. And so you'll get caught in traffic everywhere. But if you go in the off season, we went there last year at the end of April, beginning of May. Beautiful, on our way out, we hit a little bit of traffic. But it wasn't particularly busy in the off season then just because the weather usually isn't all that great.

but we got quite fortunate while we were there. I went up to the Orkney Islands during Three Cards, Three Contents. That's where the world's shortest flight is, which is only like a minute and a half, two minutes long. And with that kind of thing, there's not a ton of stuff to do, but if you go on the main island of Orkney, there's like a distillery there. You could do like whiskey tasting.

I want to say there's a brewery. There's various other things like old churches and things like that, hiking opportunities. Some of the other Orkney Islands, I don't know about the Hebrides or Unserrides. and some of the other Scottish islands, but the Orkneys, I feel like some of them have puffins and stuff like that.

So if you're into bird watching, or even if you're not into bird watching, like puffins would be pretty cool to see. Like there's hiking opportunities and things like that, Neolithic mounds and buildings and graze and stuff that are like 5,000 years old, so they're older than the pyramid. So there's stuff to do even on these tiny islands

and stuff. So that's an option. If you're just purely wanting to get away from people and not being majorly touristed spots, then that's one possible suggestion. How about you, Tim? Well, so I'm a little torn between the virtually undiscovered, but still have things to do apart. So you want, so the activity, it's virtually undiscovered, but there's activities.

So I'm going to just toss out, if you really want a virtually undiscovered island, if you're really wanting something, you can be really something that's local to me. There's a lot of uninhabited islands in the San Juan Islands, which are in the Puget Sound. The San Juan Islands are known for some inhabited islands. that are very easily reached, but you can go up to Seattle and drive north, pay $150, 200 bucks for a water taxi, and have your own island if you're willing to camp. And there will be plenty of things to do if you're willing to kayak or things like that. But it's not virtually undiscovered.

It's just that nobody takes the effort to get there. We're very few. And it's really special. So, I mean, I guess that's the, I think, the tough thing for me to kind of reconcile in the question is like how to, yeah, activities, but virtually. discovered. And I'm sure there's a lot of islands in the world, like literally tens of thousands out there. Greg? Well, I just got back recently from a really cool island. It has lots to do on it. It's called Ireland. So I recommend that one. I'm not sure it fits the question, though.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I haven't. I don't spend time looking for previously undiscovered island. So I don't have a lot of experience in this area. I will say that one really cool island that I don't think is known to most Americans is an island called Aero in Denmark that I went to. And I mean, Danes know it. So it's a vacation destination for them. But it's, you know, if you just want to get away from where the typical, you know, American tourist goes, something like that might be fun. I have a list. Most of them fit in that category, though, where it's like they're discovered, just maybe not by, maybe not indicted with American tourists. I haven't been here myself, but I've done a bunch of research to, it's on my wish list. Yapp and Palau. You can get yourself to Guam or Saipan with points, I'm pretty sure. And then once you're there, then there's some ways that you can get to the other Micronesian Islands. Cook Islands are also great Raritanga. That might be. be more touristed now than it was when I was there. But I think there's a half of the island that's touristed and a half that's not.

So go to the half that's not. Martinique, I've heard good things about. I've been to Guadalupe and I hear Martinique is like the undiscovered version of Guadalupe. It's a French, is that French Caribbean? What is that technically part of it? Yeah. Yeah. And then a Honduran Island Roiton.

That's really popular with divers. but not really so there's stuff to do but I think it's still mostly dive centric and then this is way more well known but probably still not inundated from this crowd if you go to Bali and then go onward to Gillian Lombach then you're going to lose a lot of the crowds that you would have in Bali and that would be easy to get to from Bali that's my list very nice very nice I'm impressed you had a list saved up for that that's yeah That's well done. I wrote my list while you guys were being a hog and mentioning European islands.

While Greg was talking about Ireland, you were. Well, and I found Saipan, you mentioned that. I found Saipan fascinating. You know, like it's not undiscovered, but I found it fascinating. So a lot of jumping off playing for a Palau. But also a lot of great snorkeling. Some of the best snorkeling I've done was in Guam and Saipan. All right.

Let's do one more question. Well, we can do maybe two. Let's do Greg. What airline programs should be avoided due to poor customer service? I try to book when flights come out, which means there are often scheduled changes. That can be a problem opportunity. Problem slash opportunity. Okay, I'm a little confused by the question because airline programs or airlines.

So schedule changes are caused by the airlines, whereas airline programs with poor customer service are like, you know, Avianca, Life Miles used to be really direct. for that. And so people, I don't think they're considered that bad anymore, but people used to avoid them due to customer service issues like using their miles to book stuff can be problematic. I'd say Turkish is one I would avoid booking if you're worried about, you know, the customer service of, again, this is for the rewards program, not fly. I'd fly Turkish any day. So, yeah, I don't know if there's more to say there. You famously avoid American Airlines, though, right? Oh, well.

Although you kind of suck at avoiding them. It's not because of customer service. I don't know if you actually, do you really avoid them? I think their, I think their customer service is okay. It's, it's their operations that are terrible. So the, yeah, they, you know, so often have very late flights. cancellations and everything. I've had really bad luck with American. But as Nick points out, I haven't done a good job of avoiding them because sometimes the mileage deals are so good,

especially using Alaska's Atma smiles to fly them that I've been booking them. I've been booking them quite a lot. And Delta has helped by their operations have sucked lately, really. bad and so they're making American look not so bad in comparison. Am I the only one that thinks KLM is like particularly bad with customer service? Like flying KLM? Yeah, I've never had any trouble with KLM. Really? In the comments, let me know if I'm the only one or if I'm crazy that like I feel like.

Now, if you're talking about the airport, if you're talking about it after an airport, I'm sure plenty of people will have complaints there. Yeah. Well, I mean, truthy told plenty of people have complaints about every airline program. in every airline and hotel. I mean, you hear negative stories all the time about all of them. Bad things happen all the time. So to good things, by the way, but people don't report those quite as often.

So this person says, let's see, we've got people saying Palau is fantastic. United is the main way to get to Mercantia. This is just revisiting the island. I'll mention another island that's cool to visit, but not a lot to do necessarily. It used to be called Fraser Island. Apparently they changed the name to Kagari. Yeah, in Australia, really cool. There's no roads or anything.

You got to rent a four-wheel drive vehicle and it's all sand. So you can get to isolated spots on the island where you won't see very many other. I mean, we were there a whole day and we barely saw anybody. And you're driving along the sand and, you know, it's not developed. And you can camp there. And there's some cool wildlife, dingoes and these monitor lizards and stuff. So cool place to visit if you're just looking at kind of get off the map. Someone here mentions Chook, which is really interesting.

I've always been curious about that because that's also there in the Micronesian Islands and pretty close to Saipan, I think. Pretty close flight. So that's interesting. Cool. Has anybody mentioned Manhattan? That's an island that's gotten left out here. Is there anything to do there? Not that I'm aware of, but I mean, I think it's pretty undiscovered.

You can use built points there, right? Yeah, you can certainly use built points if you want to park. Cool. And then someone else says Roton. Cool. So make sure you read the comments on this video. everyone watching. But I think that brings us to the end for this episode. So Nick, take us away with your special goodbye. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to give us a thumbs up. Everybody,

if you're watching or listening, like this, give us a review, leave us some stars wherever you're watching and you're listening. And if you'd like more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. And we will catch you on the first of every month here. on YouTube at 9 p.m. if you want to be live or on all your favorite podcast platforms whenever you'd like to listen. All right. Thanks so much

for joining us, everyone. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel comedian and since 2011 host of the Travel Tales podcast. When I'm not traveling the world telling jokes for money, I'm traveling for fun out of curiosity and love of new places. And I love talking about travel with other people who share my passion, whether they're travel experts,

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