Frequent Miler on the Air - Which Hyatts will you be book before the award chart changes? | Ask Us Anything Ep84 | 3-4-26

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

What would you suggest if your P2 (partner, or "player two") is very reluctant? Which Hyatts will you be book before the award chart changes? We answered these questions and more on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on March 4th, 2026(02:10) - What specific Hyatt properties have you booked/will you be booking before the upcoming award chart changes?(12:17) - How did you guys learn about HOW to find good flights to book with transfer partners? I am trying so hard to learn, but it feels confusing and overwhelming. need more concrete, step-by-step help.Read about the top award search tools here(18:05) - I have a question for Stephen and Carrie. Now that I am retired my wife and I are interested in finding rentals for several weeks at a time. I am pretty good at finding good properties on Airbnb and VRBO for several days but have less experience with navigating longer term rentals. Do you have any tips on how to find good locations and get good deals?(27:32) - Looking to get a Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card and upgrade a Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card. Should I do this on 2 different devices at almost the same time or does it not matter?(28:26) - I am planning a trip for 2 weeks covering Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo with 2 year old, do you have recommendations on where to stay? Planning during JulyRead more about this here: https://frequentmiler.com/use-finnair-avios-to-book-scandinavian-hotels-at-2c-per-point-or-better/(32:35) - What would you suggest if your P2 (player two) is very reluctant? I can't convince him to open more cards(38:27) - Do the Hyatt changes make you reassess the value of Chase Ultimate Rewards points?(39:58) - Can I request a retention offer for my US Bank Altitude Reserve card and then product change a month later to the Connect?(42:20) - ​​Can I book Hyatt stays now before the changes take effect, and later modify the dates while keeping the same redemption rate?(42:55) - ​What is the best way to use Wyndham Points nowadays, and do you see any new alignments in the future to replace Vacassa(47:44) - Are there good award search engines for hotel award stays?Read more about this here: https://frequentmiler.com/editmaxxer-a-tool-to-maximize-chase-travel-the-edit-credits/(51:08) - Have/would you guys entertain having all your P2s on for a podcast or AMA so we could hear about their experience through all the shenanigans you play?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 NetworkVisit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the frequent Myler team answers your questions live. Yes, we're live. Go for it, Nick. All right, welcome to this week's Ask Us Anything. I am doing the Greg portion today in welcoming everybody here. This is our monthly, rather, our monthly Ask Us Anything where we go live to answer your questions.

And so if you'd like to join us from one of these, it's the first. Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. that we do these live and you can ask your questions on YouTube. Wherever you're watching or listening to this, please give us a thumbs up, like this video if you're watching on YouTube or give us some stars. If you're leaving podcast ratings, we always appreciate that. And I think that brings us into question time, right? So Stephen, do you have a question to kick us off with? Well, I have a quick question first. Before Stephen's question, I just want to know. So I had somebody, so what happens when Greg the frequent Myler. The big thing we need to call out front and center, Greg the frequent

miler is not here. Greg is walking upside down on the other side of the world. What is it, Stephen, trying not to chunder? Correct. Trying not to chunder. Are we sure that's an appropriate word? Yeah, totally. So check out the man down under song. But so somebody said, so what do we do when Greg's out of town? When Greg's away, Carrie, did you throw a kegher and invite all of the Ann Arbor peeps over? Or is there anything that happens when Greg's out of town? Or do we just like industriously chip away at daily cats? We just keep it rolling.

We just keep the machine going for the most part. When the cats away, the mice don't play. No, we just work and make it work. The sad fact is we're all too old to play. Yeah. The cats away, it's like, well, I guess we don't have a team meeting so we can sleep in, maybe, I guess. It depends on what time's going to take a nap. Yeah, yeah.

Speak for yourself. that's dinner time for me. Yeah, totally. So Greg, Greg's absence is sorely missed, and we hope that he's having a great time walking around upside down on the other side of the world and chundering, or hopefully not chundering. Yes. So, Stephen, start us off

with the first question that you collected ahead of time, and then otherwise we'd like you to submit your questions in the chat here live on YouTube, and we'll feed them as we go. Cool. So our very first question is, what specific hire properties have we booked or will we be booking before the upcoming award chart changes. So just as a recap, I had announced that they're going to be changing how they price

awards. So they're going to go from off-peak standard and peak to five different levels. I know that there's like top. Nick, you probably remember all five of the terms for different things. So what were there? It was top. Lowest, low, moderate, upper and top. There we go. So, yes. Awards going to be getting more expensive plus. We're expecting there to be category changes announced, or like with specific properties going up or down, categories announced at some point in the next few weeks because that's usually when they announce it each year is March sometime.

They announced it'll be April this year, though. When they announced the new award chart, they announced that those changes are coming in April. Oh, it'll be April. Okay, cool. So do you guys have any plans to book things now before it gets more expensive? Tim, what do you got? Yeah, start with Tim.

Well, I have a, so I'm going to cheat in one way, not really overall. And partially it's because I'm not, I'm honestly not expecting to see huge changes for the remainder of this year. And I've just started thinking about next year because of the booking windows that we're in. So I'm kind of like, eh, at this point. But a couple things that I did think about. One was a booking that I already made that I'm glad I did is I have been wanting to try a mirror ball for quite some time. And so last year I stretched a little bit and got. If you get 100 elite nights in a year from Hyatt, you can get a what's called a Mirabal

extra night that gives you a free night. Like on a points or a cash booking, you can get a free night. Like a, that's like a fact like a bogo, buy one, get one free. And so I had that certificate. So we had already made Mirabal reservations. And I already, like, I can't remember what the cost was. I think it was like 65,000 points a night. It's something ridiculous.

But these properties, they, it's like a whole, The idea is it's like a health and wellness retreat kind of thing. And I already was sort of blanching at spending that amount of points. Looking at what the new charts look like, I'm really, really glad that I made that reservation now because I would never spend what they're going to charge for these properties going forward. So I did that.

And the other thing is I've been kind of dancing around for a couple of years about doing a just for the blog going somewhere and trying to compare it, like do a week and spend it and do a week at like one night during a week at various high at all-inclusive properties. And I've been putting that off because I don't really like all-inclusive properties, but I thought it would be a fun sort of, hey, here's the different brands, because there's like nine of them now or whatever, 10. So now I'm kicking around booking that or planning that

because those charts, again, are going up like crazy. And I already don't like spending the amount that it requires to book an all-inclusive property, and I'm going to like it even less once the charts take over. So those are kind of the two things that I'm tossing around. Nick, how about you? I want to know if Stephen's planning to stock me at the places that I'm going to. Is that way you want to know where I'm going to be? No, so I did book a couple.

So, all right, sort of similar to what Tim said. Because of the way the booking window works, I already had most of this year's travel plan, most of it, when this was announced. So, and you can only book so far into next year. However, when this was announced, it was almost perfect for a year in advance for next February. In my state, in New York State, kids are off of school for a week in February. Instead of President's Day, they get President's Week. And so that's a really popular week for people from New York to go on vacation, particularly anywhere warm. So the whole Eastern Seaboard and the Caribbean tends to be very expensive that week during

February. So, so I booked a property in the Caribbean. That's as specific as I want to be now, but, but booked a property to go to and check out and we'll see how that goes for February break because I knew that that week would be hard to get later on probably. And, and like Tim said, the prices that some of these properties are going to cost going forward. I'm just not going to be interested in going anymore. So I want to get one of those in now while I can. And then I, I'm already going to be on the West Coast. So I've made a couple of reservations and I don't know exactly which ones they'll keep, but intend to visit the Monterey Aquarium. And so I'm looking at the Hyatt's in that area to use for now and also in San Francisco because I'll be out there for a few

days. But unfortunately, like I said, unfortunately, fortunately, I did have most of this year's travel booked already. So I'm not jumping on a lot of other stuff either, partly because, and this is probably the case for a lot of us, I've traveled to a lot of the places that, I kind of wanted to, that, you know, they were out there. And so I don't, I don't feel as much pressure. I think if there was a situation where I was like, oh, man, I've always wanted to go to whatever it is, the Park Hyatt and Paris, then I would be looking to do that now. I haven't actually stayed at that property, but that was never at the top of my list. So, so I do think it makes sense for those types of properties, your high end, category seven, category eight that you like have always wanted to

and dreamed of staying at and you will not dream of spending seven. $75,000 points, it's worth planning a trip around that now. So let me quickly add a little asterisk to this question for you, for you as you finish your response and then for Stephen. So then based on kind of what you're saying, if there was one property that you, like say, category six, seven, eight or whatever, that you've already been to, that you hadn't been to,

what would you prioritize to say, you know what, I want to get this before it's going to cost me an arm in five legs? That's a great question. Boy, it's, I mean, the property that comes back to my mind is the Grand Hyac Kauai, and it's not because it's the best hotel I've ever been to necessarily, as much as it's one that I really like. It's very pretty. The breakfast is pretty good. The lounge is nice. The staff is really friendly, and Kauai is just a

wonderful place. And so it's a place that we've been to a few times now, and so it holds a lot of good memories, and it's a place I've enjoyed going back to. Again, I think sometimes in this game, you start to find places that you kind of look forward to going back to and you look forward to that familiarity of a particular place that you liked. And so that's a place that holds a dear place in my heart that I would enjoy going back to again. But unfortunately, I'm just not going to get a chance to this time. I think if you've never been to Kauai, that might be one that's worth prioritizing because it's a pretty good value compared to cash rates a lot of the time, even though it does still cost quite a lot of points these days. but there are tons of great properties out there.

So it's really hard for me to pick one, I think. But Stephen, you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I probably would have picked exactly the same property as you because I did love that. Although, I think it's more expensive now than when we visited a couple of years ago. Same. Because, like, did it go up to category eight last year, if I remember right? So it's already, like, more expensive than it was when I booked our stay then. I think I'd managed to snag, like, we stayed there for a week.

And I think I snag like at least two or three days where it was. off-peak as well. And so got quite lucky with the award pricing when it was at category 7. Otherwise, maybe like the Hyatt Regency in Lake Tahoe, we really loved that property. We stayed there in off-season, and it was a wonderful place, incredibly dog-friendly, like, quite a few of the activities and like the guided hikes and things like that. You can bring your dog along as well. We were visiting with our dog at the time, and so that was super nice that and we didn't just have to leave her back in the room when we wanted to go do stuff. In terms of future bookings, though, haven't really got anything else I need to do.

Like Nick and Tim, I think I booked most of our accommodation for the coming year already. We do have a few stays coming up that I do still need to book, but none of those are cities where Hyatt has any kind of presence, so that's not any kind of priority for booking right now. So yeah, like as of now, that, yeah, I'm not planning on booking anything now. And I think for all three of us as well, it's quite handy because we're somewhat flexible with when we go on vacation and travel. So that does give us a bit of an edge over a lot of people who only have, say, like, one week or two weeks off per year from their job and can only go during like summer vacation or school holidays or something like that. being able to pick and choose our dates means that we can hopefully find dates at a party

where we really want to go in the future at the lowest or low or moderate rates, which makes it a little bit less of an issue with this award pricing changes. I find it really interesting that all of you guys have basically planned your entire year of travel and it's only March. That's what you got to do. You've got to plan in advance, Kerry. And that will be like, I haven't necessarily planned my entire year. But in terms of like the big destination stuff, like, you know, the big, like what we're doing over spring break, it's already planned out.

What we're doing over the first part, like, and partially it's because of my wife has, is balanced somewhat by the school calendar. So we look far in advance by her based on when she's available and so forth. I'm sure there will be other things that I'll add along the way and we'll do along the way. But it's just the big ones that are sort of like the destination ones. Those are kind of already planned. I should have added, I'm sorry, and I know we need to move on, but I should have added that this may all change when the category changes come out. because if there's places that move up from category four, particularly to category five next year, that's going to make huge difference. Then I will make a strong effort to book some of those category four properties before they move into a band where it's going to cost far more to stay at them.

Yeah, that's a good point. All right. So next question. We're going to start with Tim. How did you learn about how to find good flights to book with transfer partners? I'm trying so hard to learn, but it feels confusing and overwhelming. I need more concrete step-by-step help. What do you got?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say that I am like still learning partially. But so to back up there, there's kind of two ways of, the question sort of asking two ways is like, how do you actually book the partner award? There's the one thing of how do you find space and know that which program is best to book that space. and then the second is how do you actually then book the award once you see that there's space? And honestly, these days, I do the vast majority of my searching through the various award search tools that are out there. The primary one that I use, and it's just because it's my favorite as seats. arrow, it takes a little bit, it's not as user-friendly for people that don't know what they're doing, or not that they don't know what they're doing, but don't have a lot of experience and searching for stuff. but there's a lot of really broad search capacity that you can do with it that's really cool

but that said i also use a ward tool i also use points yeah those are kind of like the three that i tend to use and stephen and nick you can add any that you find useful for like from a beginner's perspective and even the free versions of those can be very helpful in terms of finding the actual space specifically for flights especially on these is what i'm talking about and not hotels The other one is there's one called point dot, it's point dot me, right? Emmy. Yes. Yes.

And that one kind of drives me nuts because it's really slow. But what it does have that I think is cool for a beginner's perspective is once you find space on something, it will actually show you step by step how you need to get, how to get your points that you have into the currency that you need in order to book that. And a lot of the different tools will have these sorts of things where they'll say, hey, here's the space. You can book it these five different ways through these five different programs. But point.

Dot me goes an extra step and it kind of gives you a tutorial and saying, here's how to get from where you're at to where you need to be in order to book this. So that can be helpful. And the cool thing, too, about a lot of. of these is many of them you can buy like a short trial so like you can you don't necessarily have to get a subscription you can say hey i'm going to buy i think it's usually about a week i'm if i'm if i'm remembering correctly and then it's and you can just sort of use it as much as you would like with unlimited searches during that week or you can subscribe to it as well i subscribe to a lot of them

but i look for a lot of flights but that actually these days i think is is a great starting point Now, the caveat that I will say is not everything is caught by these search engines. And as you go through and start to learn more about the programs and where things can be found, you'll probably start to branch out a little bit on your own and say, oh, I see this here. This gives me an idea of something I might be able to do here. However, that's super confusing. And when you're first starting out, I think these award tools are really great. We have a post, the Greg writes every year called Which Award Search Tool is Best.

So check that out, and I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes here. Check that post out, and he does a really good job of kind of going tool by tool and saying, hey, here's the strengths, here are the cons. And I would use that as a starting point personally. Yeah. A couple of very quick things I'd add is that some of the search tools are available on shopping portal so that can reduce your net cost for the first year. I know seats.ero is definitely on there. And sometimes you'll get like 100% back on your first monthly payment or like 30% back

on your first year's payment if you do an annual membership. So that's a way to save a bit more if you are interested in subscribing. And the other thing I'd suggest is join our Freakwit Myler Insiders Facebook group because if you've like done some award searches, like say you want to get from like the US to Rome or something like that. And like you go in there, you can post like, I found this, this and this. Is this my best option? There are so many helpful people in the group. Like there's, I think like more than 50,000 people in the group now. And if you show what you found so far, you will definitely get people who are wanting to help you find the best possible thing because you've kind of like shown that you've like done the research, but there may well be like

additional stuff that you've missed. So I'd recommend like joining the group if you're not already. Yeah. Let me throw in one and a half more plugs. I know we got to move to the next one. Points path. If you haven't looked at that, it's worth looking at all of them. Because that plugs right into Google Chrome.

It's an extension. It'll show you award pricing side by side with cash pricing. It has a limited number of partners in the free version, but it's a great start for understanding that. And it's a tool that I just use all the time without thinking about it since it plugs into Chrome. And then the other plug I'll give you is that I believe, Kerry, correct me if I'm wrong,

Is it this weekend's podcast? It's actually going to be all about the tools that Greg and I actually use on a regular basis. So we're going to talk about this on the next full-length frequent mile around the air. So make sure you listen to that. That's right. And by the time you listen to this in podcast form, it will be the podcast from two days ago. Okay. For those of you who are live.

That's why I needed to carry help. For those of you who are live, it will be in two days. Anyway, so two days, either direction. All right. So next question is for Stephen. and I. This person says, now I am retired. My wife and I are interested in finding rentals for several weeks at a time. I'm pretty good at finding good properties on Airbnb and VRBO for several days, but have less experienced navigating longer term rentals. Do you have any tips on how to find

good locations and get good deals? Stephen, you go first. Yeah, so I, so this was a comment left on the Ask Us Anything blog post where we kind of like remind people that it's coming up. and I've already replied to them there, so I'll basically just read out my answer that I gave them there, just because I imagine there are people watching who would be interested in this kind of information too. So the first thing I asked them was if their stays are in the US or overseas, because if they're in the US, on Airbnb, you can check the pricing for stays of 31 or more days. That's because a lot of states don't charge for tax, don't charge like accommodation tax for stays when you're going to be there for 30 days or more or 31 days or more.

It kind of like depends on the state. And normally if you're staying at hotels for that long, then you have to proactively ask them for a refund of the tax. But with Airbnb, they seem to automatically remove the tax during the entire booking process so you don't even have to pay it up front, which is nice. Also, many Airbnb hosts offer a substantial discount when you're booking a month-long stay. So it can be worth reaching out to them directly if you're not seeing kind of like a big discount displayed when you're doing a search.

Just reach out to a particular property owner if you find somewhere that you're really interested in staying, say that you're interested in a long-term stay and ask if they'd be willing to give you a bigger discount for that kind of booking. A lot of them may well say no, but I'm sure you'll get some who'll say yes. Also, when doing a search on Airbnb,

especially for stays that long, you're quickly going to realize that there's some stuff that's non-negotiable. Like you're going to want fee parking, Wi-Fi, a kitchen, washer dryer and things like that. So use the filter options that they have on Airbnb to select all of those because that will help narrow down certain properties. And then you can use the slider on there to reduce the price to a certain price range

that you're going to be comfortable with. As for Verbo, I've never actually booked through Verbo. I've only ever used Airbnb, so I don't really have many recommendations for how to find the best deals on Verbo. And then in terms of locations, I ask them if they meant in general because it depends on if they're happy to visit anywhere in the world or if they're just looking for recommendations

of how to find a good location in any given city. Because if they're happy to travel worldwide, Airbnb lets you search by country or even by continent so you can just plug in like Europe, your kind of like dates and travel requirements and things like that. and then you'll just get all kinds of options. If they're just wondering about how to find out the best location within any kind of specific city, then I recommend that they take a look at Google Maps and take a look at the hotel options in certain neighborhoods.

Because if you've got like a high regency, a Crown Plaza of Renaissance and stuff like that, chances are it's a business district. And so that may or may not be good for what you're looking for. But then if you're finding that in an area, they've got things like a red roof in, days in, quality in, super aid and stuff like that, chances are it's going to be a bit more of a shady, dodgy neighbourhood. And so you may not necessarily want to stay there. And also just use Google Street View as well. So if you just like drag the little yellow person on Google Maps onto there, you can just search all around. And then that's not always entirely accurate in terms of getting great impression or not of what a place is like.

but it can give you a bit of a better sense of what that particular place looks like. So that was the recommendations that I had for them. How about you, Carrie? Yeah, the only other things I would add is that, again, just like you, I don't know as much about VRBO, but in Airbnb, so to see that, like, flexible search, they have a really convenient search tool. So you click, you know, you can type in where you're interested, but then when it, in the section where you would put in dates. If you click flexible instead, you can say you want a weekend,

a week, or a month, and then you can pick which kind of calendar area you want it to be in. And then they'll show you all kinds of options. So especially if you're flexible, then the map will not, it won't show you a specific range of dates. It will show you a bunch of prices for a bunch of weeks, and you can highlight the options to see, you know, this one is June 5th to, you know, 15th and this other one is June 15th to 30th. And so you can start to kind of build, fill in your calendar or build your trip around this really great spot that happens to be available for two whole weeks here. And so if you select month, it might not show you an entire month. It might show you like close to a month, but you can start to kind of like see search results that aren't

limited to things that don't apply to you because you're flexible. So again, just instead of using the calendar you want to click flexible and then click weekend week or or month and then for figuring out like um what part of town to be in if i'm going to be somewhere for a long time i'd definitely like to pull up google maps uh type in coffee and restaurants and start to like get an idea of like because i like my routine when i'm staying for a long time i like my you know i start the day with coffee and then i want to have like a few different restaurants i can try throughout the week i want to start to like be picture picture what my walking life is going to be like for that week and you'll start to see like a concentration like Mexico City is a great example uh you know we would be pinning all

these restaurants and they all happen to be in Lacandesa or you know you notice that they're all in one part of town well then you know that's the part of town you want to be in for me walkability is really important um if i'm staying somewhere for like a whole month um i want to like where i'm staying And then like Stephen said, definitely don't be afraid to message the host and ahead of time instead of instant booking, message them and just say, hey, you know, I've got good reviews, if you do. And I'm going to be staying for this amount of time. And is there any kind of discount you can give me since I'm staying for a long time? And a lot of people will do that. So don't be afraid to ask.

Yeah, I think that's all I can think of. How about the rest of you guys? Tim and Nick, anything else to add? The only thing that I would suggest since you're retired, since this person is retired, not youth carey, you better not be retired because we need you. But there's a service called, depending on your pet allergies or your animal allergies, there's a service called trusted house sitters that we use a lot. And I know several people that use a lot.

And they use as sort of their exclusive way, their permanent digital nomads. And they use this as their exclusive way by and large of going around the country and the world. And effectively what this is, it's a place where it matches people who need house sitting and have a pet, usually, with people who want a place to stay. And there's no cost outside of the yearly membership for either party. And in some cases, I know I have several friends that they've actually sort of developed yearly sort of rhythms where they go back to a given place and a given house or a given sit and they sort of. sort of kind of now have their kind of yearly migration patterns mapped out through the sits they like. And I know that can be a very good way if you're not. But all that to say, it also does, man, it mean that you're going to have a pet there. And in some cases, that might be a dog that you

have to walk a couple times a day. And sometimes it means a cat that you can kind of throw some food in a dish and not have to worry too much about. Or in some cases, it could be a horse. There's actually people that try to do horses this way. But all bad to say, it's worth checking out if indeed you're trying to kind of do the full-time traveling thing. Yeah, one other tool, if you're looking in the States, there's something called furnishedfinder.com. It's designed for, I think, like traveling nurses and stuff like that, people with like work contracts. And so that's more like three-month, you know, one-to-three-month arrangements. I think it's only in the States. but that's a decent option.

It kind of fills the role that Craigslist would have at one point if you want to find like sublets and things like that. But instead it's people who, instead of subletting now, they're just furnishing a room and they got tired of Airbnb and they want long-term folks. So that's another one to test out. I think that's kind of all I can think of.

Nick, anything from your side? Not Craigststst. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've even remotely considered that It's like, there's whiffing and there's... No, I mean, I'm laughing because, yeah, we got an apartment in Berlin years ago for a few months from Craigslist. So I totally know what you mean. Yeah. Oh, but it's freaky.

The dews out. Oh, my gosh. I wonder if it, yeah, I wonder if that even really exists anymore. And then there's couch surfing, which still exists, but not in the way that it used to. Now you pay a fee, kind of like the trusted house sitters. So it's a little bit more like just the rest of these, you know, VRBO and whatnot. All right. let's move on. Stephen, this one's for you.

I'm looking to get a Hilton Aspire card and upgrade a surpass card. Should I do this on two different devices at almost the same time, or does it not matter? I mean, I'm not really seeing a need to do it almost instantly. What I would do is get the Aspire card first and get that approved, because if you upgrade the surpass card first, that will likely prevent you from being able to earn a welcome bonus on the Aspire card. So sort out the Aspire card. then after that, do the surpass card.

Sometimes there's a landing page on the Amex website where you can just visit your surpass card and then upgrade to an aspire. Other times you can't actually product change online, so you would need to do an online chat or call up Amex and have them upgrade the card to an aspire for you. But yeah, definitely sort out the brand new Aspire card before doing the surpass.

All right. Nick, I am planning a trip for two weeks covering Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo with a two-year-old. Do you have recommendations on where to stay? Planning during July? Well, I mean, the first thought that comes to my mind for that part of the world is choice privileges because they partner with what's now known as strawberry hotels, but it's still clarion and clarion collection and comfort-in type things. But those properties are nice in Scandinavia, and just as is the case with Choice Privileged,

just properties elsewhere. Sometimes you'll be able to find rooms that accommodate more people, larger rooms, sometimes even suites available for the same cost as a standard room. I haven't looked at those properties in Scandinavia for suites in a long time, so I don't know off the top of my head if there are those everywhere, but I know I've run into those situations before anyway where you'll find those larger rooms that accommodate more people, though if it's just three of you, I imagine most rooms would probably accommodate to adults and a small child. Anyway, so that's where I look first. Clarion Collection offers, and there's at least another brand that offers this too, offers both a free hot breakfast and a free hot evening meal, which is a fantastic value.

And if it doesn't sound amazing yet, just wait until you go out to dinner in Oslo. And you'll be really happy about the idea of having it included in your hotel bill. So that's one place I would recommend looking. Now, if you're a good value shopper and you're willing to do a little bit of extra work. Another potential option that doesn't get talked about a lot, but I've written about before, is that Finair has a number of hotel partnerships in the Scandinavian countries where you can buy a voucher for a particular brand of hotel for a number of obvious and a cash component. Now, the thing to know about this is whatever you see advertised on the landing page for that is actually flexible.

You can choose to pay more obvious or less obvious. And if you choose to pay the least number of Vos, essentially, you can pretty easily come out with like 15 or 20 cents per point in value when you're looking at the Scandic Hotel vouchers and the Socos Hotel vouchers. Some of the other brands you may not get quite as much, but again, there are opportunities. And you'll find those brands in all of those cities that you just mentioned in this question. So that's another place to look. So if you look up thin air Scandic hotels, S-C-A-N-D-I-C, you'll probably find the landing page and from there figure out what you have to click to look at all the different hotel ones.

The thing about those is that you get a voucher and you can only do it up to six months in advance. It does show you on the website, though, the code that you have to use to check for voucher availability. There's a couple of different vouchers like for Scandic. I know there's a basic voucher for some properties and a premium voucher that works for other properties. So it'll take you some time to research that. but can be well worth it. I did write a post about it. So if you just Google frequent miler, thin air hotels, I'm sure you'll probably find it or hopefully we'll get a link in the show notes here with a link to that post. So that's another option to consider for award stays if

you're looking for a good value. I'll just add like two very quick things. One is that find hotels and resorts properties. There were some like somewhat reasonably priced ones in the Scandinavian countries. So if you have an Amex platinum or business platinum and you have the $300 like twice yearly credits to use up, take a look at those. You've mentioned as well that you're going to be going with a two-year-old. So I'm kind of assuming that there's like two of you and a two-year-old. If that's the case, that like could potentially limit your options because a lot of hotels in Europe only that you have two people in a hotel room. But hopefully with them being two years old, there might be a little bit more flexibility there, but I imagine that will have some kind of

impact on where you'll be able to book. So that in itself will probably, like, restrain, constrain where you can actually book anything. Yeah, good, good point. All right, moving on to Tim. What would you suggest if your P2, player two is very reluctant? I can't convince him to open more cards. Is that something you've experienced? And what would you suggest? I think that everybody but Nick Reyes, everybody not named Nick Reyes has experienced this. Nick is, Nick has one of the rare P2s who's really a P1, masquerading is a P2. And she's, she's really taking Nick along for the ride.

She doesn't listen to the podcast. I'm not going to be any good, but thank you. No, no. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not sure if she's looking at the podcast. Like Nick's, Nick's player too is somebody that everybody in this game like,

uh, envies. It's like, oh my gosh. She's liquidating gift cards for you on your, on your, your, and remind you. She's the earn next to burn. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, you know, this is relationship. And I would, my first thing to say is that just like anything else in relationship, it's not worth your relationship to try to get them to open up more credit card.

And you really have to pick your battles. And so, you know, what I have, like for instance, my wife doesn't, we have a, we've developed after years of negotiation and therapy and all this other stuff. we she can have three she wants three cards and that's all she wants she knows she's willing to do three cards in her wallet and she'll spend on those three cards so i've developed a strategy around a three card strategy for her you know it's like okay here's here's what we can do this is these are the three cards and she's willing to have it rotate but as long she's more than three cards but i think that in general the thing is to just let your pt let your player two be your player two and probably

as you get more into things, as you start to open cards, as you start to take trips together, as they start to see what is happening, as they start to, you know, as all of this stuff sort of, as you get more into the hobby, they will probably become more comfortable with the idea of them opening more cards

or you sort of managing that on their behalf. And it's funny, I just had a good friend of mine who was married to another really good friend of mine. we'd go on a weekly walk together and just as last week he was saying that for the first time ever they had ran out of uh i think it was delta sky miles or something and his wife had uh agreed to let him open up a card for the first time ever in her name and he was so excited about it he's like i feel like this is a whole new chapter in our relationship right but i think you know i mean because you know

the reality is that you know they're they're their own person and they have their own credit and they have their own, you know, and it's not worth, it's, in my opinion, it's not worth trying to badger them into doing what you think they should do as opposed to just welcoming them into what you're doing. And I think in the end, there will probably be some kind of meeting in the middle somewhere. Yeah. And just as a like nice manipulation, maybe book a trip that would be like a dream trip for them. And try and make it luxury. So try and fly business class and stay in a suite or something like that.

Because if you do something like that, there's a good chance they're not going to want to go back and they'll be like, okay, I can see why people enjoy business class. I can see why people like this luxury hotel. I'm getting on board. Like Tim said, like even if they don't necessarily want to be opening a whole ton of cards themselves, they might be willing then to let you kind of manage that side of it. So I'm like, although it is manipulation, really it's benefiting them. And so is it really manipulation at that point? So, yeah, that's just one. Don't go to Stephen for marriage counseling, though.

I think it's also helpful, or at least for me, it was helpful because I was a somewhat reluctant P2 to demonstrate the increase in credit score. Like, I don't know what different people have different reasons why they're nervous about having more credit cards. but, you know, if you, you know, help them understand that it doesn't have to be something that tanks your credit score. And in fact, it can improve your credit score, then I think that can take a lot of that nervousness out. Nick, did you have anything to add? No, I mean, I thought that Tim hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter whether there's credit cards or anything else. You don't want to force an interest on somebody that they don't have.

and, you know, and to 10 or Stephen's point, I mean, demonstrating how it works and allowing them to become interested in it on their own, that, again, that probably is effective with anything, whether you're interested in cooking or watching real housewives or traveling with credit cards. Whatever it is that you have an interest in. The way to share that with somebody is more so just share your enthusiasm rather than try to kind of shove it down their throat. So I would, yeah, I think that you have to respect that, particularly in this field. I think to Kerry's point also, a lot of people get nervous about opening new cards and managing new cards and all the rest of that stuff. And so I think it's natural for people to be hesitant.

Also, though, it's probably natural for most people if they see that it's working to be like, tell me more about that, actually. So, yeah, I think it's a smart strategy to just plan some trips and rather than try to force it on them, share when they ask questions and don't push it on them, let them become interested in it on their own. It's kind of like what leadership works, right? Don't forget that... Not everyone should be doing this. So don't forget that, you know, there's some people who probably shouldn't be

opening credit cards. So, you know, if someone is nervous because they know themselves, then definitely don't push it on that. But anyway, for sure. We're going to move on to Stephen. Do the Hyatt changes make you reassess the value of Chase ultimate rewards points? To an extent, I guess it does, just because pretty much all of my chase points do get transferred to hire. That said, at the moment, there's kind of no real way

of knowing quite how bad this is going to be. We don't know yet what the award calendar is going to be like quite how expensive it's going to be. I mean, we know like how expensive it's going to be on a numerical basis as to if something's like top or moderate or lowest or whatever. But we don't know how that's going to be spread out over the course of the year. And so once we have a better idea about that, then we'll have a much better idea. And also like with the award category changes that are going to be coming up in April, once that's all like a bit more clear and we've been able to do a bit more research and see quite how bad or not how bad it is, at that point, I guess I'll like reevaluate how I value

chase points because if it does kind of obliterate the higher program, then it might be that I'd be more likely to transfer like ultimate rewards to aeroplane or something like that. But at the same time, I think I'd still have a hard time not transferring it to higher. So I probably will stick with it regardless. So to an extent, it doesn't necessarily matter like how, like what the value will be unless it does end up being abysible. We hope you're enjoying the frequent miler on the air. podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmyler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other

terrific resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to Frequentmyler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. All right, anyone disagree with that? Anyone want to fight Stephen on it. All right. Nick, can I request a retention offer for my altitude reserve and then product change a month later to connect? You can try. I don't, there's nothing that's going to stop you from trying. I think U.S. Bank is less established in terms of the whole retention offer thing, because they've never really been known for wildly generous retention offers. And I also don't think probably that there were a lot of products where people were, asking for retention offers either. So it's not one that I have a great sense on in terms of,

like, do they claw back a retention bonus? I would doubt that they're that sort of with it and organized to do that. I'm not aware of them clawing back retention offers. So maybe you could do that. And I also don't know what they make you agree to. Like American Express, I know, has a disclosure that they read you or if you do this in chat that explains that if you accept a bonus, that you're agreeing to keep the card for 13 months or whatever it is, and that if you close it sooner, that they have the right to take the points back. I don't know what that disclosure is like or if it even exists with U.S.

banks. So I've not had the same type of disclosure with other banks on retention offers in general. So I would doubt that U.S. Bank has anything like that, but I wouldn't know unless you try to be honest with you. A great place to ask that question would be our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group because you'll probably find somebody in there who has done it with U.S. bank before and could tell you whether that worked. I will say, though, that we've had some reports of people downgrading their altitude reserve and getting a prorated annual fee. There are quite a

few people who've reported that they've downgraded to the Altitude Connect and gotten a prorated annual fee. And there was one person who commented today on the post we had written about that to say that they had a card that renewed in November, I think, and they used the annual travel credit right away, November, December, just downgraded recently and ended up. up getting the entire annual fee refunded, much to their surprise. So I wouldn't necessarily even worry about stacking them here. But I guess that's the best I can answer is maybe. Does anybody have a better sense? No. I don't know if I go to this bank. I know that, like you said, Amex will claw back if you don't keep it for a year after, but I'm not sure. I don't know about

any of the banks off top my head. All right. Then we'll move on. Tim, can I book Hyatt stays now before the changes take effect and later modify the dates while keeping the same redemption rate? Well, I can't say with 100% surety. I can say with about 98.75% surety, maybe even 99.75% surety, no. The only thing that we have to go on is past changes and category changes on all of those. If you change the dates after the change is going to effect, you have to pay the new pricing. All right. Anyone else have any thoughts on that before we move on? Same. Same. Okay, dook. Stephen, what is the best way to use Wyndham points nowadays?

And do you see any new alignments in the future to replace Vacasa? No sense on if they'll be doing anything to replace Vacasa. To be honest, I'm not too sure if there are all that many other, like, vacation rental kind of conglomerates out there that are in Vacasa. Or I can't even remember what company it was that bought Vacasa. It was something. Casago, maybe? Pasago. Oh, yeah, Casico.

Or Casago or whatever there. Pasago kind of makes sense. Yeah, it does. It does. But in terms of best use is now, Colleges.com, if you're going to be traveling in the UK, you can get some superb value there, stay in some incredibly cute little cottages. We stayed at one in the Arles Sky,

which was absolutely incredible a year ago. And they're just all over the UK. So that's one good option. Windham properties overseas. I would recommend like values, like redemption values in the US don't tend to be all that good for the most part. But overseas, you can get some really decent value for 7,500 points. Like during the challenge last year, we stayed at a property of Munich during Octoberfest, only 7,500 points. But it was going to be like $200 a night or something like that.

Otherwise, when I was researching for that challenge as well, I noticed that Dubai, had some incredible values as well. Like they had 7,500 point redemptions, but much more expensive cash rates. Not necessarily your best vacation option right now, especially in terms of just physically being able to get there. But that's just one for the future. Bangkok in Thailand,

I can't remember what property it was. I think it might have been a Ramada. And again, Bermuda overseas is way different to Bermuda in the U.S. So don't let that scare you. But there was a 7,000. 500 point property that had like a full kitchen. It was a one bedroom suite or something like that. So that too could be some good value. And then yeah, just in general overseas you can find quite a

few 15,000 point properties, 7,500 point properties that are much better than one cent per point value. Plus the Caribbean and a few other countries have some all-inclusive properties. And so those can be a good redemption option as well. as well. Let me jump some points in Hawaii. Like there's a few properties like that that are good. Let me jump in on that. If you're not married to the idea of accommodation,

you should also take a look at the Windham Rewards experiences. If you just Google Windham Rewards experiences, they offer numerous different experiences you can book with points. And in some cases, there are things that you just couldn't get otherwise. I am really disappointed that I missed the chance. There are several New York Rangers hockey games this year

where you could get four tickets in the lower bowl. and get a chance for two kids under the age of like 13 to ride the Zamboni out on the ice. And I feel like that's so much fun. That would be cool. For the kids. And I missed all of the games. You think they would have believed in you and Sam or under 13? Good question.

Good question. But they do other things too. In fact, I just today was mentioning with the team here that they had a bunch of minor league baseball experiences. I bought at some point minor league tickets for my sister-in-law. I was a big baseball fan to be like the play ball. announcer at a minor league baseball game. And so that was kind of fun.

Today I noticed that the team in Frisco, Texas, has these founders club tickets or something to their minor league games. I think it was like 5,000 points for two tickets to a game that includes a full dinner and dessert. It included unlimited hot dogs, hamburgers, beer and wine at the game, parking pass, all the rest of that for 5,000 points, which you can sometimes buy for about $35. So, yeah. Yeah, pretty, pretty choice.

So there's some things like that every now and then where I'm like, wow, that's a great deal. If I was in Frisco, Texas, I would be going to some games, but I'm not in Frisco, Texas. So I'm not doing that one. But worth looking at their experiences, they've said that for this month, for members month, they're going to add more stuff to it. They've got tickets to Lady Gaga's shows at Madison Square Gardens. So there's some other cool stuff like that that you might not have considered. And if you're not going to use your wind and points on a hotel, they may be attractive.

Yeah, there's some kind of music festival. I think it was in Florida. It's like some kind of three-day festival. 1,000 points if you, I think it's like a limited time. Like there's only a handful of tickets kind of thing. But 1,000 points for a three-day like VIP pass to this music festival. If you enjoy the music that's there, would be a fantastic opportunity. Yeah, wow.

Cool. All right. Nick, this one's for you. So earlier we talked about the tools that help us kind of figure out transfer partners and all of that with award searches for flights. This person wants to know, are there good award search engines for hotel awards days? So gondola.AI is one that I know Greg uses a lot.

I don't love it. I have not found it to be always useful in finding the places that I wanted to find. But Greg's been using it a lot, so I must be missing something. But gondola. I will look for hotels and you can toggle on a switch to look at the points pricing versus the cash pricing. and Gondola uses our reasonable redemption values, actually, to show you whether or not the hotel is a good value as compared to its reasonable redemption value, which I think is super handy for people who don't want to do the math or aren't familiar with the math or are new to the game and don't even know what the math is that they need to be doing. So I think it's really useful from that standpoint for the places that it does find.

The other tool that I use quite a bit is Max My Point. And so Max My Point will show you calendars for particular properties. So you kind of have to know what you're looking for to some extent. And then you can look at award availability calendars. And so I find that useful, both A, to take a look and see what's available, but B, because I set alerts with it. So that when a room opens up, I can snag it. And that has helped me find rooms I needed numerous times already, where there was no

award available when I was searching. But I set up an alert. And in fact, just to kind of test it out early on, I set up one of those. and I still obsessively searched like all day for days and days and days on end to see what I find it before Max my point found it. And I didn't. So I was really happy that I got the alert, was able to book. So that's a tool I use rooms. arrow does similar stuff.

And so I haven't used rooms. dot arrow. I use seats. arrow all the time. I just haven't gotten in the habit of using rooms. But that offers similar functionality in terms of being able to set alerts. And I think perhaps it's even more useful if one of you guys uses room stuff. or maybe you can talk about that.

So that's a little bit about what I use. And then if you have a platinum card, Max, my point, has Max FHR also. And that'll help you find FHR and hotel collection properties. And that I use all the time now to look for properties because I hate having to log into Miami's account. It's like a slow process. And instead, I can just pop in a country and some dates and look at what there is available for FHR or hotel collection.

I find it just to be a faster tool to use. All right. Anyone else have anything to add there? Well, really quickly, just to throw on the max. F-H-R thing. I can't remember the name right off the top of my head. Do you remember what the tool is for the edit? It's like Max. So Google Freakimiler

Switch tool. It's a weird name because it sort of sounds like an adult site. It's like MaxxXX. Oh, edit. It's editmax.com. Edit.com. M-A-XXX-E-R.com. That's true. But don't worry about the two. X's it's actually completely safe for work.

And that's also one that can help with Chase the Edit credits as opposed to what, and Max FHR is awesome for FHR and hotel collection stuff. But that's also one that's good for the edit. All right. Now we're going to move on to everyone. This is an all play, but we'll start with Tim. And I'm going to like reshape the question a little bit. So this person says, have or would you guys entertain having all of your PTO?

Again, that's player two, on for a podcaster and ask me anything so we could hear about their experience through the shenanigans you play. So since we don't have them here, I'm curious, can each of you think of the one thing your P2 would say if they were on a podcast about like the shenanigans they have to put up with? Tim, what would what would your P2 say? Well, my favorite, my favorite P2 moment and it's and it's and I'm sort of. disregarding a question a little bit, but answering it another way is she doesn't have a high tolerance for the Freakomiler on the Air podcast. Shame. Or a lot of Freakle, really.

But it's so jokingly sometimes when we're like going around or something, I might turn it on to say, oh, hey, I have this great, you know, and I'll turn it on and it's Nick and Greg. And at one point, I think it was Nick talking about the Wyndham Earner Business card and like the various, like they were, at one point we had a segment called Card Talk where they would go through like a specific card and talk about that. And so Nick was talking about the, I'm going to say

it's Nick, he was talking about the various earning ratios and stuff and she's like, you know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like the adults in the Charlie Brown shows where it's like, 8x, whoa, whoa, whoa, wow, wow, wow. Facts, woo, rude.

Everything between the numbers sounds like. Fair, totally fair. Nick, how do you feel about that? Totally fair. I understand. So I think there's a fair. But so what I give her crap about, though, is like, she is like incredibly on the Starbucks

rewards program. And I'm like, how is it that this is the one that captures the attention? But anyway. I don't know. Coffee's an addictive substance, so. Totally. Totally. But so Nick, Nick, Stephen, what would your P2 say?

I mean, we already know kind of what Stevens would. say because she she helped Stephen and Shea Pepper were the world champions of the 2025 annual challenge. Yes. So Stephen, what do you think she would say if she was on a podcast specifically about

the shenanigans that she has to put up with? I don't know. I mean, because she doesn't have to get involved in too many shenanigans, like she would be more than happy to come on a podcast and stuff like that. Like she's way more entertaining to listen to than I am. But I don't know. she's for me like almost the perfect p2 maybe not quite as perfect as next p2 um considering

how much effort she'll put into the earning side of it um but Stephen just has nervous steel we're happily married for almost 22 years i i can get it by time first you're advising everyone to manipulate your p2 and okay anyway sorry go on but like she's really great just because she's more than happy for me to manage like the credit card side of things. She will make phone calls like if needed. I do try to like reduce the need for that kind of thing. But yeah, if she does have to ever call up a bank or anything like that, she is willing to do that.

And like back when we were living in the US and things like that, if we were going to like an office depot or going to Costco or something like that, she's like, do I need to come in with you? And if I said yes to like that. how many gift cards we're buying. But then she would like come in and be willing to do that and stuff like that. And so plus, I think I can imagine it being pretty hard if you have two people really deeply involved in the game just because then, especially when it comes to award booking, I can imagine there being kind of like conflict as to, no, this is the better option.

This is the better option. No, I want to be flying like this business class. Now I want to be flying this business class. And like this location is better. This hotel suite's better and things like that. because she is happy to leave that up to me, then I can try and make the best decision, like, for us, for, like, how we like to travel and things like that

without us, like having to, like, have any kind of, like, conflict as to, like, whose idea is better and things like that. So overall, it's, like, a great situation for me, so. Redemed. You redeemed yourself. All right, Nick, what do you think your P2 would say? In the interest of time, what I'm going to tell you is when this came, I saw this recently, someone, I don't know, know if I saw this particular question or it came from someone else. And I told her that someone

had brought up the idea of the player two is coming on Ask Us Anything. She looked at me and she said, did you tell them that I'm not awake past 9 o'clock at night? That's a good one. That's a good one. So yes, I don't think you'll be hearing from her on this anytime soon because she is not a night all like some of the rest of us. Right. Like Stephen over there at 2 a.m. His time zone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now. Yes. All right. Well, speaking of which, thanks so much for joining us all. We've come to the end of our time. Again, we do this the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Join us. Ask your questions. We've really enjoyed it. Okay. Wherever you're watching and you're listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up or a like. Leave us a comment. We always appreciate that. And if you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various. social media, join our frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions

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