Frequent Miler on the Air - Would you pay more for fully refundable rewards? What do you do with pets when you travel? These questions and more | Ask Us Anything, Live Ep72 | 2-5-25

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Would you pay more for fully refundable rewards? What do you do with pets when you travel? These questions and more came up in our Ask Us Anything, Live Ep72, originally broadcast live on 2-5-25. (04:31) - Who were our most-helpful followers for the Million Mile Madness challenge? These followers will be eligible for prizes for their help! (13:31) - How would you structure your credit card strategy with a P2? See our podcast episode about 2-player strategies here. (17:45) - Frequent Miler is by far my favorite travel blog. What blogs do you follow and why? (19:47) - ​​Any tricks to apply for 2 cards in 1 day? I feel like I read a post on how to do this but I can’t find it now. Find our credit card application rules by bank here. (24:02) - are you guys surprised at how many people completed the challenge? (25:00) - I know Greg went big with Alaska transfer, I'm curious how big the rest of the team has gone? And do any of you think the merger and Amex transfer will cause a devaluation soon? (28:32) - Any word yet on Chase’s 1 million point giveaway winners (that ended last week)? (29:13) - any thoughts on aeroplan 25 status match from Marriott Titanium? could be interesting for booking economy award tickets for upgrades on long haul flights? (30:47) - Marriott & Hilton appear out of favor with you these days. Hyatt remains your favorite but If you don't or can't stay at Hyatt, what is now your hotel chain of choice between IHG, Choice, Wyndham or? (33:34) - new SW companion pass promo (personal card, 4K spend in 3 months): is this just through end of 2025? Seems like a great opportunity to try.I can make that spend in a week! (34:32) - ​​have any of you ever had to transfer airports in Taipei. i have a 4-hr layover during which i have to travel between airports with a carry-on. is that even possible? (36:24) - What are the best opportunities for long haul business class availability for 4 "when schedule opens?" With 4 travelers and bound by school schedules I want to book ahead but it's getting very hard. (38:37) - ​​Thoughts on the recent update to Citi’s T&Cs on welcome bonuses for their strata premier when product changing. Seems like it’s a blow against churning  (40:26) - How much more are you willing to pay for award ticket that is fully refundable? I find myself going for AA or United flights even though UA may be cheaper on LifeMiles for example (45:23) - ​​really curious... do any of you have pets? what do you do with them when traveling? (51:48) - How often do you folks buy points? I recently started buying IHG, Hilton, Avianca, and Avios points when they are on sale, and find it a great alternative for folks with low spend. (53:36) - any awesome hotel redemptions coming up for you guys? Subscribe and Follow Music Credit - "swappin' back n' forth" by up @ night

Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the FrequentMiler team answers your questions live. We're live. We are live. Exciting times. Ready for your question. I'm actually in the basement of my brother's house outside of Omaha, and he's pretty excited. He said this is the most lucrative thing that's ever happened in his basement

and the most exciting thing that's ever happened in his basement. So this is... So it's exciting times out here at Papillion. Let me tell you. Exciting times. I mean, big things are happening.

Yeah, totally. So Nick, I hear that we have one, uh, fewer non-million, non SAS mileage millionaire as of today. Is that because you finally got your million miles? Wouldn't that be nice? Definitely not. Uh, so I,. So I am still missing the same two airlines, Virgin Atlantic and what's the other one? Vietnam Airlines. And so I submitted those claims on December 11th, and there's been no update. I haven't heard anything. When I pull up the app, if you pull up the app, you go into the menu there and check on the status of customer claims. And neither one of them has been touched since I submitted them on December,

like a few minutes after I submitted them on December 11th. So, so that's it. So I'm still just waiting in limbo, but. I'm not sure that even matters because, you know, I have my million miles, but I still never got credited for one of my flights. Well, you know what though, you know, what makes me really confident? I haven't gotten 100,000 miles. Right.

And so if I had gotten 100,000 miles, then I'd be really nervous because I think that they thought I only met 10. Because if you did 10 airlines, you got 100,000 miles. If you did 15, you get a million. So the fact that they haven't credited me with 100 tells me that they know that my case is not done. All right. For anyone who's just tuning in, what we're talking about is the SAS million mile madness thing that we did where SAS was offering people a million miles

if they flew 15 of their SkyTeam partners in the last few months of 2024. And Nick, Stephen, and I did that as part of what we called million mile madness challenge for frequent miler. And we're now waiting for the last, the final results to come in. So I have my million miles. Steven just got his last flight credited that he had to like, uh, get manually

credited, um, I think he's still waiting for the million miles though. Right? Yeah, I think so. Right. Yeah. I don't think he's still waiting for the million miles though right yeah i think i i think so right yeah i don't think he's gotten them yet yeah nick has your aero mexico flight your aero mexico flight was was credited though right yes my aero mexico flight eventually did credit so that one came through one of either vietnam or virgin atlantic to credit and then you're going to be a million or two correct yes i just need one of those two yep exactly and the fact like i said the fact that they haven't credited me with the you know the carrot for reaching 10 airlines tells me that they know they they're not done yet

so and i mean they were supposed to originally you know be done with this end of december early january and then they pushed it to january 31st now they pushed it to february 28th and who knows what's going to happen i'm a little miffed because i would like to have the miles to be able to use them but at the end of the day i'm glad that they're taking the time to go through and do this we we saw some stats right loyalty lobby published some stats and uh and so it had four points and it sounds like way more people completed this than they ever expected oh for sure oh yeah which is not a surprise to us. Yeah, totally. It sounded like they thought it would be like maybe 10, 15 people

are actually going to do this. Who thought that? First day. Somebody didn't do their due diligence on that. In fairness, Loyalty Lobby published some numbers in terms of the number of people from how many people from each of

several countries had completed this thing. SAS is based in Denmark. I think that there were 11 people from Denmark that did this, so they were spot on in their home country. Right. They just didn't know.

Unfortunately, they had signed the projections to Sven, and Sven got confused. He said, oh, I thought you were just asking me for the Denmark numbers. That's the problem. That's exactly what happened. Speaking of the challenge, so the major piece that we haven't done yet, aside from winning in some of your cases, is that we haven't announced our reader or our follower,

most helpful followers. So this challenge was unique in that we wanted to make sure to have winners from our audience who could kind of tag along with our participant wins. And so assuming everyone achieved the SAS Eurobonus Millionaire promo, we were going to grant a prize to the followers who helped each contestant

do that. Now, as of yet, we only have one contestant who's officially gotten that email, but we still wanted to make the announcement today of who everyone's follower pick was so that Nick and Steven don't have to bite their nails by

themselves they can uh have their favorite uh help helper followers uh sharing in the misery so uh why don't we should we start with greg since greg's the known winner um let's start with you. Sure. And just to remind everyone, the kind of grand prize winner here will get 400,000 miles and five free nights at Hilton Properties. So it's quite a huge win. And so since I was winner of the Million Mile Mantis Challenge, it's the person I pick who is most helpful that will get that grand prize. So without further ado, the person I picked, lots of people were really helpful. So it was really hard to choose. But the person I picked helped with two key things during my journey. One was, he had tips for me for how to get into and then out of Vietnam when my visa was all messed up. And so that was helpful. But the really big thing was when he messaged me and told me that Japan Airlines first class had just opened up. And so that is Forrest.

I won't give you give out his last name here. But Forrest, you know, you know who I'm talking about. So congratulations for winning the big prize. All right. Way to go, Forrest. We'll prize for us with your 400,000 and if you want to congratulate forest like this video please and subscribe so that you get notices anytime we do these goofy little lives. We'll announce some all kinds of fun things, I'm sure. So now Nick, let's go to you since you're here. Yeah, yeah. So I had some difficulty picking because I had a number of people who are really

helpful. I'm really happy for Forrest that he won a big prize because Forrest was actually helpful with me, too. I ran into him in person on the journey. And I got a little lost getting through the Guangzhou train station. And he was super helpful with that. And so I'm glad that he won a prize there. But out of the people that were commenting frequently in my post, I had a lot of trouble deciding who to name most helpful. So in the beginning, I set out parameters that I wanted to achieve. And I wanted to do a round the world ticket and blah, blah, blah. And I wanted something really complicated. And there

was a reader who did a fantastic job laying out an itinerary. And so I really appreciated that contribution. But I didn't ultimately end up doing that. And so I had a few readers also that commented with really, again, really long comments. So I want to give shout outs to a couple of people that were super helpful. Anish was super helpful in the comments. Matthew was super helpful in the comments. Whitney was super helpful, both in the comments and messaging along the way, like giving me some tips and ideas along the way.

So I really appreciated help I got from a number of people. But as I went back and poured over the comments and thought about it a lot, the reader that I had to pick as most helpful gave me a lot of inspiration in terms of routes to look at. And I didn't necessarily copy the suggestions that this reader gave, but it helped me look at a lot of the routes, especially for the Chinese carriers. And that was, I think, for a lot of us, the most challenging part of this is figuring out which of those flights was going to credit and how to figure out the fare class and where

to book them on trip.com or somewhere else. And so GH, the reader named GH, was incredibly helpful in answering lots of questions about that stuff specifically. And I would have really struggled, I think, to figure out how to book that stuff. And I may not have booked qualifying flights, if not for some of the tips, or I might have made a mistake and booked a non-qualifying flight here or there, if not for a number of the comments that GH left on the post. So I had to pick GH as the winner for me. So GH, you're going to have to sit on pins and needles with me that that last airline credits, and if and when it does, and I hope it does,

then you're going to be 100,000 miles richer for your help. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. And shout out again, there were a lot of readers that were really helpful in the comments on my post. So thank you very much. Congrats, GH. And I'm curious if Forrest or GH are in attendance tonight. Give us a little hello if you are. All right. Now we're going to do the most technically savvy thing we've ever done on a live and try to replay an interview I had with Steven earlier today since he can't be here tonight where he shared his follower can you all see my screen or can you see the video yep uh tell us a bit about who uh which follower reader commenter um was most helpful for you and maybe an example of how they were helpful for you um So I had quite a few people who gave a whole bunch of helpful suggestions and comments.

And so it was tricky, like picking one person. I'm going to go with Beth B. Like she ended up coming up with, I think, dozens of different suggestions. So I can't think of any like one particular thing that she had suggested that was like incredibly important in terms of how I put my trip together but she just came up with like so many different suggestions and like all different kinds of avenues to look at and different vouchings and things like that that were all super helpful and so yeah it just gave me additional places to look so yeah that's nice she additional places to look. So yeah, that's what I think.

She helped you with your brainstorming. That's great. So congrats to Beth B was it? Yes. Beth B. But before we give too much congratulations, last we checked in with you, you still hadn't gotten all of your SAS flights credited

and obviously Beth will have to care about that because if you don't win she doesn't win so can you give us an update on where that's at? Well it's actually quite timely because I woke up this morning and I had a notification on my phone from the SAS app saying that I'd earned 785 points and that was my fifth flight that was finally crediting for Kenya Airways and so it means that I should at some point in the next couple of weeks receive an additional one million points in my account.

So I am gonna be a millionaire, which means that Beth will be able to get her 100,000 points or miles herself. Nice, so you'll be a winner and so will Beth. That's great. Awesome, well that's a good update thanks steven thank you all right that's the word from steven congrats beth exciting all right steven yes that is exciting i'm glad to hear that that worked out and i think somewhere it's like he

said that he felt his place just like this before you know maybe your luck is right around the corner or something gh i'm hoping for both of us yeah he's gonna wish that he should that he would have advised uh nick for vietnam airlines or virgin atlantic right well i mean i will say the gh did strongly question the uh the the sort of way i i went uh off the rails with my Virgin Atlantic flight. So by hope, I hope for the two of us. Oh man. You can make Reyes to water, but you can't make him die. That's right. We'll see.

Well, we're going to move into some normal questions now. So thanks for following along there. First things first. So I think we had a podcast on this recently. I'm going to ask this question to Tim. How would you structure your credit card strategy with a P2, which is, of course, player two? I'm actually going to kick it to Nick and Greg,

since they literally just did a podcast about this. And if you haven't listened to that podcast yet, I'm not sure which episode number it is, but it was last week's, right? I think so. So you should listen to it. But they had to. So I think you guys should do a brief recap of some of the things you talked about on that podcast. We'll go with Greg. Okay, sure. recap of what some of the things you talked about on that podcast we'll go with greg okay sure well

you know specifically with reference to uh credit cards signing up for credit cards um some things we talked about were the ability to refer each other back and forth so you earn not just the welcome bonus uh on the one side but then you know the other side, you earn a referral bonus. And we really love American Express because it lets you start from almost any card that you have and refer your player two to almost any other Amex card. And so those give you great opportunities to do a lot of earnings. So by working together, you could essentially not just double the potential signup bonus earnings, but more than double because you're getting those referral bonuses on top of the signup bonuses. We also, in terms of credit card strategy, talked about when signing

up for hotel cards for the purpose of having annual uh, annual free night certificates that it's a good idea to apply at the same time. Um, so that you end up with, uh, you know, a free night each year that where it's validity starts and ends around the same time, because if they're off by like six months, it becomes so hard to plan a trip where you're going to use both of those certificates, like for a free weekend, for example. So that that's like a key thing that I unfortunately did not do with my wife when, when we started signing up for cards way back when. But so those are a couple things that I'll throw out there. But I think to go into a whole complete strategy is way beyond the scope of this. The only thing that I'll add to that is, or no, I won't even add it.

I'll have Greg at it. What about when, you know, so we just talked about a little bit about structuring like stuff that you structuring is not a word I want to use. Planning out your strategy for how to attack getting new cards. But what about your strategy for player two is like day-to-day spent? I mean, like how many cards is player two carrying around? How do you handle that?

Because most of us, maybe I'm an exception actually because I have a player two that's very active in the hobby. Although even still, there's a lot of times we get a one X charge when I'm like, how do we do that? Can't get a one X charge when I'm like how do we do that kick in a one-time charge so but so what do you do I mean yeah it's player to carrying six cards eight cards ten card what yeah I mean so that's that's less about optimizing your credit card spend and more about optimizing your marriage

and so in my case we have one you know card one card that's really good all around, which in our case happens to be the Bank of America premium rewards card because we've got platinum honors, which gives us that 75% bump in rewards. So the card earns at least 2.62% cash back everywhere and a little bit more in a couple of categories. So I basically just tell my wife here, use this card for everything. And yeah, we'll lose out on a few points here and there, but not enough for it to make that big of a difference. But it's a big difference in how happy things are in the household. It's a good strategy for a lot of people. Find one good all-around card for player two. I think that's the smartest strategy for a lot of people anyway.

And if you want to hear more tips, listen to episode 292, which was the January 31st podcast episode. All about that. All right. Next question. This is going to be for Nick. This person says person says frequent miler is by far my favorite blog thank you um what blogs do you follow and why so i follow a lot of boarding area blogs and i will actually i'm probably rare in this i would think uh overall in the blogosphere that i just tend to follow the

boarding area home page i'll go to the boarding area homepage, boardingarea.com and scroll the headlines and see what I find interesting. So, so I look at a lot of the other boarding area blogs. Boarding area, by the way, is like a blog network and we're on that network. So, but I look at that because it's one homepage I can go to and I can see a whole bunch of different blogs. Doctor of Credit, of course, I think all of us probably follow Doctor of Credit, great blog, lots of good of us probably follow Doctor of Credit. Great blog, lots of good information. So that's a good one to follow. And there are other smaller blogs that I look at from time to time too. And that'll kind of vary with what I'm doing and people that I've met along the way. As we do this, you get to know other people and you like their writing style and so uh so there's quite

a few others i mean i i really like uh travel with t-mac it's a canadian blog i enjoy reading it it's not even a points and miles blog it's just a blog i enjoy reading um when she posts and so that's that's one one mile at a time i've always enjoyed kind of and i like i enjoy gary left's voice at view from the wing so i I will read that because I just, I enjoy reading stuff that he writes. So, but really, I read a lot of different stuff. I mean, I'll look at dance deals from time to time because they post lots of good stuff. I look at slick deals a lot, which isn't really a blog, but it's another site that I look at. So hard for me to kind of narrow it down to one or two.

I also look at quite a few Instagram creators, max miles points. I often love his videos, even though they're often miles and points topics that I, I know a lot about. I really enjoy the way that he breaks things down. So I find that to be a good Instagram channel. If you'd like to learn via video, uh, you know, a short snippet video. Uh, I think he does a great job with that. All right.

Great. Any, uh, shout outs that anyone else wants to add before we move on? All right. I think you covered it. Tim. Yes, ma'am. Any tricks to apply for two cards in one day? I feel like I read a post on how to do this, but I can't find it now. So that varies a lot depending on the issuer. And I would say the best thing is go to, we have a post that's called the Complete Guide to Credit Card Application Rules by Bank. Just Google that. And that has detailed more or less up-to-date rules on how the different issuers are, not necessarily rules. When we talk about rules, these aren't published things,

but oftentimes, but they're things that sort of have been gleaned through open sourcing of people that are applying for these things, right? The only one that I can think of, and you guys can tell me if I'm missing something, because I frankly don't. I always have to go and like research this before I make applications. Amex will not approve you for two cards in one day because it's one card every five days, if I remember correctly.

So you have to wait at least five days before you get a second one. Everybody else, I think you can. Now, the question of whether or not you'll get approved for it is another thing. Some of them will combine hard pulls. So they'll only, if you apply for two consumer cards in one day, they will only check your credit once. And off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to say what those are. I think it's Bank of America and Capital One maybe that do that. But go look on that post and it'll be there. Don't do that with Capital One. I'm sorry, not Capital One, but Bank of America and Citi.

You can do that. There is a way that you can double dip. So Citi has a rule on their welcome offers where you can only get a welcome offer on a card. If a well or you can only get a welcome offer on a card if you haven't gotten a welcome offer on that same card for 48 months but there's kind of a trick that you can get around that where if you apply for like and more normally people just do this on the strata premiere because most other free you know most of the other city welcome offers aren't really enough to they're not big enough to really want make you want to double dip but the str Strata Premier is. So like for the Strata Premier, if you apply for a card, if you apply for two cards on the same day or within seven days of each other,

and you don't complete the spending on the first card, so you haven't actually received the welcome offer, you can then complete spending on both cards once you've been approved for them and get two different welcome offers for it. That's a really common trick that people use. That's a really popular one. So that might be what you're referring to. But outside of that, I would say look at that post and just look at the velocity limits where you have it for each issue where there's a little bullet for velocity limits and see what their velocity limits where you have it for each issue where there's a little uh bullet for velocity limits and see what their velocity limits in terms of how many cards you can get and if it and if it's not outside of the ones that prohibit you from getting more than one every week or five

like in amex it's five days capital one it's usually six months uh thought to be um i think most of the other ones you can get approved for more than one in the same day. One big thing, Bank of America, I believe it's going to get approved for two every rolling seven day. I can't remember, but it's two consumer cards. However, they will approve more business cards. So there's a lot of people that will do what's called the Bank of America Apparama. Well, they'll apply for like four or five Bank of America cards in one day. And it's really tough to get a second approval on a consumer card. But oftentimes, they'll throw business cards out like candy when you're applying for them

in the same day. And I'm pretty sure Bank of America is one that does combine the crediting freeze into one. So. All right. Not knowing how advanced the questioner was, by the way, if all of that was like, you're like, whoa, whoa, hold on. I was just looking to apply for two cards and I haven't applied for a card in a long time. Like two cards in one day is probably not a problem. If you're like, if you're just asking, can I get approved for two cards in one day? Uh, not necessarily even with the same issue or yeah, you probably can. Like Tim's moves there are more advanced. If you were asking that from a more advanced perspective. All right. Great. Thank you. Um, Greg, this one's for you. Are you surprised at how many

people completed the SaaS challenge? No, I'm not at all surprised. Part of that, though, might be like if you go way back to when I started the blog in like 2011 and some of the stuff I wrote in 2012, I would write about like crazy ideas for like how to earn like tons of points. And I thought they were crazy, but I would do them because I was blogging about them, but I didn't really think anyone else was going to do them. And then I would go out and like meet people and people would tell me, like all kinds of people would tell me, oh yeah, I did that thing that you wrote about. And so it became like really clear to me early on that like people will literally fly around the world to earn some points so um yeah no when we saw this promotion i was pretty sure

that a lot of people would would go for it all right this next question is for nick and tim we'll start with nick um i know Greg went big with Alaska transfer. I'm curious how big the rest of the team has gone. And do any of you think the merger and Amex transfer will cause the devaluation soon? I haven't gone as big as Greg did. I transferred over a couple hundred thousand and I had some existing Alaska miles around the family. So Alaska and Hawaiian miles.

So anyway, I've got a couple hundred thousand. I may go more. I'm kind of like in a slight bit of hesitation there because I travel with a family of four. So I need to have a fairly large bank of points and miles. Transferable points is really valuable to me. I'm interested in a lot of Alaska miles, uh, but I'm, I'm not willing to go all out with everything just yet, especially cause there's a lot of travel that I'm looking at booking now. So, uh, I may yet go a couple few hundred thousand more, but I haven't yet so far, just a couple hundred thousand, two, three, somewhere between two and three.

All right. How about you, Tim? So I haven't transferred any, but that's primarily just because my wife and I combined, we already have about 1.5 million Alaska miles just because that's our airline that we use. That's our domestic airline. So I don't really feel any need to convert. But if I didn't have all of those, I would absolutely be going all Greg DeFrequent-Miler on that transfer because I think they're tremendously useful miles and worth having. In terms of the second part of that question, I don't believe, and I don't think, and Nick and Greg, you can speak up if you disagree, but I don't believe we're going to see an Alaska devaluation very soon. And the reason why is because they just redid their award chart

massively last year and redid this completely different, what they call a unified award chart where they combined all these separate award charts they have into one. And because of that, they already redid the pricing for many different routes and many different regions and so forth. And they changed the distance based and all this stuff. And I just don't see them then doing a devaluation right smack dab after doing that. So I would guess that we probably have at least a couple of years

from when they did that award chart change before they're really going to start tinkering with it. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it can be easy to get lost in the echo chamber and think that the people doing the things we're talking about make a significant impact on stuff like this. But like the number of people that know

that you can transfer Amex points to airlines is relatively small compared to Amex, this whole customer base probably to begin with. And then the number of those people that know Hawaiian's a partner, and the number of those people that know that Hawaiian and Alaska are connected, and the number of those people that know you can move the points from Hawaiian to Alaska, and then the number of people who think about doing that and have a balance of Amex points, it's just like, it's a relatively small portion of their customer base. There's plenty of people like Tim that have been flying Alaska for a while and have a couple million miles

that the few folks transferring over a couple few hundred thousand points here and there. I say few, I'm sure there's more than a few, but I don't think it's enough probably to force a devaluation like Tim said. I think all of Tim's points are great. And I don't think, I wouldn't see that happening. All right. Hope you guys are right. All right. Us too. For sure. This one is for Tim, I think is where we left off. This makes no sense to me as usual.

Any word yet on Chase's 1 million point giveaway winners that ended last week? Did Chase do a 1 million giveaway? Yeah, they were all... Chase was trying to sass it up. They ran a promo where... And I think you just had...

If I remember correctly, you just had to enter the promo, right? And then you just register for it and they were going to give away a million ultimate rewards. As far as I know, they haven't announced any winners and if they have i haven't heard about who those winners are so unless somebody else has heard something no didn't know about that um all right greg um

any thoughts on aeroplan 25 status match from marriott titanium could be interesting for booking economy award tickets for upgrades on long haul flights? Yeah, I mean, I think what they're referring to here is that Marriott now has a partnership with Aeroplan where if you have titanium status with Marriott, you get the first level, the lowest level of Aeroplan elite elite status. And, um, that's great. I mean, we've, we've talked about it on the show. We've written about it. Um, I think it's a, it's a great, uh, extra perk that, that titanium status with Marriott gives you. Um, and one of the cool things when you get that aeroplane 25 status you get some e-upgrade thingies vouchers or something

i forget what they're called and um so yeah it's possible to uh use those to book economy and and uh upgrade to uh business class and so uh there's some good opportunities there. I haven't had a chance to like actually, I haven't had a trip coming up where it made sense for me to try to figure out how to use them for that trip. But I love that. I love that it's possible. So if anyone listening has used them and has anything to say about it, that'd be kind of interesting to hear about. All right, cool. Chime in if you have something to add um all right uh nick marriott and hilton appear out of favor with you these days well okay they're talking to all of us so all of you i suppose okay uh you're just gonna have to speak on behalf of all of us um hyatt remains your favorite but if you don't or can't stay at hyatt what is

now your hotel chain of choice between isg choice windham or question mark and i'll give you a chance to correct this person if their assumption is wrong obviously as well yeah you know i think maybe some of that's misinterpreted so hyatt has the best top tier hotel elite status. And that's pretty, I think anybody who's ever had Hyatt top tier elite status, even if they didn't love Hyatt, would probably agree that the benefits at Hyatt are the best among the various hotel programs. And certainly anybody who likes Hyatt even a little bit is going to tell you that. Because the benefits are guaranteed. There's so many great benefits that are guaranteed. So we really like the benefits at Hyatt's top tier status.

But we also just recently did a coffee break on how World of Hyatt is broken and how Hyatt can fix that. We just had a frequent miler on the air or rather a coffee break episode, podcast episode about that. So there are things about World of Hyatt that we think need improvement too. And of course, there are things we think need improvement about Marriott and Hilton. But of course, we then also have a coffee break that came out already, what day is today? Wednesday came out this week, right? About what Hilton can do to win our loyalty. And I think it was largely pretty positive about Hilton because we've been pretty excited about Hilton lately. So I think maybe you've mistaken the tone on some things.

There are things that we love and don't love about every single program. To answer your question, if I can't stay at a Hyatt, I typically choose a Marriott because I'm typically trying to use my platinum status and I want to have free breakfast. I hate the Hilton food and beverage credit with a passion and I usually value having late checkout, which I get with my Marriott platinum status. That said, I'm more excited about Hilton overall because of the ability to use free night certificates at SLH properties and use points for great value at SLH properties so i know that's kind of sounds like a hedge answer there but that's the truth i typically look for a high at first marriott's probably going to be my second play because of the the platinum benefits there

but if there's a nice looking slh then i would rather stay at the nice looking SLA. All right. Great. And I think we're at, who did I leave off with? Tim. Although maybe this will be a Nick. New Southwest Companion Pass promo, personal card, $4,000 spend in three months. Is this just through the end of 2025? Seems like a great opportunity to try. I can make that spend in a week. So Tim, answer if you can, otherwise punt it. Yeah, Tim can answer this. Yeah. So no, it's actually not. It's good until the end of February of 2026. So regardless of

when you complete the spend, that is when the pass expires. So if you were to sign up for the card today, get the card next week and complete the spend by the middle of February, you would actually get it for more than a year, slightly more than a year, like a year and a couple of weeks. And yeah, it's a great deal. I mean, if you can use that companion pass, it's a great deal and it's a super easy way to get that companion pass. So yeah, I would absolutely say it's a good deal if you can use that opportunity. All right, great. This question lands on Greg.

Very specific, but I wouldn't be surprised if you know this. Have any of you ever had to transfer airports in Taipei? I have a four-hour layover during which I have to travel between airports with a carry-on. Is that even possible? I haven't done that. Have either of you guys, Nick or Tim? I mean, so Taipei, the airports, I believe there's trains that go between them. So I think it's definitely possible to do.

I wouldn't be with four hours. I would think that would be enough time. But that's just my take. Either of you have any other take on that? I personally would probably never do an international transfer between airports with only a four hour layover, just in general, Taipei or, but in terms of that specific one, could I don't outside of that? No. Yeah, I agree with Tim, because if your incoming flight gets delayed, and then if there happens to be a line of immigration, then it's tight. If you get through if you land on time, and you get

through immigration, I have not done that transit. But I have been in Taipei a number of times over the years. And their mass transit runs like clockwork. It's great. It's really well done. So I would be shocked if four hours isn't enough time to get from the major international airport to the city airport there. I would think you're totally fine if your plane lands on time and there is a really good point but that's the f you know so it's whether you're willing to chance that or not uh i you know like tim said i i don't book flights like that but during the sas challenge

we booked lots of them like that so yeah we may have so when lots is on the line, then you will. All right. Great. Nick, this one's for you. What are the best opportunities for long-haul business class availability for four when schedule opens with four travelers and bound by school schedules? I want to book ahead, but it's getting very, very hard. So what do you do for your family? You know, I don't really like, I'm not vigilant about the moment the schedule opens trying to lock stuff down in general. I am more so like, I'll just keep an eye on stuff. I'll search routes from time to time. And so I'm kind of lackadaisical about it. And that's, of course, in large part,

because I have a pretty flexible schedule. And we're not while our kids are in school, we're also not afraid for them to miss a little bit of school if they have to, you know, in order to take a trip. So so I'm in a slightly flexible spot there. In terms of the best routes, I mean, it depends on time of year, you know, going to Europe, I find that we can often find four seats on Air France for a reasonable price. Now, whether or not you want to book four seats on Air France because of the surcharges for four people, it does start to add up. That's a question only you can answer. Tap Air Portugal just lately has had four seats quite often.

And Turkish, on their long haul routes, I see four seats quite a bit. And so those are all airlines that I typically book with Starline and Smiles. So those would be the ones if I'm going to Europe. But if you're going to Asia, it can be tough. I think maybe your best bet if you're going to Asia far in advance, my bet now, I know everybody's going to tell me that it should be EVA or EVA. And I haven't messed with that program very much. So I don't have a lot of input there. But I tell you that Air Canada has more access to Singapore Airlines business class space than other partners do. And I've seen the long haul flights on Singapore open near schedule open and have six or eight seats available on them

a number of times before and also the JFK to Frankfurt route often has four seats available on them a number of times before. And also the JFK to Frankfurt route often has four seats available if you're booking far enough in advance. So those are a few things that pop out at me. All right. Hopefully that helps. Hopefully that's enough. All right, Tim. Thoughts on the recent update to Cities, T's and C's on welcome bonuses for their strata premier when product changing seems like it's a blow against churning. Oh, it's the T's and the C's. So the, I'm not, I'm actually not sure if it was or not. The, the, the change for the strata premier, like we, like I said earlier, all city cards have as a rule that you cannot get a welcome bonus on the same product within 48 months of receiving the welcome bonus on that product.

It doesn't go to families of cards. It's just that card. So you have 48 months from the time you received a welcome bonus on a Strata Premier. After that 48 months, you can get it again. The way they changed it now is they said that that also includes if you have product changed so if you have gotten a strata premiere earned the welcome offer product changed it to another city card like say a double cash or a custom cash or whatever and then applied for a city

car or the strata premiere again you would still not be welcome for that or open for that bonus now i we actually just messaged everybody today i if if you could do that before i was unaware of it so it might be that that was a loophole that they closed or it might be that they're trying to be more specific But if you could actually product change from the City Premier or the Strata Premier and then get the welcome bonus again, then yeah, it's a blow to people that were doing that. But otherwise, it doesn't really materially change the rule outside of that. So all that to say, I'm not really sure if it does or not. If you could do that before, I wasn't aware of it. All right, Greg, your turn. How much more are you willing to pay for an award ticket that is fully

refundable? I find myself going for AA or United flights, even though UA may be cheaper on life miles, for example. Yeah, I mean, there's no one set answer to that, but basically the way I think about this is if my plans are uncertain, like if I think there's a good chance I'm going to be canceling a flight because I'm just booking, like I see a word space and I think, oh, that might be fun, but I'm not really sure I'm going to take that flight. I'm perfectly happy paying a lot more miles to ensure that they're fully refundable. So yeah, just like you, whoever wrote this, American Airlines, United, Alaska, there's a number of programs that JetBlue even, now that they have a number of partners that you could book. So they're relevant. All those programs are great for having fully refundable award tickets.

Aeroplan lets you explicitly pay more as an option. When you find Air Canada awards, you can pay more and get a refundable rate. And I'll do that sometimes when I think there's a reasonable chance that I'll cancel. On the other hand, if I'm pretty sure that my wife and I are planning a trip to Europe, let's say, and we have certain things going on where we know we need to be there for that thing, then I will definitely, you know, be fine with like, okay, I'll just book with, like in this example, with LifeMiles. And if things don't work out, I'll pay the $200 per person or whatever it is fee to cancel and get my miles back. Yeah. So, on the other hand, you're willing to pay the fees and pay more for the cancelable. Right.

I always find that such an interesting debate though, because I probably do what Greg's talking about more often than not, but it's, it's kind of like prepaying the cancellation fee, right? Like, you know, like you're,

if you pay more money, depending on how much the difference is. Right. But if you're looking at like, like you mentioned life you pay more money depending on how much the difference is right but if you're looking at like like you mentioned life miles in ua so if you're looking at like a newark to london via united it's going to cost you what 60 80 000 miles and via life miles it's 45 and so you know if you're going to pay an extra 15 or 20 000 miles for it to be flexible you're essentially betting against yourself. You're prepaying the cancellation fee if you keep that flight, right?

So I struggle with that sometimes myself because I'd be more tempted to do it. Craig says I value flexibility, but I don't know. But sometimes if your plans firm up, you might be able to still find award space and then and then book the uh you know the cheaper one but that's of course it's not always going to work out yeah i you know it's it's almost like a gut thing like of how likely is it i'm going to cancel this then it's yeah if it's if it's fairly likely then it's a better bet to go with the more expensive ticket because you're gonna get 100 back and then then you win um but if you actually take it yeah then you lose i guess but you know what another element though of this is is like um with united miles are particularly uh a good example um if you already have a big

stash of united miles so you don't have to transfer from a transferable points currency, but you don't have, um, the life miles, let's say. So you, you would have to transfer from something to get your life miles. Then you're not really comparing apples to apples. You're saying, well, like I'm, I'm willing to spend more United miles and save transferable points. Do you see what I'm saying? I do see what you're saying, but I also find that another interesting conversation, right?

Because if I have the choice between using more American Airlines miles for a refundable flight or transferring to Avianca Life miles, I often look at that and I say, well, it's really easy for me to earn enough transferable points to continue earning transferable points to transfer to Life miles. It's not easy to earn a lot of American Airlines miles. So I'm more hesitant to overpay. united's a tougher example because of that but i mean american is a tougher example but united isn't in that same camp so tell us in the comments are you team flexible even if it's more expensive or team cheap even if i might run into problems

let us know in the comments. And we're all curious about, does Virgin Atlantic have an award chart? We would love to hear. And what are Southwest? Is Southwest a companion path? Oh, yeah. And does Southwest companion paths make your points twice as valuable? We love the Greg Nick debate. All right.

Pretty sure this one is not going to involve Nick. so we're going to skip him and go to Tim. Really curious, do any of you have pets? What do you do with them when traveling? So we'll start with Tim and then go to Greg. Yes, I have, as Carrie has astutely intuited, I have two cats. And for years and years, anytime we traveled for more than, you know, probably three or four days, we would pack them up and take them over to my sister's apartment and lay them all out, you know, lay all their stuff out and bring all their toys and their litter boxes and all that crap. crap uh no pun intended and um then actually a friend of mine uh who is kind of is a nomad kind of a digital nomad he's an analog nomad really uh was traveling around exclusively staying at places using a service that a lot of people probably hearing this know uh trusted house sitters and that has been life-changing for me. It's 200 and I keep meaning

to write a post about it. It's $230 a year. But you can usually if you sign up using somebody's referral link, you can get 25% off. And it's effectively, it allows you you create a profile for yourself. And you post the dates that you want somebody to come stay at your house and take care of your pets, and then all the people that are on that network can apply for that. And the cool thing about it is the people that are doing house sitting are vetted, and they have referrals because you can look at their previous reviews. You can interact with them. And once you pay that yearly fee of, I think, I'm pretty sure it's $229 or minus 25% for

the first year, you don't ever have to pay again. So every single house visit or every single stay that's, or a house sit that you, that somebody does for you is included within that fee. And this is dynamite. We haven't had, we've had every single time we've put our dates out, we've had multiple applications for them. The stays have worked out wonderfully. The communication is great. The platform is great.

It's really a marvelous way to do it. And now we just don't even worry about, you know, oh, hey, we're going to be out of town for five days. Should we get, ah, let's go ahead and get somebody, you know. And we just don't even have to think about it. It's terrific. So I highly recommend Trusted House sitters um greg did you ever try that i haven't i'm not but i'm glad you started with tim because that was a great answer yeah um because i i don't i've done a lot of different things from paying people to come to uh begging our son to come to uh guilting carrie yoder into coming and staying in my house i i actually tim you should write a post on that because i'm really curious about that i

need to yeah i'm curious if it would work for someone who doesn't live somewhere cool like who wants to come to west virginia that's the thing like it's great rafting in West Virginia. But there's a lot of people that are traveling all around the country or traveling to the U.S. for various reasons and for a lot of different reasons. And so, you know, just the fact that you may live in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, you know, if you're an hour drive from Ann Arbor and an hour drive from somewhere else, that could be a really appealing place to be, especially if the dates line up. And I, and I don't know exactly how many house sitters are on the pro are on the platform,

but I mean, based on the interest we've had, it's been, it's been massive. And I know it's cool. Like from like, well, for instance for instance my my friend that does this and they wouldn't do this again they actually once house sit it house sat for somebody that was on the University of San Diego Medical School's campus so they actually were in a dorm that's cool house sitting for a lizard whoa that's cool and they were like they kind of got there and they're like whoa wait but it happened you know it was like well this is a weekend they needed to fill and they didn't have any lodging and they were nearby and so they're like hey let's let's grab that right take care

of that lizard somebody's got to do it no the the house sitter gets free free lodging and you get free house sitting or not free but i I mean, you know, outside of the yearly membership, it's really it's marvelous. Yeah, that's that's very cool. Great. Too bad Stephen's not here to chime in. But I think I've heard him talk about trusted house sitters, too. I'm not sure they've ever used it. But yeah, I've seen some some people speak about it, too.

Like there's a I think her name is Nora Dunn. The traveling hobo is I think her blog and I've seen her speak about it like a virtual F2U a while back as a way to travel, you know, for a traveler to pick up places to go and stay. But I have never thought about it from the perspective of a pet owner. So that was an awesome answer, Tim. Well done. Well, I think what Stephen had told me was that because our dog gets along with other animals, we could be trusted house sitters wherever we want and just say, well, as long as we're allowed to bring our dog. Is that a thing?

Can people bring their pets to your house, Tim? No. Okay. And you can specify things like no kids, no dogs dogs or no other pets and and and for us it did that we do we don't we don't let folks with other pets come and it's just it's just a matter of we just everybody thinks their pet is copacetic until it's not you know yeah you're not gonna let Carrie or Stephen come to your house with their dogs well we'd have to talk about it.

No, but I mean... And Truffles got to meet the other week, which was very cute. Like, I had an application a while ago from a guy who was like, yeah, you know, my dog's great. And he only had this one issue with these two cats, but the cats were, you know, it was the cat's fault.

Jerks. Right. Right, right. Maybe that's the truth, but you know... Are your cat's right right right maybe that's the truth but you know are your cats jerks Tim but honestly I wouldn't take them to somebody else's house either you know if there's

I don't know what they're going to do to Maxwell you know right that probably seems like a less common use for that anyway to travel with your dog all right let's cover a few more points of questions here but use for that anyway to travel with your dog all right let's cover a few more points amount of questions here but thanks for that answer um greg um how often do you buy points i recently started buying isg hilton avianca and obvious points when they are on sale and finding a great alternative for folks with low spend i mean I don't personally ever buy points because I earn so many from

credit cards and SaaS challenges and things like that. But yeah, if you don't have the option of signing up for new cards for new bonuses and the other things that we often talk and write about that can earn a lot of points. I think it makes a lot of sense to buy the points when they're on sale as long as you know how to get good use out of them. Like it's not a good use to buy, let's say, Hilton points at half a cent each if you then go redeem them and get, let's say, six tenths of a cent value, because you're getting just a tiny, you're saving just a tiny bit. And in reality, like if you were just paying cash for the stay, you could have gone through a shopping portal and earned extra points that way. You could have, you know, used a credit card that earns a lot of rewards. And so there's a lot of things that you could be doing with cash days that might be more beneficial. So my point is like, if you're going to be buying points, you should be looking at big,

big returns. Like you should be expecting to get a lot more value than you're paying. And so, and that's definitely possible. So as long as you're, you know, doing that, that's great. All right. Great. Nick, actually, this is going to be an everyone and we'll start with Nick. Any awesome hotel redemptions coming up? Focus on brag worthy well yes uh so not coming up very very soon but but this year anyway i'm pretty excited about uh going back to the grand hotel victoria and like como again uh so that'll be an exciting one that's one that i've written about i've gone to a couple times love it can't wait to go back um is there gonna be anyone special there uh at the same time as you part of the reason i'm excited is because there is going to be anyone special there at the same time as you part of the reason I'm excited is because

there is going to be somebody very special and you know him Greg do I so Nick and I found out just by total chance that we're going to be there at the same exact time like our two our stays overlap which is just

crazy you guys will have to film a podcast while you're there you and sam already talked about to greg and pam about uh babysitting so you guys can go out for a night on the town of como we're gonna wait a while thanks for letting the cat out of the bag there hopefully he's not listening to this thanks for letting the cat out of the bag there no i'm excited about that state and see greg there too of course but uh but and i've got a couple other slh states this year one planned for uh the view lake lugano actually just before the grand hotel victoria which is not too far away and looks like kind of like a James Bond villains

lair. So I'm kind of interested in seeing what that actually looks like. Got to wear the fedora. Um, Tim, how about you? Well, I actually have those same two hotels book, but not while Nick and Greg, because there's only so much, because like if all, if all three of us were there at the same time, it's like begging disaster to happen you know it's tempting fate um the thing that i'm actually uh uh so yeah those those two are coming up and the thing that i'm actually we're doing a trip to east africa later in the year during the great migration and we have five nights stay at the JW Marriott, the Masai Mora, where most of you don't know, it's like a safari camp where you go in.

It's all inclusive. The food's included. The game drives are included. And we're there during the Great Migration, which will be awesome. And we've managed to book it before Marriott just raised the redemption rates. Wow. Whatever, 50%, 60%, whatever they did. So we're looking forward to that and then actually i'm really a kind of a a place i've always wanted to go that i've never

been is zanzibar um the island off the coast of tanzania yeah and we're going to be in zanzibar during that time so i'm pumped to be in zanzibar but we're also the park height zanzibar looks spectacular and we have a it's gonna be cool uh at the park in Zanzibar, but we're also the park Hyatt Zanzibar looks spectacular. And we have a sweet at the park Hyatt Zanzibar that we're going to go check out too. So those are kind of the two that I'm looking forward to. I know what song is in Nick said right now. He's so tempted to sing it.

Cause I, cause I know I can sing it so well that they'll recognize. So I just... Especially the chorus. Let's hear the chorus. No, no, no, no, no, no. Greg, how about you? We know about the Como, Le Como, but what else?

Well, so, you know, Hilton recently bought a luxury chain called Nomad. And so plans are a little bit up in the air, but my wife and I are planning to go to London and we may stay at the Nomad London, which would be really cool. And that's right in Covent Garden, which is a really neat area. But no, I think those are the two big ones that are coming up that, that I have on my radar. I'll say also, I have a couple of cruises lined up this year. I just got another one. So if you booked the free Atlantis stay with Caesar's diamond status that I

wrote about booking recently and said, you could book through the end of the year, fill out the princess cruise match form and submit that because i was able to match and get a princess cruise out of that also margaritaville at sea same thing submitted it to them actually i also submitted the margaritaville at sea free cruise offer to princess so uh so anyway you can match around get a couple more cruises so i know that's not exactly lodging but it kind of is so there you go that counts i'm being very generous in counting that for you nick thank you carrie thank you for digging deep there one of the yearly predictions this year

carrie actually won our yearly prediction contest last year um and this year how many did you because you what was your exact prediction for nick's cruises for 2025? I can't remember, and we keep trying to refine it because Nick keeps trying to make sure I don't get it. But as I remember it, I was guessing that he'd still find a way to do a free cruise this year, even though his old plans for getting free cruises are no more. So I guess you have to be using a new trick.

We'll see. We'll see. Fingers crossed for you, Nick. Looking promising for you at this point. Good deal. All right. Well,

that's all the time we have. Thanks so much for joining everybody. Thanks for all the great questions. And don't forget to like, if you haven't already and subscribe so that you can catch us next time. When we do this the first Wednesday of every month. And we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody.

Bye, everyone.