How best to spend $115K... Asking for a friend | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep350 | 3-20-26

This is a Voyscape Podcast.

You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyscape.com.

On today's episode, we talk about three ways to improve your Google Wallet.

Marriott Bonvoi, Bonvoi's us again.

And I explain how I would spend $115,000.

I speak with my lawyer on the air, starts now.

Today's main event, how best to spend $115,000, asking for a friend.

So Nick had a friend reach out to him that was in a, had a great opportunity.

I guess is the best way to put it to spend a heck of a lot of money in a fairly

short amount of time.

And in today's main event, Nick is actually going to walk us through

his thoughts about if he was in that situation, how would he make that spend?

Because the answer of like what's the best way to do it really depends so much

on your individual situation.

And so Nick can best answer that from his point of view.

Yeah, so we'll talk about that a little bit more in a little bit.

But don't forget if you want to jump ahead to that or come back to something later on,

you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes.

So just expand the description box for that.

And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a like,

give it a thumbs up.

If you like the idea of spending $115,000, give us a like.

And if you think it's crazy, give us a like too.

We'll talk more about that a little bit later on.

But right now, let's drag out this week's giant mail back.

All right.

Today's giant mail, we have three pieces of mail that are all basically saying the same thing,

but in different ways.

And there's different nuances to each.

So I thought it was worth reading each one.

Basically, in previous shows, we talked about how you can reorganize cards in your Apple wallet

for Apple Pay. And we didn't know if you could do a similar rearranging in Google wallet.

And a number of readers wrote in to say, actually, yes, you can.

And here's how.

And the interesting stuff is in the details here.

So first up, Mark says I was watching your episode about gems from the giant mail bag.

One of the readers mentioned about how to change the order of your cards in Apple wallet.

And Nick said, it doesn't appear you can do that in your Google wallet.

I'm an Android user and you can change the card or at least on my Pixel phone I can.

When you open your wallet, you will swipe left through the cards all the way until you see a circle

with three bars in it.

And for those listening, Nick is doing this right now to try it out.

If you click on that circle, you will see all of your cards from top to bottom instead of left

to right. And by scrolling to the bottom, you'll see an option to edit card order.

I hope this helps the Android users out there.

All right. So before I go on the next one, so the Mark's technique works for changing the order

of your cards, Nick?

Yes, it wasn't exactly the same. So on mine, instead of swiping left, I had to swipe all the way

to the right. I swiped left first and there was nothing all the way on the left side.

And to the right, I wouldn't have thought of it as a circle, but you're right, it is a circle

with three bars. When I saw it, I was like, oh, it's not a circle, and now I'm looking at it.

And it is. It's the hamburger menu, the traditional, you know, sort of three bars that you see

everywhere. And it's inside a circle. I just, my brain, my eyes didn't even recognize it that way.

But yes, at the bottom of that, there is indeed an edit card order, and I have never noticed that.

Okay, well, don't put away your phone because Rick and Heather said on the most recent episode

with Mailbag Gems, Nick said he didn't think you could rearrange cards in Google Wallet.

Good news you can. In the Wallet, click your profile picture in the top right,

select payment methods, and touch the button at the bottom to edit the card order.

Brings you to the same place, yeah. Look at that.

Look at that.

All right, don't put away your phone just yet.

Okay, it's still here.

Raj wrote in about Google Wallet and said in the recent episode blah, blah, blah.

You can easily do that by tapping on the card, click on three dots on top and set make default.

So this is about making a particular card default for time to pay.

But here's where it gets interesting.

Yeah, it's at the same place. You can put, you can put in nicknames.

So I update the cards with rotating category names.

So for example, a card that where the 5x benefit changes every three months,

Raj goes in and changes it to say, you know, grocery stores and whatever,

which is great, right? Then you see that in your wallet.

That's great. Now I do not think I can do that in Apple Wallet, but please let me know.

Anyone out there if there's a way to do that because that could be really helpful to have

some tips right in there when you're using your wallet about how you should use it.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, mind blown on the idea of doing that with the categories,

like the rotating categories, because I always forget what the rotating categories are.

So that's a brilliant idea that you could do on the first day of each quarter.

So that seems great. But then my next thought was, oh my goodness, player two,

sometimes can't remember which card to use for a particular type of purchase.

And I could just nickname it in the wallet. That would be so convenient.

So yeah, thank you, Raj. That is a terrific tip.

There really is. All of those, all of those are good tips because I had not found that before.

And I've played around a little bit in Google Wallet. I didn't go looking

deeply obviously since I had never seen any of that. But I think that that was terrific feedback

because I wouldn't have known if not for Rick and Heather and Raj and Mark. So thank you very much.

Absolutely. Great tips there. All right, let's move on to card news.

In this week's card news, the IHG Premier Business credit card is out with a new offer

with an eye popping 200,000 points as the headline.

Yeah, you can earn up to 200,000 points. So the offer is structured as you'll earn 140,000 points

after spending $4,000 in purchases in the first three months. And then an additional

60,000 points that are spending $9,000 in the first six months. And so let's talk a little

bit. And to be clear, that's $9,000 total. So it's an additional $5,000, right?

I just wanted to be honest. Oh yeah, I'm not sure how I said it, but

absolutely, that's important to say that a total of $9,000 in spend in six months,

if you structure it right, will get you the full 200,000 points.

That's a terrific offer for this card. The card is only cost $99 a year.

And I want to talk a little bit about the perks of this card because I actually think this is

a pretty darn good card for a card that only costs $99 a year. So especially if you're into

IHG at all. So I'm not going to go over everything, but it's not super rewarding for spend.

Let me get that out of the way first. So it does earn 10x at IHG, and it has a few 5x categories,

but basically it earns 3x everywhere else. And if you think about the fact that you can buy IHG

points often, they go on sale for half a cent each, it's sort of like it has a base earning rate

of 1.5%, which is not bad, but it's also not good. It's not a 2x everywhere card, right?

So it's not great, but it has a number of perks that I think make up for that. So for example,

every year upon renewal, you get a 40,000K free night certificate, which can be topped off with points

to any amount. So if you want to book a 90,000 point night with IHG, you could use your

cert plus 50,000 points to book that night. It automatically gives you a 4th night free

on awards days. So book for nights, for the price, for the award price of 3 nights,

gives you platinum elite status automatically. You get $25 in United travel bank cash every

six months. Now that goes away, like if it's not you. So it's not like you can, it just accumulates

over time. And if you need global entry, it'll give you $120 of credit towards global entry,

TSA pre-check or nexus. It's also interesting in terms of the big spend bonuses. You, after 20,000

dollars in spend and 40,000 dollars in spend and 60,000 dollars in spend, each of those thresholds

in a calendar year, you get some perks. So at 20,000, you get 10,000 bonus points plus $100

statement credit. At 40,000, you get IHD diamond status, which includes like free breakfast at all

IHG properties, which is pretty good. And after 60,000, you get another 40K free nights certificate

at that point. So if you spend exactly to one of those bonus categories, depending on how much you

value those perks you get at each stage, that goes a long way in making up for the fact that it's

otherwise earning only $3 points per dollar for most of your spend. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I think that so backing up a quick second, you mentioned that

the card earned $3 points per dollar and most purchases, the non-bonus category purchases,

and that you can buy points for about a half a cent each often. So you might think of it as earning

like the equivalent of the rough equivalent of 1.5% back. And you said, which isn't good,

but isn't bad. And I think it's worth pointing out there that if you really wanted IHG points,

and then you might be better off just getting a 2% cash back card and using your 2 cents to buy

4 IHG points when they're on sale instead of three. Now, there's some caveats there,

because you can only buy so many points every year and they're not always on sale, etc. But that's

just to give you a comparison point as to what you're giving up. You're kind of giving up an extra

point per dollar on other purchases. But if we valued that at 1.5% at that 20K level,

the 10,000 points, if we value those at just the $50 that you would have to spend to buy them

when they're on sale, and the $100 statement credit, which is $100, right? That's 150 on the 20K.

That's like 1.5% back. I think if it did, I'm sorry, that's point. Oh, I can't do the math that

quick. I think that's 0.75% if I'm doing the math from my head crack, which is probably correct.

It still gives you around a 2.25% return, but that's only if you spend exactly to that 20,000 threshold

and stop. Correct. If you go over it at all, you're dropping. But that makes the return relatively

reasonable at 20K. That's exactly how much do you value diamond status? Right. You would

have to. The way I think about this card personally is like, you could do it one of two ways.

You could just say, after I meet the minimum spend to get the welcome bonus,

I'm just going to pay the annual fee each year and get that 40K free night certificate,

plus I get the ability to get the fourth night free on award stays in the other automatic perks.

And just never use it for spend, except maybe at IHD hotels. That's one way of using it.

That's probably how most people should use the card. Now, people who are really big spenders

that could easily generate a lot of spend might be interested in spending to diamond status,

for example. That's how I use the card. I try to, once every two years, spend exactly 40,000

dollars on the card, and then I get diamond status for two years. If I do it right in the beginning

of the year, because diamond says last for the rest of that year and all of the next year,

and I think through January of the year after that, maybe. Yeah, and I think it's really reasonable

for what you quote unquote, give up by spending on the IHD card versus a 2% cash back card.

If you value diamond status at all, it's pretty reasonable. If you've got a lot of spend,

I think it's a pretty reasonable option. But anyway, we'll talk more about big spend bonuses

later on. Maybe we'll come up with some other comparative options too. Next up, let's see.

We've got a new updated resource. The best credit card purchase protections. You updated this,

right? Yeah. I had last updated it in a major way six years ago. That poor post was sitting out

there, just basically completely wrong. It's terrible that I waited so long, but in my defense,

it was a bear. It was so much work to update this thing because I basically had to

crawl through all the benefits guides of all the popular cards where I wanted to know what the

purchase protections were. And so first, I had to find all those guides, and that was a whole thing.

I find that it's not easy. Now, most issuers don't make it simple. No, they don't make it simple.

I tried to use AI to help, but I discovered AI wasn't getting it all correct. Anyway,

enough was me. The point is, we now have a post that's up to date with information about

just popular rewards cards and what they offer in terms of extended warranties,

purchase security. That's where, for example, they might say, if within 90 days of when you made

a purchase, if your item was stolen or damaged, then they'll pay to fix it or replace it.

Return protection, where if you want to return an item you purchased recently,

and the retailer doesn't accept it for some reason, they'll cover that. And then there's

price protection, which allows you to say, you've bought something, and now it becomes available

for less somewhere else within, let's say, 60 days, then you might be able to recover the

difference if the card you purchased the item with has price protection. So take a look. What

you'll find is that there's no card that offers all four of these things, like none. And where

they vary, cards that offer three of these four benefits, either offer return protection or price

no cards offer both of those things. So there is no single best card for all of these things,

but there are some cards that stand out. We'll have a link to this guide in the show notes.

I have two quick questions for you. So the first one is, have you ever used any of these

protections yourself? And B, do they ever come into play when you consider what what card to use

for a particular purchase for you personally? No, I have never used any of them myself.

It does come into play sometimes when I'm buying something big and refusing the,

you know, I know I'm going to refuse the extended warranty because I hate the idea of paying more.

Basically, you're gambling on something going wrong when you when you pay more to get an extended

warranty. You win if something goes wrong during that extended warranty period.

So I don't like to do that. So anyway, yeah, you know, it's pretty rare. It's like I'm buying a new

laptop or recently had my fridge replaced and that's when I look at this guide actually and see

of the cards I have, which one would be best for making this purchase. Another thing to consider

is that, and I have this in the guide as well, is that American Express has a really good reputation

for people having success with claims. So even if they don't necessarily have the best

protection for what you want, if they have good protection, you might consider using your American

Express card because of people having reported good things. Now, I think Nick, you've had some

success, right? I have. Before I mentioned that, I want to mention always check the exclusions to

before you before you put a purchase on one of these because, you know, for for instance, a lot of

household items that are like anything that's like attached to your house, basically in some way,

shape, or form like for instance, I think pretty sure like a microwave that's that's one of those

like built-in microwaves like won't be covered by purchase protection on some cards and on other

cards it might be. So when you mention the fridge, for instance, I think some cards might exclude

appliances, but others definitely don't. So you should take a look at the details before you

decide which one to use. Yeah, I've used all of them except the extended warranty. I've never

had something that I needed to use an extended warranty on, but purchase security, I dropped a

cell phone within a week of buying it and smashed the screen and was able to get the entire purchase

price back. Return protection, I've used a couple of times in situations where we bought something

from some small retailer that didn't accept returns and MX has been great about that when

when we've been in that situation about return protection and so both purchase security and return

protection we've used with MX. I tried using return protection once with a chase card and I had

so much trouble and pushback and eventually I gave up on it. It wasn't enough money that it was

worth the time to continue going at it. So my one experience there was not positive. Price

protection I've used a bunch of times. I used to use it all the time. Back in the day, more cards used

to have that and some excluded Black Friday ads and some didn't and so I would often see what's

going on sale for Black Friday and buy it ahead of time and then file a purchase protection claim

once the ads came out. Now that won't work with a lot of issuers anymore. However, there's plenty of

times where I have used that with multiple issuers and I think it's a great benefit that a lot of

people will probably overlook and don't think about when you're buying something especially electronics.

If you're buying an electronic, the chances of it going on sale cheaper in the next three to five

months is almost 100% on most electronics that aren't Apple, right? I mean the price protection,

the length of time that you have doesn't tend to be five months but by sale. Yeah, absolutely.

The chance is pretty good of the price dropping and I was surprised. I thought that there were very

few cards left that had it but I was surprised to find that a lot of Capital One cards have it

and whether or not your card has it has less to do with which card you have than which network

it's running on. Capital One doesn't have a benefits guide for their venture rewards card. What they

have is a benefit guide for their world master card cards or their visa signature cards and since

Capital One issues cards different ways to different people, you'll just have a look at your

cards, see what it is, and then match it up to figure out what kind of protections it has,

unfortunately, but it's great that a number of their guides show coverage for price protection.

The biggest surprise for me was that one of the built cards has price protection. The

expensive built Platinum card has it too, so that was interesting. Yeah, terrific. All right,

next up in our card news this week are points and miles and card news, I guess this is card news.

Next card news is city thank you points. Are they about to end point sharing between card holders?

We started seeing reports pop up on some other blogs saying that you would no longer be able to

share points. Now as a reminder, if you have a card that earns city thank you points, most of them,

like let's say you have the strata premiere card and you know somebody else who also has a

strata premiere or a strata elite, you can share points with them up to a certain amount of points

each year, and when you do the points expire after 90 days, so you only want to do that when

somebody has an immediate kind of use in mind. However, word on the street has been that might end,

is that true? Yeah, it's really interesting. So what's happened is so there used to be a seers shop

your way card that got sunset and replaced. Everyone who had that got instead the city thank you

master card that you can't otherwise get. So it's like it's a it's a it's own thing that

some people have because of that situation and those people on their most recent statements

got a message saying effective May 17th, 2026 point sharing will no longer be offered as a thank

you rewards redemption option. Additionally, you will no longer be able to receive shared points.

You can share and receive share points until May 16th. Yeah, and so so that came out and some

like blogs reached out to their city bank contacts or city bank in some way and asked,

is this just for this card or is this going to be for all thank you cards? And at least in one

case, they were told it's for all thank you cards. Now let me let me tell you how much I

believe anything a city rep tells you about about detail details like that is not at all.

It's not to say that's not this isn't possible. It's just that I don't think that what a city

representative says about this without it in writing, there's actually any way at all. And

so just as an example, when the Strata Elite card came out, there were questions about

if you book hotels, is there any way to earn points or are those bookings loyalty eligible so

that you would earn high at points or marry at points on those bookings, for example.

And we had our city contacts say yes and then after pushing like you know pushing back about

that to like can you really confirm this because it seems unlikely. They said yeah we researched it

and it's definitely the case. Well it is not the case. People have not received points. There's

no way to put in. Anyway, so that's just an example of why I really distrust anything that's come

out verbally from city in response to a question about this situation. So the other reason I'm

dubious about this being going beyond this one city thank you master card is that there's another

city thank you card that doesn't allow point sharing. That's the custom cash card. So with that card,

you earn thank you points and you can you can pull those points together with your own other city

cards, but you cannot share those cards like I could not move my city points that were earned

on my custom cash card to next city card, for example, which I could do with any of my other

city cards that are in thank you points. So I think then again, I don't have any proof either way,

but I think what's happening here because it's only come out. The message only came out on

statements for this particular city thank you master card. I think that's what's happening is they

realize that they want to make this more like the custom cash card. Yeah yeah and to be clear about

what Greg said, I mean, as a consumer, any detailed question like this, if you're calling an 800

number and talking to a frontline rep, like you can flip a coin as to whether they would they would

be right or wrong and the chance of them having the actual answer or information or knowledge of

something that deep in the weeds is like infinitely small. As a blogger, in some cases, we have

contacts with various banks and loyalty programs that we can ask questions and in many of those

cases, we've got high faith in the answers that we got like we know that we've asked detailed

questions and gotten research detailed answers that proved to be correct. That's just not the case here.

So that's right. That's experience tells us that that's I don't blame anybody for thinking that

a rep or even if a rep had confirmed that it's just like like Greg said, we just wouldn't have

much faith in it until you see it. So we got to wait and see when the April statements come out.

Is there something on other card statements? And if not, then I think this is going to be a

nothing burger. I think Greg's right, which is good. That's a tasty nothing burger. We're hoping

anyway. Hopefully. All right. Next up, we've got Bonvoid by Bonvoi. So the new Bonvoi, well,

there's a number of new Bonvoi related welcome offers out, but they've gotten more restrictive.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're interested in the Bonvoi brilliant or the Bonvoi bevy card, they're both

out with great welcome offers right now, but they've changed the language. So all the all the Bonvoi,

all the merit Bonvoi cards have confusing requirements about whether you can get the card or get the

welcome bonus if you've had if you have or have had any other merit cards in the past. And what's

happened with these two cards in particular is they've made it harder to get the welcome bonus because

previously, both of the terms said you're ineligible for the bonus if you've had the chase

Ritz Carlton card within the past 30 days. So at that time, with that, like some people would

like product change the Ritz card to a different chase card, wait 30 days, apply for the Amix,

Bonvoi brilliant or the Amix Bonvoi bevy. And then after they're approved at, you know,

an eligible for the welcome bonus, then they could, you know, product change their chase card back

to the Ritz card. You can't do that anymore because now you're in an ineligible if you've had

any chase Bonvoi card in the past 30 days. So you would have to, if you really want the welcome

offer for these Amix cards, you'd have to cancel all of your Chase Marriott cards, wait 30 days and

then apply. And I kind of doubt the welcome offer is worth that if you like those chase cards at all.

Yeah, I mean, not to mention that there's no guarantee that you won't get a pop-up saying that

Amix doesn't want to give you the offer. And so boy, canceling the other Marriott cards you have

only to maybe find out that you can't even get the welcome offer you canceled them for.

That would be a huge bummer. I mean, that's, I think that's more risk than I'd be willing to put

in unless, unless I don't care about things like, if you don't care about the Elite Knight

credits from the cards, you don't care about the, you don't care about keeping the Chase cards.

Well, then yeah, of course, consider canceling those and going after these if the welcome offers

matter. But if you're somebody who's like, oh, well, I get the Elite Knight credits every year,

I value the Ritz card for the priority pass and for the Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Lounge

access rather. And for the free night certificate and other stuff, I'd be hesitant to give that up,

I think. I don't know. What about you? Yeah, no, I wouldn't want to do that either. Plus, you know,

I only mentioned one particular rule. There's quite a few rules that might prevent you from getting

the bonus that I haven't mentioned because they haven't changed yet. And so we have this post,

which we'll link to in the show notes called, are you eligible for a Marriott card? And it, it has

a whole like matrix that lets you kind of figure it out. That's been updated with these new rules.

But just one simple example, if you're interested in both the Brilliant and Bevy card,

and trying to remember the order, yeah, if you've already have the Brilliant, you won't be

eligible for the Bevy, but it's, but it's not true the other way around. If you have the Bevy,

you could be eligible for the Brilliant potentially, as long as you don't have a Chase card. And,

yeah, anyway, look at the chart and get ahead, I can then just don't worry about it.

Pat, your head, and Rudry Tommy, and spin around in a circle three times while hopping on one foot,

then maybe you can get all of the Marriott cards you'd like. All right. So Bonvoid by Bonvoid,

that kind of wraps that one up and moves us on to awards, points, and more. So Rove,

Rove Miles, we wrote a post this week in response to a reader email about redeeming Rove Miles

for a paid stay at a loyalty eligible rate. Because if you do that, you can earn hotel points

and trigger hotel promotions and get your hotel elite credit. And this is something that we didn't

really talk much about at all on our show about Rove Miles, our recent episode about Rove Miles.

We talked about earning Rove Miles and using them and kind of in passing, we mentioned that you

can use them to pay for hotel stays usually at around 1.35 somewhere between 1.35 and 1.5 cents per

point. We said, that's pretty good. And then we moved on to other stuff. And a reader said,

well, you know what? Slow down. Maybe it's better than pretty good because you can use those for

the loyalty eligible rates. And when you do, you earn hotel points as though it's a paid stay.

And so the short version of the math without getting into all the math here on the show because

you can read about it in the post is that you can end up getting somewhere around 1.8 cents per

point when you're stacking promotions and the points that you earn from the paid stay

for your Rove Miles. If you value the hotel points anyway, that you could be earning. And

that starts to look pretty good when you consider what you could earn on the paid stay. So that might

make it more attractive than we had sort of presented it for some people. And I think that's

a legitimate, interesting use of Rove Miles. Yeah, I think it really is. Now personally, I would

do the calculation of the cents per point differently just because if you book with cash directly,

you still get all of those benefits. You're in those points and everything. So I think a fair

comparison. I think it's still 1.35 or up to 1.5 cents per point value. It's just that

you're getting a lot more than you would in a point in the other booking where you're not earning

the hotel points. It may be a be fairer to say you're effectively getting less than 1.35

when it's not a hotel eligible. But then it gets very complicated.

Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to put in that kind of fine print there. But overall, I think, yeah,

it makes this a more attractive use of points to book hotels. And it's nice to have a decent way

to get value from your points and still earn hotel points, earn hotel elite credits, be able to

use your hotel elite status so you get benefits during your stay, probably qualify for promotions,

hotel promotions that require paid stays, still qualify for those. All that kind of stuff is really

good. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Next up, I think we have some sort of breaking news here.

Yeah. So as we're recording this, we're recording this on Wednesday before publishing on Friday.

So I wanted to call out this as breaking because this is really new and details may change about

what we know by the time this publishes, for all I know. But anyway, a doctor of credit reported

on their blog that the Safari Reserve for Business card, when you go into their travel portal,

the hotel booking platform shows that it now offers a price guarantee, price match guarantee.

And it appears that even if your booking stays with Chase's the edit that you can make a price

match guarantee. So what does that mean? It means you can book a stay through Chase's the edit.

And then within 24 hours, you find a better price elsewhere, which with the edit is often very

easy to do because often the prices are inflated. You should be able to submit a claim to say,

hey, I found it cheaper elsewhere and get back the difference from Chase. So if this works,

that's great. Now what Dr. Credit reported was that it's only on the business card.

And it's true. I tried, I logged into both the business card and the personal

server reserve card. It's true that it only pops up on the business card account. But if from there,

if you click through the terms and conditions, it's pretty darn clear that it applies to the

personal Safari Reserve card as well. There's, in fact, there's a bullet point that says,

you must book the hotel in your Chase travel account connected to a qualifying Chase credit card

in parentheses, JP Morgan Reserve, Safari Reserve, and Safari Reserve for Business. So Safari Reserve

accounts. So that means that potentially the value of making bookings through the edit could

have gone up a lot. And here's the other reason this is breaking and not like something.

Most price match guarantees require that all the state details be exactly the same for them to

to, you know, say, okay, we'll honor that claim. And if that includes what benefits you get during

the stay, there isn't going to be anywhere you can compare the edit to, because that may be

fine hotels and resorts. But even there, it wouldn't be worded the same, the benefits. So

And that wouldn't be a public rate that you get. It seems unlikely to me that if they do that,

that you, you would be ever successful in filing a best rate guarantee claim. However,

one, when, when they list out what has to be an exact match, it kind of sounds like we're okay.

So they list out that the hotel name has to be the same, the address dates, room type, bed type,

refund policy, number of guests and currency has been US dollars. That's all they list. So

we don't know, right? Yeah. It seems so it's possible that the best rate. So anyway, it'll be

fairly easy, I think, to test this because when you make a booking through the edit, most of them

are fully refundable. So there's very little risk in just trying it and seeing

whether it works. Yeah, I'm really interested in this because that would, that would greatly

increase the value of that edit credit. Now, I say greatly, it's still hamstrung by the footprint.

There still aren't enough. The edit properties for me to get wildly excited. But this is certainly

a major improvement if it works in the best possible way that we can imagine. I'm hopeful but

cautiously hopeful. It's also a big advantage for just using, if you're interested in using your

chase points at decent value, whenever there is a boost, which tends, currently tends to be either

1.65% boost or a 2x boost, then you can be getting good value for your points as long as the price

of the hotel is decent. And, and boosts aren't reserved only for the edit states. There's also

some other hotels that show up boosted. So it might be good for that as well. Yeah. And then it'll be

interesting to see how they refund the difference. They refund the points or just the cash. Yeah,

I would guess it's cash, but yeah, I don't know. It's very clear that you can book with points though.

Right. That'll be interesting. Okay. So that's, that's the Sapphire Reserve breaking news.

Next up, there are some updates to Delta's 20-minute baggage guarantee. If you're not familiar,

Delta offers a baggage guarantee that your bags will be at the carousel within 20 minutes of,

I guess if you're getting to the gate, is that the way this works? Yeah, 20 minutes of arrival,

whatever, whatever they consider arrival being. And I'm not even sure they check.

But, you know, I've, I've filed a, so anyway, yes, Delta has long had this benefit where

you're waiting for your bags. It's taking a long time. You could then, there's a, there's an

easy online form where you could fill out your flight number, your SkyMiles number, a couple

other pieces of data. I can't remember. And they write away, credit you with 2500 miles,

which is, which has been great. In the past, you've had 72 hours from arrival to submit your claim.

What's changed is now they limited it to two hours. So, wow. Yeah, that's, that's a shame.

So if you're, if you're the type who like, you know, waits till you get home and

settled and everything to do something like this, you know, it might not work for you.

For me, I would tend to forget if I was waiting till then anyway. So I tend to be like, I'm waiting,

waiting at the baggage care. So this is taking forever. Let me fill out a form. Let me fill out the

claim right now. You know, and that's, that's how I do it. So it doesn't affect me. But,

but yeah, so it's something to be aware of because it, it, you know, obviously you have less time

now to do it. Yeah. Well, if you're arriving in like New York City at a New York City airport,

and it takes more than 20 minutes to get your bag, that's eating into your two hours, right? So

if you wait until you get your bag, and then you got to go find an Uber or a taxi or whatever,

forget to get into the city and get to your hotel. Yeah, I mean, you're two hours to be up by the

time you get checked in, maybe. So, so you really have to be there on the form, ready to rock and roll,

I guess. So that's something to keep in mind. I will be flying Delta this week and, and checking

something. So I'll have to have my form pulled up and ready as I'm walking the baggage claim,

just in case. Just in case. I'm not going to let them get me. That's fine. I'm not going to get me

Delta. It doesn't take long to, you know, Google for, for the, the form and pull it up and, and

fill it out. It does not take long at all. So that's that much is good. That much is good.

And I probably wouldn't have bothered Delta, but once you put a little pressure on, you let a

fire and now it's going to cost you 25 and a mile. So if it's not there in 20 minutes, it would

good luck to the baggage claim. Yeah, you know, it'd be funny if they get more claims now, rather than

fewer, because, you know, because before, before people probably, you know, frustrated about the

baggage being late and thinking, oh, I'm going to do this when I get home. Then they forget, right?

Now it'll be like, oh, this is frustrating. I better do it now, because I've only got two hours.

I can't wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's a really silly move to be honest, Delta. So

you're just encouraging people to fill that out more. But anyway, all right, well, good luck.

Anyway, one way or another or bad luck or I don't know which way to wish the luck, but I hope my

baggage get there on time and I don't even have to worry about it. Okay, we'll be right back after

this with our main. We hope you're enjoying the frequent mileer on the error podcast.

Did you know that frequent mileers also a website? At frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest

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How to best spend $115,000. Just asking for a friend. Well, like Greg said at the beginning of

the show, a friend reached out to me and had this enormous amount of spend to do $115,000 worth

of spend in short order and asked, you know, what's the best credit card to use or what are the best

credit cards to use because the situation where the spend can be broken up over multiple cards

and they had enough foresight to know that there are some big spend bonuses to hit and whatnot.

And so I found myself thinking, well, what would I do if it was me if I had the $115,000

suspended? And like Greg said at the outset, it's really hard to give any kind of general advice

that would apply to everybody because it all depends on your situation. Do you care about

at least that is with this program, you know, how do you travel? What matters to you? It varies

so much from person to person, they're kind of giving some blanket advice for how everybody should

spend $115,000 is almost impossible because there are so many different big spend bonuses out there.

But we wanted to talk about it through the lens of how I might do it. Yeah, and I just want to

throw in like one thing about like, even if there was a card that that for some reason gave a

bonus for tax payment or whatever this is a payment for, I was assuming tax because that's what

usually comes up. You know, let's say there's a card that earns 20 points per dollar for this type

of spend. Does that card offer $115,000 of credit limit for that person? Probably not, right? So

even if there was that magic bullet card, you probably could only do a percentage of that spend

with that card. Right, exactly. So most people would have to split that over multiple cards,

and I would probably be splitting it over multiple cards too, although we'll talk about how you might

be able to do it. But at any rate, before we get into all of that, I want to first recognize that

the fastest way to earn lots of miles and points is always to apply for lots of cards and meet lots

of welcome bonuses. And with $115,000 in spend, I mean, an average of $5,000 in spend to meet

an average welcome bonus, you could open like, I don't know, 30 31 cards or something and earn lots

and the millions of miles and points. And so I want to recognize that that would be the best way to

earn lots of points would be to split this over tons and tons of new cards. So recognize that

full stop that's absolutely true. But not everybody wants to sign up for a bunch of new cards and

you can't necessarily sign up for 30 at once. And in this case, it was a situation where the spend

had to be done in short order and a short amount of time. And so that wasn't an possibility to

open 30 new cards or whatever. And so we wanted to look at it through the lens of, okay, well,

I'm going to look at it through the lens of the cards that I have, which cards would I use out of

the cards I have if I had this big purchase that I had to make or a big amount of spend that I

had to do. And so big spend opportunities on lots of additional benefits like elite status or

ability to earn more points or other stuff. So let's talk about the contenders that I would consider

and then Greg can tell me out of my contenders, which ones you think you would pick and how you

might divide the spend and I'll talk about maybe how I'm thinking about it. That's good. So let

me start with some contenders. First up, the business platinum card. Now, this is a card that

ironically enough, even though Greg just said you probably wouldn't be able to put all the spend

on one card. This is one that maybe you might be able to put the entire hundred and fifteen thousand

dollars on. I've heard of people spending significantly more than that on their business platinum

cards. In fact, it's going to depend on your spending pattern and all sorts of things as to whether

or not amics will let you spend a hundred and fifteen thousand. I say you, meaning like you,

the listener, like me, I don't know if I would be able to put a hundred and fifteen K all on one.

But it's at least theoretically possible because it's a pay-over-time card that needs to be paid

immediately unless you have the pay-over-time feature on and then you can only do that up to your

pay-over-time limit. So it would be theoretically possible to do it entirely on that one card

and the business platinum, of course, offers two points per dollar on individual purchases of

five thousand dollars or more on up to two million dollars per year and spend. So if it was possible

to do the entire one hundred and fifteen K just on a business platinum card, that would yield

two hundred and thirty thousand amics membership rewards points, which is a nice return on that

amount of spend. And if it was a new business platinum card at that, then you'd have the walk-maw

for as well. And then it would be pretty incredible. Now, at seventy five thousand dollars spend on

a business platinum, which you could hit with this, you'd earn unlimited Delta Sky Club visits.

So if you're a regular Delta flyer, that could be a great benefit. You wouldn't be limited to the

ten visits per year that you ordinarily have on this card. And you get two guests when you visit

Centurion lounges or side carbice Centurion, which again ordinarily you don't get any guests as an

amics platinum card holder or a business platinum card holder. So if you live in a city with a Centurion

lounge or a side carbice Centurion lounge or a Delta Sky Club, that could certainly add up to be

worth something for you. Yeah. And I think I think those benefits are good for the rest of this

calendar year and all the next, if I remember right? I think that's correct. I think that's correct.

Yeah. I think you're right about that. And then if this person had a bunch more spend to do over

the rest of the calendar year, if you were to spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on

a business platinum card, you'd earn a twelve hundred dollar credit for flights through AMX travel.

Now, the hundred and fifteen K we're talking about here only gets you not even halfway to that

ultra big spend bonus. So whether or not that would make sense. I probably wouldn't have enough

spend to hit the two hundred and fifty case. That probably wouldn't be a factor for me. But I

bring it up because it's it's there. And this would get you part of the way there. So that's one

contender is using a business platinum for some or all of this this this hundred and fifteen K spend.

Then we got World of Hyatt. Now, I don't have the business card. But if you did have the business

card that might be appealing for earning additional elite night credits, although I actually think

having a consumer card might be a little bit better here. So if if we were to put all hundred and

fifteen K spend on a consumer World of Hyatt consumer card, which would not be possible for me or most

people, but just as an if if you did the be forty six elite nights since the card earns two elite

nights per five K spend plus the hundred and fifteen thousand points plus a category one to four

free night certificate. And we value those free night certificates at two hundred and sixteen

dollars. So altogether, if you take our reasonable redemption value for the points you would earn,

and the value of the free night certificate, and you compare that to what you'd earn on a two

percent cash back card, it's pretty much an even match two percent cash back on a hundred and

fifteen thousand dollars. If you were to be able to put that all on two percent cash back cards,

it gets you twenty three hundred dollars. And your value is going to be somewhere in that range

if you consider the value of the points and the free night certificate with Hyatt. So it'd be

relatively close. But in my case, I'd probably only be looking to put some card some spend on the

consumer card. We'll talk about how much in a little bit. Yeah. Let me just add one piece. The

business card also gives you a ten percent back on award redemptions up to twenty thousand

points earned back after you spend fifty thousand dollars. So if you spend points enough at

high at hotels, that's like twenty thousand extra points on top of what you'd be earning from the

spend. That's a good point. That's a good point. And then the consumer card, I just talked about

a hundred and fifteen K. But I think in my own personal circumstances, I'd be more likely to

consider spending just fifteen thousand dollars on the consumer card in order to earn both

six elite night credits and the category one to four free night certificate on top of the fifteen

thousand points that you earn with fifteen thousand dollars spend. That combination is a really

good return. But that would only take care of a small piece of the overall spend here.

Another thing that could take up a small piece of the spend is spending on an AMX Hilton

surpass card. If we put fifteen thousand dollars on a surpass card, then we would earn an

uncapped Hilton free night certificate. And those can be used any night of the week at any

property for a standard room, our value for a Hilton free night certificate. And we have an entire

post on how much free night certificates are worth and how we come to that value based on

an approximate points value and a fudge factor because it's not quite as valuable as points,

etc. Our value for a Hilton free night certificate is five hundred twenty two dollars and seventy

five cents. So that's the big spend bonus at fifteen thousand dollar calendar year spend

on the Hilton surpass card. And so you could look at that if you valued it at that, which you might

value it less, you might value it more. But if you valued it at our valuation, that's about an

additional three and a half percent cash back on fifteen K. It's not cash, but three point five

percent value back on fifteen thousand dollars spend on top of the base earn. And the base earn

rate on that card of three points per dollar based on our reasonable redemption value is about one

point two three. So if we put fifteen K spend on a Hilton surpass card, it's kind of like an

effective return of four point seven three percent on that fifteen K, which is pretty good. Again,

it only takes care of a small portion of the overall spend here. Then two more cards that I would

consider putting some spend on are the Caesar's prestige card. I just recently got that one

actually in fifty thousand dollars and spend on that card would give me Caesar's diamond status

again. Now we used to value Caesar's diamond status mostly for the ability to match around for

free cruises. But there are some other benefits that are related with Caesar's diamond status. So

fifty thousand dollars spend on a pressed each card would get me fifty thousand rewards credits

worth five hundred dollars at Caesar's properties plus twenty thousand tier credits, which is more than

enough for diamond status. So if I were to compare that against a two percent cash back card,

if I valued the five hundred dollars in Caesar's credit at five hundred dollars because I'm

planning a trip to a Caesar's property anyway and I'll use that like cash, then you can kind of

look at it as earning like one percent cash back ish and so fifty thousand dollars spend is

coming at an opportunity cost of about five hundred dollars that I could be earning with a two

percent cash back card. So it's not it's not the most attractive option out of the ones we've

talked about so far. What interests me about that is that after the fifty thousand dollars in

spend and the tier credits you earn for that and the tier credits you earn from the welcome bonus on

the card be very close to diamond plus status with Caesar's, which is the next tier above diamond status

and that's interesting because it offers the complimentary Atlantis stay that you get with diamond

status, but with no resort fees. So that is a savings of about seventy dollars a night and a

nicer hotel room because it's a nicer tower that you get to stay in with diamond plus status.

So that's marginally interesting to me and twenty five hundred tier credits would be relatively

easy to acquire. So that's another thing I'm considering and then finally the sapphire reserve

card is the last of the things that I would kind of consider here because seventy five thousand

dollars in spend in the sapphire reserve card would get I H G one rewards diamond status southwest

a list status a five hundred dollar southwest airlines credit when book through chase travel

and two hundred and fifty dollar credit to the shops of chase. So that's not a slam dunk by any

stretch, but we value chase ultimate rewards points at one and a half cents per point. So if you

consider that plus just whatever you value the five hundred dollar southwest airlines credit

and the two hundred and fifty dollar shops credit, you're probably close ish to a two percent on

the seventy five thousand dollars spend. So close to parity with a two percent cash back card

and you can kind of look at it as an easy way to end up with I H G diamond and southwest a list

status. So not again a slam dunk, but kind of a cheap way to get to I H G diamond and southwest a list

if you value those things. So all right, those are the cards that I talked about here that I would

consider. So let me first ask you are there other cards you think I should consider for big spend

in this type of situation. And then out of the cards I mentioned how would you do this?

Well some other cards that come to mind are depend on like are you interested in airline elite

status then you've got you know the Delta reserve card if you're interested in American airlines

elite status you've got any of their their cards you know and so on you can you can go on about

other airlines as well where you can spend to status. So depending on what your friend is interested

in there might there might be some opportunities there the where they would now in most cases with

that where you're spending to status I would say that if you were if you're making like a just a

logical decision about which approach is going to get me the most sort of concrete value for my

spend that's probably not going to be it. But there's there's this sort of intangible it's very hard

to put a price tag on the value of things like just knowing you're always going to get an extra leg

room or whatever it is and which is also why you with Southwest for example you can't it's

hard to put a price tag on there right. So that's so independent you know it's it differs so much

from person to person how much they would value that but anyway I would throw that in the mix

same thing with hotel programs. So you mentioned hi it of course with Hilton you could get

if you don't have the aspire card and you want diamond status you could do that with $40,000

spend with you know Marriott it's a little bit more complicated but anyway you could do stuff with

Marriott as well and I wouldn't recommend it and then of course IHG we talked about earlier in the

show I the IHG premier card or the premier business card with $40,000 spend you get

diamond status which will get you free breakfast at IHG hotels so that's that's pretty good too. So

that's the main thing that comes to mind there's the if you're thinking more about like just earning

points you know you already said it the outset like we know that signing up for cards is better so

so I mean I would start off looking at what are the big sign up bonus at least do a couple of them

I think and then do the rest with with the left over spend but assuming you could break up the

spend into multiple right chunks but you know beyond that what if your main thing is I want valuable

rewards okay so you pointed out the business platinum 2x and you you could and what's attractive

about that you're getting transferable points which of course if you if you're into this game you

know how to transfer to the right airline or hotel partners in order to get outsized value

but there's another there's a couple other 2x games in town right there's

capital one has a few options with earning 2x with their venture X venture X for business they've got

their cash plus spark cash spark cash plus yeah yeah so you know almost there all those are in 2x

almost there I'd be like ooh can I get a a big welcome bonus plus get 2x for all that spend and

then there's the built palladium card again 2x now people aren't getting huge you know credit

limits on those so that might only go so far but if you combine the 2x with the spend plus

other points you can earn from their points accelerators and and whatnot they have other ways

earning you know using it to pay for rent or mortgage you can get even more points than the 2x

with the built palladium so those are a few off the top of my head no that's a good one and the

built palladium car you mentioned people aren't getting huge limits and that you know a various

person in person my wife's limits her largest limit by by margin oh wow and so it it it just

depends you know I think one person to the next is to wear that shakes out and I think that

that in particular is one where you know you're only probably gonna get reports on the internet

from people who are disappointed yeah rationally like somebody who gets a a limit that they're happy

with isn't looking for a reddit thread to tell everybody hey I got a great credit limit on this

card right so you always kind of have to take those types of things to the grain of salt

yeah it came up in my mind though because my credit limit went down a little bit when I went

from the old built 1.0 card to the built palladium yeah didn't go down like a lot but still it

did go down so went down yeah and you're not the only person we know who had that happen so

you're absolutely right about that makes sense yeah so you know I'm kind of looking at it and

saying you're right so there are a lot of ways to earn at least two points per dollar so then

let me ask you this I could even if you couldn't do it all on one card at 2x probably I mean like

in my household my wife has a venture X I have a venture card she's got a spark cash card we

got a double cash we could put some in the business platinum should we just be putting all of that

if we were doing this should we just be putting it all at 2x or are any of the other big spend

bonuses worth going after you know first I think I'm going to go back to it's so individual about

because a lot of those big spend bonuses are about elite status and there's just no way

to give someone else you know here's how much you should value this there there's no

algorithm where you could you could say well the ability to book you know right into extra

legroom seats and have the chance of an upgrade is is worth this so individual it's and even if

there was an exact dollar value you could assign to how much that's worth if you fly you know once

a week well most people don't fly exactly once a week so it's still individual right right and so

yeah so it's so hard so so you know personally I'm looking at it going well the one on there that

would attract me because I like high at globalist status so much is is spending enough on

high at high at card to make sure that you were in globalist status this year but

it again it just really depends how much you want those the users thing did not

excite me because it because of what you mentioned because you said okay wave resort fees if

that's really why you're doing it and you add up how much you're saving and resort fees plus

versus how much you're losing an opportunity value from spending on a two extra transferable points

card I don't think it adds up now if there's other things about that Caesar's elite status that

you'd be excited about sure that that could be interesting um right right so all right so let me

let me tell you the one I would eliminate right off the back okay so for for me I would eliminate

the sapphire reserve right off the bat and here's why so it's obviously a lot of spend in order to

marginal benefits you know I we fly southwest a lot so the five hundred dollar southwest credit

is pretty good it's kind of a bummer that you got to use it booking through chase that's kind of

annoying right I would put up with that annoyance but there's not enough else that they are to

attract me the two hundred and fifty dollar credit to the shops of chase I mean I could probably find

a Christmas gift or whatever that I would value enough to I don't know look at that half of

its face value or whatever but when you mention the southwest airlines a list that is she said

it's hard to put a price on that and and I would push back as a southwest person on that and say

no it's actually very easy to put a price on that because the southwest priority card or the

southwest performance business card gives you basically all of the benefits of a list status except

for the like priority check-in line at the airport that's really the only thing you can't

beyond with a list status it's meaningful that matters you know otherwise your access

to extra legroom seats is the same with the priority card other performance business card and

you know other stuff like that so I guess you earned some more points per dollar on paid flights

and one that's I guess maybe some people find a marginal benefit but for me that benefit is worth

the annual fee so it would save me the annual fee on one of those cards if I were going to cancel

them but I'm not going to cancel them because I keep it around right this is a blogger I'll write

about I'm an occasion to be able to use my referral link and and so I'm not going to get rid of

the southwest cards so that benefit doesn't really mean anything to me at all so it's whether or not

I care about IHG diamond status and as you said if I really cared about IHG diamond status

night she card to be the way to do it I don't have any of the IHG cards where you could earn

status I could upgrade my old $49 card to do that but I don't care enough about IHG diamond status

so I'd eliminate that one the easy elimination for me now the Caesars one's interesting because

I would not earn Caesars diamond status any other way and so that's the one that I look at and

you're absolutely right mathematically it's a bad decision it doesn't make sense compared to the

other options but there's part of me and it says well but there's there is no other I mean you

could earn the tier credits and there are some people that will go during the 10x tier credit times

and play certain types of machines and be very strategic about how they do it and I'm not talking

about picking like the machine that looks like it's a you know a firecracker about to explode

or whatever I mean mathematically there's some ways that you can actually you know approach gambling

in order to minimize the the amount of house edge and and then and minimize the expected variance

so that you could you could earn tier credits somewhat reasonably I'm probably not going to do that

to go after diamond status I probably will use some of those techniques during the other 2500 tier

credits but I'm interested in that to see what else I could do with diamond plus and particularly

to see if diamond plus could get me any other cruise opportunities or matching opportunities with

other casinos that diamond has not opened up before yeah so to sort of rephrase this it's not

it's not so much that earning diamond status from that spend is what you're after but you're

you're looking for that big leg up towards diamond plus and that's where the the potential

exciting stuff is yeah and the in the cost is relatively small because you know it it does

aren't something back right that's concrete your answer or word credits that we can you and we are

planning a I stay in Las Vegas where we will be able to use the reward credits and get value

out of those and some of the diamond elite benefits so I would look at that and say well I could

I could use that and and get some additional benefit if I stayed at a Caesar's property

to get wave resort fees and free valet parking and all those types of things that that would

be nice little benefits where I wouldn't really want to pay a lot of money for them but in this case

the opportunity cost would be small enough and the opportunity excuse me would be easy enough

that I would consider spending the 50k on that yeah however that would obviously be like

lower on the totem pole because you're right that the return on spend isn't great so then yeah

I look at okay well you get the Hilton surpass card that to me would be an easy $15,000 of the spend

no more because I already have diamond status that comes with the aspire card easy to get diamond status

so I wouldn't be spending any more than the 15 but I would spend the 15 because that's a pretty good

return on 15 so I would knock out 15k for sure on the surpass card and have a hundred thousand

left to sell so that would that would come you down right away I would for sure do the 15k

on the consumer high card because at 15k the return there between 15,000 points and the category

one to four free night and the six elite nights towards status it's a struggle for me to hit 60 nights

with high it so getting six nights is kind of a no-brainer for me it's an easy way to pick up six

nights and get me closer because I wouldn't hit 60 without that for sure I may need to spend more

on the card than that in order to reach 60 this year so and I think I probably will go for 60 so

I'd spend at least 15,000 on that and maybe more so that's 30 so that leaves me with 80 more

which is relatively convenient because 75k on the business platinum card would offer a good return

and it would offer at the two points per dollar on a purchase of over 5,000 and it would get me

some small additional benefit in terms of unlimited Delta Sky Club visits now I don't

fly Delta enough that probably I'm gonna use the 10 I got anyway so that doesn't attract me

as much as two guests for Centurion Lounge access does because my wife and I both have platinum

cards so we can each get into a Centurion Lounge but we don't go to them now because we have two

kids and I don't want to pay the thirty five dollars a kid or whatever and there are multiple times

each year where we fly through an airport with a Centurion Lounge but we don't go anymore because

because of that so spending the 75k on the business platinum would get that access and that would

be worth something more to me and the two X is already a good return so two X plus something more

is I think attractive enough for me to to say I would I would do the 75k and if I just did 75

that leave me an additional five I could toss on the high card for a couple more elite nights

and be done with that so so and that would be without the Caesar's card at all so that would be

probably my strategy without the Caesar's card Caesar's card is is tempting for me

I haven't thrown it out yet but I but I think more reasonably 75k business platinum 15 or 20k

world of high at and 15k Hilton surpass I think that'd be my answer in my house all day

that's the way I would probably do I mean I I think that's a really solid approach I think if

you know if somebody was really interested in Hilton free night certificates I think now correct

me if I'm wrong well all right I think you mentioned that the spend had to be done pretty quickly

if it if it didn't need to be done too quickly I think what you could do spend 15k on the surpass get

a free night certificate upgrade to the aspire which comes with a free night certificate right away

so now you got to spend 15k dollars more because if you spend 30k in a calendar year on the

surpass in my on the aspire yeah you get another free night and they count at least a lot of

reports have said that first 15k counts even though it was on the surpass but it's now an aspire

so with a total of 30k dollars spend you then have like three nights in short order if you can

stage it that way which would be kind of cool yeah I mean I think that's a really solid plan so

I love that I think this does a good job of demonstrating how individual these these things are

right you know I think some people would look at the Caesar stuff and be like I go to Vegas all the

time if I could be one of those high rollers just just by throwing this bend there and getting a

few more you know tier credits that would be awesome I could see a lot of people highly valuing

that on the other hand you know everyone else would be like I don't value that at all you know it's

so or the business platinum card the two guests in the Centurion Lounge if you didn't travel the

way you do and or even if you're wife didn't also have a platinum card yeah having just two

guesses isn't enough right because you're traveling for people and so I think that it's such a good

demonstration of why we can't just give an answer that works for everybody absolutely does not

no we can't and and you know I only briefly touched on the capital one cards and that was

the 75k and a capital one card is something else I thought of because that would get you

guest access for two guests for you and the authorized users from him you pay for an authorized user

card at capital one lounges and so that came to my mind as well though I can count on one hand the

number of times I've been in a situation where I potentially could have used a capital one lounge

and count on zero fingers the number of times I've been into a capital one lounge yet so

so it's that's not something I'm using but if I lived at an airport with a capital one lounge

that might be more of a consideration for me obviously potentially more than caring about

centurion lounge access so you're right so it's so individual varies so much from person to person

and and the surpass technique that Greg just mentioned be a great technique for somebody who has

had a surpass card for a long time but if you don't you're opening a new surpass card in order

to get the bonus and spend the 15k well you're not going to be able to upgrade to the

entire card yet so you know it varies tremendously for person to person in terms of what you might

might be able to do there so yeah but but fun exercise to consider I like sometimes getting questions

like that because it does make me think about what would I do how would I do it and and bounce

that off and I kind of like bouncing it off of the rest of the frequent myler team and getting

opinion so I appreciate you playing along with that one Greg it's fun this is like a fun game

would you spend the listener same to you how would you spend $15,000 I'd be curious to hear what

you have to say I'm sure there's going to be some folks out there who say they would spend to

dial to diamond or they would spend on an aviator silver card in order to earn credit towards

elite status of the American Airlines you could spend towards a companion pass with Southwest or

so many other things you could do so please let us know what you would do I'm curious I look forward

to reading the comments but let's move into this week's question of the week so this week's

question of the week came in a couple of questions but Rob wrote in and said could you talk about

how significant amounts of investments like brokerage IRA investments can be used to enhance

the points in miles game I think Greg has mentioned a Bank of America program he's taken advantage

of thanks Rob and I know we've talked about Bank of America before but maybe not really in detail

in a while and maybe it's not the only opportunity out there I don't know what can you share a little

bit about how somebody who has investments and how much they need to have in order for it to make

a difference might be able to enhance their points in miles game sure so Bank of America yeah it has

this bank level rewards program where basically you get a different elite tier based on how much money

you have in the combination of Bank of America plus Merrill so Merrill is Merrill Edge and Merrill Lynch

and if you have I don't remember the exact amounts but currently as we're recording this if you

have a hundred thousand dollars and more across your investments and in all of Bank of America and Merrill

then you get a the big deal is that on certain Bank of America credit cards you get a 75%

boost in the rewards earnings so there are one and a half percent the credit cards that earn

only one and a half percent everywhere suddenly jump up to earning 2.62 and change percent

back for all your spend which is incredible that's cashback equivalent and what Bank of America does

not have is any cards that earn points that are like airline miles or hotel points or transferable

points where you could get that 75% boost the other thing to know is that soon I forget what I

think may they're changing the program up and so at the hundred thousand dollar tier is going to

give you a 50% boost instead of a 75% boost so I think that brings you down to 2.25% everywhere which

is still better than most programs but not as I poppingly as exciting and then at a million

dollars in investments and savings you can you get the 75% boost some others worth knowing about

that off the top of my head are city bank if you have 200,000 dollars I think in investments and

savings checking all that kind of stuff with city then you have city gold status and that gives you

things like a annual rebate on certain high end city bank credit cards including the city strata

elite the American Airlines executive card the old city prestige card I think those are the three

currently and so that brings the effective annual fee for each of those cards down by a camera

$145 I think I've taught me that I remember exactly how much $150 maybe and suddenly like those

cards become a lot easier to justify if you like the perks of those cards it also gives you

some things like if you have a checking account you get I can't remember $200 back on certain

types of purchases and so you might be able to get like your Costco membership rebated and different

things like that wow I know there's others but those are the main ones a couple others a couple

others kind of mine US bank if you have $100,000 or more and you get the smartly card and there's

some additional I think you need like a smartly checking account I can't remember the exact smartly

card details but if you have $100,000 or more then you get a total 4% back on your first $10,000

in net eligible purchases each billing cycle with the smartly card and there are different tiers you

get 3% at between 50 and 99 99 or two and a half percent less than that so it just depends on

how much you have but again at that 100k level or more then you're looking at 4% cash back

on up to $10,000 a month which could certainly be interesting so that's one to keep in mind I

suppose and then with Morgan Stanley you can with investments and a platinum cash plus account

you can get an annual fee waiver essentially get the $195 engagement bonus that I can't remember

what they call it but you can get the $895 back on the annual fee right is that the way it works

with the Morgan Stanley card yeah right I mean there's there's requirements you have to have a

certain account open and if you have that account open the cash plus account yeah you get the

full annual fee back but that account has a monthly fee which can be waived if you have enough

and savings in that account yeah I think if I remember correctly you have to have $25,000 average

monthly balance or average daily balance each month in that account in order to not pay a monthly fee

and if you don't then I think the monthly fee on the platinum cash plus account if I remember

correctly is $55 a month and so I did briefly think about is it worth trying to get that

and just pay the monthly fee and get the annual rebate on the annual fee for the Morgan Stanley

platinum card that's questionable though based on your tax bracket because you're going to pay taxes

on that $895 that you get back and so if you're in a higher tax bracket the amount you're going to

pay in tax plus the monthly fee for the account might add up to more than the cost of just paying

the annual fee on the card so if you weren't going to keep that money in that account then it's

questionable value right now and right now because of the way interest rates are it's questionable

to keep $25,000 in that platinum cash plus account but at any rate it's it's a possibility something

else to keep in mind Schwab also has an engagement bonus on the platinum card if you've got I think

is a million dollars or more with Schwab then you get a discount on the annual fee on the platinum

card so that's another one that comes to mind but but the majority of what I think about here are

the things that we mentioned initially Bank of America City and U.S. Bank are the three that come to

mind in terms of your investments making a difference there probably are some others out there that

are less interesting to us and or just that we haven't yet stumbled on but those are the ones

yeah one of the ones that used to be fantastic was Chase Private Client because what that gave

you was you used to be exempt from the 524 rule if you had private client status through their

banking and so that meant you could sign up for at that time as many like Chase cards as you

wanted basically and get the welcome bonus on all of them but that has long that ship has long

since sale and it's worth mentioning the cash or and or investment requirements from most of

these again you'll have to look into the details but like Bank of America for instance I'm familiar

with since I've done it in the past investment accounts could include like IRAs in their self-directed

brokerage Merrill Edge and so that's worth calling out because if you're familiar with Merrill Lynch

you might say oh but there's there's fees you know managed account fees and whatnot but Merrill Edge

is the self-directed brokerage that does not have like monthly and annual fees and so you could

just have an IRA there move an IRA because you can change custodians maybe you have an IRA right now

it well as far go or fidelity or wherever else you could move it to Bank of America in order to

meet that requirement and that's going to be similar probably with most of the rest of these

that you could move over retirement accounts like that in order to meet the requirements so it might

be as hard as it might sound when you hear what a hundred thousand dollars in cash I don't have

that in the bank but you might have retirement savings that could potentially work for that so

it's not it's not necessarily as far fetched as it might initially sound right right and if your

main concern is about the cost so you maybe you have a lot in investments but you don't want to be

paying like you know brokerage fees as Nick said all of these that we've talked about have self-directed

investment account options where the fee you know any fees that are there are so tiny that it

what you really care about is how you're investing and whether that's getting a good return and so

it's a pretty pretty good option yeah if you have the money anyway right right all right that brings

us to the end of today's episode if you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of it in your email

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