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Episode 11: It's Incidental Season
308 Plays18 days ago
Hey TPP listeners,
It’s January and you know what that means, we’re getting to work on incidentals, but also we’re taking some time to think about how we approach incidentals.
Other than this, we have some feelings about all the Bilt v2.x noise.
We end the show with upcoming vacations we’re (still) gardening. We hope you enjoy the show! -TPP
Timestamps
- [01:30] - BILT v2.1
- [15:20] - Incidental Season
- [36:24] - Calendar Year Product Downgrades and Cancellation
- [42:40] - BofA Alaska Ascent to Summit PC
- [48:40] - Booking Vacations / Award Gardening
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Points Project
00:00:00
Speaker
It's incidental season on this episode of The Points Project.
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Points Project with your hosts Christoph and Raymond. Well, hello everyone, it's
Travel Experiences Over New Year
00:00:20
Speaker
2026. Happy New Year and happy incidental season. Raymond, it's been a while. How have you been? how was your break?
00:00:27
Speaker
Hey, Christoph. Yeah, I'm doing well, man. How are you? Yeah, pretty good. Well, we had some travels for New Year's and then even afterwards. right All the awards flights only really open up but once everybody's back from the holidays. So we kind of shoot in a little ah weekend vacation in Mexico in there for three days. But yeah, it it was good. like What did you do for the holidays?
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, actually, um you know, we just went to Los Angeles. Essentially, we just went to go visit family, took P3 down to Disneyland, which was, you know, really nice. He got to hang out with his cousin. And yeah, it's nice to see like, you know, our offspring hanging out with, you know, other family offspring and just seeing them kind of like gel together and first, you know, first impressions. It's it's really neat to see. Yeah.
00:01:14
Speaker
And yeah, Disneyland with a, ah you know, essentially a one-year-old. It's pretty cool, man. Like, I just, I can't wait to see him, you know, walking, running, playing a little bit more. Like, ah getting that independence. It's one of the most heartwarming things ah that i'm I'm going through as a father. So, yeah.
Bilt Credit Card Complications
00:01:31
Speaker
But other things that are going on right now, Christoph. We have the... Well... There's a ton going on. But built... You know, we talked about this on the Patreon show, just built being, I guess, you know, when we did that show, it was, there was a lot of unconfirmed details and rumors, right? And I think we we've now, a couple weeks later, see what those rumors and details are actually confirmed to be. I mean, we have, you know, the three new cards. We have the zero annual fee blue card. We have the Obsidian kind of mid-tier card. And we have the Palladium, you know, high annual fee, high benefit, high engagement card.
00:02:10
Speaker
Man, Christoph, I mean, this has been on the blogs nonstop recently. And honestly, Christoph, like I am so tired of hearing about Bilt. How are you feeling with this Bilt? Exactly, yeah um ah One thing that was hard to me is definitely and like the social media blast that was going out.
00:02:31
Speaker
So probably every award blogger, YouTuber, a podcaster, I guess, like, you know, everybody that's potentially at a payroll talk about it. um We don't get paid, so ah we still get to talk about it because everybody does talk about it. But um to be fair, um it's also usually slow new season, right? So before the new year, there's like, oh, people still try to get their new credit card office out and everything. But then after the holidays, Well, at least in Award and credit card land, it's usually a little bit quiet.
00:03:02
Speaker
And I think the timing here of Build is maybe not completely intentional. Essentially, Build is now in its third bank. right So they started with Evolve, then they had a partnership with Wells Fargo, and then essentially Wells Fargo didn't extend or like whatever, just ah eventually canceled that partnership. And so now they're together with Cartless as an issuer.
00:03:23
Speaker
and and so ah probably some of the reasons why this build release happened, um with you know lots of rumors and lots of unconfirmed stuff. And to be honest, it was pretty chaotic. right so like it It seemed like the plan was not completely... um It wasn't fully thought through. Yeah. It seemed like the plan was not completely um finished. right So everything was pretty half-baked. And so they came out, and it seemed somewhat rushed. And it's probably related to some deadline that they have at Wells Fargo to just ah get their essentially their cart hotels out.
00:04:02
Speaker
And so ah because of this, we essentially we looked at the built v2 release, right and then it became the v2.1 release, and then became the v2.1 release with built cache updates. And I think by now, um the dust has somewhat settled, and we have an idea of what the cards do. But yeah, it's um it was quite a bit. right So there there was lots of noise and lots of rumors and and even lots of changes that happened already after the launch. And so now I think we can look back at this and make up our minds of you know what's a potentially interesting angle there and what maybe is something that we might pass on.
00:04:41
Speaker
Anyways, um long revel here, but what was your take on that, Raymond? Now, looking back at all the changes and kind of where we ended up right now. Yeah, you know with the built card, you know because they switched issuers, um and I've been previously trying to get this built card for a while now. And now that they've migrated over to, well, I guess still in the process of migrating over to Cardless, I was like, maybe I have a chance of getting this card. And you know I was like, OK, typically with me, Christoph, I'll C3 cards, right? The low, mid, and high tier cards. And I'll pretty much, you you know me, I'll default to the high tier card. I think that... Absolutely. Okay, yeah, you're... That's what we do, right? So I defaulted to the high tier card because I was like, okay, I like... um
00:05:24
Speaker
I like higher ah potential to spend and be rewarded for
Strategies for Maximizing Credit Card Benefits
00:05:28
Speaker
it. The built cash stuff, I feel like I still need a college degree or, you know, like a vocational degree or something to figure out how this all works. um But I was like, I think I can make sense of this. And, you know, I just need to, like, get the card first and then figure everything else out.
00:05:44
Speaker
So, like, it all kind of looked good. It's nice to also see, you know, in the past... Both of the previous built cards, they did not come with welcome offers, right? And these cards, you know, they they came out and they said, um you have welcome offers. So i was like, okay, yeah, it's probably time to apply. My credit report doesn't look amazing right now, but, um you know,
00:06:06
Speaker
Built has a lot of good transferable partners, right? Like Hyatt. They have Japan Airlines, which I could definitely use some more Japan Airlines miles right now. um And I was like, let's let's see how this goes. And when I looked at the application page, it was like, we're only going to do a soft pull on your credit. So I was like, there's pretty much nothing to lose here. And so I went in on it.
00:06:26
Speaker
And yeah, basically, yeah, they were like, no. And I don't know the reason for the no exactly. Like, was it related to some previous experience with Cardless? I'm not exactly sure, but...
00:06:36
Speaker
It was a no. And so umm there's not a lot of motivation to try to learn more about the BUILT program, at least personally, because there's ah you know there's no involvement for me right now.
00:06:50
Speaker
Christoph, did you actually even think about applying for this? did I don't think that you applied for it, but... Yeah, so I contemplated applying for it, but I'm also just waiting for, i think, my last ever round of 5.24 to roll around, which will be the case in early February. So I am still trying to take it slow with player 1 and player 2. and then hopefully get a bunch of Chase cards and then do a bunch of applications again. Now for build, we didn't have the original build cards. like it never like
00:07:23
Speaker
you know Because of the lack of a signup bonus, we never really yeah went in on it. Because some of the say MX offers or Chase offers or the other stuff that's out there just juicier. I mean, you you spend on it and probably your cashback rate on a signup bonus is 10, 15, sometimes 20%, right?
00:07:41
Speaker
And with Build, it's more a card for ongoing spend. Now, ironically, the card was originally marketed to renters, right? So you can pay your rent on the credit card, essentially.
00:07:53
Speaker
And i think one of the things that really had appealed to people is that you can float your rent payment, essentially, for a month on your credit card, right? Meaning you used to be able to make a payment, the payment would go on your credit card, and then only once your credit card statement becomes due,
00:08:08
Speaker
you know Then when you make that payment, you actually make the rent payment. I think there was like a a big part of the the built user base took advantage of this. but Now with that refresh,
00:08:22
Speaker
changed. And that's the irony on this whole thing, which is when you make payments to your rent or mortgage, both of which are allowed right now, but your payment ultimately comes out of your bank account via ACH, but you still pay a 3% fee on it. That's kind of like the crux on it. Essentially, they're saying, hey, you make a payment from your bank account, the way that you would have made a payment anyways. And if you want points for it, well, you can pay us a fee, right? And essentially pay like whatever, you know, 3% to get 1% back in points. That, of course, is...
00:08:55
Speaker
that of course is you know, not so appealing. But the other funny part of like all of these changes were when once they came out with like this built cash, right? So now technically there's like built points, right? The the ones they can transfer right to Hyatt and Jell and Alaska and so on, kind of like the valuable currency. And then there's a second currency, which is built cash. And now there's like some trade-offs how we can essentially ah use, build cash to do things to get more points and vice versa. And then that's where like most of these complications come from. It's kind of like Amex saying, hey, we have membership rewards type one and membership rewards type two. And then, ah you know, some of them only transfer to Hilton and others transfer to airlines or something crazy like this, right? So I think lots of the... um
00:09:42
Speaker
lots of the complications that Build came up with here is mostly to come up with a card where you can say you can come up with some theoretical value, but on the other hand it's highly marketed still towards people that tend to optimize and you know game systems like this.
00:10:00
Speaker
I guess like people in this podcast and the listeners thereof. um And so therefore they needed to build a card that looks good but has a lot of breakage in it right and it essentially prevents build from completely bleeding out one way or the other.
00:10:16
Speaker
And so, yeah, you you end up up with a card that originally said like, hey, it's easy, you know pay your rent, you can float your rent payment and you've got some points for it. And it turned into, hey yeah You can still pay your rent, but it comes out of your bank account immediately. And if you want to get some value out of it, now get you know a master's degree in math in order to figure out how to walk and work around all of these monthly breakage factors and different... Anyways, and that yeah it came out pretty crazy. There's some there's some value, but like some of it is extremely complicated. And the complication is there to essentially just hide the fact that
00:10:55
Speaker
You know, the payoff is just not that great. Anyways, that's my take on it. Yeah, like with BuildCash, I'm looking at the website and I mean, they have like, like they have Grubhub credits, they have GoPuff credits, there's dining partners, there's...
00:11:12
Speaker
points accelerators, there's all kinds of things, right? it's It's actually getting pretty wild. And it's like, if you were a normal person, like, like i already find that Amex and Chase, with all of the coupon book credits that we have to deal with, this is already enough for me.
00:11:31
Speaker
And if you really wanted to maximize built, like, you would have to be just focused on built if you were maximizing everything. And I'm just like, you know, With Amex, there's like multiple cards that you can get. like Why not focus on Amex in Chase, right? like Yeah, there's a you few different cards that have higher signup bonuses and less complication. like We complain so much about how bad incidental credits and coupon book credits are with the you know the big players, and then Bilt comes in just like,
00:12:01
Speaker
it's an exponential increase in complication. And I'm not sure that anybody is going to be able to take advantage of every credit that exists. um I think, I don't know, Christoph, like, I just feel like it's, it's too much. And I've, I've, I've had enough.
00:12:17
Speaker
And, um you know, I just, I just want to get some value. I don't need to, yeah it's it's just going to be too much for me. Yeah, i mean, i think if there is a snarky comment to be made about this, then it's this.
00:12:30
Speaker
When Build started with Wells Fargo, they had a big bank would you know pick up the tab. I think Wells Fargo lost something like 10 plus million on the whole ecosystem, right? Now, if I were to use the Build card, I would probably take those points and transfer them probably to Hyatt because I tend to use it quite a lot. But if I then think about this and I say, hey, let's compare this to something expensive. Let's say the CSR business, the Chase Sapphire Reserve business card, which I think even right now has a somewhat lukewarm bonus of, let's say, points, I think, for 20,000 spent. the fee like 800 bucks.
00:13:07
Speaker
Look, if I spent $20,000 on my build card with all accelerators and on all the craziness and essentially wading through linear algebra to min-max it, then i get maybe 80, maybe 100,000 higher out of like kyat points out of this um Okay.
00:13:26
Speaker
So you're telling me instead i can go, i can get a CSR business. I just pay 800 bucks. I pay my tax bill and i just want to 150,000 points plus something extra. And I don't need to go to chase it and fight with them of whether the tax payment should count or not. Right? So that that's that's really the the takeaway. There are simply other banks and issuers that are more rewarding than built. And they're also simpler, even though their ecosystems have their own complexities. But it's just much easier than built.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think like, um you know, if, if you're one of us and you're getting a built card, you're, you're getting it because of the signup bonus and you're not looking for additional complications because you could get less complication and more value out of, you know, chasing the big bank. So I think that's probably the customer base that, you know,
00:14:18
Speaker
built
Efficient Batch Processing of Credits
00:14:20
Speaker
Built was created, like or at least designed in part by you know Richard Kerr, and he's he's one of us, right? He's one of the charters. And i feel like he had to balance you know two types of stakeholders, right? Like people who want to figure out the value and also you know not lose a lot of money on all the benefits that they offer, but make it look like there's a lot of benefits here. And I think like it's it's hard to fit you know a square into a circle hole, right? like
00:14:49
Speaker
So yeah, these are just basically two opposing forces and they're meeting each other. So I think like, you know, if if I were at least able to get approved for this card, you know, I'd just be like, okay, get the signup bonus, put some spend on it. Maybe try to, you know, I'm not going to maximize it, but I'm going to at least for sure take advantage of like the signup bonus, the transfer partners and kind kind of call it a day.
00:15:11
Speaker
So um let's let's move on, because I think we've kind of belabored the point here with BILT. It's just way too complicated. But um we have more complication, Christoph. It is incidental season, because it's January.
00:15:25
Speaker
How are we doing on incidentals with all of the major issuers? Yeah, see, thank god. MX is so simple compared to BILT. We don't have monthly breakage. We have quarterly and annual breakage.
00:15:37
Speaker
I guess that makes it much better, doesn't it But yeah, um so I've been ah working hard on making sure i squeeze out most of the annual incidentals. So there's the airline credits. Apparently, they're still low to United Travel Bank just fine.
00:15:53
Speaker
um I've also ah used some award bookings like on Delta. Apparently, those fees still count as well. So there there's a bunch there. And essentially, I use them all up immediately so that don't have to think about them anymore. you know There's personal and business platinums. And then there's even this $50 credit on the Aspire card.
00:16:10
Speaker
um Besides that, ah you know speaking of Aspire, right there's not know all of these $50 quarterly Hilton credits, especially on the the Platinum business cards as well as the Hilton business cards, if you still have some. I actually ended up canceling a bunch of Amex cards too that were just due from a triple dip that I did in 2024. The idea to get a card in December, like mid-December.
00:16:35
Speaker
yeah You get the credits for one year, you get the credits for the next year, and then when the annual fee posts, guess what? It's the third year, so you can usually get these credits out, then cancel the card and still get that fee payment back. So essentially you pay one annual fee for sign-up bonus plus three years of incidentals, which is of course very, very nice. and And that works with, of course, the Platinum cards, but it also works with, for example, Hilton cards.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, so that's been the Amex side. There's another card that is kind of dear to me, which is the Bank of America Premium Elite card, which also has these nice calendar year credits, not card member year credits. And that one too works in the same way. You open the card sometime mid-December. You get a bunch of credits there. There's also incidentals, kind of similar to what Amex does. There's some lifestyle credits, but you can just load them to Uber Eats. Yeah, you can get them, well, for the first year, you can get them for the second year. And then you can usually get them for the third year.
Credit Card Downgrading and Canceling Strategies
00:17:36
Speaker
And in the third year, if you then downgrade that card, within 30 days of that very high annual fee posting to a fee-free card, and that's important, it has to be a fee-free card, then Bank of America will also fully refund that fee, which also means you end up doing the exact same as Amex, meaning you pay the annual fee once, you get a sign-up bonus once, and then you get the incidentals for three years. And while we're at it, also this premium lead card is a very nice priority pass offering. So that's another thing that is worthwhile looking into.
00:18:08
Speaker
But yeah, so lots of credits on my side, lots of cancelling things. There's something to be said about FHR credits, but you know I think we'll talk about this later. But you know if I talk about incidentals, then I talk about this on on one level, like very basic. you know Just take take like the the the biggest, juiciest things and take them out.
00:18:28
Speaker
But Raymond, I know you have a whole other level of dedication to making sure that you max out those incidentals. So tell me about it. I think this is the reason I was so tired with built is because I went through and I, I've been doing this, i think since 2024, but I think I was like, I need to make this a little bit more repeatable.
00:18:48
Speaker
Right. I previously would spreadsheet my, my incidental credits, but I was like, ah I need to be able to scale this you know year after year instead of like kind of starting over on a new spreadsheet. So it just became like a log. So I went through and i was like, okay, like what are all the banks that offer any type of credit? And I just went ahead and listed those out. And then I went, well, okay, which cards at those banks you know, have the types of credits that I need to kind of keep track of. Okay. And then do I have multiple instances of one of these cards, right? Then all of a sudden it's like, you know, two or three instances of that credit that you need to keep track of. So I basically like spreadsheeted this all out.
00:19:25
Speaker
I even like said, okay, you know is this annual? Is this quarterly? Is this in the City Strata Elite? I mean, hourly is a kind of joke here, but I mean, like you you could get you know crazy with your how you track things.
00:19:38
Speaker
And I went through and I listed every single thing out, like Citibank, Chase, B of A, um PenFed even came came up on this sheet. You know how many freaking credits I have, Christoph? That, you know, for 2026, I need to do at least this many transactions.
00:19:57
Speaker
how many How many you think? Like maybe, i don't know, probably over 100, right? Oh, for sure. Like 120 or so? Yeah. and are Okay, so let me... I have 225 rows on the spreadsheet.
00:20:12
Speaker
This is like a credit almost like every day and a half, right? Like I need... And these are the ones that I thought like are useful, right? Like, you know, I can just go in and do a transaction and then be done with it. There are more credits that I didn't even include in
Upgrading to BofA Summit Card
00:20:26
Speaker
here because I was like, okay, I'm not using an Adobe credit. I'm not using a Squarespace credit or whatever, like these other ones. But, the you know, the ones that we kind of think of, and I was like, 225? Like our profile between me and P2 is also like kind of slimmed down in the last, since 2024 for sure. And I was like, man, like if I had 10 business platinums or something like this, like I would just be spending my time just like crediting everything.
00:20:53
Speaker
And yeah, some of these, like, you know, there's, and you know, there are easy pathways to liquidating the credit or getting them out. But like, if you had a very involved process with trying to use some of these incidentals, like, it i yeah it just I just came up with the conclusion it's unsustainable.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so, yeah um yeah, that is my thesis for for credits. But you know I did start to get ah to get a move on some of these. Because, yeah, I mean, we're at the end of January. And I was like, oh, OK, let me filter down on just the ones in January. And i was like, I need to get started because I you know i don't want to be January 30 or 31. And then being like, oh, God, I need to go do like 20 of these things. So.
00:21:31
Speaker
I have made some progress, but ah you know I probably need to put probably 30 minutes to just like focus on finishing the January stuff up. So my my first question here is, you know you mentioned useful credits. I wonder where do you draw the line here? Because you know that I draw the line at the $7 monthly Dunkin' Donuts credit. So where do you draw this line?
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I will still do the Dunkin' Donuts credit. I know you won't. I knew it. And and I have offered previously multiple times, like, i'll I'll buy your Dunkin' Donuts credit. And then, you know, when we meet up, we can exchange for like a beer or something.
00:22:11
Speaker
And the reason that $7 is still something I'll do is because it's very easy, right? Like you can go into your Dunkin' app and just load. And I used to have three personal goals, right? Like just load write one right after another. And it was it was very easy, right? Versus like...
00:22:29
Speaker
A $10 wireless credit, sometimes I let slip because, well, I don't really have cell phone service at the moment with one of the majors that, you know, it'll get credited. And so I find myself even like paying other people's cell phone bills or trying to sell it. And then that becomes a whole process of its own, right? Like just to, you know, capture maybe 70% if I sell it to somebody, like...
00:22:49
Speaker
Well, there's all the back and forth. So yeah, the dunking credit makes sense to just load and be done with it in 30 seconds versus, you know, sometimes a wireless credit often with me, at least will slide by.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's funny, the the Uber credit is, those are usually done, Christoph, like on the 31st. We usually have something from Uber Eats delivered on the 31st because it's like, okay, the credits are starting to show up and it's dinner time. Let's just order something.
00:23:16
Speaker
That sounds familiar. You do that too? Yeah. um I think for January, you know, like the the only thing that I came up with that needed to be used for this month was the um the Apple TV app. Apple music subscription. Like I think I set that up, but I didn't see the charge hit. so I don't know if I am just going to miss the credit or maybe my billing cycle is not, is not working on my, um,
Hawaii Trip Planning with Points
00:23:39
Speaker
you know, Apple account. And so, uh, you know putting that on P2's chase Sapphire reserve. I mean, we'll just see, you know, yeah, it's like they advertise so much value and then, you know, yeah there's so many things that can go wrong and you just miss the value.
00:23:53
Speaker
yeah Anyways, yeah, I mean, i have been, you know, I'm doing some Japan trip planning and I'll get to that later. But I have been trying to like make use of some of these bigger, more valuable credits. I think that's probably what I would, you know, instead of like coming to a crossroads of like, I have way too many credits to to keep track of. Like, yeah, I mentioned there was like 225 rows on my spreadsheet that I need to do this year if I wanted to maximize everything.
00:24:20
Speaker
I should probably filter this by the value, right? and Or not filter, but sort the spreadsheet by highest to lowest value and focus on it that way. Maybe I need a way to track like level of involvement, high or low, with ah with this particular credit and just like kind of like work down a spreadsheet in in that regard. So I mean, like the City Strata Elite, we're going to Japan and you know I have a couple of these credits used up for that trip. um actually from 2025, but I did use one from 2026 so far. And, you I'm pretty happy with that credit, right? Like it's it's not like a...
00:24:56
Speaker
It's not terribly hard to use. um And the nice thing is like, it's a $300 travel credit, but, or really hotel credit, but it's just like, it comes straight off the booking and you don't have to book some crazy expensive hotel, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve edit credit, right? Like that, you know, you're going to be spending like 800, a thousand bucks for two nights, even at the low end, just to get 250 off. Like it doesn't really seem like too much of a value. So, you know, the $300 City Strata Elite credit for me, has been you know It's easy to use and it's high value.
00:25:27
Speaker
So I feel pretty good about that one. You don't have this card, do you, Christoph? Yeah, I somehow didn't get this card. So I have a bunch of Prestige and also American Airlines cards. But yeah, I never got the Strata Elite. I guess I mostly chickened out after people i got all of this drama of it.
00:25:46
Speaker
getting requests for tax forms and other things immediately after signing up. So I held off on it and then, you know, 524 rolls around and you figure like, ah, well, you know, I can always do it later. And that way you push it into the future. So, yeah, I'm glad that you're ah exploring this part. Actually, if I remember correctly, then you have even multiple of those in the family by now, correct? Yeah, yeah. And it's it's nice. Yeah, we got two within, I think, eight days last August. And I was like, oh, yeah, i did the double dip. Should I go for the triple dip or the quadruple dip, Christoph? Like, I don't think Citi, I think Citi would have been, would have took issue with that if if I tried to execute that plan with P2's relationship there.
00:26:29
Speaker
So... Christoph, maybe more of a philosophical question here, but like what do if if we were to recommend somebody newer to the game, you know just like, OK, yeah, i I want to extract maximum value, but I also don't want to spend a lot of time, like how would you suggest somebody approach this? right like my My approach is spreadsheet.
00:26:49
Speaker
What do you think? like I've heard people say, like I like to do vibe accounting with this type of stuff. Is that sort of your approach? your general outlook on incidental credits that that is a fascinating term but yes i'll adopt it like i think i'm or even though i'm strong on spreadsheets i think vibe accounting really captures my approach here that is absolutely weird i guess this is like vibe coding nowadays or uh vibe music editing i've done that too or vibe podcast editing hey um
00:27:24
Speaker
yeah With certain things I like to do, Vive accounting, it's probably, you know, my Uber balance. I'll do some Vive accounting. Like, yeah, it sounds about right. um But yeah, I don't think that my, so I'm going to look back at 2026 at the end of this year and look back at the spreadsheet. And I'm going to be like, yeah, I missed a lot of stuff.
00:27:43
Speaker
And I think I'll be okay with that. like i'm I'm like doing all the crazy tracking up front. And then when I go back and look at a retrospective, I'll just be like, oh yeah, that was pretty good.
00:27:55
Speaker
i think I did all right there. So that's my vibe accounting take. Just so I don't you know feel really bad that I didn't capture all the value throughout 2026. I think I agree with your approach, though right? So you want to hit the bigger credits first. But even if I think about my Amex credits here, in reality,
00:28:15
Speaker
I could have made a spreadsheet, but I didn't really. Of course, I have most of my credit cards in my password manager. and And so if I'm doing my Amex credits, the way that I go about this, I essentially open up my password manager, filter down to all Amex cards, and then I just go down the list. And whenever I take care of these, say, airline incidentals or the FHR credit, I just drop a note there on on the date field, and then essentially it's taken care of. And most of this is kind of I guess, in bulk processing, where we're saying, hey, maybe we're, for example, we're booking a trip to Hawaii over Memorial Day. Maybe we want to burn some FHR credits. Guess what? right So we're booking multiple hotel rooms, right so it's like family, it's in-laws, it's a friend of ours. So we know we need a bunch of bookings and we have a bunch of these cards. And then essentially I go ahead and say, okay, let's burn these credits and then maybe and then maybe we're burning nine of these FHR credits. We have 10 cards. Sure, I'll maybe make a speculative booking for that 10th card. But once I'm done with it, I kind of mentally just ah check it off the list and I move on.
00:29:27
Speaker
I guess in that way, sometimes like stuff slips through the cracks. But in general, I guess the you extract most of the value. Saying, hey, you know I got all of the airline incidentals at the beginning of the year. Maybe do it would once more towards the end of the year. Maybe you got some new cars or something like that. Maybe those need a ah second round. But in general, I don't find myself...
00:29:50
Speaker
working on those incidentals too frequently. Maybe the Hilton
Japan Trip Planning and Cherry Blossom Excitement
00:29:55
Speaker
credit recently has kind of introduced a slight like quarterly cadence here. But mostly I'd say I'd look at the bigger credits twice a year and that's about it. And then maybe once a month for like Uber credits or something like that.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah, I also find, you know, this whole idea of batch processing, right, like kind of lining up similar types of credits. And um I think with experience throughout the years, like i kind of know you what's the best way to liquidate this credit on this card. And I think for the most part, i like i've I've, you know, okay, so in the past, I used to be like, okay, this business Platinum is going to be Southwest Airlines. And this business Platinum is going to be Alaska Airlines. And this one is going to be United Airlines. And I never really chose like American or Delta, but like those used to be my three.
00:30:41
Speaker
And i realized like I still have credits in those programs to this day. And it's been like years since I've loaded those funds into the program. And I'm just like, OK, like if I'm ever happening to making a booking with one of those random airlines and I have... yeah I'm having to like even manage the expiration of some of these kind of like flight vouchers.
00:31:00
Speaker
And that just became too much. And so um going back to like batch processing and also simplifying, I've kind of landed on just stick to one airline and just have that be your your your fun kind of travel bucket. Similar to FHR credits.
00:31:17
Speaker
just like plan a whole trip and see if you can like stack a bunch of FHR credits um and you know just just see if you could use them all in one trip right like versus like sprinkling them around, like the mental capacity and the... ah yeah We just don't have unlimited brain resources to put into this stuff. right so i like the That's what I did this year. is like I just settled on, okay, everything is going to be United Airlines this year and I'm just going to liquidate all my credits that way.
00:31:43
Speaker
And It was funny, Christoph. I logged into um United and I was going to load my account. And then I realized, like oh, i never select it's still January. like I never selected United on all the cards. So I had to go back and reselect. This was like two nights ago. So I think I can go back in and do do these loads now. But like i almost made the noob mistake of like loading without selecting my my airline. Oh, definitely happened to me before. I think you have. Yeah, like I mean, it's not the end of the world, right? like You're not...
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, it just sucks, right? like So I was able to take care of like my PenFed Pathfinder, um my B of a not the premium rewards elite, but the regular premium rewards. And so that one's kind of nice. like I've kept that card open for a long time, paid the $100 annual fee because it kind of nets out to zero at the end of the day. And I do like that card. So ah yeah, I just need to get back on the Amex credits um and get those off the books.
00:32:39
Speaker
I think the one ah thing that made a big difference, if I think back here, kind of like the early days when I got started with this game, if you have like one platinum card, then squeezing out the benefits out of them is like really a chore, right? Just like, oh, here's like one FHR credit, like one airline incidental credit. It's like, oh, 200 bucks.
00:32:58
Speaker
I don't know, on United, okay, fine. But it's really a lot of mental capacity that you need to kind of go through this and and make sure yeah that you get the value out of it.
00:33:09
Speaker
Once you get multiples of the same card, suddenly the mental load of doing it is almost the same. Like maybe you sit there a little bit longer, like clicking the buttons. But say once you've figured out that, hey, you know you can make award bookings on Delta and pay a small amount of award fees with these incidentals,
00:33:31
Speaker
guess what? You know, just make all of your bookings in in one go and then you burn it through like four or five of these cards in one go and then you can like mentally write it off. I think there's really something to be said about benefits of scale here where yes, if you have to, i don't know, take care of one $10 monthly credit, like holy moly. But on the other hand, if you're sitting there and say I'm a I have a T-Mobile plan, right? Like at some point I was just literally sitting there on the first of every month and then just in my app going through like 10 different cards to to get these credits. But it's, see, at that point you're like, okay, yeah, it's it's like a chore and I spent like five minutes on it, but it's like a hundred bucks, right? and it's like every every month. Like it doesn't take anything. You just wake up in the morning, whatever, whenever you have time, just, you know, go through it. Just just click, click, click, click. click
00:34:21
Speaker
If you do this once, It's like, okay, well, i had to think about this for $10. It's not worth it. But if you do this for $10, it works. And similar for, say, United Travel Bank, right? Where you say, hey, yeah you know loading $200 into this once a year, maybe not the real thing, but say, you know you have like platinum business platinum, you have like multiple players, like whatnot. is Also, you just go through it. Okay, click, click, click. It takes 15 minutes, and then you have like $1,000 in travel credits there. Mm-hmm. And so I think there's there's really a benefit here that comes with scale. And I guess if I think about what is the credits that I tend to ignore or forget about the most, well, they tend to be credits on cards where I have like maybe only one in the household.
00:35:06
Speaker
and if As soon as I have multiples, I'm like, oh yeah, sure, I got to make sure I remember that and I do it. But if it's just a single card, oftentimes it's like, oh, who cares about the $10 credit? Just ignore it. So definitely, if if you scale up, suddenly there's a lot of benefit to kind of getting these credits more for sure than if you just deal with a single card.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, with P2's business gold that I actually just downgraded, was like, ah let me make sure I do the $20 flexible business credit. And like, you know, I would just go on Staples and buy a gift card to whatever. And that that would work. And it was like, okay, when I had multiple business golds, like, yeah, I was way more motivated to do that. But now like that we only had one business gold and now no more business golds in the family. Like, it's just like, it's such an, like, I have to like, I don't know, just you to make the time, sit down, like get in the mindset.
00:35:58
Speaker
And I was just like, there is no motivation because I'm going to go do this once. And then after that, I'm going to go open the Duncan app. And after that, I'm going to go, you know, double check my walt Walmart account, like make sure that that's going through. was just like, it' it's too, it's too separated.
00:36:12
Speaker
And it just makes way more sense when you can kind of like batch things together. So I'm i'm a big fan of this batch idea. And um I guess, spreadsheeting too. Okay, so Christoph, speaking of business goals and downgrading things, um it is the turn of the calendar year. What what have you been up to with cancelling, maybe downgrading cards, annual fees? What have you been up to there?
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I already mentioned that, of course, that's the season. I have a bunch of triple dips, right? So there's, for example, two business platinum cards that opened in late 2024.
00:36:48
Speaker
They now got all their the credits used plenty of times and now it's time to cancel them. ah In fact, I actually had another card. This was regular platinum card that I opened sometime in October 2024. So this card actually had the annual fee post like a while ago, even like late last year.
00:37:10
Speaker
like late last year So now ah here I am and you know I got all the credits out of it. ah There's still value to kind of downgrading and then canceling these cards. right So essentially, sure, if you open the card in December, yeah, the annual fee posts sometime in January, fine, you can just cancel it. by the You chat with Amex and you cancel the card and you get the fee back.
00:37:33
Speaker
If you have a card that had the annual fee post you know a while ago, like more than 30 days ago, then ah technically if you cancel a card, you don't get the fee back. But fortunately, Amex has some nice options there with downgrades.
00:37:49
Speaker
ah which gives you a prorated annual fee refund. Now there's certain states, I think Massachusetts is one of them, where regardless of when you cancel you always get a prorated fee refund, but that in general doesn't apply. However, you can kind of simulate it, right? And that's what I did with my platinum card here, where I had the fee post sometime in November, right? So it's i way too late to essentially cancel it, but I can still downgrade the card to a green card.
00:38:17
Speaker
The green card itself has a fee, but I still get the good chunk of the platinum fee back right and and rebate it. So I actually ended cancelling this card, but essentially the way I do it is i first downgrade it a green card and then If at some point it is not very useful, then you can still cancel it. but And that way you still get a fi refund on the difference between the platinum and the green card, which is still quite substantial nowadays.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, that can make sense. Like when you start the new calendar year, all of these credits reset, right? And that's, I think, like why people love the triple dip situation.
00:38:56
Speaker
But um actually, like for me, Christoph, like P2 also had that Amex Business Gold. And um I was looking at it like, oh, I forgot to cancel this thing. Like I should have done it like in...
00:39:08
Speaker
October, I think. And so it was already January and I was like, okay, I'm just taking advantage of a few of these like monthly credits. Like, so what? But I was like, let me go ahead and just like, I finally got down and got to it and like chatted Amex. And can we just like downgrade this card? And then I, you know, I know that you'll get the prorated annual fee. And then, um, right after that prorated annual fee, I was just like, I'm just canceling this thing. Like ah we're not going to make use of it. And it's one less thing for me to track.
00:39:38
Speaker
And ah yeah, this works, right? Like, so it's it's not getting a full refund, but at the same time, if there's some value to having the card open a little bit after the annual fee refund window,
00:39:49
Speaker
you know, calendar your credits. Like, yeah, it makes sense to hold hold off on canceling the card outright just for a little bit so you can kind of like dip into these credits. And then, you know, yeah, as long as there's a downgrade path, I think i think that's the real key, right? Like um this really is not going to work on a, for example, Morgan Stanley platinum card, Charles Schwab platinum card. Like they they don't have any downgrade paths. And so um that, you know, Those co-branded platinum cards, maybe the triple dip is really a requirement there. But I don't see the opening of vanilla platinum business gold, you know, any one of these regular charge cards. I don't see the triple dip, you know, being a requirement anymore because, you know, there's always this backfall option. So I think it's more of a strike when the signup bonus is really high and don't worry about triple dipping calendar your benefits.
00:40:40
Speaker
Actually, here's another nice thing that i I don't know. Maybe this is common knowledge, but it was new to me and it might be useful. So you know that if you message Amex usually to cancel a card, you have to go through all of these retention steps, right? Especially business cards are notorious for this, where you know you have to wait for like half an hour until people have listed every last credit that you might possibly get from this card before they allow you to cancel the card.
00:41:04
Speaker
Well, it turns out that if you chat with Amex outside of business hours, they usually give you a message that says something I can do. Hey, yeah you know there's a special
Reflections and Future Travel Plans
00:41:17
Speaker
team for this. It's only available during these hours. ah Please come back and reach back out to us during business hours.
00:41:25
Speaker
But if you get that message, and you simply ah push back gently and say, like hey, i appreciate it, but would you mind just canceling my card? The agents will usually go ahead and just redo the disclosure and you can cancel the card. So if you already know that you want to cancel a card, for example, because it was a triple dip,
00:41:42
Speaker
That is perfect. So you ah now have the choice between hey calling during business hours if you're fishing for a retention offer, which can be very juicy. you know We've seen like 100, 150K before, which is almost like a new sign-up bonus.
00:41:57
Speaker
Or if you already know that you want to cancel the card for sure because, hey, guess what? It was a triple dip. Wait for them to give you the callback spiel and then just gently ask them to cancel the card and you'll get the disclosure and get the card cancelled in no time.
00:42:11
Speaker
ah Real time savings there. yeah I remember dealing with Amex chat all the time and remember like you know getting the whole spiel of like, a talk to membership consulting services, I think was the name of it. um and I think I'm going with fuzzy memory here, but like when I canceled P2's business green, it was very straightforward. and I probably was like up at 12 AM doing these chats as I tend to do. and yeah Very simple process.
00:42:39
Speaker
Okay, so speaking of product changes, um I know I've detailed this on the Patreon show quite a bit here. And I just wanted to provide a quick update on this, which was, um Christoph, you know, I wanted to get that Summit card that came out last summer. And I applied, reconned, got laughed at in in one phone call. Like, it was...
00:43:03
Speaker
It was an emotional damage type of phone call. um But actually, like I've been calling once a month since the card was eligible to upgrade from the Ascent, which is the $95 card, to the Summit, which is that $400 card that has really nice benefits.
00:43:19
Speaker
And I think 2026 is like my my good luck year, Christoph. Because I was able to call in and ask about this. And they were like, oh, yes, we do see the Summit.
00:43:32
Speaker
Visa Infinite card. And um yeah, so it took like it took like three to four months after I guess the card turned one, which like you can't upgrade a card within the first year on the if it's a consumer card, right? And so I don't know what it is. Maybe like B of A's IT t is like very calendar your focus or something.
00:43:51
Speaker
But yeah, I was able to do that upgrade. And then I was like, okay, like, let me sign into my B of A account. Let me look. Still shows a cent. Okay. Like, let me wait a week. And I keep like pushing out this like kind of reminder on my to-do list. Like, keep checking. And it's been like three plus weeks now since the upgrade. And I still don't see...
00:44:11
Speaker
that I have the Visa Infinite card. So I tried like testing. like Maybe it's a display issue on B of A. like Let me go and try to you know book a partner award on the Alaska website, use this card number as my checkout card, and see if because I know that they have this ah partner award booking fee waiver.
00:44:30
Speaker
right like It basically says if you were paying $12.50 per person on a partner award, like they just wipe that out. I've seen it with like other people's Alaska accounts, and I was like, let me go see. and it still shows the $12.50. And so I was like, hmm, when is this product change going to take effect? And Christoph, do you have any background knowledge on this? Because I'm like, anxiously, when is it going to take effect? I'm so excited because then can start spending towards status and start spending towards the 100K Global Companion Award cert. so excited. Let me spend towards status.
00:45:06
Speaker
Do you know anything about this, status trophies, my favorites. Starting to become more mean, my experience, Bank of America takes atrociously long for product changes. Like two or three weeks is nothing out of the ordinary. Like I've seen this before.
00:45:21
Speaker
So I think as long as you did the phone call and it's like, hey, do you see the option and they' do the transfer to read the disclosure, I think you should be good. Which doesn't mean that it might not take like a month or so before you actually get the card and like all the effect. But yeah, I mean, I'm i'm actually really, really happy to hear this because i too have been contemplating actually upgrading one of my cards because again, you know, 524.
00:45:51
Speaker
Here I am, and I'm debating, hey, well, yes, I could sign up for a new one. But yeah, if you tell me i might be able to just upgrade one of my Alaska cards, maybe I should also make this call. And you know maybe it's only going to take me three minutes instead of three months. That would be great. So you know I really appreciate you taking one for the team here. this is a very valuable and promising data point there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm i'm very excited because um this card already has, you know, a decent credit limit and I'm able, you know, it's already conditioned for my spend. So I'm excited because like now instead of, I think like it's one status point per $3 in spend, I think it goes down to one status point per $2 in spend. And so that plus, um you know, actual one world flying, like using my Alaska ah award, like ah
00:46:39
Speaker
I'm excited to try to see if I can get to titanium status. um I've been watching from the sidelines with all of the City AA stuff, right? Being able to spend towards Executive Plat and just like being so jealous. Like I have no options in my portfolio to to do something like this. And um yeah, it's ah it's ah it's definitely a trophy ah that I'd like to pursue. um and it would be nice to have like one world Emerald and, you know, maybe try to get into some first class lounges that I really don't belong in. That that would be nice.
00:47:11
Speaker
you know The other thing that I like about this card right is they give you 3x back on dining, and then I think like foreign transactions. And so to me, that seems interesting. As you know, Christoph, I've told you, like i'm currently I just actually opened up a personal B of A checking account. I think there was like a $500 bonus on that, but that's not the real big win on this personal checking is actually, you know, when I applied, there's that little checkbox to to do fast track to, you know, whatever status that you can get into. And so, you know, I'm working on getting platinum honors on the personal side. i'm just like funneling some cash together.
00:47:47
Speaker
And so that means that that 3x back is it really three point three x on dining and foreign transactions. And currently, you know, on the B of A business side, on my ah Alaska business card, I i do see that 10% like kind of like relationship bonus. And so I know that's working on the business side and I just need to get that ginned up on the personal side. So that plus again, like spending 60K on this card, getting a hundred thousand point global companion award.
00:48:16
Speaker
i'm I'm excited. I'm excited, Christoph. And maybe I'll, you know, book some Alaska flights speculatively into weather and see if I can get a couple of these like $50 vouchers. So we'll see.
00:48:28
Speaker
Well, you're already planning on gaming this and I'm actually looking at booking Alaska flights right now. Did you know this? Let's actually talk about award puzzles and travels here because that's what we've really been up to besides, you know, the chores of gardening our portfolio and getting the last little bit out of our credits. No, we actually want to go travel with these points sometime. And so I want to go to Hawaii.
00:48:52
Speaker
And so we are here, west Coast based, right? San Francisco. So Alaska has a bunch of options here, right? Both Alaska and Hawaii. Now I figured, well, we're going for Memorial Day because that's what works for you know us and the extended family. But of course it means peak travel season. right So I literally need flights on a Friday and on a Monday. So that's going to be essentially as as tough as it is.
00:49:17
Speaker
And so yes, I got these FHR credits right and I put them to work there. We have plenty of hotel rooms, you know lots of individual bookings, still need to call the hotel to stitch them all together. But you know Besides having the hotel, you of course still need to get there. And even when I use my companion certs and other things and so on, if I make a cash booking, it is extremely expensive. I mean, we're we're talking something like, you know, 2,500, like 3K, just economy round trip. And that's not even like the flights that you want. That's just, you know, what you can find with like great eyes on the return and so on.
00:49:53
Speaker
So... Here I am, and yeah, i'm I'm playing a lot with the Alaska booking engines. And really, what I ended up doing is that I decided, well, I guess I need some flights, but I need to put something on the books that I can potentially cancel.
00:50:11
Speaker
um And then maybe at some point there will still be some availability and I can, you know, maybe sneak in and and swap them out. And so I actually ended up putting my American Airlines miles to work.
00:50:22
Speaker
I was just surprising, but essentially i have a ton of American Airlines miles from, you know, said status shenanigans. So therefore I figured, well, ah whether I pay, ah you know, 20,000 Atmos points or maybe 22,000 American Airlines points just to hold these flights, it doesn't make a difference.
00:50:42
Speaker
And so now I booked a bunch of flights both on the outbound and on the inbound. I'm just holding them with AA. And then I'm hoping that maybe Alaska will open up some availability. Maybe there will be some SAVE awards, even though I don't think there will be. But there might be.
00:50:59
Speaker
ah Maybe I actually bite the bullet, and I also get the B of A Atmos Summit card. And then I get some of these companion vouchers that I might be able to use there. So yeah it it will be interesting. like Essentially, i have a trip that could work right now, but there's lots of placeholders there.
00:51:18
Speaker
And so, yeah, i'm I'm hoping there is a way to really get some outsized values from companion certs and maybe save awards on Alaska and Hawaii. It's not like fully baked right now, but yeah i'm I'm really like looking into this. It's definitely a challenge if you just ah need these like peak travel dates. but they Even just moving it by a day or two would probably make it easier. But yeah, so here we are. Let's let's see if maybe something comes up, an opportunity with award or fair sales.
00:51:49
Speaker
But we'll find out. yeah Do you have any other airline miles that you can kind of potentially just hold things like United comes to mind, Southwest even comes to mind. yeah Are you looking at these? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's Southwest and United. but So technically we have options here. So we should have Hawaiian and Alaska. That's the thing that I looked at the most also because it's like convenient from kind of the airports that we're flying.
00:52:14
Speaker
But for United, yeah, um doable but expensive and i also don't have any Starline status right now. I know there's actually this ah challenge floating around for Singapore Airlines. If I happen to be in Asia before a Memorial l Day, then maybe I can take advantage of that. But yes, so I could have burned some United Travel Bank, but overall it was pretty expensive.
00:52:36
Speaker
um And then the other option Southwest. Actually, right now, I don't have a companion pass. They just expired. That's also why I'm looking at the 524 numbers with such a keen eye because, well, I'm i'm hoping to chin this up. right And so maybe with companion pass, there is an option.
00:52:56
Speaker
But yeah, so I don't have enough points. And kind of from the cash fares, yeah, like yeah southwest is Southwest is actually really bad. yeah and then yeah Yeah, so this is why we have like lots of options and like maybe it will pop up, but yeah, TBD, we'll find out.
00:53:14
Speaker
And so those are the flights. What about hotels? like What are you doing to make this trip happen with hotels here? Yeah, hotels, as I mentioned before, so I burned some FHR credits to stay on Honolulu.
00:53:28
Speaker
We are doing Marriott, right? So we also have some Brilliance in the household. So we have status and then stacked on top some FHR. So hopefully we'll have ah breakfast and dinner and you know everybody will be happy.
00:53:41
Speaker
But yes, um especially Honolulu has gotten like very, very expensive. So even though we have our $300 credits here, like you know if you want hotel rooms and then you want to speculate on on upgrades, that should be ah possible, but especially when you have like the FHR benefits and you see the stack.
00:54:02
Speaker
Then you might book some slightly more expensive hotel rooms, speculating that the next category would immediately give you like a junior suite or like a suite upgrade. And so actually I booked different types of rooms for different you know members of the family with different status, hoping that in the end we'll get upgraded into a suite with maybe a connecting room, plus you know another room there.
00:54:25
Speaker
But overall, yeah, I mean, $300 doesn't really pay for our nightlife these days. Yeah, that they are all rooms that are at least like 400 and then you have your ah mandatory resort fees on top of this, right? So it's by no means free. Yes. But yeah, it's definitely lots of, you know, lots of speculation and puzzling there. But yeah, if it works out in the end, even just partially, it's going to be a win because guess what? It's all quote unquote free, isn't it?
00:54:54
Speaker
Yeah, the FHR credits are, they're very tough to use in Honolulu. I've definitely like looked at FHR. Last year we went to, you know, Oahu twice and I was never able to make FHR work, so.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, um good good luck to you. I hope to hear a post-mortem on this trip, you know, probably in May, right? Like in June, I guess. so Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. But, you know, Hawaii trips are boring because we're doing them all the time. You are going to Japan, which is probably not the first time you're doing it, but there's always some adventure to be had. So tell me about that particular award puzzle there. Yeah. Yes.
00:55:33
Speaker
Yeah, Japan is like my, you know, after Hawaii, it's like my second option. It's like my first international option. I think I've talked about Japan a lot on this podcast. um But you know what Sometimes the award inventory becomes the whole trigger of starting a trip and planning it. And I think that's what happened here. um Sometimes like 11 p.m. at night, I'll get these messages from Nutella and it'll be like, I found 2F, like just book it. And so yeah i had Lufthansa miles.
00:56:02
Speaker
I wanted to use those miles for Lufthansa first, but you know this came up. And so like SFO to Haneda, Red Eye on ANA, two seats in F. Sadly, it's not going to be the new sweets product that they have, but you know two F seats opening up. You just grab them, right? You don't even question it.
00:56:23
Speaker
And so that's what I did. And I was like, okay, um you know this is early March. like I think we can make cherry blossom season happen. And then after some research, I was like, okay,
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to have to go south, right? like um You're not going to see any cherry blossoms really until like late March in Tokyo. And actually everything just kind of aligned by you know the will of some greater power here because like The fact that we got the award snagged on ANA through Lufthansa and the fact that it was like early March and cherry blossom season is at the end of March for like, you know, Tokyo and Kyoto. It basically said, hey, we got to get off of Honshu Island and we need to get down to Kiyushu Island, which is the southern
00:57:09
Speaker
Well, really like the the last main southern island in Japan. And so, you know, i was doing some research with like ChatGPT and other AI tools and I was like, okay, yeah, let's try to make this work. Like, let's just go south and ah go see cherry blossoms and bunch of like, kind of like, you know big cities, I would say. and so...
00:57:29
Speaker
In Kyushu, we're going to Fukuoka, other places that came up when I was doing my research on where should we go, Kumamoto, and actually Kagoshima. Have ever heard of Kagoshima, Christoph? They have this active volcano. I think I remember hearing about it, but I don't have anything really associated with it. Yeah, it was recommended as one of the top places to go, especially the dates that were there. I think it's March 9th-ish, basically the first towards the mid-March timeframe. Apparently, it's going to be really good. And so I'm just crossing my fingers that the weather is cooperating and cherry blossoms come up. But we're going to be chasing cherry blossoms because I think we're going like...
00:58:09
Speaker
essentially like west to east and hopefully that means like, you know, we'll be able to see the bloom while we're there. So I think it's going to be it's going to be really, really pretty. um And yeah, I mean, like, you know, we're flying in and out of Tokyo. So, you know, let let me get into the hotels here because ah As you know, Christoph, when I go to Tokyo, the first stop, which hotel do you... which Actually, which is the hotel that we we met up in at one time?
00:58:34
Speaker
It must be the Conrad Tokyo. Oh, yeah. I couldn't help myself here. I was just like, you know, the first thing. Actually, the first thing that we're doing is riding Black Lane. Because you know we have P3.
00:58:46
Speaker
It's going to be tough you know navigating subways. And I was like, you know the the first thing I want to do when I get off a long international flight is like just be chauffeured to my hotel. And so, yeah, we're splurging a little bit here because it's like $190 on Black you know when you get a hundred dollars off it's it's it's really like the same cost as a taxi and i think we would have taken a taxi anyway so um you know i i talked about my black line experience in seattle uh in a previous episode and i loved it just because it's it's nice to have you know the help with luggage with you know just just being treated really well and so yeah i'm looking forward to the black lane credit i'm looking forward to our uh conrad tokyo which is going to be like my fifth visit here I booked one night with a expiring Hilton free night cert. It's expiring in April, right? And so this kind of forced my hand because I was like, yeah, free night cert, you're in Tokyo, it's expiring next month. Like, of course, you're going to go use it at like your your most favorite beloved property. So we have that.
00:59:47
Speaker
And actually, like the second night is not on a free night cert. I actually initially paid 130,000 honors points. But then i remembered I have FHR credits. And so let me go and ah actually like, you know, once once the prices lined up the way I wanted them to, i went ahead and just rebooked my second night through FHR. And I mean, it wasn't too bad, but like when I looked back, I was like,
01:00:12
Speaker
I'll gladly trade 130,000 Hilton honors points for like $300. Right? Like that seems like a pretty good trade. So I decided to keep the points. Yeah, spend some money.
01:00:23
Speaker
But at the same time, I still get the same, the same benefit. So yeah, it kind of goes against like my earn and burn philosophy. But you know, sometimes you have to, you have to make executive decisions there.
01:00:37
Speaker
I think this is a great choice. In fact, I think last time we went, we also had a combination of just the same free night certificates and some FHR nights. And that worked really well. Like yeah essentially, because we get the breakfast, I mean, you get it anyways with status.
01:00:52
Speaker
ah But then also these credits, we just managed to, you know, add some nice dinner there as well, which is casual. I mean, of course, you can run around Tokyo and there's many options. But, you know, if you're doing this for a few days, it's sometimes nice to just... ah you know settle into the hotel and call it a night essentially by eating in.
01:01:11
Speaker
And so that's a nice option. So I can totally see how the FHR credits useful there. Like to be honest, I think you're getting better value there at the Conrad Tokyo that I'm getting on Honolulu. But yeah, we will ah soon exchange our notes on that.
01:01:27
Speaker
Yes, for sure. Yeah. I'm really excited, Christophe. I need to go buy some of that cologne again. What is it? That Mojave Ghost cologne? like i just Anyways, I'm getting a little giddy now that I talk about it. So we have two nights in Tokyo, and then we fly down Fukuoka for three nights. And actually, let me talk about my booking here, because as you know, and I've detailed on the Patreon show, like I got the FNBO JAL USA card, and I finally started earning miles on this card. And I was like, OK, great. like Let me see. Okay, we we know we need to get down to Fukuoka. And initially started looking like, okay, does British Airways have anything? Does Alaska Airlines have anything? And what noticed is that, like, okay, I started earning these Japan Airlines miles. And I was like, you know, they're going to expire in three years. Like, yeah, it would be nice to redeem them for, like, really... uplifted value and Japan Airlines International first, but the same time, it's like there's an obvious use case here, plus they expire, plus P3 is going to be free. Like, okay, yeah, it just just made sense to get these off the books and start to use my Japan Airlines mouth. So, you know, so far I've been playing with the Japan Airlines program.
01:02:37
Speaker
ah The award search is kind of fun. um And so far, so good. You know, one of the things and, you know, so we're flying down to Fukuoka on Japan Airlines, but I don't have status with Japan Airlines yet.
01:02:52
Speaker
um But I do have status with Alaska Airlines through credit card spend. And so I was trying to, like, change my frequent flyer number to my Alaska frequent flyer number. Right. Like basically booking a Japan Airlines award.
01:03:05
Speaker
and ah you know change my frequent flyer number so i can you know get some one world benefits and the problem with the japan airlines website is that they don't allow you to select any other program except for japan airlines And so, you know, I did some research and, you know, things came up like really old artifacts from the past, Christoph. Like, I think I even was like messaging you about this. Like, can we still look up like one world itineraries on Fin Air website? Yeah, that's no longer working. Even Royal Air Morocco came up like as an option to potentially make a switch like this, like go and look at the base, you know, reservation record and like make some adjustments. But
01:03:43
Speaker
Royal Air Meroc, you can look it up, but you can't make any changes. So that, you know, that maybe that's useful in one way, but yeah, it's not useful for my intent. and so what I landed on was like a couple of Reddit posts where that said, you know, if you chat and I didn't want to call Japan Airlines because you have to call the domestic, like literally, you know, pay two cents a minute kind of thing. And I didn't want to call it like a random time. So there's actually like live chat on Japan Airlines website once you're logged in. And um you can you know basically chat just like, I guess like the the closest thing that comes to mind is like Hawaiian Airlines chat. Like it's pretty simple and you just do a quick verification of who you are.
01:04:21
Speaker
But you you can make changes like this. So um I've made that change and yeah, I see the Alaska number, but I don't see like the indicator that they selected Alaska Airlines. I just see my number. And so I know they made the change, whether or not it says this number for Alaska Airlines I don't know. i feel like I have to go back and chat them just to confirm this. So, you know, if you're booking through Japan Airlines, like maybe this will be an option, um you know, if you want to leverage status from another program on your Japan Airlines award. So I just wanted to throw that in there because, um you know, that question comes up from time to time. Like, how do I use my status on, you know, an airline or at least a program that I don't have status with? So...
01:05:03
Speaker
That's that. you know were We're hitting up Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Fukuoka. I got hotel bookings all over the place, which I'd really like to get into like after the trip. I think ah you know it would be nice to to actually review these hotels. So you know I'm excited for all this, but you know on the way back from Tokyo at the end of the trip,
01:05:25
Speaker
We're going to be flying ANA business class. And actually, this was also Lufthansa miles and more reward redemption. Like we're flying ANA business. And i think it's like 71,000 points per person.
01:05:37
Speaker
Right. So like 144,000 think, seven point one k for So, you know, a little north miles. like ah I think I got pretty decent value out of my Lufthansa miles. Well, that's sure a lot of value that getting out of a domestic redemption here. And who knew that you'd be doing it with child miles inside of Japan?
01:06:02
Speaker
Yes, and Lufthansa miles on ANA. It's like none of these redemptions make sense, and I love it. That's how it's an award puzzle, isn't it? Yes. And that see, it was still much simpler than all of the build cache shenanigans that we had to deal with over the past weeks.
01:06:20
Speaker
Yes, that's for sure. i If I had to use built points to book this, I would probably just quit this whole game altogether. ah All right. Well, um you know, more to come on the Japan trip. It's coming up in just over a month and I'm very excited. And to you, Christoph, good luck with ah gardening your Hawaii reservation. Those are always fun to do.
01:06:41
Speaker
It's going to be fun. I look forward to hearing f from your trip because I want to do cherry blossom season in Japan too. Maybe next year. Yes. Fingers crossed. I think that's a show, Christoph. Should we wrap it up?
01:06:53
Speaker
I think it's a show. All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of The Points Project with your hosts, Christoph and Raymond. Have a good one, everybody. See you next time.
01:07:04
Speaker
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