In today's episode, we're schooled about Wells Fargo cards, we learn about earning points on your mortgage, and we talk about how you can take the sting out of Southwest's customer unfriendly changes.

(01:03) - Listeners give us more ideas about making a great Wells Fargo Wallet

Find our episode "A World-Class Wells Fargo Wallet" here.

(08:20) - Mesa Homeowners Card: Earn transferable points on mortgage payments

(14:20) - Goldbelly no longer selling $10 gift cards (minimum is $25)

(16:06) - Read about maximizing your "coupon" credits from American Express here.

(16:15) - Capital One Shopping pulls many good gift card redemption options (and it varies from one cardholder to the next!)

(20:05) - Pepper Rewards app not working (Taking payment but not producing gift cards, no coin...

(22:44) - Likely: JetBlue partnering with United

(27:51) - AA reducing award holds to 24 hours

(29:04) - Emirates breaking up with some transferable currencies (temporarily?)

Read more about this Emirates speculation here.

(31:39) - Transfer SAS to Scandic hotels and back

Main Event: Southwest LUVs cardholders

(34:26) - New Details announced (fare bundles, bags, credit cards)

(41:09) - Cardholders will win big

(47:05) - Is Southwest Priority Card the best airline card ever?

(53:09) - Is Southwest Priority Card even better than elite status?

(57:23) - But....is the writing on the wall?

(1:01:19) - If you have a major purchase you weren't expecting, which credit card would you put it on (and how would you decide?)

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Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

On today's show, a couple of you school us about Wells Fargo credit cards. We'll learn about how you can earn transferable points just by paying your mortgage.

And we'll learn how the Southwest credit cards can take the sting out of becoming customer unfriendly changes.

Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Southwest loves cardholders. Southwest has made a number of customer unfriendly moves lately.

But as we started to learn more about how they're going to treat cardholders, we've discovered that the cardholders might actually like some of the changes that are happening.

Yeah, I think cardholders are going to make out really well, much better than average. So we'll see, we'll see how that works out for you when you listen to that part of today's show.

Speaking of which, remember, if you want to jump ahead to something or you want to come back to something, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description to find that. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up.

Like it Leave us a review view. We always appreciate those things. It's time to drag out this week's giant mailbag.

All right, this week's giant mail is several pieces of mail in reaction to our show, a world class Wells Fargo wallet, where we talked all about how you could put together a great Wells Fargo wallet by assembling together several different cards. And Jonathan wrote, among other things, he wrote, to my surprise, Wells Fargo allows you to transfer as little as a single point.

So that's really unusual. Usually with most programs, you have to transfer at least a thousand points at a time.

Jonathan says that you could actually transfer one point at a time.

Yeah, you know, I remember that being discussed when the cards first came out and the points first became transferable. But it was one of those pieces of knowledge that I remember hearing about.

I kind of filed it away and totally forgot that I knew it because I don't have one of the Wells Fargo cards. So I've not been in the habit of using this.

But I remember when they first came out, we wrote about how they could be great for topping up whatever you need for a specific redemption because you can transfer to the, you know, single point digit. Single digit point, whatever. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's a, that's a really nice trick. You know, I, I don't think they support transfers to Etihad, but would be great. They would Be.

They would be perfect.

Because the problem with Etihad we've discussed on the show before is sometimes you'll see, you can book this American Airlines flight with Etihad miles for - I'll make something up like 6,500 miles, or let me do a round number, 8,000 miles.

And so people transfer 8,000 Etihad, and then when they get through the booking process, it says something like 8,230 miles, and then they have to transfer another thousand. But if you, you know, if Wells Fargo is able to do it, then you, you'd be able to do exactly that amount, which would be nice. Anyway. That's.

That's a cool feature. The next two pieces of giant mail are about a card we did not discuss last week. A Wells Fargo card we didn't discuss that had sort of no name.

It was referred to as the signature Visa card. So it, like, had no, like, identifying name to it. It said Visa card, horse with no name.

Wells Fargo. I just a picture of the, you know, the horse and cart going across the country. All right, tell me about the horse with no name, Greg.

Okay, so Nick and I actually talked about before we did the show last week whether to talk about this card because it's a card that's no longer available, but it has the ability to offer better value when you redeem points for flights. And so, you know, we said, wow, it's.

It is really useful, but at the same time, you know, I don't even know if people can get the card anymore, so let's leave it out. And neither of us have experience with this card, so we're not exactly experts. But Allison and Carl chimed in with some information about the card.

So Allison says, I'm a huge fan of your podcast and have been able to book amazing trips for my family of five using points and miles using the advice you provide. I have an old, very old.

Opened as a College student over 15 years ago, Wells Fargo Visa signature card that I've never closed, as it contributes to the length of my credit history. When Wells Fargo began its transferable points program, I checked to see if this card would be eligible for transferable points, and it was.

So that's good news right there. I have no idea.

While it earns only one cent per point, it allows you to redeem points used for airline miles on its Travel portal for 1.5 cents per point.

So now I'm definitely keeping it open so that if I ever consider entering into the Wells Fargo ecosystem, this would then let me Redeem points at 1.5 cents per point for airlines, which possibly might be useful someday. All right, so that was from Allison. So that's good info from Allison.

And separately, Carl chimed in and says you didn't mention that holding the one Wells Fargo Signature Visa allows you to use their points to book airfare through the Wells Fargo portal at 1 1/2 cents per point. The Signature Visa hasn't been available for new apps for years, but it's still available for product changes.

So that's something that Nick and I didn't know. One and a half cents per point can be used on virtually any flight. It's pretty hard to beat.

It seems to be dollar for dollar, the same prices as Expedia. So that's important because some of these credit card portals have worse fares.

Like, I've played around with the bank of America 1, and I keep seeing, like, higher fares. And so that would wipe out the ability to get value when you're seeing something like this. But if he's seeing the same fares, that's great.

He does say, though the portal is painfully bad, it's not always easy to see what inventory is available. There's no way to select Basic Economy. There's no way to see more than one fare class at a time.

And he recommends, he says it's better to find the flight you want in Expedia first, then extract the same flight in the portal by controlling all the possible search variables. So he means, like, you know, you could filter down to exactly the one you found separately and get the same price.

That's a great tip. My question was going to be, can you move rewards from the newer cards to the Signature card in order to get the 1.5 cents per point?

But it sounds like you can. It sounds like that seems to be.

Implied by both of these. By both of it. You know, we don't have direct experience from it, but, yeah, I think that's reasonably safe.

You can, because I do think I remember way back when this card, the Signature Visa, was available. I kind of remember people talking about earning points on a different card and then using this for redemptions.

Yeah, I remember that, too. Yeah. I just wasn't sure if the newer autograph cards, the cards that are available now, you can still move those points.

But Carl seems to suggest that if Carl's had enough experience with the booking portal, I seem to get that. It sounded like Allison maybe doesn't have because she's talked about if she decides to get into the Wells Fargo ecosystem.

So it sounds like maybe she doesn't have one of the other cards yet. So I was questioning. But with both of these, I think it probably seems safe. Ish.

To assume or at least if you've got one of those old ones and you have a new one, also let us know if you're getting one and a half cents per point with your points. But yeah, that's, that's really interesting for people who still have it.

And sometimes, you know, sometimes those old cards, it pays off to keep those old cards with no annual fee. Sometimes people talk about canceling cards and there's reasons you might want to cancel them.

But I often feel like if there's a no annual fee option, I'll just hang on to that and maybe there'll be something else I want a product change to later on or then maybe something like this will come along where you'll say, oh, wow, now all of a sudden it's great to have that old card.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I don't know if it still exists, but if I remember right, there was something like if you spent, I don't know, 50,000 or 75,000 on the card, then that value when you're booking.

Flights actually went up 1.75. Right?

I think, I think so.

Yeah, you're right. You're right. I mean, that's.

There's a big opportunity cost at spending that much on a 1x earning card.

True, true, true, true story. But good to know, and good to know that it's still available for product changes. That's a hot tip. Well done.

All right, let's move on to this week's card news. Card news. This week, Mesa Homeowner's Card is out. So you got an option to earn points for those of you who are paying for a mortgage. Tell me more.

Greg, is this an exciting opportunity? What's the deal?

It is exciting.

It's a little perplexing how they're going to make money at this because the basic idea is that when you're signing up, you show them how much you're spending on your mortgage.

And as long as you spend $1,000 a month with the card, you also, in addition to whatever you earn from spending on this credit card, you also earn the number of points that equal how much your mortgage is. So you don't have to use the card in any way to pay your mortgage. You just need to register with them how much you're paying your mortgage for.

So, and there is a cap, like an annual cap of 100,000 points. But, you know, let's say you have a $5,000 a month mortgage.

All you have to do is spend $1,000 a month with this card and you'd be getting an extra 5,000 points every month, if I'm understanding all this correctly. So, so you're getting. In that example, if you're just earning 1x on your spend, you're getting 6x for all your spend.

And then of course, if your mortgage is higher, it could be more than 6x. So.

Yeah, and that's without MESA processing the payment or anything. Right. So there's.

Right.

There's no piece of this puzzle where they're getting something out of that.

Yeah, I mean, the only thing I can think, there's. There's a couple things I can think.

One is that it's kind of a gimmick to get a lot of people to sign up and then, you know, maybe the rules will change later.

Another thing is maybe they have a theory that they, you know, you know, they can sell like, mortgage products, financial products, people, by knowing how much they're. They're paying for their home ownership.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Yeah, I'm dubious about it. So anyway, the points can be used to pay for airfare, I think. I can't remember what the rate is for that.

But the thing that got us most interested was that it has transfer partners. So you could transfer to bunch of programs you've never heard of, but maybe.

You'Ll find a hidden gem there, Greg. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a couple of programs you've heard of, in fairness, Finnair is a partner. Right.

And so Avios, So once you get them to Finnair, you could move them around to all the other Avios programs. So that could be useful.

And Accor, which is popular in certain areas of the world, they have a much larger footprint anywhere other than the United States, basically. But certainly around Europe they have a better footprint and somewhat in Asia also. So.

So, you know, there's, there's some, a couple of partners that are useful, and then there's partners like Thai Royal Orchid that I've, I've tried to dig into and I've had a hard time figuring out, like, spending a day that Greg's paying my salary to, like, look at stuff and, and I couldn't figure it out. So if it was like a leisure thing, I don't know, as though I would be able to figure out Thai Royal Orchid.

But that's maybe, maybe you've got it figured out and maybe it's going to Be well no.

So so anyway so use the points for now I remember and Nick I think muttered it that $0.01 per point value if you redeem for flights transfer to Avios via Finnair and that that has Avios have obvious value to a lot of people listen to the show regularly. You can move them to British Airways, Qatar and Iberia and so on.

And there's a lot, there's a lot of sweet spots and or good enough spots to make it like still exciting. The transfer to All Live Limitless. Those points, the all points are worth exactly €2 cents each and the transfer is 1.5 to 1.

If I remember right given the current exchange rates and that transfer ratio it means your MESA homeowners card points would be worth one and a half cents each towards a core properties. So yeah that's. That's very decent.

Yeah that's pretty good. And.

And there are some other partners that you know may, you may find some good sweet spots and Tim suggested there's some probably some good uses of Air India miles that we just weren't aware of because they weren't a transfer partner with someone else.

And so there is some probably some opportunity to find some things that people just haven't found yet because we haven't necessarily dug into some of the transfer partners that it has. But I it so it's interesting but also kind of wild.

So you don't even have to like you could just be paying your mortgage with a check and you earn the points on the mortgage as long as you spend on the card. Right. That. That was my understanding too and reading about it which doesn't seem sustainable at the same time.

A lot of times we say you got to strike while the iron is hot I guess and if they're giving away points I guess you know it makes sense to take advantage and get some of those points. But. But a limited set of transfer partners so far.

The other thing that is kind of wild is that BILT keeps saying they're going to be adding the ability to pay mortgage and if when they do I don't see any reason why you can't have both of these cards and double DIP earn points with BILT for actually for the actual mechanism of paying your mortgage and then earn points with MESA for telling them that you have a mortgage and that's a wild stack. Presumably showing some kind of evidence of that.

That would be a wild stack. You'd be earning two points per dollar on mortgage. Wow. Right. Yeah. Then. Then there's true if that works out this Will be really hot, I think so.

That was a, that's a great thought. All right, so there's, there's first bit of card news. Second bit of card news is bad news. Unfortunately.

Gold Belly is no longer sending selling $10 gift cards. It used to be possible to buy a $10 gold belly gift card and now the minimum is 25. Why do I care about Gold Belly gift cards, Greg?

And why are we talking about this under card news, the Amex Gold Card, one of its features is $10 per month dining credit, which is like a mishmash of different restaurant ish places where you can get up to $10 back per month by using your Amex Gold card at them. And, and so Gold Belly was, was the easiest way to use your this credit from home once a month.

Like I just routinely would just log on to goldbelly.com, buy myself a $10e gift card. And, and the nice thing is Gold Belly lets you apply a whole lot of gift cards. I don't even know if there's a limit to a single order.

So you could later use, you know, 12 different gift cards for $120 order. So it was actually really, really nice and easy. Now we've got to go searching for another way to get value from that $10 a month credit.

Yeah, I mean unless you really like Gold Belly and you would buy a $25 gift card, I guess you're getting $10 off of that. But then it's really hard to value how much of that $10 is like, you know, the money you already paid in the annual fee versus a discount.

Yeah, it's much worse than it was. There's no doubt about that. So that's a bummer. But so goes it. That's, that's the way the cookie crumbles. So there are a couple other things.

We have a guide and we'll have a link in the show notes to the best ways to maximize your coupon credits essentially so you can check that out for other ideas. All right, let's talk about who Bonvoyed us this week. First up, Capital One Shopping has Bonvoyed some or many of us.

And I say it that way because I wrote a post this week about how there's a bunch of different things that so, okay, let me back up. Capital One Shopping for those unfamiliar is a shopping portal has nothing to do with Capital One credit cards.

You don't need a Capital One credit card or a checking account or a login or any. You do need to Create a login. And if you do have a Capital One credit card, you want to create a login with a different email address.

For Capital One Shopping, don't use your Capital One login. That's another discussion for another day.

But Capital One Shopping is a shopping portal that looks like it's giving you cash back in percentages, but it's really like reward dollars that can only be redeemed for gift cards.

And it's only some gift cards, the ones that they have available at any given time, and they do seem to ebb and flow in terms of what the gift card options are. There's a bunch of them, but the good ones come and go. And so we've seen a lot of the good ones go, unfortunately.

And so over time, they had, at one point, Walmart no longer there. They had Kroger no longer there, they had Albertson, Safeway, et cetera no longer there. And so there's a bunch of those.

Door Dash is gone now, Uber Eats is gone. Grubhub is gone there. So there were many useful ones that were gone. And the reason I wrote the post was a.

I, I had noticed that over time and people had been reaching out and I, I had forgotten to write a post. So I, I was reminded this week when somebody reached out and said that ebay was gone as a redemption option.

And I looked at Capital One Shopping, no ebay is there. And so I wrote the reader back and said, no, eBay is still there.

I sent them a screenshot of where it was on the redemption page, and then I sent them a link directly to redeem for ebay.

Because if you click on any one of those gift card options and you just copy the URL, you can use that URL to go directly to the gift card redemption. So I sent that URL to the reader and they wrote back after I published the post and said that they still don't see ebay.

They went through the whole thing and it's not there. And they clicked my link and it wouldn't work on their account. And then other people commented to say, yeah, eBay was gone for some of them too.

And others said, no, ebay is there. And then one person said, instacart is gone. And I see Instacart, and several other people see Instacart.

So it seems that maybe somehow they're targeting who sees which gift card redemption options. And that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I don't understand it.

You might be tempted to think, oh, well, if you've redeemed for a bunch of one kind of gift card, they'll just take that one away. But that's not true because I've redeemed for thousands of dollars in Hotels.com gift cards. That's still there as an option for me.

So I don't, I don't know what the answer is, but apparently it might vary a little bit person to person. But the bottom line is most of the best gift card redemption options are gone.

Hotels.com does appear to be there for everybody, I think, and there are some others like that that I thought were broadly useful and you can find more information in the post that I wrote. So bummer there. Are you still seeing ebay?

I don't know, I haven't checked lately.

Didn't look? Yeah, didn't think so. I figured probably not, but yeah. So check your Capital One shopping account.

Keep an eye on that as you're earning rewards so you know what your redemption options are going to be.

Yeah. Also, I mean we're putting this under bond void, but in my memory, like things come and go, right?

Like so things might reappear or new things might appear and we just have no. We haven't identified a pattern to why or when that happens.

No. And Safeway in particular has come and gone a number of times already.

So if that's one of your preferred options, you might just have to wait it out and see. Maybe it will come back. Walmart has come back briefly a couple of times and gone away again. So yeah, that's a great point.

You might sit tight and wait, but then make sure you redeem when you see something available again. And I'll try and keep an eye on that more regularly to update if new things come in that are useful.

Okay, sounds good.

Next up, we got Pepper Rewards. The Pepper Rewards app is not working and this is a big time bummer because it's. Well, the whole thing is a mess really.

So some people, when they pull up the Pepper Rewards app, get a pop up that's says that the app isn't available or not.

The app that gift card purchase and redemption of coins is temporarily unavailable while they make some changes or upgrade systems, something to that effect. And they sent out an email to some people. I didn't get it and neither did my wife, oddly.

But they sent out an email to many people it sounds like saying that this is all part of a planned upgrade in systems to the pepper rewards 2.0 and that everything's intact and your rewards will still be there. When they get everything back up and running and they're hoping to have it back up and running shortly, whatever that means.

And so in the meantime, it's impossible for some people to buy gift cards. It's impossible for everybody really, but it, it shows the pop up saying you can't buy gift cards for some people.

In my account, I don't even get the pop up. The Pepper Rewards app looks like it functions like normal and I can pull up a merchant to buy a gift card.

I can't use my coins, which I have like more than $300 in coins, but I can't use those. However, I can use a credit card. They'll take my money. And they did. But it doesn't produce a gift card.

So I tested it out to see and sure enough it just, it spun and spun and spun. It put the charge through to my card. I received the email receipt saying, here's your receipt.

But when I go into my transaction history, there's no gift card there.

The transaction is there, but there's no link to see the gift card number, whereas there is on orders before that, before this all went down this week. So. Yeah, so don't buy anything from Pepper until we tell you that it's back.

Yeah. And hopefully it is just a temporary thing, but people have been predicting its demise, so we just don't know.

We should have led with Pepper Rewards as an app that lets you buy gift cards and get rewards when you buy them. And so it's sort of like a big discount you get when buying gift cards because you could use the rewards to buy more gift cards.

And it's been pretty lucrative for that up till now and now it's anti lucrative at the moment, at least for Nick.

Well, not just for me, there are quite a few other people.

Well, I mean, for the people who get the pop up, it's neither here nor there.

Yeah, right.

It's obviously you're not going to, you're not going to buy a gift card when you've got the pop up in your face, which I do.

Yes, yes. And I unfortunately do not. So. So there you go. There you have it. Watch out for that. And we'll surely post if and when that comes back up and running.

And like Greg said, hopefully it does. I certainly hope that it comes back and we see that offer some more good deals in the future. All right. Awards, points and more.

So let's talk about awards, points and more. First up is a development I think you followed more closely than I did regarding JetBlue.

Yeah.

So this is still largely unconfirmed as we're recording this, but the first news that came out was that American and JetBlue were no longer going to seek getting back to their partnership that they used to have or, you know, doing any kind of partnership. And that was a bummer. But then very shortly after that, we learned that it looks very, very likely that JetBlue will be partnering with United.

And what we're really waiting for is like, what will that look like? There's been some information that what it'll initially be mostly is we'll be able to use each other's miles to fly the other airlines.

So you can use your JetBlue miles to fly United and United to fly JetBlue. Later on, it might lead to much more. In fact, there's people have projected an end game where United actually buys JetBlue.

So that would be, I mean, huge. Of course, for the short term, you know, once the ability, once the frequent flyer reciprocity comes into play.

Oh, you'll also be able to earn miles on each other's flights is the other part. Once that comes into play, I don't think that's like a huge deal for most people.

But it's funny in that it excites me because I, you know, using my United miles, I often see great award flights out of jfk now, not flying United, but flying United's partners. They have so many partners in the Star alliance and some individual partners as well that fly out of jfk.

And the problem is using United miles, I can't get directly to JFK from Detroit. I can get to Newark, which is close. But if you're flying same day, that's not a fun way to travel.

There's not a high speed train that goes between the two, which would be nice. So I tend to avoid those itineraries. But JetBlue does fly from Detroit, at least at the moment, from Detroit directly to jfk.

And so in some future world, it seems likely I could book those kind of international flights directly and have the whole thing be directly from Detroit, where I fly, use my United miles to fly JetBlue to JFK and then fly whatever other partner onward. And so I think for anyone else who's in that kind of similar position, this could be really good.

The flip side is the main reason people say that United wants to partner with JFK, partner with JetBlue, is to get some of those JFK slots for United's flights. And I could easily see as an example JetBlue giving up the Detroit to JFK slots so that United could fly from JFK to somewhere else.

And so, you know, whether or not this really helps people in my situation remains to be seen.

Yeah, I hate this. I absolutely hate it. I hope it doesn't happen for a few reasons.

Number one, selfishly, because I live in New York and so there is oftentimes decent to very good, sometimes award availability out of jfk specifically because of what Greg is talking about, because it's not easy for people that are booking a United award to get to jfk.

So I think I probably get access to more awards out of JFK than I would if United could get people to jfk, because I'd have four far more competition to get those Star alliance awards. So. So I'm not happy about the fact that people like Greg will be able to get to JFK easily.

Sorry, I know that's most of you out there listening probably, but. But personally, selfishly, I'm not excited about that.

And then secondarily, and this affects more people is that JetBlue has sometimes really good award availability on their own flights that you can book with guitar Avios, and sometimes you can get Mint for like eight or nine people going to Europe on some of their European routes. And once you can use United miles, even if they open up eight or nine seats, there'll be so many more people that can book those flights.

Oh, man, that's a really good point.

And so booking jetblue mint into Europe is going to, I think, going to be like not happening anymore if and when that partnership happens. So that would be a bummer. And I haven't flown into Europe many times, only once, actually, so far.

But it's something that I know in the back of my mind there's always probably a possibility that I could book JetBlue Mint for my whole family to Europe, and that's going to go away if they partner with United. So I'm rooting against this.

Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. But a little selfish of you there, Nick.

No, it's very selfish. It's very selfish. But so goes. All right, so we'll see what happens there.

All right, next up in the list of awards points and more, American Airlines is now reducing award hold times to 24 hours.

So historically, for as long as I can remember, if you want to book an American Airlines award, but you're not exactly sure right away, you could put a hold on it for five days and so that would save the seats for you, so to speak, for five days. As long as you're doing it more than, I don't know, a week in advance or something like that.

And so that could be useful if you're not sure your plans aren't quite firm yet. Blah, blah, blah. They're changing that. It's only going to be 24 hours now.

And so that's a bummer for anybody who enjoyed taking a few days for a hold.

I'm wondering, and maybe this is just my wishful thinking, but if this is more foreshadowing, the transfers are coming from Citi at some point because they don't want to have everybody holding it waiting to transfer over points. So I don't know. That's just a conspiracy theory gas on my part probably. But. But anyway, that's a bummer.

Yeah. And you know, at least they're still doing 24 hours, which is 24 more hours than most airlines allow.

That is absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah. And there are times when I really wish I could put a hold with. On with other airlines to figure things out. And so that.

Yeah, that'll be nice to at least still have that. Thank you for keeping it. Aa Finally Emirates. Not finally next Emirates is breaking up with transferable currencies. Maybe, maybe not.

It sounds like maybe they aren't actually as I.

I heard more about this, so I wrote a post earlier this week about them breaking up with transferable currencies because we recently saw the devaluation from Citi where now your points are like one to eight points when you're transferring to Emirates, you're getting fewer Emirates miles than before. And then this week we saw announcements, sort of announcements.

We saw text on the transfer pages from both Amex and Chase saying that transfers to Emirates skywards from Amex Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards would be down from the end of May, May 28th or 29th until June 30th, tentatively. So it was, I think actually chase said tentatively June 30th they would come back and AMEX didn't have a tentative date to come back.

So it was just that they were going to be down and to see Emirates for more information.

And so that sounded to me like maybe they were breaking up with transferable currencies, though I didn't see any messaging like that through Capital One or Built. But word on the street now is that this is more of an it thing and, and that it it is indeed going to be temporary. So.

So I think it's sounds like it is going to be a temporary downtime. I wouldn't be surprised if Other issuers also experience that whether it all happens at the same time or not, we'll see.

Yeah, so you know, that's just something we're watching right now to see, see what happens. I'd say if you definitely if you know you're going to need Emirates miles, you might want to make the transfer before it gets paused.

Like even if you won't need them later just because we don't know for sure what's going to happen. But yeah, I guess it seems like it's going to come back and still be one to one as far as we know. So that would still be my bet at this point.

Yeah. I think the biggest group of people to be affected here are people who have a reservation to fly in business class.

And I say that because on the day of departure it's very frequently, based on my understanding anyway, possible to upgrade to first class if they still have any seats available for sale using your miles like at the check in counter, at the gate, etc.

And so, so if you're one of those people who had a business class award booked in June on Emirates and you were hoping to find out if there was availability and transfer and, and move up to first class, well, you may need to proactively transfer or have some capital one miles or built points, but of course we don't know if and when those might go down too. So.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

And finally you can Coming soon you will be able to transfer your SAS euro bonus miles to Scandic Hotels. Scandic Friends is their the name of their program. Scandic Hotels is a hotel chain that is mostly in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

There are also a number of locations in Germany and a few in Poland. And so you'll be able to transfer SAS miles to Scandic and they will transfer at a 1 to 2 ratio.

So €1 bonus mile will become two Scandic and Scandic Friends miles or points rather. And the same is also true in reverse. So two Scandic friends miles becomes €1 bonus mile.

And that's notable because often when we see transfers between airlines and hotels, the ratios are not balanced like that.

Such that if you transferred your airline miles to the hotel program and then later decided, oh no, I'd rather have the airline miles and you want to transfer them back to the hotel, usually you'd end up with far fewer or rather back to the airline, usually you'd end up with far fewer airline miles if you transferred back again. But this partnership is going to be equitable so that you'll be able to move them back and forth.

So that's kind of cool for anybody with a lot of SAS miles, I think. I don't know you. What do you think? Is this good, bad? Are there going to be good uses of Scandic Friends Points?

Yeah, I mean, I think, as you said, for those with SAS miles, Scandic has fixed point prices for all their hotels. And so, you know, if you happen to be traveling a time when the hotel price, the cash price is very high, you can probably do pretty well.

We haven't, or I haven't looked into individual, you know, examples yet to see how good it could be for most people in the United States.

I don't think this is very meaningful right now because there aren't any transferable points programs that, that I'm aware of that transfer to SAS or to Scandic.

And so you're, you know, that's too bad because it would have been great if that was like a secret, like, backdoor to get into SAS, for example, if you can transfer from something else to Scandic and then over. But you. We don't have that yet anyway.

Right, right.

But you got to figure if you can get a penny per point out of Scandic Friends points, and we don't know, we haven't dug into it deeply, but if you could, then every 1 SAS mile would potentially be getting you 2 cents. And so, yeah, that's a pretty good move for anybody who did the SAS Millionaire Challenge. That.

I mean, that makes your million miles worth $20,000 potentially in hotel stays. Now, we don't know for sure whether or not that's the value. We'll dig into that more for sure because it'll be fun just to take a look and see. But.

But it looked like reasonable award pricing anyway.

At first glance, it seemed like a pretty reasonable number of points for most of the hotels when you're considering that you're transferring one to two. Anyway. All right, that's that. Let's talk about this week's main event.

Main event time. Southwest loves cardholders. So I'm gonna admit I. I've been traveling and I haven't been paying much attention to this particular situation.

What's happening with Southwest. So this main event is mostly going to be the Nick show. While I kind of ooh and awe about what's going on at the same time.

Go ahead.

I've got a meeting to go to. So we're going to try to do this in about, I don't know, 20 minutes and.

Or less.

And let's see, let's see. How much love there is.

Well, you know, I'm particularly curious because you haven't followed it super closely and you're not a Southwest flyer. What you think about all of this as we go through, because I think you are the target person to be potentially really interested.

So anyway, first up, new details were announced about what's coming. If you've been living under a rock, Southwest is changing a lot of stuff on May 28th. So just a few weeks here, a bunch of stuff will change.

And so they made some announcements about that this week. Most of it was stuff we already knew.

So most of the program is going to be more or less the same with the big negative changes we already knew were coming.

The biggest of those negative changes, probably, arguably is that basic fares, which are the equivalent of the want to get away fares today, are going to only receive a trip credit that's valid for six months if you cancel your flight, whereas others will be valid for 12 months. And of course before May 28, flight credits have had no expiration for the last few years. So that's a big change.

The other big change, of course is that bags will no longer fly for free. And so that's going to be a huge change for a lot of people. Most fares will not get a free bag based on the fair class.

Need to know for people who are not familiar with the other changes happening is that Southwest is in the middle of retrofitting their planes. So they are creating or going to be creating extra legroom rows at the front. And of course exit rows will be extra legroom rows.

So that means they're going to crunch some of the seats a little bit closer together than they were before. And so they're going to have these different seating areas. Standard seating, which is going to be roughly back of the plane to the exit rows.

Preferred seating, which is going to be basically roughly between the exit rows and wherever they start, the extra legroom seating. And then of course you're going to have your seats right in the front. So it's standard.

Is the back of the plane preferred, is sort of the middle to frontish. And then extra legroom is pretty self explanatory.

So they're not taking any seats out of these planes in order to make room for the extra legroom.

You know, I, I, that I'm not sure.

Maybe they are removing some seats, but I know they're reducing the pitch on the regular economy seats because that's, that's been a, a, a pain point for, for people. And I say that without Meaning painful, literally. Although I guess it might be literally painful.

Very well could be. Sure.

We'll see how close they put them together. The. So they're renaming the fair bundles, trying to erase any memory of the old Southwest.

So they've got four new names for the same types of fair classes that are again, mostly the same with the changes that we knew were coming. So Want to get away fairs will be called Basic and. And those basic fares will get a seat assigned at check in.

So if you book a basic fair, you won't get to pick your seat at all. You'll just get a seat assigned at check in. That's the big bummer there. And of course, that'll be the last boarding group.

Want to Get Away plus will now be renamed Choice. And so Choice tickets will get a standard seat at the time of booking that you can select at the time of booking.

So you'll be able to sit in the back of the plane and select that seat at the time of booking if you get that, which is the equivalent of today's Want to Get Away Plus. Right. And then Anytime fares will be renamed Choice Preferred. That'll get you a standard or a preferred seat at booking.

So you'll sit in the back or front ish at the time of booking if you book, what is now called an anytime fare will become Choice Preferred. And then finally Business select gets rebranded as Choice Extra. And so Choice Extra will give you two free checked bags and an extra legroom seat.

So it'll come with all the bells and whistles, essentially, that Southwest has to offer if you book those, which is, again, not a big surprise. I think most of that is stuff that we kind of saw coming.

We didn't know what seat selection was going to look like, which fares were going to come with seat selection and how that would work. But now you know that Choice, which is the equivalent of Want to get Away plus is going to give you a standard or preferred seats.

And rather, I'm sorry, Choice is going to give you standard seats. Choice Preferred will give you standard or preferred preferred seats.

I wanted to quickly mention the price differences because people who aren't typically familiar with Southwest might not be familiar with. Well, what does that really even mean?

So what's becoming Choice here, which is Want to Get Away plus today usually costs $20 more, and that's pretty standard almost across the board. On very short routes like San Francisco to Los Angeles, it's like $15, but on most routes it's $20 more to book. Wanna get away plus?

And so I expect that will hold true. So it'll cost you $20 more to get a ticket that includes standard seat selection at the back of the plane, usually.

Then what would become choice preferred is again, almost always $60 more than what's going to be called choice. So a total of $80 more than a basic ticket. That choice preferred is what's going to get you again, standard or preferred seating.

So that's kind of the value, so to speak, of each upgrade.

I would say it's a $20 upgrade from basic to want to get away plus and then about another $60 upgrade, or rather I should say $20 upgrade from basic to what's going to be called choice, and then about another $60 upgrade from choice to choice preferred, essentially. And then the business select fares vary. So I'm not exactly sure how much to value the. The top end of that. So that kind of gives you a dollar figure.

Go ahead.

So. So real quick, one thing I really don't like about this Choice preferred.

That's what I Google when I'm trying to find the website to log into Choice so I can book a preferred hotel. Choice preferred.

Luck. Good luck.

That's not going to work anymore.

No, it's not. It's going to get you right to Southwest Choice preferred. Yeah, Southwester Summer. All right, Greg.

Greg's frustrated already and we're barely into this here. Okay, so. So again, that was all pretty much expected.

We didn't know how much it would cost, and we don't still know how much it'll cost to select a seat if you want to book a bigger seat or whatever. If you book a choice fair and then you later decide that you want a preferred seat or an extra legroom seat.

We don't know what the difference in prices will be on those types of upgrades yet. But we do know that cardholders are going to win big here. And there's a number of different reasons for that.

First of all, the benefits that cardholders enjoy will extend not only to the cardholder, but up to eight people traveling on the same reservation. And they've already said that seating benefits or baggage benefits, rather. Let me take that back.

Baggage benefits will extend to the companion if you have a companion pass. And I did also read that you'll be able to select a seat for your companion also if you have a companion pass.

So it sounds to me like both baggage and seat selection benefits will extend to up to eight additional passengers on the same reservation and or your companion if you have a companion pass. All of the credit cards, every Southwest credit card comes with a quote unquote boarding benefit.

Now that's not defined yet what that's going to be because each of those different fare classes of course is going to board at different times. So you know what's going to be now called Choice Extra, the equivalent of Business Select.

The choice extra is going to board first, of course, and then it'll be choice preferred and then it'll be choice and then it'll be basic. I don't know where cardholders are going to fit into there because they haven't said, they just said that there's going to be a boarding benefit.

For what it's worth. That's also what they say for a list and a list preferred. It just says boarding benefit. It doesn't explain what that's going to be.

It says that it'll be announced at a later time time. So I don't know what the boarding benefit is going to be, but you're going to presumably get a boarding benefit of some sort.

So you won't board last probably if you have a, a credit card.

Now, Southwest Rapid Rewards plus cards, which is the cheapest card that they offer, or Business plus, which I don't think has been offered for years. I don't think. Anyway, those will get a free standard seat selection at 48 hours before takeoff.

So if you book a basic fare that would normally give you an assigned seat at check in, instead, if you've got the Southwest plus card, you'll be able to pick a standard seat at T minus 48 hours. So that's pretty good. I should have mentioned. I didn't mention.

All of the credit cards also come with a free checked bag, one free checked bag for you and up to eight passengers on the same reservation. So if you're traveling with a group of people, you'll still each get one free checked bag. So that's true on all of the credit cards.

Again, Southwest plus gets free standard seat selection 48 hours in advance.

Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier or Business Premier, that's kind of the mid level $100 ish card for the consumer and business side that in addition to your checked bag is going to give you a free standard or preferred seat selection again 48 hours prior to departure. So two days before departure. This is of course based on availability.

If there are no standard seats left, no standard or preferred seats left, then you're not going to be able to pick an extra legroom seat, for instance. But if there's a seat selection available 48 hours in advance and either standard or preferred seating.

And you've got the Southwest Premier Premier business, you'll get that for free.

So that's kind of nice because you could be booking basic fares and as long as you have any of those credit cards, then you're going to be able to pick your desired seat 48 hours before departure.

But I think where this really becomes kind of special and notable is for the Southwest Rapid Rewards priority consumer card, because that card is going to give you free standard or priority seating at the time of booking.

So when you book, even if you book a basic fair, you're going to be able to pick a seat in most of the plane, the standard or preferred seats, which again are the seats in the back of the plane and the seats between the exit rows and whatever the front few rows of extra legroom seats are. So it's going to give you access to the vast majority of the plane at the time of booking on any fair that you book, if you got the priority card.

And then you can upgrade to extra legroom 48 hours before departure. So two days before departure, if there are extra legroom seats available, you can upgrade for free. And again, that's not just for you.

It's up to eight passengers traveling on the same reservation and. Or your companion, if you have a companion pass, which could be huge.

Yeah, no, totally. So, so before we talk about the extra legroom, just let me, let me kind of try to grok this first part of it.

The free standard or priority seating at booking. Now you're going to get priority seating if you book a choice priority fare.

So, so what this really means is if you're booking a basic fare or a preferred fair.

But a basic or a choice fair. Yep.

Basic or choice fare, you're automatically getting as if you booked the choice preferred fare. And so, of course, I mean, there'd be no reason not to book the basic fare, I think.

Well, no, I guess there is because they have different rules for cancellations and such. Right.

The big difference is if you're booking a cash fare, if you're using money to book your fare and you cancel it, if you booked a basic fare, then the credit you receive is only going to be valid for 6 months vs 12 months if you booked a choice or higher fare. So that's a big difference. But if you're an award traveler, if you're traveling using points, then there's very little benefit to booking a choice.

The other reason you might consider booking choice is for same day free same day changes, which you won't get on a basic fare. So if you want to be able to change to a different flight same day, then you'll want at least choice.

But either way, you're getting the benefits of choice preferred, essentially apart from the expiration of the credit you're getting.

And, and that, you know, the, the ability to same day, you're essentially getting choice preferred benefits just about with the credit card without having to pay any extra for your ticket.

So whether the benefits of choice, the ability to free same day change and the 12 month expiration on a Southwest credit, like if those don't matter to you, then yeah, you could book basic and essentially get $80 more in benefits, you know, more or less. Like, you know, more or less obviously debatable as to how much it's actually worth and whether you'd actually pay for it, etc.

But the bottom line is it's a pretty good deal.

And yeah, it sounds like it. So this is the priority card. How much is that priority card?

It's $149 a year.

And so the priority card I find really compelling now because it comes with a great set of benefits and I would argue it might be the airline card, the king of the airline cards. I think this might be arguably the best airline credit card out there and we'll save that fight for another day. But this card is a great deal.

It's so not just, not just king of the Southwest credit cards, you're saying. King of all airline credit cards in the whole world, I mean, universe.

We're going to.

Well, I'm sure we'll debate that sometime soon, but yeah, I mean, I have a hard time thinking of one off the top of my head that I would say is a better card. Now obviously, of course, you know, you live in a place that's not served by Southwest. It's not going to help you at all.

And you know, if you live in a place with tons of Delta service and one Southwest flight a day or something, and obviously there are situations where it's not going to be best for you individually.

But I think overall when you look at this versus other airline credit cards, it's tough to beat right now because right now it costs $149 a year and it comes with a Southwest credit every year, $75 Southwest travel credit. So you can use that to book a Southwest flight. I think you could probably buy a Southwest gift card on the Southwest website to trigger that credit.

As long as the charge come comes from Southwest, then it should trigger that credit so it's very easy to use that if you're going to travel on Southwest at least once a year. It also comes with 7,500 points every anniversary. And so based on our reasonable redemption value for Southwest points, that's 97.50 worth of points.

So between the 75 Southwest credit and the 97ish dollars worth of points, I think it's really easy already to justify the $149 a year without any additional benefits on this card before you consider anything else.

And now suddenly as they start charging for checked bags, which they haven't said how much they'll charge, but they've said it's going to be in line with industry standards. So I would expect about 35 bucks for a checked bag once they start charging for checked bags.

And you're going to get a free checked bag for you and up to eight people on the same reservation. And then the ability to select almost any of the seats on the plane at the time of booking with whatever fare you buy.

I mean, again, if you fly Southwest once or twice a year, that's certainly not worth nothing. That's a good benefit to have. And then if you're ever able to upgrade to extra legroom, that's potentially also a huge benefit.

I just booked a JetBlue flight the other day that the the extra leg room was more than the cost of the ticket. It would more than double the cost of the ticket for a three hour flight for extra legroom.

And unsurprisingly, they haven't sold any seats in the extra legroom section. But, but you know, it was $131 each way for extra legroom seating, which again was more than the cost of the ticket in each direction.

Now, how much is Southwest going to charge for exit rows and the extra leg room at the front? I don't know. Who knows? Will there be $131? But I bet you it won't be $10 to set the front of the plane either. So it's going to have some benefit.

And at $149 to get all of that and preferred boarding, I mean, that's a pretty compelling deal.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds pretty good. And it sounds a lot like the extra legroom seating.

I don't really know much about it other than what its name implies, but American, Delta, United all have some form of economy plus Delta calls. There's comfort plus where you get extra leg room.

And usually they sort of advertise some other things like Delta claims that you get, I guess you get a free drink, you get upgraded snacks, you know, so instead of just the, the pretzels or, or, or peanuts, you. You can also pick from a candy basket, basically. It's inconsistent whether they actually bring that around, by the way.

Anyway, so I'm wondering, like, does, do we know anything? Like, does Southwest gonna do anything extra for these people in these special seats, or is it just like, you have extra legroom and that's it?

I would assume just like, extra legroom. I mean, American doesn't do anything for people that have main cap and extra seats.

So I think Delta, I don't know if they're unique, but they probably offer something better there, which is probably not surprising to anybody who's flown both airlines in a while. But. So I don't know of anything additional that they're going to do yet for people in extra legroom seating.

But the car does come with 25% back, of course, all the bunch of. I said all I know the priority card does, and I'm sure that others of the cards come with 25% back on in flight.

Food, beverage, WI fi, stuff like that. So, you know, you get a discount, but you get the same discount no matter where you're sitting.

I don't know of any additional benefits for people sitting in main cabin extra. But, you know, again, breaking this down. So if you. Okay, it stinks that Southwest is going to start charging for checked bags.

There's no doubt about that. That's a huge bummer and a big hit to the value of flying Southwest.

And so anybody booking Basic Choice or Choice Preferred is going to get zero free checked bags without a credit card. So having the credit card is going to save you 35 bucks on a checked bag.

So if you're somebody who checks a bag, you're otherwise going to pay $35 each time for it. So this is already going to save you.

And when you add just one free check bag once a year on top of the 7,500 anniversary points and the $75 Southwest Credit, you're coming out nicely ahead with the priority card.

And then when you add the additional benefits in the seating benefits, both the ones at the time of booking and the one you know for extra legroom, whether they have anything additional in extra legroom seating or not to me is not even of consequence because this card is just like it's paying for itself. And basically it's giving you the same benefits as a list status on Southwest.

Very few exceptions, a list will get you a priority check in Lane at The airport having the credit card won't do that for you. So that's a little bit of a benefit. But otherwise a list customers, and we're talking Southwest Elites, right?

There's a list and a list preferred are the two levels of elite status. A list customers get the same seating selection at the time of booking and the same 48 hour window to pick extra legroom seats.

So there's no measurable benefit to having a list status over having just the Southwest priority card.

And when you compare against elite status with other airlines like United Silver, members get an economy class, an economy plus seat selection at the time of check in, which is only 24 hours versus 48 and similar with American Airlines Gold and Delta Silver. I think they're all at, at the time of check in, you get a main cabin extra type of a seat with the first level of elite status in those programs.

So having the Southwest priority card is giving you a better deal than the first level of elite status in most airline programs at this point. I think this is a, I think for 149 bucks a year this card becomes really compelling. As long as that lasts.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that does sound really good.

It does make me like I have not even paid attention to where does Southwest fly out of Detroit, because it's just not been the airline I've wanted to fly. I don't like the not, you know, the fact that you haven't been able to select seats.

And so, you know, something like this sounds, sounds interesting enough to where, where it's like, yeah, I could see myself wanting to, you know, if, if Southwest had the right flights and schedule flying them, whether it'd be worth it to me to get a card where I'm like, I would have to know that I'm going to be flying it more than once, I guess to say it's worth getting the card because the benefits, I'm not going to be getting those benefits basically if I'm not flying Southwest.

So if I was just going to do one flight and see how it goes, I probably would just do the flight and pay for choice or choice preferred or something and, and resign myself to not having extra leg room seating.

So you'd pay like an extra. So if choice preferred to get you a seat standard seat or a seat at the frontish.

Again, standard or preferred seat typically costs about 80 bucks more than a basic fare.

So you're going to pay $80 more than a basic fare instead of paying 149 to get $75 off of that fare, plus 7,500 points at anniversary, plus the chance to upgrade to extra legroom seating.

I mean, if I'm only going to fly Southwest once, like once.

True. Of course, of course, yes. Once every. You're fine once every year, but once a year, I mean, once a year.

I think it pays for itself once a year. It probably does. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, if you're not going to fly Southwest, don't get a Southwest credit card, probably.

And it's notable that that is a difference with other airlines. Like, it doesn't matter if I'm going to fly American Airlines or not.

The credit card might still work out for me because the initial welcome bonus, I could use those points to fly all their partners or even if I'm spending on the card, I can use my miles to fly on Americans partners. So it doesn't really matter whether I'm going to fly American or not. The American Airlines credit card might make sense for me.

And it's not specifically that card. That's just a general example I'm giving.

Whereas Southwest, if you're not going to fly Southwest, then yeah, it doesn't make sense to get the Southwest. Yeah.

Well, a good counter example is the Delta Business Gold card, which gives you $200 a year in, in hotel stay credit. So you can actually, I could see people getting that card even if they don't know if they'll ever fly Delta just to get that small $50 advantage.

Plus, if they do fly Delta, then they get the free check bag and whatever other perks.

But so maybe the Delta Business Gold is the true king of the airline credit cards. We'll have to fight that one out.

I mean, but you're not going to get into comfort plus seating for free, so.

Right. That's right.

They're not exactly apples to apples.

No, no. But, but an interesting discussion for another day. But all that said is the writing on the wall here.

I mean, I'm going to ask you to make a bet here over, under six months before they completely revamp the Southwest credit cards and increase the annual fee on the priority card and decrease the seating benefit or something. Over, under. It's going to be over six months or under six months before we see the major changes to the Southwest credit cards.

Over.

Over.

I think that, yeah, I think that Southwest is in a dangerous spot of having like pissed off a lot of their loyal customers with all these changes.

And this is a major, you know, really big way to placate them and make them feel really good about sticking with Southwest, as long as they have the credit card or get the credit card if they don't already have it, I don't know that if they would want to endanger that anytime soon.

So that's, well, that's, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I, I, I feel less confident about that.

I mean, right now I'm looking at this thing, we've got the priority card, my wife has the priority card. So they're going to start charging for bags.

But as I've said before, we don't, we usually travel as a family of four and we don't ever check more than four bags. I mean, usually we check one or maybe two bags total for the family of four.

So having the credit card is going to effectively make the change to the baggage policy. Nothing to us. It's not, not going to be a change to us. We're still going to get the free check bags we had before.

So that's not going to be a big difference.

And now the seat selection thing, getting standard or preferred seat selection at the time of booking means that them charging for seat assignments is also not going to affect us at all.

Now, in fairness, I never minded the what, what people call the cattle call boarding style of Southwest because as long as you get in the A or B group, usually you get to pick essentially where you want to sit or seats together, maybe not where you want to sit, seats together, usually. So, so that's never really been a big downside for me. Now there's exceptions to that. Blah, blah, blah.

Somebody's going to chime in and be like, no, no, no, I never get to say where I want to sit. But generally speaking, we've never had an issue with it. So I've never been bothered by that.

But now, even better, sure, I'll get to pick the seat, we'll know exactly where we're going to sit before we get on board just by having the credit card. To me, that's, I guess, slightly better. There's zero anxiety about it then.

So, so like I'm looking at it saying the only thing that's going to change in my, from my perspective now is the six month expiration on trip credits from basic fares. But usually I'm using Southwest points to book our flights anyway.

And now when I use those, you know, when I use cash, so to speak, or existing credits, I'm probably going to book choice fairs for the $20 more, which I already kind of was doing in a lot of cases so that I could have A free state, same day change if I wanted it anyway. So it's, again, not a huge shift for me.

I don't like the 12 month expiration on trip credits moving forward, but overall, the priority card is kind of erasing the negatives for me.

And, and maybe we're going to get some extra legroom seating because I imagine that Southwest average customer is not going to want to pay whatever it is that Southwest wants to charge for that extra legroom seating, whether A, it's because they just wanted a cheaper deal and that's why they were flying Southwest to begin with, or B, because out of protest, they don't want to give Southwest more money. I don't know what it's going to be, but I feel like there's a decent chance that we'll be able to use that upgraded seating.

So I'm looking at this saying, I think we might come out ahead.

Yeah, no, totally. I agree. You will have to book a cash fair once a year, right. To use your $75 travel credit or.

Buy a Southwest gift card from the Southwest website, like I said.

Oh, really?

Yes, yes. So, yes.

Okay.

So.

So once in a while that, or.

Maybe, maybe you want to use your gift card or use your choice extra to buy a refundable fair. So there's, there's ways. Ways probably around that, Craig. Anyway, so we. And we will probably fly Southwest more than once a year anyway.

We do usually fly Southwest. All right, that wraps up this week's main event. Because I know that Greg is crunched for time.

We're going to get to this week's question of the week very quickly. This week's question of the week is one that we could do a whole main event about.

So we're not going to do a whole main event on the question of the week. I wanted to put you on the spot for this because this is kind of more true life.

We get some variation of this question almost every single week that comes in via email where somebody says, I have a major purchase that came out of nowhere. I have to spend 10 or 15 or $20,000, like tomorrow. What card should I use?

So I want to ask you, if you suddenly right now found out that you had to spend 10 or 15 or $20,000, some large amount of money, and it was going to have to be paid tomorrow, what would your thought process be? What would your strategy be?

Well, so there'd be several things. One would be, am I trying to, you know, achieve big, A big spend bonus?

Whether it's because I signed up for a new card or maybe I'm trying to get a free night certificate with a credit card that gives me a free night at, with 15,000 or $30,000 spend one of those kind of things.

And if I didn't have any of those kind of things where I'm trying to get the big spend, then I go on to like which card do I have that just earns the most rewards for whatever type of spend this is. So if it's, if it's spend at a, you know, I don't know, at a, a, a grocery store, I mean, I doubt that would be the case.

You're not going to have 10 or.

$20,000 in a grocery store, Greg. Probably going to be on bonus thing, right?

Probably unbonused. So then I look, you know, what cards do I have that have the best rewards for unbonus spend?

Which for me personally would be between my bank of America cards that earn 2.62% cash back or like my wife's Venture x which gets 2x everywhere or my double cash that gets again 2x everywhere.

And then it would be a matter of like am I low on a transferable points currency that I want to get more of one of those two or would I rather get the 2.62% cash back?

Because if I go for the Citi points or the capital one points at 2x, I'm basically buying them for 1.3 cents each by not getting the 2.62% cash back from bank of America. And that's how I think through the whole, the whole thing. If I don't need more of those points, I'm not going to buy them at 1.31 cents each.

If I do think, oh, I'm getting low on those, then yeah, then, then I'm willing to sacrifice the cash back.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's exactly it. The only thing that I'll add to Greg's strategy is if I have until tomorrow, I might consider is there a new card I can apply for today?

Because some cards you can get overnighted. Chase is usually pretty good about most of their cards they'll overnight.

If you call and request it, they'll usually are willing to overnight it next day. Amex most of the time you can get, if you get approved instantly, you can get an instant card number.

And also they are decent about expediting some of their cards. The platinum cards usually get expedited, though I've had trouble getting other cards expedited in recent memory. So, so that may not be a universal.

And so anyway, you might consider can I get a card? Which card issuers issue an instant card number if it's something I can pay for online. That would be another piece of my my thought process.

But otherwise same as Greg. You know, if it's a $10,000 purchase and you can earn 2 points per dollar, that's 20,000 points. Which currency am I lowest in?

And if I have something like the bank of America Premium Rewards with platinum honors, that's $262.50 that I could get in cash back. So would I rather have 20,000 points or $262? And so I have to kind of make that decision between the two if, if, if, if those are the options.

So totally agree. I would not take less than 2 points per dollar because there are too many cards now that offer 2 points per dollar.

So I wouldn't be taking less unless you're working to a free night certificate or something of that sort. So exactly what Greg said. All right, that brings us to the end of this week's episode.

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