Best uses of points, value versus savings, how Frequent Miler began and more [Week in Review]

Got Citi Thank You points or Avios from one of the many programs that use them? This week, we published guides for your best uses of either of those. If you’re a Delta loyalist, you’ll want to check out Greg’s guide for making good Choice Benefit choices. If you’ve always been curious as to how Greg became The Frequent Miler, you’ll want to check out this week’s 20-minute coffee break podcast. All that and more in this Frequent Miler week in review.

This week on the Frequent Miler blog…

Delta’s New Choice Benefits for Platinum and Diamond Elites

Whether you have earned or will earn Delta choice benefits with Platinum or Diamond status, you’ll likely wonder which benefits are worth selecting. In this post, Greg covers all your options and identifies which are the best, which might make sense in the right situation, and which you should avoid at all costs.

Best uses for Citi ThankYou points

Citi gets less attention than competitors for a number of reasons. I’d argue that one of the reasons for less attention on Citi and its products is fewer sweet spots than you’ll find with competitors, but this post is a good reminder that Citi is not without sweet spots entirely. In fact, Greg has put together a number of solid uses for your points — so if you have Thank You points to use, it makes sense to consult this post for some best options.

Best Uses of Avios (British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, and Aer Lingus)

I don’t often end up using Avios, but there are nonetheless a multitude of ways in which they could be useful given the right circumstances. That has become truer still as Avios has expanded to now include Qatar and Finnair (though you can’t yet move Avios between Finnair and the other Avios programs, though I’m told that functionality is on the way in the not-too-distant future). This post collects many of your options for getting great value out of this popular currency.

Hyatt’s cumulative changes hurt more in retrospect (on Nick’s mind)

I was disappointed with the way that Hyatt is handling its integration with Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which led me to think more about the ways in which Hyatt’s value proposition has changed in recent years. To be sure, Hyatt still offers a lot of value in many situations, but it is no longer the no-brainer program that it once was. With the addition of more ways to use points have come more options for using points to lesser value. Not mentioned in this post is the fact that this makes me nervous about the future of World of Hyatt.

Value credit card perks not by what you’ll save . . .

Last weekend, I spoke about a couple of topics at The Travel Summit in Toronto, Canada. One of my talks was about year 2 with a credit card and valuing perks. I encouraged people to value perks ultra conservatively (as has often been our advice at Frequent Miler). This post provides an example or two to explain the concept on a grander scale — with the aim of helping to make the point as to why we think of perks not in terms of how much we can save bit rather in terms of how much we’re willing to pay to subscribe to them.

Podcast: Tips for booking Positioning Flights | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep253 | 5-3-24

A recent reader question led us to a complete podcast episode about our tips for booking positioning flights. Since I am based in New York State, I’ve often driven the ~3-4 hours to the New York City airports for my international awards, but when the best award is to or from another airport, there are some important considerations to keep in mind when booking those positioning flights.

[Update: I made it!] My award alert, flight change, and a risky layover

After you listen to our post about positioning flights, you’ll wonder why we didn’t record it before Greg’s current trip to London as future advice to save him from potential grief. Let there be no doubt: Greg was living on the edge with this one! He booked a separate-ticket positioning flight to Newark airport that was scheduled to land 42 minutes before his international award ticket was set to depart (and just 12 minutes before the boarding gate would close for it!). Magically, he made it. Crazier yet is that he didn’t run. There’s no way I’d have been walking it in this case — though, truth be told, Greg is a noted speed walker, so when he says he walked keep in mind that it may have been at your “running” pace.

Virgin Voyages: Book a cruise for as few as 45K points per person

I’m including this in Week in Review just because we’re written a lot about free cruises via casino status matching, but this is a great opportunity for someone who doesn’t have easy access to matching and/or an interest in Virgin Voyages. That’s particularly true given the convergence of cruise availability with a transfer bonus, which could make for a great deal on a Virgin Voyages cruise.

Frequent Miler Live: Wednesday May 8 at 7pm ET. Ask Us Anything!

With a couple of team members abroad this week and some special plans to announce soon, we moved our usual first-Wednesday-of-the-month Ask Us Anything to this coming Wednesday, May 8th. We usually publish the reminder for our Ask Us Anything just a day or two in advance, but since this one went out a week ahead of the new time I figured I would include it in the week in review as a reminder to mark your calendar if you’d like to join us live.

Podcast: Frequent Miler origin story – Greg’s story | Coffee Break Ep09 | 4-30-24

For this week’s 20-minute coffee break, we discussed the origins of Frequent Miler. While I had of course known most of this story from conversations with Greg over the years, even I learned some new tidbits about Greg’s journey from the first post to a thriving site with multiple team members. At some point in the future, we’ll continue the story with how the site expanded from just Greg, the Frequent Miler to include the rest of the Frequent Miler team.

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye out for this week’s last chance deals to make sure you don’t miss any expiring over the next few days.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.