Disputing the indisputable best offer

When it comes to credit cards, which one is the indisputable heavyweight champion of the world of new card welcome bonuses?  While 100,000 points is a respectable number that surely packs a lot of punch, the truth is that an offer of only 100K is punching below its weight class in comparison to the true best offer on the planet. This week on Frequent Miler on the Air, we take aim at the claim that 100,000 points is the best offer out there.

Watch or listen or scroll on below to read about why Greg is settling for a less-than-the-best offer (that still outclasses the purported “indisputable best”), two different takes on the finest round-the-world trip that your points can buy, and more.

Frequent Miler on the Air

• 00:51 Giant Mailbag
• 5:09 What crazy thing….did the Waldorf-Astoria Maldives do this week?
• 9:45 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is 129x Hilton points worth a mattress run? 
• 15:02 Main Event: Disputing the Indisputable Best Offer
• 41:02 Post Roast: Are Marriott 50K free night certificates worth more or are 40K certificates worth less?

Subscribe to our podcast

We publish Frequent Miler on the Air each week in both video form (above) and as an audio podcast.  People love listening to the podcast while driving, working-out, etc.  Please check it out and subscribe (if we get enough people to subscribe, we might be able to earn some income from this someday. So far, the podcast is just a labor of love).

Our podcast is available on all popular podcast platforms, including:

Apple

Google

Spotify

You can also listen from your browser:

This week at Frequent Miler

Settling for 350K Amex points with one new card

Greg knows that the indisputable best offer out there is the Resy offer on the Amex Platinum card. Unfortunately, he’s not eligible for it. Fortunately, he can still settle for “only” 350,000 Membership Rewards points. Sound painful? It isn’t. It’s a ton of points for almost no effort. Personal anecdote about these crazy Platinum card offers: a family member told me last night that he was thinking about buying a used car for $14,000. I told him to see if the dealer would take the full price on a credit card — because if they would, the points you would earn with a new Platinum card would be worth a rebate of thousands (since I am pretty confident that the used car dealership will code as a small business). With the Resy offer and only valuing the points at 1.1c each he would earn $3,685 worth of points — a far better deal than what he’s likely to get trying to negotiate the price down. Even with the lesser Schwab offer it would be a fantastic deal.

“World’s Best” Round the World Trip w/ Points

Greg recently wrote a post highlighting the best hotels in the world that you can book with points. In this post, he imagines how to build the perfect trip to visit 10 of them utilizing the amazing ANA round the world sweet spot and including how one could put together all the points to book the hotels. If you enjoy plotting our your plan as much as arriving at the destination, you’ll love digging in to this post.

Take 2: “World’s Best” round-the-world trip (Nick’s turn)

Greg and I each looked at the recent Travel & Leisure “best” lists and thought about a best round-the-world trip, but funny enough each of us thought about it differently. Whereas Greg thought to use his ANA miles to visit the world’s 10 best hotels bookable with points, I wanted to try to build a trip that would connect the world’s 10 best airlines using points. Here’s what I came up with, though I have to agree with Greg that I think the list was a bit weak. A world’s best first class trip might be even more fun….

The Maldives vs Bora Bora (on Nick’s mind)

Fresh off a trip to the Maldives, many readers asked me to compare it to Bora Bora and decide which I liked better. Both can obviously be fantastic destinations (or a total bore depending on your travel preferences), but the more time I marinated on it the more I realized that if I had to pick one for a return it would be Bora Bora. A reader commented saying this:

Scenery is huge and the contrast of Mt Otemanu and the volcanic island with the beach and bungalow cannot be beat. Bora Bora is the bungalow, the beach, the snorkeling. But it is also a magical landscape that will leave you with the thrill of adventure. It is that otherworldly atoll at the end of the world you are dreaming of.”

I completely agree. I distinctly remember flying into Bora Bora and seeing that mountain and the water that looked like a postcard. Waking up every morning to the view at the St. Regis is hard to beat. I certainly wouldn’t be disappointed to return to the Maldives, but I’ll more likely get back to Bora Bora while my kids can still eat for free :-).

What are Marriott Bonvoy points worth? And what are 85K certificates worth?

Earlier this year, Greg began revisiting our reasonable redemption values to update them based on current real-world data. He has now gone back to Marriott to bring them back up to date anew and add more data given that Marriott now has 85K free night certificates. This post will tell you what to expect when redeeming points and how much your 35K, 40K, and 50K certificates are worth, too.

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep your eye on this week’s last chance deals for to make sure you don’t miss anything ending this week.

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