Frequent Miler "Ask Us Anything"
What are you spending on credit card annual fees? | Ask Us Anything Ep79...
What are you spending on annual fees? What's the holy grail of first-class suites? We answered these and many other questions on the Ask...
Is the Grand Hyatt Kauai worth 45K? | Ask Us Anything Ep78 | 8-6-25
Is the Grand Hyatt Kauai worth 45K? We answered this and many other questions on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on...
Is hotel elite status obsolete? | Ask Us Anything Ep77 | 7-2-25 | Podcast
Is hotel elite status obsolete? What's been your favorite first class experience? And do you have favorite Hyatt hotels? We answered these and many...
What to do when you don’t have enough hotel miles, and more | Ask...
What do you do when you don't have enough hotel miles? And why aren't we letting all 100K Vacay competitors use Chase points? We...
How to use that 100K bonus, and which vacation home platform rules? | Ask...
How would we use that 100K bonus, and which vacation home rental platform has the best value? We answered these questions and more on...
Checking to see if I can upgrade from the $99 Atmos card to the $395 card and still earn the rewards ? Or do I have to apply for a whole new card going through the credit check process??
You do have to apply new in order to earn a welcome bonus.
Love the website and podcast. Just getting started in the points and miles game and I’ve learned a ton here in the past few weeks. What does it take to join the insiders facebook group? I’ve submitted a join request twice in the past several days the pending request resets back to asking me to Join again a day or two later. Is there something I’m missing?
When joining, there are a couple of questions to answer; it doesn’t look like either of those were answered.
I must have missed them the first time but now it doesn’t ask any questions when I try to join. I’ll try from a different device. Thanks
in your opinion, what is the best hotel chain credit card to get and why?
Hi, I hear about Flying Blue business class to Europe for 60k points, but haven’t found any in over a year. I use AwardTool and am in MSP. Any help appreciated. Thx!
We often hear about using airline alliances for travel to Europe and Asia, but what about to the Caribbean and Latin America? Thanks!
We have a whole post on just that topic! 🙂 You can find it here.
Long time fan, but never reached out before with a question. I made several reservations with Choice for Scandinavia using Citi point. Thanks for the tip!! I have confirmation numbers but they are not showing up in my Choice account. I called and they said they could see them, but it makes me very worried that the hotel will not honor them. Have you heard of this happening and it its okay or should I be worried? I don’t want to show up with no hotels booked. Scandinavia is expensive enough and I got great valuations with these bookings.
Does anyone know if aligned incentives is still in business/functioning well?
Yes, they are
Thank you!
So happy to have found your platform. I’m in a long distance relationship with someone who lives in Cabo San Lucas, and I’m in New York City and we’re trying to figure out which city to meet in. That would take the fewest miles. It really doesn’t matter where we are cause we’re happy just to be together, it could be Des Moines. It could be Rome. We just want to be economical with our miles so we can have as many visits as possible. Is there a way to find out the routes that require redeeming the fewest miles on American?
Thank you for being such a great resource! You are my go to for all points and miles questions so here goes. I am taking a tour next year to Australia/New Zealand with Gate One Travel that requires that we use their airfare. I don’t know why I agreed to this but I did. I know we will be flying Air New Zealand. Is there a way I can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to either Air New Zealand or a Star Alliance partner to upgrade our seats. I
also have Capital One and Bilt points and am willing to open an Amex if I can make this happen. Thank again for your wealth of knowledge!
people avianca devauled again for domestic flight a flight that was 12500 now is 15000
This might be a niche thing that everyone else is aware of but I wasn’t. The Uber benefit with my American Express gold and platinum card usually goes towards Uber eats or something else of not much value since I only Uber occasionally or on travel.. recently my family and I were in Rome and Athens before and after a cruise and we used Uber a few times because of the crazy heat and to give the legs a rest. I felt great that I was going to be using my Uber credit and I had already made sure to lock in my Uber app that I wanted to be charged in euros so I avoided any fees. When I returned home I opened up the Uber app and noticed that my credit remained. After chatting with the customer service rep asking why it wasn’t applied it turns out it was not applied for two reasons that I was not aware of.
Reason one: The American Express credit is only available to be used on domestic US Uber trips and we were obviously in Europe
Reason two: The Uber credit was in dollars and since I had made sure to be billed in euros it would not have applied.
Unfortunately I did take one final ride share trip home from the airport at Washington Dulles, but it was a Lyft since I thought I had used my Uber credit and lift offered me a 10% off notification when I arrived.
Yes, that’s always been the case with the Amex Uber credits – they’re only valid in the US and when being charged in US Dollars.
Howdy! I am trying to get to GUM in December and want to go business class. I have 1K status on United and have Membership Rewards and Ultimate Rewards. What are the chances if I book a premium economy ticket that I will get upgraded to business class? Also is it worth it to take a chance and waiting to get closer and see if any deals pop up or should I book now? Or should I buy a cash ticket and use miles to upgrade to business? I have never done such a far trip (only to the UK) so this is kinda new spending this much either money or miles on one trip
I want to know about the Vietnam airlines award charts https://www.vietnamairlines.com/lotusmile/redeem-mile/with-skyteam/north-america can you also make a rrv of ana and vietnam
FYI, SWISSAIR does not exist anymore. They ceased operations on March 31 2002.
It is called SWISS- Swiss International Airlines.
Where are we supposed to post questions for ‘Ask Us Anything’?
(And, you have a typo above. Your link says ‘Wtach the latest episode here…’ instead of ‘Watch the…’)
The best place to ask them is during the live Ask Us Anything sessions as that’s usually where we get the questions from. You could leave a question on this post too as we’ll occasionally take a question or two from there.
Thanks, Stephen.
And thanks for the heads up about the typo – we’ll get that fixed