This week at Frequent Miler, we tackled whether or not to mattress run Marriott, updated a tool to help you decide whether and how to mattress run Hyatt, and gave you keys to saving big on Hilton and earning big while saving for college. And if you have Alaska wallet funds, you won’t want to miss the deal of the week.

On Frequent Miler on the Air, in addition to our usual segments (Giant Mailbag, What Crazy Thing Did Citi Do This Week? Mattress Running the Numbers), our main topic was Raising points while raising kids: ways to earn additional points with a family. We talked not only what I did with my new son but also strategies to pursue for those with young adult children and why it makes sense to plot out a plan. Watch or listen for all that and more:

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This week at Frequent Miler:

A bundle of points with our bundle of joy: Nearly 200K points earned in the first month of life

The latest member of the Frequent Miler family joined us last month and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to rake in a rebate on things like college savings, the hospital bill, and more. See this post to see how I put my new son to work right away in padding the family points balances. There’s no doubt that he set the bar high in month 1 — and he’s working on packing away more points for me one diaper at a time.

Mattress Running Marriott

I felt like Marriott’s Week of Wonders promo was a little weak, but Greg points out that those looking to mattress run their way to Marriott status may be particularly interested in the ability to book properties for off-peak pricing in the near-term. This post sorts out what you need to know to figure out if it’s practical and worth it for you.

Hilton Price Match Guarantee: How I Saved $550+ Making 2 Best Rate Guarantee Claims

Stephen saved a bundle recently with two Hilton best rate guarantee claims. It’s always good to keep these in mind. While I don’t often find opportunities to submit these, like Stephen I’ve had pretty good success with my claims and written about them here several times. If you’re booking a Hilton hotel, the process is especially easy and worth a few minutes of your time considering the big savings possible.

Chase Freedom Unlimited Complete Guide

Everything you need to know about the Chase Freedom Unlimited card in one place. We’re working to eventually have guides like this for all of the cards that we list on our best offers page so you have a one-stop resource with the answer to any question you’d have about this particular card. If you have a Freedom Unlimited card, it might be worth bookmarking this for future reference.

Greg’s Top Picks: Current credit card offers (Oct 2020)

With a number of cards offering temporarily increased new bonuses, Greg sorts through the noise to share his top picks out of the increased offers — as well as which cards you should wait on in hopeful anticipation of something better. I am personally less excited about the current Marriott card offer because it comes in the form of certificates that need to be used within a year and it is becoming increasingly likely that international travel will still be difficult for at least a large chunk of 2021. On the other hand, it’s hard not to come out well ahead of the normal welcome bonus with these free night certs — it wouldn’t make sense to wait on a 75K or 100K offer when you have the chance to pick up five certificates each good for a night up to 50K points. Even if you use those for nights that would have cost 30K you’re ahead of the usual bonus by some measure. Still, I’m not looking to get myself caught up in any more certificates that are scheduled to expire next year.

Frequent Miler’s COVID-19 business survival update

Greg shares an update on how business is going here at Frequent Miler. Spoiler alert: things are looking up. That shouldn’t come as a surprise: we’ve got the support of readers like you. Thank you reading, thank you for commenting (the comments on this series of posts has been really uplifting in times when I think we could all use some of that), and thank you for supporting the site. I think I speak for all of us at Frequent Miler when I say that we love what we do and we appreciate the opportunity to do it for a living. Here’s to many more years of success.

In updated resources:

Hyatt cash or points? Or Points+Cash? Use the Frequent Miler worksheet

This resource to help you determine how to pay for your Hyatt stay (especially in light of the current promotion and rare opportunities it brings for a status mattress run) now includes cash & points.

Instant Gift Card Deals: Save Money & Get Rewarded

If you’re standing at the register ready to pay for something in-store but you’d like to stack more rewards, you’ll want to have this page bookmarked on your phone so you can buy a gift card instantly and earn more miles or a better deal (or both).

Flying under 5/24

While it can be quite a challenge for those who have opened many cards to get under 5/24, it gets a little easier to stay under if you have a strategy for which cards to focus on and why. This post gives you the tips you need to continue to earn big without blowing up your 5/24 slots.

Deal of the Week:

Great deal: Convert Alaska wallet funds to miles at 1c per mile

If you have funds in your Alaska wallet (credit from canceled flights or gift cards purchased before 10/9), you’ll almost definitely want to take advantage of the ability to convert them to miles — and you’ll want to do it right now since this is only available at this rate for a couple of days. Sure, Alaska miles may devalue — but they would have to go through a devaluation of truly epic proportions to make this a bad deal.

That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Next up: Last Chance Deals.

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