What’s In WandrMe’s Wallet? Seth Miller, PaxEx.Aero

Speaker 1: You're listening to the Miles To Go podcast, the go-to source for travel tips, news, and reviews you can't afford to miss. Now here's your host travel expert Ed pizza.

Ed Pizza: Hey guys, welcome back to the Miles To Go podcast. If you listen to the show on a regular basis, you know we've been diving deeper into credit card strategy, and as travel has started to resume in earnest, at least for me and a lot of people, it's definitely exciting to start thinking about planning trips and getting back out there. But whatever decisions that you made during the pandemic might not apply as we get later in 2021 or even as we look at 2022. You might spend less money on groceries or restaurants as you're traveling more or if you go back into the office. And for sure changes in your travel patterns could definitely dictate a change in what card you're carrying. We had Gary Leff as a guest recently to talk about what's in his wallet and we also broke down my wallet on a recent show. I'll put links to both of those episodes in the show notes. But today's guest has a very different travel pattern than I do. So I'm going to be interested to dig into his wallet.
I'm joined today by Seth Miller of PAX X dot arrow and the dots lines and destinations podcast, who we just did a crossover episode with. He normally joins us to explain how things work in the aviation industry and for my benefit he usually uses small words, but today we're talking plastic. Hey Seth.

Seth Miller: How's it going? I promise that I will try to use small words again this week.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Well, with the credit card companies, they have some really nice big terms so you never know, it depends on how deep we get into what's actually in your wallet. And I'm curious to see how many cards are in your wallet and your tease earlier when we were putting together the segment I will say definitely more than I expected.

Seth Miller: Really?

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Yeah. Well just based on our conversations, but anyway, not to give too much away yet. So real quick though, before we get started for folks that are listening if you have any questions you can always shoot me an email ed@pizzaandmotion.com. We love answering questions on the show. And you can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, usually being insulted by Seth. All at pizza in motion.

Seth Miller: I do not insult you on Facebook at all.

Ed Pizza: All right. That's fair. Mostly Twitter.

Seth Miller: I mostly don't use Facebook is why.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Well, I'm in that same boat with you.

Seth Miller: So maybe we've been insulting each other and knew that the other one hasn't seen it because we're not there. That would be terribly awkward in some way.

Ed Pizza: I don't know how awkward it would be. If an insult happens in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, did it really happen?

Seth Miller: Yeah. It's true. I dumped on you and you were not even playing the game. I don't know.

Ed Pizza: So, I was a little surprised by the number and I guess we won't bury the lead. You said that you carry six cards.

Seth Miller: Yep.

Ed Pizza: Not to say that, I thought you had one, but six was a little high.

Seth Miller: So, let me be clear, when I say carry, it's relative. Two of them are sitting on my desk and I don't actually carry or use them, but I have them open. I actually think technically I have a seventh that I literally never use, but I'm not sure if it's open or not anymore. So, the one I'm not sure is an Amex blue card because I think it was literally the first credit card I owned on my own from college in the nineties. And there's no reason to close it because there was no annual fee, whatever, but I'm not sure if it's closed or not. I do have an Amex. What was it? Gold, PRG BRG. There was a fancy version of the rewards gold card at one point.

Ed Pizza: Oh, now you're going way back in the way back machine. But you said Amex Gold. Do you have the standard American express membership rewards Gold card?

Seth Miller: Is it membership rewards. It used to be called, there was a something rewards gold. I forgot what the first letter and what it stood for is, and I don't even know if it still exists anymore, but that's what it was when I got it. It is one that sits on my desk. I almost never use it. I actually bankrupted my membership rewards account if you will, I cashed out. I'd gotten just to the right number of points and transferred to Sky Miles for a business class ticket on Korean for my wife to go to Asia when we went on our six to 10 week ish India and Southeast Asia trip in late 2019. And I would bet since then I've spent less than $500 on the card.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Okay. All right. So, when you think about that card, as you mentioned, you got down to effectively zero points. Why is it still sitting on your desk? Why not cancel it?

Seth Miller: Momentum or lack thereof.

Ed Pizza: Not to sound like-

Seth Miller: I almost certainly should, if for no other reason then so I can sign up for another bonus in 24 months. Right?

Ed Pizza: Are you using the dining credits that are on the card now?

Seth Miller: No. I honestly have no idea what the benefits of the card are.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. I mean, if you're not using that, I think that would be my argument. I know a lot of people who held cards like that American express gold card because of some of the, and I don't remember the exact number either, but $10 a month for Uber or $20 a month for dining and that sort of stuff through the pandemic where it was like, all right, well, I'm going to pay for my annual fee that way. But if you're not using those, you're talking about, I mean, I don't know.

Seth Miller: A couple hundred bucks a year to keep it. It's two 50. Yeah.

Ed Pizza: I think it's 250 now. But on top of that, the other thing too is if your balance is effectively at zero in the account, the amount of spending you'd really need to generate to have any sort of effective value for those points. I guess you could be like transferring to Delta for an incremental award. That's probably the only thing I could see that might make it worth-

Seth Miller: And I don't have a huge Sky Miles balance either right now. And it's probably the lowest priority for me in terms of programs that I deal with. Now, that is one that I should be retiring. And whether being chastised by you about it here now is sufficient motivation or not remains to be seen.

Ed Pizza: Chastise is kind of a strong word, but okay. Sure. I'll go with that.

Seth Miller: Bashed on. Dumped on. What are we doing here?

Ed Pizza: At least all those things keep us from having to put the explicit lyrics label on, or me having to bleep things out, but when I look at the rest of your cards and we'll go through them, I certainly see a value that this card could have if you wanted to keep it. Four points per dollar on grocery stores, combined with using the Uber credits, assuming those continue, those two things probably cover your annual fee. I don't see you getting huge outsized value out of this card, but you could probably cut half the annual fee using up the Uber benefits as you start to get back out there traveling again.

Seth Miller: I generally avoid Uber.

Ed Pizza: Okay. I didn't realize that. I figured you were probably-

Seth Miller: I lean towards Lyft mostly because of conversations I've had with drivers who said they at least get paid a little more.

Ed Pizza: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So if you're not going to use the Uber benefit, then I would say, and again, not remembering all of the benefits off the top of my head that they've had going, you'd have to max out the dining credit. And part of the problem that I have with the dining credit on that card is, I don't really love the whole third party app thing. And you don't really live in a part of the world where you have a ton of choices via third party app. And so, I don't usually like waiting 45 minutes to get food and having it be lukewarm. So that's not a favorite of mine although a lot of people really do love that about that card. So if you're not using it for dining and you're not going to use Uber credits then it sounds like that one should hit the scrap heap.

Seth Miller: Yeah. And I use this as a bit of a segue, the other thing you mentioned is four X points on grocery, which yay for me not knowing that either. I really know nothing about this card. I switched from something else to it at some point, it was for bonus points or something and then I didn't ever spend on it. My grocery spend goes on my Barclays jet blue card, which is just two points, I think is what they do for that, which isn't as many points, but it's also pretty well known fixed value because of how the jet blue points are relatively fixed value for redemptions. And it counts towards my-

Ed Pizza: Aren't there two jet blue cards? Is this the regular one? Or the plus one?

Seth Miller: This is the plus one.

Ed Pizza: Okay. Just clarifying.

Seth Miller: So it is the one with the annual fee, but it's also the one that lets me earn mosaic status with spend, which historically has been useful to me. And I have a ton of jet blue points and I like using them. It was very nice when they were still the biggest airline here in Boston, which is my often go to airport. The schedule has thinned out a bit in the last year. And as you mentioned, I have started returning to travel a bit, but it's been harder and harder to not necessarily always fly them, but there's been a few routes where they just don't serve anymore that they used to. It'll be interesting to see how that comes back and if the American relationship makes it worth it, but at least for this year, I didn't need to spend the 50 grand to get the status last year because they extended it. This year there's a hybrid lower spend plus some flights option that I should hit without trouble.
So I could potentially move some of my spend off of that. But grocery is one of my biggest spend categories, but it's one that when I, in my mind at least, combine the value of the elite status plus the jet blue points, it has been sufficient for me to consider that a good place to focus that spending.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. When I look across the rest of your cards, I don't see another card on here that has a grocery bonus. So this makes sense, especially as you say, with the potential spending on trying to earn mosaic status. And I think this is one of those hundred dollar annual fee cards. Maybe it's 89. Maybe it's 99.

Seth Miller: Correct.

Ed Pizza: Okay. So at that price, you don't really need to get a ton of value to keep this card in your wallet. And as you say, even though the schedule is thinned out a bit, my guess is you'll still probably fly jet blue at least half a dozen to a dozen times this year.

Seth Miller: Yeah. So the other challenge there though, not to get off the credit card topic too much, but the main value I had from jet blue with mosaic status was free changes.

Ed Pizza: Don't go too far down that rabbit hole, man. That's our second segment.

Seth Miller: That's true. Are we talking about that today or a different episode?

Ed Pizza: Probably a different episode, but you're right. This is the reason why I want to do this and tease for everyone else. Now I've obligated Seth to record with me again. I want to have this argument. I wouldn't even say argument because we'll probably end up agreeing, but is there still value in chasing elite status and for some folks, and I've said this in a couple of things I've written and on the podcast, you just keyed on one of the biggest values for business travelers when it comes to elite status, which is no change fees.

Seth Miller: Yeah.

Ed Pizza: They don't exist.

Seth Miller: Historically I got thousands of dollars of value and admittedly this is also one of those funny ones, would I have booked as many tickets and then changed them later? No. I would have been a little more discretionary on my bookings, but I think I still got huge value over the years from that mosaic benefit. And now that it's disappearing, I'm not sure it's worth forcing all my credit card spend to get that because the other four cards in my wallet are all bank programs. One is the Barkley card arrival plus, which I used to use a lot. It's the other one that sits on my desk that I don't remember the last time I've used.
You earn two points per dollar or one point per dollar and then they're worth $2 for spend. It's basically a 2% travel rebate, as long as you charge the new travel onto that card and then redeem points against it. So again, that was one that I sort of bankrupted the account around that trip November in 2019 and haven't really had much motivation to put spend back on it. It was a good everyday for travel bonus type card.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. When you're traveling regularly, I think that card is a good fit for a wallet for someone like you who's also more of a free agent when it comes to things like where you're going to stay for hotels and stuff like that. It's a card that's not available anymore. So I think that a little bit of that plays into your thinking. At least I don't think it's available. I don't think it's available for new signups anymore. And so if it's not, if you got rid of it, then you'd have to think about, well, what do you replace it with? Because I do think a card like that does make sense in your wallet for how you spend.

Seth Miller: Yeah. And the other place that I put most of my points in it is I use, speaking of cards that aren't available, I have the chase Inc. Plus maybe. It's one of the business cards that you can't sign up for any more. It's the one that still gives you five X on cell phone service and things like that, which ironically, I don't use for my cell phone bill because-

Ed Pizza: You are just killing it man.

Seth Miller: I switched

Ed Pizza: You are killing it on card optimization.

Seth Miller: I switched to Google thigh and I don't know how to set up multiple different cards in the Google account so one bill goes to one thing and the other goes to the other one. And I don't care enough because also the cell phone bill is like 50 bucks a month. So if I'm forgoing a thousand points a year, I'm kind of willing to put up with that for just not having to worry about shit.

Ed Pizza: Right. But you also know that there was a time in our life when we would have done everything to get those thousand points, this is the part about getting old.

Seth Miller: I'd like to think it's the part about getting smarter.

Ed Pizza: The two could be related. I'm not saying they are, but they could be related.

Seth Miller: It really is I've made something of a judgment call of how much energy is it worth for me to invest to figure out where these 2000 points or 500 points or whatever it is are coming from. There's a reason I don't do the surveys that they send me all the time. The 50 to 100 points isn't worth it. I have a stack of quarters on my desk here that I'm staring at that is in fact worth more than that. I can get over it. There is a time value that I consider, but I do put my staples spend on that still because it's good for the office supply and whatnot. None of those are huge. This is another one of those that because it's no longer available, I'm a little hesitant to cancel it. But most of my spend in all of those categories is pretty low at this point just in general. Can I justify the hundred-ish dollar annual fee on that inc card? Probably not, but again, momentum and not being entirely certain that it's time for it to go.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. I'm not trying to sell you on anything because, as you well know, I'm not a credit card affiliate guy. So I'm just looking at wallets. And so I think the argument I'd make if I was looking at your wallet, a two-part argument for why I'd argue keeping the inc card in there. One is you have actual business spend so there's something to be said for keeping that spend on a business card. And as you say, you have the more valuable version of the card, which I do, those five X categories can be quite nice. I certainly don't run to staples for every gift card I ever need to buy, but it isn't hard when I'm going in there to pick up something else to pick up a $500 Amazon gift card, load it on my Amazon account and then forget about it until my wife tells me the account is at zero again and earn points that way, synergistically.
The last piece, I'd say why it makes sense is sort of a segue into one of the other cards that you had listed here, which is you have the chase Sapphire reserve. And so being able to transfer those ultimate rewards points into your Sapphire reserve account and redeem them at a quote unquote higher cashback rate if you will, or a higher rate for paid travel is something I could see you doing for non chain hotels or random airlines somewhere in the world that doesn't have a loyalty program, stuff like that.

Seth Miller: Yeah, absolutely. And so my other two cards are the CSR and the Chase Freedom. The freedom was a Sapphire preferred and rather than paying the annual fee on it, I downgraded to a Freedom card a year or two ago. It was pre COVID, but not much. And it's interesting as you mentioned the business expenses or whatever, I actually use the reserve for my business.

Ed Pizza: Oh interesting.

Seth Miller: Even though it's a personal card, every business transaction I have goes on that card with very limited exceptions. Part of that again is simplifying my accounting life and whatever else. At the end of the year, I send the statement from chase of that account, to my accountant and say, this is every transaction I had. And if it was a cash or a check, checks are easy because whatever. But if there's something I had to pay cash for, it doesn't go into the tax calculations because there's zero chance I saved the receipts or figured any of that out. I'm just a little too lazy and too scatterbrained for that to work. But I have one card, everything that goes on that card is business and everything that is businesses on that card with the exception of a staple stuff on the inc card. And as a travel and aviation related journalist and traveling IT consultant, you'll be shocked to learn that my biggest spend categories for work are hotels, airfare, and dining.

Ed Pizza: Right. Which all line up nicely with that card.

Seth Miller: Perfectly with that card.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that when we look at the wallet, especially when we're talking about that you're going to get rid of the Amex gold card, Chase Sapphire reserve gives you three points per dollar on both travel and dining if I remember correctly. Right?

Seth Miller: Yeah. And there's something else that had even another bonus I think added on at some point, but in my brain, I've always had it at three. And then when redeeming out, because it's the reserve, it's one and a half cents per points as opposed to one and a quarter for the preferred if you redeem travel through their Expedia portal or whatever, which I've done a few times. There've been some great deals with that, a sale slash mistake fare on premium cabin cafe first mistake fare Vietnam a couple of years ago. I bought that with chase points. And so I paid, I want to say 80,000 points for a round trip first class cafe first ticket from Southeast Asia to the United States, easily half the number of points it would cost through a transfer to any rewards program. Admittedly that's because they had screwed up the pricing on the tickets, but a similar one I did, I actually think positioning for that I did a coach flight on Qatar airways, JFK to Denang via Doha. And that one was like $420 ticket, but I did it for 30,000 points.

Ed Pizza: And because you have the Sapphire reserve, I think that can make some more sense. I don't spend a ton of time doing the calculations every time I think about it. I'm more of a blunt force guy, kinetic energy, so with you. I have a Sapphire preferred. I don't have a Sapphire reserve. So knowing that I'm at the 1.25 cents, I don't even bother looking at redemption options unless it's something like really fringe like universal tickets or something that happened to be a screaming deal on their portal. But I don't look to that benefit because I never applied for the Sapphire reserve. I guess you could say maybe I regret it, but I still feel like that card seems to fit you well. But still a $550 annual fee card, you get the $300 travel credit so you're $250 annual fee, which is the same fee as the Amex gold. I've since moved a decent chunk of that spending to the Amex goal, that sort of spending where I'm getting four points on restaurants versus three.

Seth Miller: Is it 250 instead of 300? I thought it was 300. Did they downgrade it?

Ed Pizza: The travel credit?

Seth Miller: Yeah.

Ed Pizza: I thought it was 300.

Seth Miller: Okay. But it's 250 on the gold, on the Amex?

Ed Pizza: No. There's no travel credit on the gold. I'm just saying it makes the annual fees essentially the same. So if you say it's a $550-

Seth Miller: Sorry. I misunderstood what you're saying.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. I used math for just a second there. My bad. Sorry about that.

Seth Miller: You got to warm me before that sort of thing happens.

Ed Pizza: But yeah, so I mean, you're obviously going to use the whole $300 travel credit. So your net annual fee on that card is the same for both. The reason why I haven't upgraded is that I've already got other chase cards. I've got the inc card. I think if I traveled more in your style of non-branded hotels or non Jane hotels, I think it makes a ton of sense. And that's where I think the Sapphire reserve really does fit well in your wallet.

Seth Miller: Yeah. I like where I'm at, overall, if the wallet, most;y the chase points have worked so well for me. I understand for some people it's not right. What I'm curious about is you keep saying non-branded this and that. I stay in a surprisingly decent number of branded hotels also. I still like getting three points per dollar generic points that are worth basically a four and a half percent return versus a hotel branded card.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Let me clarify the comment. I think, when you talk about the big trip that you and your wife did last year, you're staying much further afield than I normally do. And so the chances that you're going to redeem through their portal to buy something are much higher for you than for me in a city that's not going to have a Marriott or Hilton or something like that.

Seth Miller: That's fair.

Ed Pizza: So, I think you have more opportunities to stay. Where for me, especially traveling with the kids, frequently we're looking for things that are much less further afield than you travel on some of your trips. I'm not saying you would do it on a regular basis, but you don't have to do it often to get value at the one and a half percent. All these people say, you got to get two points per dollar or it's not worth it and cash back. I get all that to some degree but given that you have a bunch of mix and match travel trips I think you having a card that you can redeem points to buy pretty much whatever you want at 1.5% makes sense for you much more so than a lot of other people.

Seth Miller: Yeah. Believe it or not I don't think I've ever redeemed those points for hotel, only for airfare. So I've never thought of it that way. And even in India, we did stay in a couple Marriott's, You'll be happy to know.

Ed Pizza: Well, I mean, it's Marriott. They've got a property in every city, whether you like it or not.

Seth Miller: And some cases you'll have more than one brand. I got 30 to choose from.

Ed Pizza: It's the age old argument I use about Marriott and I should double-check to make sure I'm using still using the correct math. They have six properties in Williamsburg, Virginia, which isn't far from where I live and all of them are pretty darn mediocre. But by virtue of them having six and Hilton only has two, does that make them three times better than Hilton?

Seth Miller: No.

Ed Pizza: So you also have chase freedom, which you said you downgraded from a Sapphire preferred. Do you use the card at all?

Seth Miller: I do. I use it for mostly dining personal expenses because it pays pretty well on that front with the bonus there. And I imagine I'll start to push a little more spend on to that card once I really decide this year what I'm going to do about mosaic status, which I may not actually decide this year so we'll see. But it's still a pretty good bonus earn. The points are obviously of a nice value to me. I do have a bit of a problem of historically I've tried to not maintain too high a balance in any particular program just because they always get devalued and it's good to spend the points when I have them. Having not traveled nearly as much this past year I'm noticing that I have a few too many points right now.

Ed Pizza: Welcome to the club.

Seth Miller: I would like to start redeeming again. Every time I've gone to look to redeem, especially with the limits route maps and flight schedules right now, it has been hard to find not even good options, but options at all in some of the trips I want to take. I've got far too many jet blue points, but if they don't fly on the markets I need them in, that doesn't help. I've also been working off some credits from 2019 still from all the cancellations early last year. So I think I finally burned those up with a couple of work trips. So I'm back to new spend money again.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And the only other thing I'd comment on with the chase freedom card is I wonder if it might make more sense for you to have the freedom flex?

Seth Miller: Sure.

Ed Pizza: I mean, it's a no annual fee card. and I don't remember all of the categories for the original chase freedom because if it's a freedom, they don't issue the chase freedom anymore if I remember correctly. Now it's like the freedom unlimited and the freedom flex.

Seth Miller: If you say so. This one's a couple of years old and it very well may be one of those. I thought it was just a freedom.

Ed Pizza: Right. Freedom was the old original card. And then they came up with new versions. It was like the freedom flex. And I think there's a freedom unlimited. And so the freedom, as I remember, they had the rotating categories, that sort of stuff. So freedom flex has 5% on travel if you purchase through the ultimate rewards portal which I like.

Seth Miller: I'm not going to do.

Ed Pizza: Well, you might do it once in a while.

Seth Miller: Very rarely. Yeah. If I'm going to do that, I would rather spend the points that are in the points.

Ed Pizza: Sure. I'm just saying if we're going to have a no annual fee card in your wallet-

Seth Miller: So I will say it's not wallet specific, but if I start looking at off-brand hotels, I often will end up booking through hotels.com.

Ed Pizza: Yeah.

Seth Miller: And that's 10 to 15% back. And it's straight cash or future booking. It's 10, 5% through a cash back portal, plus 10% through the rewards program. Works out pretty well for me. So it's a quirky arrangement, but it gets me there.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And the other thing I'm not sure of about the chase freedom, because again I don't think you can apply for that card anymore, but the freedom flex has benefits with, wait for it, Lyft. So that would help out a bit there.

Seth Miller: CSR is 10 X points on my Lyft trips.

Ed Pizza: Is it? I didn't know that.

Seth Miller: Yeah. I think that's active. I think maybe they added that during COVID.

Ed Pizza: They did but I thought it went away. Okay. That'd be great.

Seth Miller: I thought I saw that pop up the other day. It was also a midnight car home from Logan so I was pretty delirious.

Ed Pizza: I know that the chase freedom flex benefit runs through like mid 22 for Lyft, so that it would make sense that if they're going to run it on the no annual fee card they probably are still running it on the premium card.

Seth Miller: Yeah. I'm just looking at my actual purchases now. It's restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, home improvement store, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, five guys.

Ed Pizza: There you go. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for the contribution to the college fund. And I did just look it up. It is through March of 22, Sapphire reserve is 10 points per dollar on your Lyft and then you get complimentary Lyft pink. Congratulations.

Seth Miller: Yeah. You know, I never actually enrolled in that because I couldn't quite figure out what it was or why it would be useful in semi rural New Hampshire.

Ed Pizza: But as soon as you figure it out, you're going to let me know?

Seth Miller: Yeah. I think it was like, oh, you got a free city bike annual pass. And I was like, sweet. That'll be super helpful here in New Hampshire.

Ed Pizza: What would be helpful for me like in certain cities in Europe is as I remember it that there's a scooter benefit and we love renting the scooters in certain cities that have them. So I would use that. All right. So in wrapping up, you're going to dump the American express gold soon, but everything else seems to make sense.

Seth Miller: Yeah. The arrival plus, also again, for everyday spend, in theory it's worth a little more, but I'm not sure it's worth bifurcating my earnings again, going back to the same reason with Amex, how much do I have to spend on it because you can only redeem at certain levels. Am I going to spend enough quickly enough to make it so I get to a redemption tier versus just putting that spend into another program where I'm going to be able to, even at a slightly lower earning rate, be able to cash out more aggressively and frequently.

Ed Pizza: I think the argument I'd make against holding the arrival plus card is that you've got a couple other cash back cards on the market, like the bank of America one. And then I think there's a Wells one that could consistently earn you more total cash back. And then you don't have the need to use it just on travel. So I think if we were to look at this prescriptively it would be, dump the Amex gold, dump the arrival plus card, see what you're spending and decide whether you needed to add a true cash back card amongst the other stuff.

Seth Miller: Yeah. I think I'm actually probably not looking to add anything, but there's a slim chance that I will have some home improvement expenses with a contractor and if they do take credit cards, it would be a good opportunity to hit a target real quickly.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Yeah. No. I'd agree with that.

Seth Miller: I'm just not particularly willing to put in the churning sort of gift card to money order game energy. And my regular spend in a normal world is actually enough typically to hit a minimum, but I have to focus on it and focus enough that it's some work and we're not quite back to that normal level of spend yet.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And I'm not being prescriptive on what other folks should do, but for me, I'm more a fan of using credit cards in a much more traditional sense for two reasons. One I don't want to spend the time to do the churn. The other thing too is I get a reasonably large amount of value out of the credit cards I hold, but I still like being a decent customer of the banks. So I don't want to have a card just for churning. It's not really who I am. I don't begrudge anybody that does it. But for me, if I'm going to apply for a card, it's going to be because I have a reasonably high expectation it's going to stay in my wallet for a while.

Seth Miller: Yeah. As evidenced by the number I have here that I don't know what they are anymore, me too.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. Then you got that stack of quarters. Don't forget about the stack of quarters.

Seth Miller: I'll claim that I leave it on my desk as the reminder for why I don't do the other stuff. The reality is very much, that's not the case.

Ed Pizza: Well folks who have listened this far, definitely stay tuned for Seth and I to talk a bit more about the case against chasing elite status, but for now tell folks where they can find you when you're not hopping on a podcast with me and forgetting which credit cards you have.

Seth Miller: I am wandrme W A N D R M E, it's misspelled, but there it is, on Twitter and Instagram. I have paxes.aero, P A X E X dot A E R O for all sorts of things in flight, passenger experience related and more. The dots lines and destinations podcast, as well as more dotsmorelines.com. And I'm sure I'm forgetting one. I do have my old blog, which is blog.wandrme, but that's mostly just regurgitated stuff from paxes.aero now. What did I miss about myself, Ed? Usually I do something wrong.

Ed Pizza: I think you did a pretty good job covering yourself right there. And you got to squeeze the word regurgitated in so I'm going to call that a win.

Seth Miller: Excellent.

Ed Pizza: Thanks a ton for being on. We'll talk to you again soon.

Seth Miller: Thank you very much. Take care.

Ed Pizza: That's a full wrap on this week's episode. You can find links to everything we discussed today in the show notes. A big thanks to all of you for tuning into this week's show. If any of you have questions or suggestions for a future show, you can drop me an email @ ed@pizzainmotion.com or hit me up on social media, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all @ pizzainmotion. And you can find me blogging daily at pizzainmotion.com. Until we upload again, we've got miles to go.