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Here we go.

This is not your typical frequent mile on the air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling

coffee break. Each coffee break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points.

And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy. Today's coffee break, we're going to be considering the Alaska and

Hawaiian credit card strategy which card if any of these should you get now so

time is limited time is limited Alaska has announced that that the they're going to be merging the Hawaiian and Alaskan programs next year in 2025.

And we expect that the Hawaiian Airlines cards will be gone, no longer available to new applicants when they merge the programs together.

So that's like raised these questions of like, do we want to get, should you get the

Hawaiian cards now?

And then further, they said a new premium Alaska card is coming in the summer of 2025.

And that also raises a question like, should you get an Alaska card now, if it might make

it harder to get the premium card later? So, yeah, so those are the topics. What do you think,

Nick? Lots of questions. Lots of things to consider. Yeah, this is a tough one, actually. Reader emailed in with this question. I thought it would make for a good discussion because there are a number of considerations. Let's start by just going quickly over the current lineup of credit cards. And the reason we're going over Alaska and Hawaii, and if you've been hiding under a rock somewhere or just not paid attention to this news over the last month or two

or three or whatever it's been. Like Greg said, the two airlines are merging programs. And at the

moment, you can transfer your Hawaiian miles one to one to Alaska. So if you collect a bunch of Hawaiian

miles now, you can move them to your Alaska account. And there's some other considerations here too.

But let's start by just going over the different options for credit cards then that are either Alaska credit cards or Hawaiian credit cards so that you know all of the options you have for essentially collecting Alaska miles.

So first up, we got the Bank of America, Alaska Airlines consumer visa signature.

That card, as we record this now in late

2024, has a welcome offer where you can earn up to 75,000 points after $3,000 in purchases,

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