What’s the Best Travel Credit Card?

00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to Portfolio Rescue, our show where we take questions straight from you,

00:00:19.600 | the audience. Today's Portfolio Rescue is sponsored by Innovator ETFs. Duncan, pretty

00:00:25.040 | good timing here. So, the way Innovator ETFs work, they're these buffer ETFs, right? You

00:00:29.020 | have a floor on the downside, a cap to the upside. You can go right now, they actually

00:00:32.280 | rebalance these on the first of every month. So, tomorrow, July 1st, these things rebalance.

00:00:36.520 | So, let's take an example. The way that we look at downturns in the market is, they lead

00:00:41.280 | to a wider range of outcomes, and not necessarily in the best direction, right? But the stock

00:00:45.040 | market's already down 22%, call it, as of this morning. So, you could pick this 9% buffer

00:00:50.360 | and realize, okay, I'm protected down 9%. If it falls further than that, you eat the

00:00:54.600 | little losses. So, if it's down 12%, you're down 3%. But you have a cap range anywhere

00:00:59.100 | from 20% to 23% on the upside. So, you say, "Boy, I think the market could fall out of

00:01:03.960 | bed a little more, but I don't want to get stuck if there's a bear market rally, a dead

00:01:07.480 | cat bounce, whatever you call it. I still have some upside." So, that's the way these

00:01:10.520 | Innovator ETFs work. You're capped to the upside, but you still have some room to run.

00:01:14.320 | And if stocks fall, then you have that 9% buffer, right? Same thing, 15%, 20%, and the

00:01:19.220 | cap goes down a little bit. I can't predict what's going to happen in the market, but

00:01:23.740 | you can give yourself a little bit more protection if stocks fall out of bed a little more, which

00:01:27.240 | they seem to be doing. But you can also leave some room for the upside if we do have that

00:01:31.200 | bounce. If Powell comes out and says, "Hey, we're not raising anymore. The stock market

00:01:35.480 | screams higher," you have a little room. So, check out InnovatorETFs.com. Again, every

00:01:40.800 | first of the month, they rebalance these buffer ETFs. So, check it out. That's a good time

00:01:44.760 | to get into one of these things.

00:01:46.660 | Alright, a little different show today. We're going to be talking about some personal finance

00:01:50.080 | topics. Ben's number one rule of personal finance, pay off your credit card bill every

00:01:55.600 | month. But a credit card bill -- credit cards are kind of the Larry David GIF from the Palestinian

00:02:00.880 | chicken episode, right? Where you can't really decide. Because credit cards are horrible

00:02:05.680 | for people that don't pay off their balance, because the rates are so egregiously high,

00:02:10.880 | and the banks take advantage of people. So, John, do a chart on this. We talked about

00:02:14.920 | Sun Animal Spirits last week. The current credit card rates right now are above 20%.

00:02:19.800 | So, if you hold that -- I mean, you're talking about, obviously, banks take into account

00:02:24.960 | default rates. But banks are making Warren Buffett-like long-term returns on credit cards

00:02:29.280 | right now. So, if you don't pay that off, you're setting yourself up for terrible compounding.

00:02:35.360 | Right? It's awful. But, on the other hand, there's a lot of good things that come from

00:02:40.440 | credit cards. You can earn rewards, right? You can get these sign-up bonuses from that

00:02:45.720 | stuff. You can get perks. There's a lot of perks that you get. When you rent a car, you

00:02:51.520 | get insurance on that car from your credit card. You get purchase protection. There's

00:02:55.200 | all these things that you can get that people don't know. If they lose your luggage, you

00:02:57.720 | can get reimbursement on that stuff if you have to buy stuff. There's a lot of fine detail

00:03:02.960 | stuff that you don't realize that credit cards can give you. Also, one of the better things

00:03:06.080 | is having a credit card and paying it off each month can build your credit, which means

00:03:09.980 | you can potentially borrow more money at lower interest rates.

00:03:13.600 | We wanted to bring in an expert. I dabble in the personal finance stuff. I kind of go

00:03:17.360 | in and out. I check out the credit card when there's a good sign-up bonus. But I'm definitely

00:03:21.200 | not following this stuff very closely. I haven't quite hacked everything. I kind of look for

00:03:25.480 | other people to find this stuff for me. So, the person that I've turned to now is Chris

00:03:29.680 | Hutchins. Chris comes to us from All The Hacks podcast. How's it going, Chris?

00:03:34.080 | It's going good.

00:03:35.920 | So, we put it out a few weeks ago. We said, "Send us your questions." We wanted to talk

00:03:40.020 | about all this stuff, because I've been leaning on you lately. I needed a new travel card.

00:03:44.500 | We're going to get into some of that today. But I'm guessing one of the questions a lot

00:03:47.580 | of people have is just, "Tell me the card I need." And we've got a lot of specific questions

00:03:51.740 | for this kind of stuff. So, I'm interested to hear what you have to say. I know that

00:03:55.020 | you've done a lot of hacking in this stuff. You had an awesome video up on your YouTube

00:03:58.660 | page for All The Hacks, taking a trip to Bora Bora for, what do you say, $1,500? That could

00:04:04.520 | have been a $20,000 trip. Is that about right?

00:04:06.780 | Yeah. I mean, I got called out a little bit, just to clarify. Yes, I could have earned

00:04:10.540 | cash back and to get all those points. So, maybe it probably cost me $2,500. But it certainly

00:04:15.060 | didn't cost me anywhere near $20,000. And if you're willing to put in a little work,

00:04:20.260 | I think you can make your credit card rewards worth a significantly larger amount than you

00:04:24.860 | would if you were just getting cash back. If you enjoy nice vacations, traveling internationally,

00:04:30.580 | that kind of stuff.

00:04:31.580 | Yes.

00:04:32.580 | Who doesn't, right?

00:04:33.580 | I always say, look, if your only goal is to fly domestically in coach between kind of

00:04:39.160 | standard cities, cash back is probably your way to go. But if you want to take international

00:04:44.140 | trips, if you want to splurge and fly business class, you want to stay at kind of crazy luxury

00:04:48.860 | hotels, points are going to get you a lot further than that cash back.

00:04:52.420 | Yeah. Live a little, you know?

00:04:54.660 | All right. We got a bunch of questions, people. So, let's dig right in, Duncan.

00:04:57.940 | All right. Cool. Yeah, I'm excited about today because I'm super into this stuff myself.

00:05:01.140 | Okay. So, first up today, we have, I'd love to hear your thoughts on a good credit card

00:05:05.340 | to get for a family. We have one from our credit union that offers no perks or points.

00:05:10.460 | I've been considering getting a card that offers points, but would like to hear what

00:05:13.520 | you guys think is a good card for us.

00:05:15.500 | Chris, good timing for you. You just had your second child, right? You're still in it with

00:05:19.020 | the newborn stuff, right?

00:05:20.300 | I am. Although I haven't really gotten out much, you know, like cards that are like,

00:05:23.740 | oh, you get a bonus if you go here, here. I'm like, oh, we're still sitting at home

00:05:26.660 | most of the days.

00:05:27.660 | All right. I'm going to give you my personal favorite for this because you don't get out

00:05:30.900 | much and you can tell me what you think. So, the one that we probably use the most, what

00:05:34.140 | I think is family friendly, is we just use the Amazon Prime Rewards card, where you get

00:05:38.180 | 5% for every dollar you spend on Amazon. And it comes back in an Amazon credit. So, you

00:05:45.100 | can essentially think about it as 5% off your purchases that you can then use. Because we,

00:05:49.800 | with multiple kids, going to the store is not all that much fun. So, anytime we need

00:05:53.700 | soccer cleats or swim goggles, or for you, diapers and wipes and all that stuff, we had

00:05:58.380 | all that on a subscribe and save. And every time we spend on Amazon, we get 5% back. What

00:06:01.540 | do you think about that one?

00:06:02.900 | 5% is great. Like a lot of cards, it's really hard to get anything more than three points

00:06:07.060 | to make that match up to 5%. I can't argue. This question, you know, it always comes up.

00:06:12.100 | What's the best card for me? And I'd say the answer is always, well, where do you spend

00:06:15.140 | your money? If you don't spend any money on Amazon, then, you know, Amazon card is not

00:06:18.460 | the right move.

00:06:19.940 | The card that I got really excited about recently, and it's the Citi Premier card. And the reason

00:06:25.900 | why is that, one, when it comes to getting a great signup bonus, they're giving the biggest

00:06:30.620 | signup bonus ever. But when it comes to categories, I was thinking, what do families spend money

00:06:35.100 | on? And Citi Premier is 3x on groceries at supermarkets, 3x on gas, 3x on airfare in

00:06:41.100 | hotels and 3x on restaurants. And it's a $95 annual fee. So it's not in the camp of these

00:06:46.880 | cards where there's, you know, three, four, five, six, $700 annual fees. And so that to

00:06:51.860 | me was like, that seems like a great, you know, starter one card. You know, the points

00:06:57.340 | can be used to buy travel, but you can also transfer them to, I'm going to get the number

00:07:01.420 | wrong, but let's say a dozen-ish airlines or hotel groups to use the points. So that's

00:07:07.340 | one where it's like, gosh, you don't really need two cards if you did. And if you, you

00:07:11.860 | know, you could match it with like Citi Double Cash, which is just 2x on everything. And

00:07:15.620 | now there are a bunch of those, you know, Capital One has this Venture Venture X, both

00:07:19.300 | those cards, 2x on everything. So what's your, what's your signup bonus in the city when

00:07:23.420 | you said there's a good signup bonus? That's one of my favorite things. Yeah. City bonus

00:07:26.820 | right now is 80,000 points. It's, you know, I would say it's never been 80,000. So this

00:07:31.700 | is kind of the biggest time to get it. If you go to, I think the Citi website, it still

00:07:36.660 | says 60. If you go to basically any points blog, there's a link for 80,000 point signup

00:07:42.620 | bonus. Obviously I'd prefer, you want to go to allthehacks.com/cards, but at the end of

00:07:46.820 | the day, I just want you to not sign up from a Google search. So, um, yeah, there's 80,000

00:07:52.340 | point bonus there. You know, the, the old tried and true answer was always Chase Reserve,

00:07:57.060 | kind of in our kind of group of millennials growing up. But you know, the primary there

00:08:02.340 | is travel and dining. And I feel like once you have kids, you know, travel, maybe you're

00:08:06.520 | down to one or two times a year dining, you're probably not going out as much. So fast casual,

00:08:11.260 | you want to get in and out as fast as possible. We have a, we have a specific question about

00:08:15.260 | that card. So we'll get to that. Yeah. So, you know, for me being able to add on gas

00:08:20.420 | and supermarkets is a big thing for families. Um, right. Good one. Okay. Let's do another

00:08:25.340 | one. Yeah. I bet surges and, uh, gas cashback cards, uh, have been happening recently. Yeah.

00:08:31.100 | It just happened that, yeah, I think that's why Citi's probably taken, taking a big swing

00:08:34.680 | here and offering a huge signup bonus. It's worth over, you know, a thousand dollars for

00:08:38.180 | a new card. So, uh, is that gas? It's probably one of the best gas cards. Okay. Let's do

00:08:44.060 | the next one. Uh, okay. So most credit cards charge a fee anywhere from three to 5%. When

00:08:49.260 | you do a balance transfer, do you know of any that do not charge a fee and give you

00:08:53.260 | a 12 to 18 month period of 0% APR on the transferred balance? Or is there a better way to defer

00:08:59.060 | the interest a year or two out? It seems like credit card balance transfers, uh, at current

00:09:04.220 | interest rates are a better way of saving on interest than getting a consolidated debt

00:09:07.420 | loan from a bank or credit union, trying to see if there's a more effective way to manage

00:09:11.140 | my capital. So I've actually never done one of these balance transfers before. So I don't

00:09:15.180 | know what the, so obviously it takes a fee and that at three to 5%, that's a big chunk

00:09:19.700 | of your balance that you're paying on top for the ability to do the 0%. So what do you

00:09:23.840 | look at as terms of like the breakeven or cost benefit of doing something like this?

00:09:27.420 | And when does it make sense? Yeah. I mean, so the short answer to this question, so I

00:09:31.780 | did some research, I wasn't sure. And when the pandemic hit the, a lot of these zero

00:09:37.320 | fee balance transfer cards just kind of disappeared. So I looked there, there was a list I found

00:09:41.940 | on Reddit. A few of them still weren't there, but the union bank platinum visa credit card,

00:09:46.540 | I don't make anything for saying this, right? Like the union bank platinum free credit card,

00:09:50.180 | 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months, but $0 balance transfer fee

00:09:57.500 | for transfers in the first 60 days. So this is the card you were looking for. I believe.

00:10:03.140 | Uh, after that you pay that kind of standard 3% fee to balance transfer. Um, but look,

00:10:08.840 | if you have a credit card that's at 20 something percent APR and you have to pay a, a one-time

00:10:14.220 | 3% fee to get that to 0%, I think as long as you have a plan to pay that off in that

00:10:20.620 | 0% window, you know, this card says after the 0% it goes up to nine to 20%. So I'm not

00:10:27.820 | a fan of paying nine to 20% on anything. So if you, if you could say, I have a plan to

00:10:31.460 | pay this off in that 15 month window, let's transfer the balance over here. In the case

00:10:36.380 | of this card, there's no fee to do it. If you do it right away. Um, I don't know any

00:10:40.900 | better way to refinance debt than 0%. I assume no one else on this call does, especially

00:10:46.140 | for that long. Do you have, do you have a preferred method for searching out cards with

00:10:49.140 | different features? So you could click down by balance transfer or travel or hotel. I

00:10:53.780 | mean, it's been a while since I've done this. I know like simple, like credit card.com was

00:10:57.460 | the one that I used to use. Like it's probably the last one you'd want to use now, but there's

00:11:00.980 | a, is there a preferred method if you want to do that? If so, I'm searching for just

00:11:04.220 | 0% APR, whatever it is. Is there an easy way to do this or is Google your best friend here?

00:11:08.260 | So this is what I was doing last night. And the challenge is there are so, I mean, credit

00:11:11.980 | card affiliate revenue is real and there are a lot of sites out there that have all moved

00:11:16.020 | to this model where they get paid, uh, to promote cards. And you know, to be clear on

00:11:21.620 | my show, like we get paid if we refer cards. However, I'm not going to just tell you to

00:11:26.460 | get a specific card. And that's the difference. If you search 0% balance transfer card, as

00:11:30.660 | I did last night, preparing to answer this question, the cards that show up are not the

00:11:35.340 | best cards for the circumstance. They're often the best card for, you know, making money

00:11:40.080 | for the blog. So I typically always search within how I found this card was zero, zero

00:11:47.380 | balance transfer fee credit card site colon reddit.com because everyone on Reddit in,

00:11:54.980 | you know, different forums and subreddits are always posting things. They're not shilling

00:11:59.600 | their affiliate link. They're actually trying to share information. So with a lot of financial

00:12:04.260 | information, especially I was looking for auto loan rates. I was like, you know, cheapest

00:12:08.580 | credit union, auto loan site, colon reddit.com. Uh, and I find it searching Reddit on Google

00:12:14.660 | is for some crazy reason, more efficient for me at least. Maybe I don't know how to use

00:12:18.620 | Reddit search, but more efficient than searching Reddit on Reddit. That makes sense. You got

00:12:22.620 | to filter out your answers. I get that. No, that's, that's good advice. All right, Duncan,

00:12:26.620 | let's do the next one. Okay. Which I'm, I'm personally interested in this one. I want

00:12:31.080 | to hear this one as well. I know. Yeah, I have this card and have some thoughts. A few

00:12:35.300 | years ago I signed up for a Marriott Bomboy card to get the a hundred thousand point bonus.

00:12:40.380 | My wife got one too, and the points were good enough to pay for a large part of two vacations.

00:12:45.060 | Are there any good travel card signup bonuses today? What's your go-to travel credit card

00:12:49.780 | for either rewards or a decent signup bonus? So I basically did this same thing too. Cause

00:12:55.420 | a lot of them, they have rules. If you've signed up before, you can't sign up again

00:12:57.780 | for a new bonus. So my wife and I did the Marriott Bomboy thing a couple of years ago.

00:13:00.900 | I think we got, both got the a hundred thousand points. Then I think you get the free year

00:13:04.060 | or the free stay sometimes up to a certain amount of points. And so we did this too.

00:13:09.140 | Like we went to our favorite place in Marco Island at the JW Marriott there. And I think

00:13:13.980 | it paid for at least two to three nights each time. It might've been, might've been more

00:13:18.300 | before and less this time. We just went about a month ago, but it's, it's, I don't know

00:13:22.860 | if they still have this same bonus signup. And obviously I couldn't get it again, but

00:13:26.380 | if you already use this and that's your card, what do you think in these days for travel?

00:13:30.780 | So you know, this is a revolving answer. So this is very timely, right? If you're listening

00:13:34.940 | to this and it's, it's been out for two years, I would say just ignore it. But right now,

00:13:40.900 | you know, there's always going to be five or six cards with great bonuses. And so it's

00:13:45.380 | funny, the new Chase, so Marriott cards used to mostly be all on Amex and now Chase is

00:13:50.380 | kind of the big partner. And Chase has a new one, which right now is amazing. It's five

00:13:54.740 | free nights at a Marriott up to 50,000 points. And if you Marriott now lets you, if you have

00:14:00.660 | these coupons that you get with cards to get, you know, 50,000 point night a year, you can

00:14:04.740 | actually top it up. So if you have some Marriott points, you can, you know, add on 15,000 points.

00:14:09.380 | So right now there's a card that'll get you five free nights, uh, up to whatever 50,000

00:14:14.100 | points is. That's a good one. The city premiere, I mentioned another one, 80,000 points. You

00:14:18.780 | know, if you're spending this on travel, that's a minimum of $800. Both the venture and the

00:14:24.140 | venture X are 75,000 points, which if you're using them in like the least optimal way is

00:14:29.660 | $750. If you're losing, using them in a more optimal way, maybe it's close to $1,500. Um,

00:14:35.900 | the optimal way I guess would be you're, you're booking your travel through them. Yeah. So

00:14:40.140 | the, the optimal way is you're taking your points and your, let's say you want to fly

00:14:44.940 | to Europe and you transfer from capital one to air France and you buy your tickets with

00:14:50.340 | miles through air France. Um, the less optimal way, but still totally valid and I don't want

00:14:56.260 | to shun anyone away from doing it, but the less optimal way is to just go into the capital

00:15:00.340 | one portal, go into the chase portal, go into the city portal and just search for flights

00:15:04.820 | and book up there. Depending on the card and the portal, you'll get one to one and a half

00:15:09.020 | cents and you're not going to ever get more than that booking in their kind of dashboard.

00:15:13.860 | If you transfer to the airlines, you know, it could be a horrible deal or it could be,

00:15:18.700 | you know, close to 10 cents a point. So it could be, you know, five, six times better

00:15:22.180 | just depending on the circumstances. And it really depends on, on where you're going,

00:15:27.740 | what the flight prices are, how last minute it is. But the big thing is that if you wanted

00:15:32.420 | to fly, let's say to Europe with your family and business class, there are some airlines

00:15:36.180 | where you can do it for 50,000 points. Uh, you know, maybe 60,000 actually if it's a,

00:15:41.380 | uh, if it's air France, I think it's 57,500 each way. But like that ticket is going to

00:15:46.940 | cost five, $6,000. So, you know, if you needed to use your points in that portal, you're

00:15:51.580 | going to need five or 600,000 points to do it. Um, but you probably could transfer and

00:15:56.180 | only need a hundred thousand round trip kind of with a signing bonus. So I've already done

00:16:01.620 | the Marriott cards through chase, right? That's where I had the bond boy ones. If chase has

00:16:05.260 | a new Marriott card, I probably can't get that sign up on a scan. Is that right or not?

00:16:08.900 | Yeah. So depends on the card. And I would say, you know, Google is your friend here.

00:16:12.900 | I know for the chase reserve and the chase Sapphire cards, it's every four years. So

00:16:17.180 | a lot of people signed up for the chase reserve or the chase preferred more than four years

00:16:20.860 | ago. You know, the move here is you can downgrade it to the chase freedom, freedom, unlimited

00:16:25.300 | freedom, flex, these free cards, and then open it up again and get it. Amex, depending

00:16:29.980 | on the card, sometimes it's a lifetime limit. You can only get the gold bonus once. Um,

00:16:35.540 | but you know, it just depends on the card. So I would definitely Google it before you

00:16:38.500 | sign up for that card. Um, a couple other big ones right now, some kind of more high,

00:16:43.580 | all the cards I mentioned, um, you know, mostly a hundred dollar annual fee. The venture X

00:16:48.220 | is a $400 annual fee, the platinum card, if you can find a referral. So I would say like,

00:16:53.540 | if you want to get the biggest signup bonus for the platinum card, don't, don't go to

00:16:56.580 | all the hacks.com/cards and sign up. It will help me. But if you go, uh, search for Amex

00:17:01.540 | platinum, 150,000 referral, there is an offer that Amex is offering only as a referral

00:17:07.020 | from cardholders for 150,000 points. And, uh, I think there's a blog frequent Miler

00:17:12.700 | that has aggregated it's readers, referral links, and just cycles through the reader

00:17:17.460 | referral links when you click their signup link. So, you know, I always say look for

00:17:21.380 | the best bonus out there and, and find it there. And sometimes it's from a referral.

00:17:25.900 | Sometimes it's from a, you know, an offer and sometimes it's, it's everywhere.

00:17:28.820 | And it sounds like there's obviously a lot of these places have to get that signup bonus

00:17:32.420 | because it's so competitive.

00:17:33.420 | Yeah. I mean, it's hard to get people to sign up for cards and my general rule of thumb,

00:17:37.620 | look, if you want to make a hundred, $200 for free, when you sign up for a card, you

00:17:41.180 | can basically sign up for any card. Uh, but if you want, so my rule of thumb is anytime

00:17:45.460 | something crosses, like a hundred thousand is like, I will consider getting this card

00:17:50.860 | for a hundred thousand cause thousand to $1,500 to open a card. You know, we'll get to this

00:17:56.020 | on the credit question, but you know, the impact on your credit is not enough to make

00:18:00.260 | me shy away from getting 1500 free dollars. Um, and so if it's over a hundred thousand,

00:18:05.660 | I think it's like, no brainer, let's get it. Every now and then there's a crazy one. Um,

00:18:11.380 | one about six months ago, there was a capital one business card that had a 350,000 point

00:18:15.980 | signup bonus. I was like, I don't even, of course I'm going to get this crazy deal in

00:18:20.260 | the world, but I'd say anything over a hundred thousand for a card with an annual fee around

00:18:24.380 | a hundred dollars is like amazing. Um, anything under 75,000 and I'm just going to wait for

00:18:30.900 | the next one. So 75,000 is a great bonus. A hundred thousand is awesome. And anything

00:18:35.700 | over that is incredible unless you're looking at a card where the annual fee is really high.

00:18:40.220 | So if you're, you're looking at the Amex platinum $695 to get the card, you got to really make

00:18:44.660 | sure you're going to get a lot of the perks out of it for the 150,000 points, right? Yeah,

00:18:49.740 | that one takes some math. My personal, my biggest success was one of the sapphires.

00:18:54.020 | I can't remember which it was years ago. I have both of them, but the bonus was so good.

00:18:57.900 | I ended up like flying, um, transatlantic, you know, business class just using like points

00:19:02.860 | from, from that bonus. That was pretty cool. Yeah. Cause he never would have been flying

00:19:06.720 | business class without, without those points. The only thing I'll, I'll flag here is if

00:19:11.100 | you're looking at cards and they have a high annual fee, you can't cancel the card and

00:19:15.780 | keep the point. So if you get an Amex platinum and you rack up 150, 200,000 points and then

00:19:19.980 | you're like, well, I don't want to pay $700. You know, you, you, you're going to have to

00:19:24.340 | either spend the points or say, I'm just going to transfer them to one of their partners.

00:19:28.780 | I'm a transfer them to air Canada where they can stay. And you know, it's free to open

00:19:31.940 | up these airline mileage accounts. So I would say early on, my strategy was like, stay within

00:19:38.020 | a program. It's like, you've got your chase reserve. Maybe you downgrade open the preferred,

00:19:42.720 | maybe you open up a chase ink card for your business and you've kind of, you got at least

00:19:46.540 | one card that you're going to keep forever in that program. Uh, but with, when it comes

00:19:50.460 | to city and Kappa one and Amex, if you don't keep one card open in that program, you lose

00:19:55.460 | your points. So, um, I like to say, don't start diversifying and trying to open points

00:20:00.580 | in 12 different programs till you feel like you've kind of gotten a grasp of the game.

00:20:05.060 | This is the one place where concentration pays. All right, let's do the, let's do another

00:20:08.240 | one on the airline stuff, Duncan. Okay. My husband and I like to travel, but don't necessarily

00:20:13.060 | have one airline we use for every trip over certain airline rewards cards that are better

00:20:17.620 | than others, which airlines offer the best deals if we want to narrow it down to one.

00:20:22.660 | So the only, the only one I've ever really used for airlines is the Delta has an Amex

00:20:26.680 | one and I just use it because Delta is the one that I fly the most. It's the only one

00:20:30.000 | with a straight through flight from Grand Rapids to New York. And it gets me free checked

00:20:33.580 | bags and priority, uh, boarding, which to me is kind of useless cause I hate getting

00:20:38.700 | on the plane before, but I also like to get on last. But, uh, any luck for you with, with

00:20:43.940 | specific airline cards or do you stick more to the other travel ones that can, you can

00:20:47.660 | still use to purchase airlines? So my first rewards card was the United card,

00:20:51.420 | right? I was like, I lived in my parents and I grew up in the DC area. I went to school

00:20:55.500 | in Colorado, both United hubs. And back in the day that that was like a great move for

00:21:01.940 | spending money and earning points. The problem is you look at the United card and it earns

00:21:06.060 | $2, two points, two United miles per dollar on United. And if you use a chase reserve

00:21:11.780 | card, you earn three points per dollar on United and you can transfer those points to

00:21:15.500 | United. So you actually earn more United points using like a chase reserve card than you do

00:21:19.920 | using a United card. That makes sense. So my general rule of thumb is airline credit

00:21:24.640 | cards do two things really well. They get you perks like free check bags, lounge access,

00:21:30.580 | those kinds of things. And so if that's something you want, those cards can be great. And maybe

00:21:35.540 | that perk includes status. Some of these cards will maybe give you some extra miles towards

00:21:39.260 | getting their premier status. The other one is sometimes they have lucrative signup bonuses.

00:21:43.700 | The United quest card at a hundred thousand signup bonus. Delta cards have 80 to a hundred

00:21:48.620 | thousand various times throughout the year. But when it comes to-

00:21:51.900 | So what does that mean? You look at it as basically a free flight, maybe potentially?

00:21:54.340 | Yeah, I look at it as a way to get some points and a way to get some perks, but I'm not using

00:21:59.620 | a, if I were like, what is the one card I want to use? And I want to use it regularly

00:22:03.020 | to buy things. It wouldn't be a airline card, especially for the person asked this question,

00:22:09.220 | you know, they like to travel. They don't have one airline. You know, if you take, let's

00:22:12.700 | take the chase reserve, you're not tying yourself to any airline. You want to transfer those

00:22:16.380 | points. You earn these points. And these are all flexible rewards cards. Capital One does

00:22:20.180 | it. Citi does it. Amex does it. Chase does it. Even the built card to earn points on

00:22:24.900 | rent does it. And so the way it works is you earn chase ultimate rewards points or any

00:22:29.580 | other currencies, and you can take those chase points. You could transfer them to United

00:22:33.300 | and book as if you had United miles. You could transfer them to Southwest and book as if

00:22:37.140 | you had Southwest points. You could transfer them to Air France. You could transfer them

00:22:40.780 | to, you know, each one has somewhere around, you know, eight to 20 airline partners and

00:22:46.700 | probably one to three hotel partners. And so you get the flexibility of being able to

00:22:51.380 | put miles and points in any airline program. And I think, and I say any because all, I

00:22:58.300 | think every single one of the flexible currencies has at least one airline in every Alliance.

00:23:04.820 | So you might want to fly Delta with your points, but Delta's not a transfer partner of chase,

00:23:10.500 | but Air France is. Air France and Delta are both in SkyTeam. So you can use Delta miles

00:23:14.900 | to fly Air France, or sorry, Air France miles to fly Delta. You can use with Amex, United

00:23:21.100 | isn't a partner, but Aeroplan, Air Canada's program is fantastic. So oftentimes if I want

00:23:26.760 | to book a flight on United with points, I'm going to transfer my Amex points to Air Canada

00:23:32.100 | because they're all in Star Alliance and book that. So in that Bora Bora example, I think

00:23:36.380 | it was like 15 or 20% cheaper for me to book the United flight with Air Canada miles than

00:23:41.980 | it was to book the United flight with United miles.

00:23:44.740 | So all of these regular credit cards have obviously done their homework and they're

00:23:48.580 | more flexible. And to your point, you get points for other things too, whether it's

00:23:51.860 | dining out or gas or whatever it is, the monthly categories they have, instead of just points

00:23:56.860 | for flying or purchases on those airlines. Yeah, you're locking yourself into one airline.

00:24:00.620 | So if you want to look at this purely mathematically, the points guy has this great valuation series

00:24:04.300 | where they go and say, okay, we booked all these United flights, or we priced them out

00:24:08.780 | in miles and dollars, and we figured out what's the value of a United mile. And then they

00:24:13.620 | also say, what's the value of a chase point? And inevitably the chase, the flexible currencies,

00:24:18.100 | Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, they always come out being worth like 30, 40, 50% more

00:24:23.660 | because you have the flexibility to use it in any one of 20 programs. And so I tend to

00:24:28.900 | try to keep all my points that I can in these flexible currencies because it just gives

00:24:32.640 | me more optionality. But look, if you're flying on United, definitely open a mileage plus

00:24:37.620 | account and credit the miles and build a balance there. And the same goes for travel. And some

00:24:43.420 | question I got that I think is relevant here is someone emailed me, one of my listeners

00:24:47.420 | and said, I'm flying on Korean Air. Do I really need Korean Air points? I was like, well,

00:24:51.820 | no, no, no, they're partners with Delta. So if you have a Delta mileage account, you can

00:24:55.180 | credit your flights on Korean Air to Delta. You can credit your flights on Lufthansa to

00:24:59.140 | United. So I try to pick one airline within each alliance to try to credit my miles to,

00:25:05.020 | but when I'm spending money on a credit card, I try to earn them in the most flexible way.

00:25:08.620 | All right. You're taking notes here, Duncan. We've got a lot of moving pieces here.

00:25:11.380 | Yeah. I was thinking, I just said in the chat, like the Zach Galifianakis gif with all the

00:25:16.300 | math equations floating around. Someone said, "This sounds more complicated than trading

00:25:21.620 | options."

00:25:22.340 | I mean, the way that I think about it, these rewards are like the original cryptocurrency

00:25:26.860 | in a lot of ways. They have a lot of value, and you can port them into other things. There's

00:25:31.900 | no running the bank here. Let's do another one about these points, too. I think the next

00:25:35.820 | one is a good one.

00:25:37.100 | Yeah. Okay. "Has inflation hit credit card rewards points yet? Have we seen any credit

00:25:41.700 | card providers devalue their points systems to account for higher costs?"

00:25:45.500 | Okay. I was curious about this, too, because I booked our trip to Marco a couple of months

00:25:49.260 | ago, and I'm talking to the Marriott person, and they said, "You should put it in today

00:25:54.180 | and book it because if it costs $50,000 for a room today, it's going to be $75,000 in

00:25:59.420 | a couple of months," or something like that. I couldn't tell if that was a really good

00:26:01.380 | sales pitch or if that was true, but-

00:26:03.100 | Wait. You mean points, not dollars, right?

00:26:05.180 | Yeah. Sorry. Points. Yeah. Yeah. Not. Yeah. So, the points-

00:26:07.820 | Fancy trip there. $75,000.

00:26:10.380 | But I mean, you have to know a lot of people who've been sitting on points for a couple

00:26:13.380 | years because they didn't travel as much in the pandemic and have been waiting. Are they

00:26:16.500 | coming back to see that their points don't take them as far? Has that been happening

00:26:20.180 | slowly but surely, or have you not really noticed that?

00:26:22.020 | I mean, it's definitely been happening. So, I think Marriott devalued points this year,

00:26:28.060 | Southwest last year, United the year before, IHG did it in 2020 and 2021. So, the credit

00:26:35.780 | card points haven't really gotten devalued in that a chase point is one-to-one to United

00:26:41.780 | since they've had that flexibility. But a United point has gone down.

00:26:45.180 | One Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin, right?

00:26:46.820 | Exactly. Exactly. So, one chase point is still equal to one United point, one Air France,

00:26:50.900 | et cetera. But one United point is worth less. And what's happened in the last three to five

00:26:55.940 | years is most of the airlines have shifted to this dynamic pricing. It used to be, if

00:27:01.620 | you wanted to book a flight in the United States with United Miles, and it was available

00:27:06.940 | in this low bucket where it was 25,000 miles round trip anywhere, or it wasn't and you

00:27:11.660 | had to pay 50,000 miles and you could use any seat on the plane. Now they're like, "Well,

00:27:16.220 | what's the price? Let's come up with a flexible number." And there's still deals to be had,

00:27:20.740 | right? If there are awesome deals, if you're booking in advance or last minute or you find

00:27:25.300 | the right timing, but they've kind of started mimicking, "Oh, well, the prices are expensive,

00:27:30.340 | so we're going to need more points." And that's what happened with Marriott. So, Marriott

00:27:33.620 | this year switched to, "We're going to change the number of points you need." Instead of

00:27:38.820 | saying category seven is this number of points, it's like, "Might be more, might be less."

00:27:45.540 | They did put a cap and they said, "We're not going to go too crazy in 2022, but I think

00:27:49.540 | in 2023, some of the really high-end resorts, the overwater bungalows, the super luxurious

00:27:55.460 | things, they're going to take that cap off." And I think everyone in the points world was

00:27:59.660 | like, "Oh gosh, Marriott's going to be totally devalued. It's going to be gutted. Get out."

00:28:03.700 | And then they were like, kind of shared what they did and they implemented it. And people

00:28:06.700 | were like, "Well, it wasn't that bad." Like, yes, it's going to be a little more points

00:28:09.700 | here and there. So, in general, I think we just something got to get used to. If you're

00:28:15.260 | going to take a trip next year, it's probably going to cost a few more points on whatever

00:28:18.480 | program. It probably changes every couple of years, but if you don't want to take the

00:28:23.140 | trip, don't just take a trip because you don't want to have to pay 10% more points next year.

00:28:27.020 | Right. Yeah. By the way, people in the chat calling me an elitist for staying in a $50,000

00:28:30.460 | night room. That's not true. And also, I'm flying from a regional airport here. I'm the

00:28:34.740 | one who has to take connecting flights everywhere. You people, and Chris is out in San Francisco

00:28:39.420 | and Duncan is in New York. You guys are getting the best flights. I'm the one who has to get

00:28:43.420 | the puddle jumpers and transfer everywhere. It's true. It's true. Come on. All right,

00:28:48.540 | let's do another one. Okay. So, up next, we have a question from Jimmy. "My fiance and

00:28:54.140 | I are getting married in April 2023. We are paying for a good portion of the wedding,

00:28:58.380 | so we will have tons of opportunities to spend and hit sign-up bonuses. What are the best

00:29:02.500 | type of travel cards that we can sign up for, and how many credit cards is too many? For

00:29:07.940 | some background, I currently have three credit cards, two are frozen, and my fiance only

00:29:12.540 | has one. We never carry a balance on our cards, so I'm not worried about running up big balances.

00:29:17.060 | I just don't want opening new cards to negatively impact our credit. This might be a good opportunity

00:29:23.180 | for people that are totally new to this to explain what they mean by hitting sign-up bonus

00:29:27.260 | spending."

00:29:28.260 | Yeah, because that's something we haven't met. That's why, if you have a bunch of big

00:29:31.140 | purchases coming up, doing the sign-up bonuses helps, because a lot of these cards will say,

00:29:35.380 | "You get the sign-up bonus if you spend $3,000 to $10,000 in the first three to six months,"

00:29:40.460 | or whatever it is. They have different ranges, but I guess it used to be $3,000. It seems

00:29:44.060 | like they're going up a little bit now. It might be $5,000 in the first three months.

00:29:46.940 | So, you have to actually spend that money on the card to get the sign-up bonus. So,

00:29:50.460 | if you know you have a wedding coming up, you can strategically do it.

00:29:53.500 | Chris, I know you've talked to me about freezing cards before and having too many. Do you think

00:29:57.380 | that there is a point where you can get too many and you can max it out? What would you

00:30:02.000 | suggest here? One for him and one for the fiancé and get two sign-up bonuses, or what

00:30:06.540 | do you think?

00:30:07.540 | I think there's a couple of reasons where you might cap it out. I was doing some research

00:30:11.140 | on this. I was like, "How many cards can someone reasonably open in a year?" There are stories

00:30:15.180 | on the r/churning, is the Reddit subreddit on this, where people in their first year

00:30:20.060 | of getting into this opened 17 cards, and they got approved for that 17th card. So,

00:30:25.700 | one thing to the credit question, new credit is about 10% of your FICO score. So, when

00:30:31.380 | you open up a new card and people look and they say, "Oh, what's been going on here?"

00:30:36.540 | It does have some impact, but the amount you owe relative to the amount of credit you have

00:30:43.920 | is a much bigger factor. So, if you go from having $20,000 of credit where you might spend

00:30:48.740 | $5,000 a month to going to $100,000 of credit where you spend $5,000 a month, that actually

00:30:53.720 | makes the amount you owe, your total debt to credit ratio, it actually makes it much

00:30:59.980 | more favorable.

00:31:00.980 | That's what I was going to say. Years ago, I did a lower version of that where I signed

00:31:05.580 | up for five or six cards in one year when I got into this, and it actually helped my

00:31:09.100 | credit score because my overall credit limit went so far up.

00:31:13.980 | Every couple of years, you should probably ask your credit card company if you're going

00:31:16.660 | to keep that card to increase your limit, right?

00:31:19.100 | Yeah.

00:31:20.100 | And the other hack here is if you're ever going to cancel a card, which I kind of recommend,

00:31:25.200 | if you're not using a card and it's not worth the annual fee, before you cancel it, first,

00:31:29.680 | see if you can call and just say, "Hey, I'm thinking of canceling this card. One time

00:31:33.280 | I did this with the Platinum Amex," and they're like, "We're just going to waive your fee

00:31:36.080 | for the next year." Lots of stories of people that are like, "Well, if you can spend five

00:31:39.920 | grand, we'll give you another 50,000 or 100,000 points."

00:31:42.440 | So, first call, see if you can get a bonus to make it worth keeping. Two, see if you

00:31:46.720 | can downgrade. If you have the Chase Reserve card or the Chase Preferred card and you've

00:31:50.280 | had it for so many years, the length of credit history is really important on your credit

00:31:54.280 | score. So, you might not want to get rid of this card. For me, the United card that I've

00:31:58.480 | had since college, I didn't want to get rid of it, but I could downgrade it to a no annual

00:32:02.880 | fee United card. So, you could downgrade it so you don't have to cancel it. And then finally,

00:32:07.360 | if those aren't options and you have to cancel it, some banks, Chase is one of them, will

00:32:11.680 | let you move your credit around. So, before I canceled my United card, well, I didn't,

00:32:16.600 | but if I were going to cancel my United card, before I would, I would call and say, "Hey,

00:32:20.160 | can I take this $15,000 limit and move 14,000 of it over to this other card?" So, I keep

00:32:25.280 | my credit limit high instead of just canceling it. So, you can move that credit over before

00:32:29.800 | you cancel it. But, to get back to the original one. So, one is, think about how much you're

00:32:34.840 | actually going to spend and you don't want to sign up for 15 cards that all need you

00:32:38.640 | to spend $5,000 if you're not going to be able to actually spend all of that, because

00:32:43.140 | if you don't get the signup bonus, it makes a lot of it not worth it. So, that's one.

00:32:47.720 | And keep in mind, I thought this was a great opportunity when we did our wedding, but a

00:32:51.160 | lot of vendors, these vendors all have to pay 2%, 3% to accept credit cards. And sometimes

00:32:57.600 | they offer, they charge you that fee, or maybe they even say there's a cash discount or those

00:33:02.480 | kinds of things. So, you might be surprised that you might be having a $40,000 wedding,

00:33:07.300 | but you might only be able to put $4,000 on a credit card. So, that's something to keep

00:33:12.020 | in mind. As for which cards, I think, rewind a little bit. We talked about a bunch of the

00:33:16.680 | cards with big bonuses. I don't know. I think that, I'm trying to think about all the things

00:33:21.120 | you asked. And I was like, "Did that cover them all?"

00:33:24.600 | Let's do one more from Duncan, because he's going on his honeymoon soon. Duncan, you're

00:33:28.880 | going to London, right? So, Chris, I've heard you give your one biggest hack that's like

00:33:33.080 | a simple one about trying to get an upgrade, where you say, before you go, call the hotel

00:33:38.600 | desk, tell them you're coming in. And a lot of times, what do you say? You can actually

00:33:41.840 | kind of get a free room upgrade, right? So, what can we do to get Duncan a free honeymoon

00:33:45.280 | upgrade? Yeah, let's do it.

00:33:46.560 | Yeah, yeah. So, this is, I don't know why this works so well, but it does. So, you definitely,

00:33:52.840 | what you should do is, if you want to book a hotel and you book it directly with the

00:33:56.440 | hotel, email the hotel in advance and say, "Hey, I'm coming for this thing. I'm really

00:34:02.600 | excited to stay with you. Here's a little bit of information." That's it. And then maybe

00:34:07.180 | follow up two, three days before. And I have heard so many amazing things. I just pulled

00:34:12.480 | up an email and someone said, "I stayed at this hotel. I got free parking, a room upgrade,

00:34:17.480 | three free breakfast coupons, a $10 voucher for food and drink at the bar, and two cocktails

00:34:22.280 | in my room with the check-in note," just for sending one email.

00:34:26.320 | And Duncan, I think you slip in there. We're on our honeymoon. I think when my wife and

00:34:30.200 | I were on our honeymoon, we got there, they had champagne waiting for us. They gave us

00:34:34.080 | an upgrade to a nicer room because we mentioned that we're coming there on our honeymoon.

00:34:37.320 | So, I do think you got to slide that in there. And I figured I'd show up with a cap that

00:34:41.160 | says like "Groom" or something on it. Yeah, yeah. Just married. But I think the big thing

00:34:44.920 | is book directly with the hotel. Okay. If you book through Expedia. Hotels.com is not

00:34:50.160 | going to help me. Yeah. Look, there's a big debate about Hotels.com. The Points guy wrote

00:34:54.580 | this post about how his room got canceled because some mistake and the hotel was unwilling

00:34:58.900 | to do anything. And so, when you book with these programs like Hotels, Expedia, they

00:35:03.720 | have rewards programs that might be worth it, but the hotel is not interested in helping

00:35:09.040 | you in those problems. And you've got to lean on everyone else. And sometimes they don't

00:35:12.240 | even know who you are until you check in. I did it once and they were like, "Oh, we

00:35:16.360 | didn't know you booked that type of room. I guess it was in the notes. Really sorry."

00:35:20.440 | So if you want to try to get the best experience, hotels are optimizing for people that come

00:35:24.840 | to their brand and they might have a chance of winning to stay at the brand in the future.

00:35:29.400 | And if you book through Expedia, they're kind of like, "Well, this person didn't even go

00:35:32.300 | to our website." A quick follow-up on that. If you book through the Chase Ultimate Rewards

00:35:37.440 | portal, does that count as direct with the hotel or is that not? I don't remember if

00:35:41.080 | it still is, but that's literally, I think, powered by Expedia. So the short answer is

00:35:45.520 | no. But look, I have a Capital One Venture X card and you get a hotel credit every year.

00:35:50.620 | And look, I'd rather get the room $100, $200, $300 off than potentially get an upgrade.

00:35:55.820 | So it's not saying never use these portals. If you've got credits to book through portals

00:36:00.120 | and online travel agencies, it's totally worth saving. I'd rather save 50% on a room than

00:36:06.220 | get a free upgrade. But if you're just going to book the room and also a lot of those OTAs,

00:36:12.460 | the online travel agencies, you might not be able to earn points. Technically, you're

00:36:17.020 | not supposed to earn Marriott points when you book through Expedia. That doesn't mean

00:36:20.680 | that when you check in, you can't give them your number and maybe get lucky. But I find

00:36:24.460 | that some of the perks that they try to offer you to lure you into using those programs

00:36:29.220 | don't compare to the perks you would get if you just book directly and then you earn those

00:36:34.780 | points. And then the last thing I'll say, this is kind of seems crazy and like 20 years

00:36:38.580 | ago is hotels really value the travel agent channel. And so working with a travel agent

00:36:45.140 | for high end hotels can get you a lot of perks. And it doesn't cost you anything. You're going

00:36:51.380 | to pay the same rate you're normally going to pay. But you're probably going to be able

00:36:54.940 | to get, if you're staying at a hotel that's like five star, maybe honeymoon level, maybe

00:36:59.660 | four or 500 bucks a night or more, you could probably almost always get free breakfast.

00:37:04.980 | You could probably almost always get a hundred or so dollar credit when you're there, an

00:37:09.500 | upgrade, maybe early check-in, late check-out. And if you don't, if you feel free to email

00:37:14.580 | me or go to allthehacks.com/upgrade, we've got a travel partner where we could just connect

00:37:19.020 | you and get those kind of high end things booked. And you get all those same amenities.

00:37:23.260 | There's probably 4,000 hotels around the world that kind of fit into that program.

00:37:26.740 | See, so I've never really used a travel agent besides my parents back then. Duncan, Josh

00:37:30.340 | swears by it. Josh still uses one. And I know you're right, Chris, that you don't pay them.

00:37:34.860 | They get paid through making their bookings. I think a lot of people don't realize that

00:37:38.460 | if you use one, it makes a lot of sense, especially for a more complicated, larger vacation, I

00:37:42.900 | think. Yeah, I think you've got to realize is they

00:37:44.780 | don't make money on flights really at all. And it's a lot of work to plan a trip. So

00:37:49.860 | if you're like, "Hey, travel agent, are you going to help me book this entirely complicated

00:37:53.580 | trip where I'm going to stay two nights at a Holiday Inn Express?" The kind of travel

00:37:57.500 | agent that's going to take that deal is probably not going to make that trip magical. But if

00:38:02.220 | you're like, "I want to go to Europe and I want to stay at the Four Seasons, 10 different

00:38:07.180 | cities," there are dozens of travel agents who would be more than happy to help you plan

00:38:11.540 | that entire trip to get the commissions there. But if you're just like, "I want to stay at

00:38:15.500 | one of these nice resorts and I just want to get it booked easy and simple and get these

00:38:19.420 | perks," just email me and I'll just help you do it.

00:38:22.180 | Sweet. All right, we've got one more, Duncan. Okay. "I've been using the Chase Sapphire

00:38:27.060 | Reserve card for a few years now and the benefits have been fading. What other options are there?

00:38:31.460 | I want to maximize my credit card spending as I spend around $8,000 a month. Humblebrag.

00:38:35.540 | Humblebrag. Humblebrag, right?

00:38:37.580 | We've probably gone over the options already enough on here, but I think you mentioned

00:38:43.420 | the Chase Sapphire Reserve was like a millennial credit card that just blew up. I got that

00:38:47.140 | $100,000 bonus. I think the annual fee was like $550,000. And I realized recently, in

00:38:53.460 | the last couple of years, I'm not getting enough for that. And so, you talked about

00:38:57.740 | negotiating, Chris. I called them a couple of times and said, "I've been a Chase client

00:39:01.940 | for 12 years or whatever. What do we do about getting the annual fee taken off for a year?"

00:39:06.820 | And they turned me down like three times. I tried. So, they just kept saying, "Go down

00:39:11.060 | to the Sapphire Preferred." And that's only $95 a month. So, that's what I ended up doing.

00:39:16.100 | I downgraded from the Sapphire Reserve to the Sapphire Preferred. That was as easy as

00:39:21.020 | I could get. So, I guess Chase doesn't care about it as much anymore? Is that what the

00:39:25.580 | thinking is?

00:39:26.580 | I don't think Chase is as generous with retention as Amex. It sounds like if you called three

00:39:30.980 | times, maybe you weren't threatening that hard because you ended up sticking around.

00:39:36.020 | And I will say, don't make the mistake, sorry, that Ben made, which is don't downgrade your

00:39:39.940 | Reserve to a Preferred. Downgrade your Reserve to the Freedom, the Freedom Unlimited, the

00:39:45.220 | Freedom Flex, which are all free cards, and earn a complimentary set of perks. Freedom

00:39:50.020 | Unlimited is going to get you one and a half points on everything.

00:39:52.020 | So, you think that's better than the Preferred?

00:39:54.420 | Well, and then open up the Preferred as a new card.

00:39:57.060 | Oh, don't do the downgrade. I got you.

00:39:58.740 | The downgrade a few months ago was an 80,000 point sign-up bonus on the Preferred.

00:40:01.900 | Oh, a total noob move on my end.

00:40:03.620 | So, the move was downgrade Reserve to something, open up a new Preferred. I think now it's

00:40:08.220 | still 60,000 points. The Preferred actually upped the dining bonus. So, Reserve was like

00:40:13.980 | 3X Travel, 3X Dining, and now the Preferred is 2X Travel, 3X Dining. So, it's like, is

00:40:20.580 | it really worth getting one extra point on all your travel for an extra $450 a year?

00:40:26.460 | Now, I will say, a lot of people look at these and they're like, "God, $550 is a huge cost

00:40:31.140 | for a credit card." I'm not going to say it's not. But on the Reserve, for example, the

00:40:36.220 | first $300 you spend on travel, you don't have to book it through their portal anywhere,

00:40:39.940 | they credit it back.

00:40:40.940 | Right, they get it back.

00:40:41.940 | So, instantly, I'm like, "Okay, it's a $250 card." Now, is spending $250 worth it if you

00:40:45.780 | don't use the lounge access they give you? If you don't use it for getting a free global

00:40:51.100 | entry, which you can, but you don't need a global entry every year. I think it'll last

00:40:54.820 | five years.

00:40:55.820 | Yeah.

00:40:56.820 | So, it might not be worth keeping it open, but don't forget that a lot of these credits,

00:41:01.300 | some are way easier to use than others. The Amex stuff, it's like, I was talking to my

00:41:05.020 | wife, "Do we cancel our Platinum card?" I get $15 a month of Uber credit each month,

00:41:09.300 | but we end up on the, oh gosh, it's the 30th. I was like, "We end up on the 30th of the

00:41:13.020 | month being like, 'God, we haven't used it,' and we order Uber Eats to deliver a pint of

00:41:17.020 | ice cream." I promise you, that wasn't something I would have done otherwise, so I'm not really

00:41:21.700 | getting $15. So, when you evaluate these credits, you've got to ask yourself, "Is this really

00:41:26.460 | saving me $15, or is this giving me $2 of value, because I wouldn't have otherwise ordered

00:41:32.380 | ice cream at 10 p.m. on the last day of the month?"

00:41:36.180 | Right.

00:41:37.180 | Good point.

00:41:38.180 | So, this can be confusing to people who are just kind of dabbling. So, remember, check

00:41:42.740 | out all the hacks for all finer podcasts are sold. Chris can help you with a lot of this

00:41:46.380 | stuff. He's helped me on a lot of this stuff, personally. If you're listening to this in

00:41:50.380 | podcast form, leave us a review. If you're watching on YouTube, Duncan wants you to hit

00:41:53.940 | that Subscribe button. If you want some merch, Duncan and I, both. I got the Portfolio Rescue

00:41:57.340 | t-shirt on today. Duncan's got the Compound shirt.

00:41:59.620 | We've got to get Chris something.

00:42:01.380 | We've got to send Chris something.

00:42:02.380 | I just got a gray t-shirt.

00:42:03.380 | idontshop.com. We have the "Ben doesn't drink coffee" mug behind me here. Keep those comments

00:42:08.220 | and questions coming. I know we've got a lot of good questions, actually, in the chat today

00:42:11.240 | that we didn't even get to. If you have a question, send us. Askthecompoundshow@gmail.com.

00:42:16.120 | Thanks again, everyone, for watching, and we will see you next time.

00:42:18.140 | Yeah, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Chris.

00:42:19.460 | Yeah, thanks. See y'all.

00:42:20.460 | Bye.

00:42:21.460 | Bye.

00:42:22.460 | [music]

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