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00:01:34.560 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:41.920 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:43.640 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you here.

00:01:46.160 | As I mentioned in my short episode a few weeks ago, I want to bring more travel

00:01:49.920 | and credit card points content to this show in 2022.

00:01:52.680 | So I am excited to be joined today by Richard Kerr.

00:01:56.440 | Richard's a veteran Naval officer who left that career behind to become one of

00:02:00.000 | the top experts in the world on travel loyalty programs, credit cards, and

00:02:03.600 | points strategy.

00:02:04.360 | He's the founder of the Award Travel 101 Facebook community and spent six years at

00:02:08.800 | the points guy as a contributor, an editor, and the director of travel

00:02:12.320 | partnerships.

00:02:12.960 | He's now at the up and coming credit card company, Bilt, running travel rewards.

00:02:17.080 | We're going to talk about where he thinks points and miles programs are heading in

00:02:21.000 | 2022.

00:02:21.880 | We're going to hear some of his favorite redemptions out there, learn all this

00:02:25.280 | travel hacks, both on the booking and travel side and get an update on the new

00:02:29.440 | Bilt card and how to get off the wait list.

00:02:31.480 | I am sure I'm missing a few things because there is so much to cover.

00:02:35.480 | Let's jump in.

00:02:36.520 | Richard, thanks for being here.

00:02:39.880 | Hey man.

00:02:40.520 | My pleasure.

00:02:41.280 | And that word you use to describe your show, upgrading.

00:02:43.400 | I'm all about it.

00:02:44.160 | Yeah, I'm constantly seeking out upgrades in all aspects of life.

00:02:48.680 | So before we get started, I would love if you could just share what led you down

00:02:53.240 | this rabbit hole.

00:02:54.640 | Yeah, a really long story short is I was in the Navy.

00:02:58.840 | And at one point I had to choose between spending $3,000 on last minute economy

00:03:03.200 | tickets to see my family after I had not seen them for a year because of

00:03:06.720 | deployments or just skipping Christmas and not seeing them.

00:03:09.400 | And I chose to spend the $3,000 from my wife and I thought there

00:03:12.360 | has to be a better way.

00:03:14.080 | Luckily I found that better way.

00:03:16.080 | And for whatever reason, it clicked with me and down the rabbit hole.

00:03:19.160 | I went spending the next almost seven years in the Navy, being able to travel

00:03:23.600 | around wherever we were stationed, having family travel, thanks to points

00:03:26.280 | and miles and I took it and literally and proverbially ran with it.

00:03:30.400 | And can you briefly touch on what you were doing before points and miles?

00:03:34.120 | Yeah.

00:03:35.120 | So before doing points and miles full time, my last job in the Navy was the

00:03:39.640 | logistics officer for Marine one, the president's helicopter.

00:03:42.240 | I got there when president Obama was leaving office and president Trump was

00:03:46.680 | coming in and I had a lot of jobs there to make sure that helicopter could fly

00:03:51.120 | the parts gas all over the world, but the one thing I'll let you, the inside

00:03:55.200 | tip on that president Trump loves his tropical starburst and his Pringles.

00:03:59.400 | The man hammered them.

00:04:00.320 | So we had the credit card of which was of course not earning any points

00:04:04.320 | because it was a government card, but a lot of starburst Pringles for

00:04:07.280 | Marine one in my last year, the week would finish and I would have a trip

00:04:10.440 | plan to hop somewhere for the weekend, wherever we were, of course, on points

00:04:14.320 | and miles and my love and decided that I want to do this full time.

00:04:17.560 | Navy has been great, but I'm out.

00:04:19.720 | So you've, you've built up probably an arsenal of knowledge

00:04:23.000 | that, that few others have.

00:04:24.440 | So just to kick off, I want to talk about the current state of things

00:04:27.960 | and the points and miles world, and maybe recap where we're at and

00:04:30.880 | what some of the big things happening in the last few years are.

00:04:33.160 | And maybe we start with airline and hotel programs and I'll kick us off

00:04:38.120 | saying, I think one of the biggest trends I've seen, and I'd love to hear

00:04:41.480 | your kind of take and maybe explain what it means is this kind of trend

00:04:45.360 | towards these fixed redemptions to a more dynamic program.

00:04:48.240 | Yeah.

00:04:49.600 | You know, it's what the programs in my mind should exist

00:04:52.480 | to drive a recurring business.

00:04:53.840 | And you might think that's very simple.

00:04:55.440 | What is turned into for many airlines and hotels is it's a

00:04:59.360 | revenue arm more than anything else.

00:05:01.320 | And in the case of most of the big airlines and some of the hotels, the

00:05:05.200 | revenue arm that is the loyalty program is worth more than the airline itself.

00:05:08.280 | We saw during COVID several of the large carriers take out loans against their

00:05:12.240 | loyalty programs to get cash, to keep operating.

00:05:14.280 | And once that they figure this out through all kinds of deals and

00:05:18.800 | partnerships and, you know, passengers and hotel guests being willing to buy

00:05:22.960 | points at what I think are crazy rates that said they honed in on it.

00:05:26.640 | And that's led to the state of what we see today and most large loyalty

00:05:30.360 | programs, which is nothing is fixed.

00:05:32.440 | Nothing is predictable and everything is designed to drive maximum revenue

00:05:36.760 | rather than, in my opinion, in most cases, earn repeat business.

00:05:41.280 | Now you might think that's really bad thing at the end of the day, you and I,

00:05:45.080 | and people who listen still get to do amazing things because of points and miles.

00:05:48.160 | So it's not all doom and gloom.

00:05:49.160 | It's just a different environment than we're operating in.

00:05:51.240 | Yeah.

00:05:52.520 | So a couple of listeners have sent me this YouTube video that I'll link to in

00:05:55.320 | the show notes where I can't remember the name of the guy who did it walks

00:05:58.880 | through here is exactly how these businesses work and why you should really

00:06:01.840 | think of the miles programs as banks almost.

00:06:04.080 | And so I'll put that, yeah, I'll put that in the show notes, but, and just

00:06:08.360 | to clarify, it used to be that there was a chart and it said, Hey, if you want

00:06:11.920 | to travel from the United States to Europe, it's this many miles.

00:06:14.960 | So that's what it is.

00:06:16.160 | And now I don't know if there's any airline that's fully a hundred

00:06:19.560 | percent dynamic dollar for point other than the ones who've always

00:06:23.440 | done it Southwest and JetBlue.

00:06:25.120 | But, but the main American Delta United, you can still get some of

00:06:28.800 | those low cost non-dynamic awards, but they've taken all of the award

00:06:33.560 | inventory that's not at the low price and made it seemingly sometimes, at

00:06:37.480 | least with Delta, it's I'm not going to spend a million points to fly to

00:06:40.560 | New York this weekend.

00:06:41.680 | Yeah, no, there's overall, there's still deals to be had.

00:06:45.880 | And actually bring up the point of Delta.

00:06:47.360 | I can't keep Delta miles in my account because I'm constantly redeeming

00:06:51.240 | them for economy domestic flights.

00:06:53.640 | Because in the world of dynamics, as high as things may be, there are still

00:06:58.280 | low deals out there all the time.

00:07:01.160 | And maybe it's because I'm an Atlanta guy, but oftentimes Delta is

00:07:03.880 | the most expensive out of Atlanta.

00:07:05.200 | But to your point, every currency and program now almost has its uses.

00:07:09.600 | If you want to fly luxury premium classes, don't collect Delta sky miles.

00:07:13.280 | If you want to get your family of four to the beach or grandma's

00:07:16.360 | house a few times a year, I think sky miles can make it happen.

00:07:18.880 | So along with the bads of, you know, now some redemptions are crazy priced.

00:07:24.120 | Almost every program does have the great deals.

00:07:26.520 | American has these web fair deals where you can fly one way in the

00:07:29.160 | U S for 5,000 miles to like really good, like on the weekends on holidays.

00:07:33.280 | So it's just kind of wild.

00:07:34.000 | And to my mind comes back to, there's, there's no predictability left.

00:07:37.160 | You're not really sure what to prepare for.

00:07:38.600 | And what do you think about hotel programs?

00:07:40.240 | What's been going on with hotel loyalty?

00:07:42.240 | I always try and figure out a better and more polite way to say this, but I usually

00:07:46.880 | fail, unfortunately, Marriott has destroyed its program to a point where I don't know

00:07:51.320 | why you would invest in the bond boy program anymore, and I'm sure you have

00:07:54.080 | lots of listeners who are going to be up in arms about that because they love their

00:07:57.360 | Marriott, but we're a couple of weeks out of time of recording from award charts,

00:08:01.440 | being completely Marriott it on a good day is a broken disaster.

00:08:05.920 | The phone agents are not empowered.

00:08:07.760 | Social media team can't do anything for you.

00:08:11.360 | Probably a high likelihood, your points are going to be calculated

00:08:13.640 | incorrectly from every stay and goodness.

00:08:15.400 | If you have certificates in points that you want to combine or use

00:08:18.400 | do anything outside of the norm.

00:08:19.760 | It's just not going to happen.

00:08:21.280 | So it's really a shame because SPG was amazing.

00:08:25.040 | Marriott rewards is pretty good.

00:08:26.240 | They've combined them and they've just, I have no idea what the strategy has

00:08:29.280 | been over there, except trying to minimize costs for hotel owners.

00:08:32.680 | So Marriott, I'm sorry.

00:08:34.040 | I just, I'm going to go to the portal and earn 10 X venture rewards rather

00:08:37.240 | than trying to collect the points.

00:08:38.760 | As far as everyone else goes, there's still a gold standard in my mind

00:08:42.080 | of, of hotel programs, which is the world of Hyatt and their points

00:08:44.960 | are just incredibly valuable.

00:08:46.160 | You can book luxurious aspirational stays as easily as you can book again,

00:08:50.360 | that room for your family where you just need to stay next to the airport for one

00:08:52.880 | night and then everybody else has got their uses.

00:08:55.880 | I mean, Hilton continues to offer huge signup bonuses to continue to be able

00:08:59.720 | to find value there as a traveling family.

00:09:01.920 | Again, you can now book connecting rooms with points, which we just

00:09:04.400 | did in Orlando, which is great.

00:09:06.400 | I'm not a big fan of what they've done with some of their elite benefits,

00:09:09.200 | like not giving free breakfast anymore, but it's fine because

00:09:11.560 | I just go and stay at Hyatt.

00:09:12.840 | So overall, I think it's still a war charge going by the

00:09:16.440 | wayside, except for Hyatt.

00:09:17.640 | It's not predictable how many points you're going to have to

00:09:19.680 | need or you're going to need anymore.

00:09:21.640 | And it's all about maximizing the revenue off of these programs rather

00:09:24.800 | than encouraging repeat loyalty.

00:09:27.160 | So it's very interesting to see how quickly it's changed.

00:09:30.120 | And what do you think happens in the coming years?

00:09:33.400 | Are, is Hyatt going to follow the way of Marriott is what changes do you

00:09:37.360 | think happened 2022 and I guess beyond to these programs, both airline and hotel?

00:09:41.800 | We can talk for a very long time about the difference with hotel loyalty

00:09:46.520 | programs is that the majority of the hotels in these programs are not owned

00:09:49.600 | by Hyatt or they're not owned by Marriott.

00:09:51.800 | They're owned by individual investors who pay marketing and licensing and

00:09:57.040 | program dollars to the big corporate.

00:09:58.800 | But ultimately they have a huge say to Marriott that says we're not

00:10:03.000 | going to do this elite breakfast because it's too expensive for us.

00:10:05.840 | And you don't reimburse us enough.

00:10:07.320 | And the corporate tie hands are tied a little bit, as far

00:10:12.360 | as most of the programs go.

00:10:13.600 | I think what we're going to see happen, which we've seen a really

00:10:16.520 | big uptick in 2021, the beginning of 22 is hotels actually

00:10:20.000 | leaving programs like Marriott.

00:10:22.040 | They've lost a couple hotels in Venice in the last few weeks, and they've

00:10:25.960 | lost tons of properties to Sinesta.

00:10:28.320 | And if you haven't heard that hotel chain Sinesta, I guarantee you, you're

00:10:30.960 | going to hear it over the next couple of years, that they've almost tripled

00:10:33.640 | in size in just the last two years by acquiring hotels that are leaving

00:10:36.720 | programs like IHG and Marriott.

00:10:38.320 | And unless those franchise agreements are fixed, I don't see things getting better.

00:10:42.160 | Now what Hyatt has done a good job is their franchise agreements and their

00:10:45.240 | terms and conditions of the program are written so that there's very little gray

00:10:49.560 | area, like the properties know what they're getting into, they know what

00:10:52.160 | they're going to get reimbursed.

00:10:53.120 | And Hyatt does a great job of making sure that things are executed well.

00:10:57.480 | So I don't think, and I don't hope we're going to see Hyatt go the

00:11:00.600 | way that other programs have gone because of how they've structured

00:11:03.880 | these agreements with the property owners and how popular that program

00:11:07.240 | really is and continues to be with its members, like the program

00:11:10.160 | really does drive repeat guests.

00:11:11.880 | So I hope we see things kind of stay where they are.

00:11:16.600 | Um, as far as these programs are going to continue to struggle in this

00:11:19.640 | program's going to continue to do really well.

00:11:22.200 | Do you think anything changes with flights and flight airline loyalty this year?

00:11:25.840 | If you'd asked me that last year, I would have said no, but then American

00:11:29.440 | came out and said, we're going to completely redo how elite qualifying

00:11:34.160 | works in our program, and it's really quite interesting, and I think it's great.

00:11:37.600 | If you're not familiar with American loyalty points, give that a quick

00:11:40.600 | Google on the machine and read up, but basically you don't need to fly

00:11:43.920 | American anymore to get elite status, which is really quite amazing statement

00:11:47.960 | to say you can earn status off of spending on their co-branded cards,

00:11:51.160 | off of shopping with their partners, booking hotels and vacations through

00:11:54.200 | them, and you can go fly American twice a year and have top tier status.

00:11:58.600 | I would argue rather easily, um, for anybody that's really trying.

00:12:01.760 | So that's really interesting.

00:12:03.400 | And it's going to be, uh, even more fascinating the rest of this

00:12:06.920 | year to see how that goes and how it's picked up and typically

00:12:10.280 | in the airline industry, it's rather copycat what airline aid does,

00:12:13.240 | at least amongst the big three BNC are quick to follow.

00:12:16.160 | So I'm sure Delta and United are watching with great interest, how

00:12:20.040 | this is working and what kind of revenue is going to drive for the

00:12:22.640 | advantage program, um, of which I'm a loyal member of American, which

00:12:27.040 | we can talk about for several reasons, but I think it's great.

00:12:29.600 | I think it's interesting and we will see American could turn around

00:12:33.480 | if they don't like what they see after the first year and say, that

00:12:35.440 | was a really interesting experiment, but, uh, no more, or we could see

00:12:38.640 | Delta United go, you know what?

00:12:39.760 | That's a great idea.

00:12:40.520 | Let's follow.

00:12:41.080 | And you don't even need to fly airlines anymore to get status, which

00:12:44.320 | again, is a remarkable statement.

00:12:45.960 | Yeah.

00:12:47.240 | Yeah.

00:12:47.480 | I hack here.

00:12:48.280 | I have listeners sometimes write in and say, you know, I have this business.

00:12:52.320 | I'm spending millions of dollars a year, and it seems to often be on

00:12:56.160 | categories that are nothing right.

00:12:57.680 | This, someone said, I'm a contractor.

00:12:59.440 | I spend almost a million dollars a year on hardware and supply stores,

00:13:03.200 | and I could put it all on a credit card.

00:13:04.480 | What should I do?

00:13:05.760 | And I, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to do.

00:13:07.760 | It kind of is a very personal question, but if you value status on American

00:13:13.600 | and you've got a bunch of spend, that's not going to earn you five points.

00:13:16.320 | There's four points or three points.

00:13:17.760 | An option is to use that spend to buy yourself American status at

00:13:21.240 | least this year, and, and we'll see how long that lasts.

00:13:23.480 | Yeah.

00:13:23.960 | Cause on top of that, you get redeemable miles as well.

00:13:26.440 | And American miles are fantastic.

00:13:28.000 | Great value to do luxury or weekender flights around.

00:13:31.920 | So I find myself very much more engaged with the advantage program,

00:13:35.800 | which is what they're hoping for, you know, shopping portals and things

00:13:38.760 | like that, American offers earn you status.

00:13:40.640 | So I could tell the wife, Hey, if you're going to be doing any shoppers,

00:13:43.080 | we can, you know, to go to that advantage shopping portal, right?

00:13:45.440 | Cause we want status again next year.

00:13:47.240 | Yeah.

00:13:48.280 | The shopping portals, I think are, are underrated in that

00:13:51.520 | sometimes it's, it's a point here.

00:13:53.080 | You could, you could use Rakuten or anything to get a point.

00:13:55.200 | And sometimes you get these crazy offers where it's 10, 20 miles per dollar.

00:14:00.040 | And so, you know, it's frustrating to look, I think there's a site I'll

00:14:03.240 | link it in the show notes and I want to say it is cashback monitor cashback.

00:14:07.440 | And they'll, they'll give you both the shopping portals and the

00:14:11.040 | cashback portals for both of them.

00:14:13.600 | And it's pretty cool.

00:14:15.320 | They, sometimes those I've gotten 10, 10 points per dollar

00:14:18.560 | before on, I think, I think American.

00:14:21.320 | So at the end of 2021, a crazy deal came out.

00:14:24.760 | That was for every dollar you donated to conservation international which

00:14:29.440 | is like a featured mastercard charity.

00:14:31.560 | You got 40 miles per dollar and you're thinking, Hey, that's pretty good.

00:14:34.880 | But at the end of the year, American also had a five X on

00:14:38.320 | all portal bonuses going on as well.

00:14:41.560 | So you got 240 American miles per dollar donated to conservation international.

00:14:48.440 | Um, and American honored it and people went all in on this thing.

00:14:51.160 | Like I have friends and colleagues that donated $25,000 to conservation

00:14:55.400 | international to get millions of American miles at they, they prefunded

00:15:01.520 | five years or 10 years of travel for 25 grand all in business class, by the way.

00:15:05.760 | Cause once you have 20 million American miles, like it doesn't matter.

00:15:09.600 | You can book whatever you want, whenever you want.

00:15:11.120 | And it's really quite fantastic.

00:15:13.240 | It sounds like a story from days of the past, but this was six weeks ago.

00:15:16.760 | And I did get a little taste of it.

00:15:18.520 | I did donate, uh, I think 300 bucks and got 72,000 American miles, which

00:15:22.720 | is more than enough to fly business class across the Atlantic.

00:15:24.920 | So I look at just buying business class for 300 bucks.

00:15:27.560 | That's crazy.

00:15:28.080 | Yeah.

00:15:28.640 | I've been trying to think about, I've never been the social media

00:15:31.280 | person is just like all over it.

00:15:32.880 | I looked at a survey I did with listeners and they're like, that's what they want.

00:15:35.640 | So I'm going to start using my social media solely to just post

00:15:39.360 | when these crazy deals come out.

00:15:40.720 | So, so, you know, give me a follow.

00:15:42.560 | If you want, I'll stay on top of them.

00:15:44.080 | Sorry.

00:15:44.440 | Sorry for everyone who missed the American one.

00:15:46.040 | I also missed it at the end of the year.

00:15:47.400 | It was just too crazy.

00:15:48.360 | But, um, you know, on top of that, I guess you probably get a

00:15:50.880 | tax write-off on the donation.

00:15:52.120 | You do, it keeps going and going.

00:15:54.600 | And if you look at, there's some great websites out there that rate charities.

00:15:57.920 | Like I always go and look at the charity navigators.

00:16:00.480 | One of them that tells you like the expense ratio, like conservation

00:16:03.280 | international was an a plus plus in every category.

00:16:05.280 | So you felt confident giving that money to this.

00:16:08.120 | I just want to know who was the guy or gal that set this deal with American.

00:16:12.320 | What kind of Christmas party did conservation international have after

00:16:15.080 | probably getting millions of dollars of donations over the course of a

00:16:17.960 | couple of days, like good job over there.

00:16:19.840 | Who lost out in that?

00:16:21.520 | Like, is this American losing money?

00:16:23.040 | No, there's some really great insights into this deal.

00:16:26.360 | Specifically by my buddy, Gary left at view from the wing who wrote several

00:16:29.840 | articles over who was funding this.

00:16:31.320 | What basically happens is the charity paid none of it because they wouldn't

00:16:34.080 | agree to be in these portals if they were taking a lump of it, but it basically

00:16:37.400 | came down to mastercard funding it because this was done through the mastercard

00:16:40.800 | website called simply miles where you link a card and anytime you use it at a

00:16:44.840 | participating merchant, you get bonus miles, great details of the math.

00:16:48.040 | How basically nobody lost to believe it or not in the way that this works again,

00:16:51.560 | because of tax write-offs and the pricing that you can have when you control it in

00:16:55.320 | the way that you can carry that liability of these miles.

00:16:58.080 | And while we think it's millions and millions of miles is a big deal from

00:17:01.480 | these promotions, the grand scheme of things, the amount of miles that were

00:17:05.320 | given out on this based on how many miles are outstanding in the American

00:17:08.280 | books was inconsequential.

00:17:10.520 | And then if you ever want to go into loyalty accounting, who it is a complex

00:17:14.200 | and a rather amazing space about how they can defer the liability of these

00:17:17.360 | unredeemed miles to where nobody took a hit for this happening in the charity.

00:17:21.160 | One really fascinating stuff.

00:17:22.760 | Wow.

00:17:24.040 | Okay.

00:17:24.520 | So I'm going to link to that Gary's article.

00:17:26.440 | What fantastic blog at the end, we'll recap some of the favorite people you

00:17:30.640 | follow in blogs, but that's all hotel loyalty.

00:17:33.480 | I think a big thing that everyone listening here wants to talk about is

00:17:36.360 | credit cards.

00:17:37.000 | So I kind of want to talk about the space cause we'll get to built, but a lot of

00:17:42.040 | crazy things have been happening in credit cards in the last few years.

00:17:45.080 | And it feels like all of the issuers, the big issuers or the big four, at least

00:17:50.120 | are merging to the same place.

00:17:51.720 | And then city is just like, went on the side.

00:17:55.240 | I don't know.

00:17:55.480 | I don't know what to say.

00:17:56.400 | Wilting on the side.

00:17:57.320 | Where do you think we're at?

00:17:58.440 | It seems like the average person that used to collect five or six cards now

00:18:02.320 | has three priority past memberships could buy global entry for their entire family.

00:18:07.200 | Yeah.

00:18:07.640 | I'm curious what you think of the state of cards.

00:18:10.800 | And one way, I think it's a race to the bottom.

00:18:12.480 | You cannot have the customer acquisition costs that these cards are now having

00:18:16.360 | and expect to make money because the demographic that's getting these cards

00:18:19.680 | in large part, they're not going to revolve, meaning they're not going to

00:18:23.000 | pay 25 to 30% interest and you're just getting the interchange off of them.

00:18:26.880 | So looking at recent examples of the capital one venture X, you cannot go in

00:18:31.160 | an airport, turn on a sport show or look at commercials right now without seeing

00:18:34.960 | the same, it was like what in the Rose bowl, capital one venture X.

00:18:37.720 | I was in the airports this weekend.

00:18:38.960 | I see it.

00:18:40.120 | That's on top of giving people a hundred thousand venture miles, which costs

00:18:43.200 | capital one money on top of a $200 vacation rental credit on top of paying

00:18:48.440 | blogs and content creators, who knows how much per card approval.

00:18:51.800 | So with all of that marketing, tangible signup benefits and everything like the

00:18:56.480 | quick numbers show you they're over $2,000 per customer acquisition costs.

00:19:00.640 | I don't know how they make that back.

00:19:02.920 | I really don't.

00:19:04.000 | And I think it's the, the, the, uh, chase Sapphire reserve reincarnated.

00:19:09.920 | When that thing came out in 2016, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread,

00:19:14.600 | everybody had to have it, but then that first report came out that showed how

00:19:18.440 | much money chase loss on the customer acquisition costs and how far it like

00:19:22.680 | to the magnitude of 20 X, what they expected to lose, to get these customers.

00:19:26.720 | And what do we see now, five years later, that car is being moonlighted

00:19:30.320 | because it's losing a ridiculous amount of money customers are not revolving.

00:19:34.240 | And we've seen the value propositions of the chase Sapphire prefer move to be

00:19:37.960 | arguably better for $95 annual fee, rather than $550, which is why I really

00:19:43.160 | scratched my head when I see capital one, come out with this and go great for the

00:19:47.080 | consumers, don't get me wrong, like my wife and I both picked this thing up and

00:19:49.920 | now we have hundreds of thousands of venture miles, but they're not making any

00:19:53.120 | money.

00:19:53.320 | So why wouldn't they take all of these efforts and make the venture card, which

00:19:58.960 | is a wonderful card for, especially for people who just don't want anything

00:20:01.880 | complicated and want to get miles and all the great improvements capital ones made

00:20:05.200 | with their loyalty program and replay the chase Sapphire reserve playbook, where

00:20:09.160 | you go awesome, but just make the venture card better, not do this luxury card

00:20:13.920 | thing to your point that like, I don't need another priority pass membership.

00:20:17.760 | I don't need another global entry deal.

00:20:19.440 | What are we doing here?

00:20:20.360 | Is it because FOMO is because you just have to have something out there as a

00:20:24.600 | loss leader to get new customers.

00:20:26.080 | So what do you think, man?

00:20:26.880 | Like why, why, why throw this out?

00:20:30.760 | And no, you're probably not going to make money.

00:20:33.680 | Yeah, I guess my perspective is that if I look at all these cards and I talk to

00:20:36.880 | people, I know everyone seems to have come to the terms that they're going to

00:20:40.360 | hold a card that has a 500 ish dollar annual fee.

00:20:44.200 | And because capital one didn't have one, it was kind of like, well, it doesn't

00:20:47.640 | make sense.

00:20:48.160 | Like even, even if the extra incremental perks for the card aren't worth the extra

00:20:55.000 | fee, it just feels to me like it's never felt like capital one had a card worth

00:20:59.120 | holding and what was funny.

00:21:00.960 | So then VentureX comes out, huge signup bonuses.

00:21:03.520 | I get one, my wife gets one.

00:21:04.760 | I tell my sister to get one.

00:21:05.880 | And my sister's not thinking about the bonuses as much as "Is this a card I'll

00:21:11.120 | spend on?"

00:21:11.720 | And she looks at the card and she's like, "Well, it seems like the Venture card's

00:21:15.480 | just as good.

00:21:16.640 | Like, I don't...

00:21:17.240 | There's three lounges.

00:21:18.680 | I've already got priority pass."

00:21:20.000 | So I was looking at it and I was like, "Man, I guess it was just like it convinced

00:21:23.360 | me to sign up for the huge bonus.

00:21:25.480 | But I see, I feel like it's gonna be hard at the end of the year to not consider

00:21:30.600 | downgrading to just have the Venture card for, for less, but assuming they allow

00:21:34.920 | downgrading, I have a card.

00:21:36.960 | No, I agree.

00:21:38.040 | Like, why would you hold a VentureX long-term over the Venture card?

00:21:40.680 | I don't, I don't know.

00:21:41.440 | The bonus earnings, the portal grade, et cetera, et cetera.

00:21:43.600 | But overall it's the competition of massive signup bonuses.

00:21:47.400 | So we've seen American Express the last six months has just let the wheels off and

00:21:51.440 | been like with the resi and small business offer, if you sign up for the right referral

00:21:56.520 | Platinum card at the right time, you could be earning like 18X on almost all spent.

00:22:01.000 | Like 18 points per dollar on your American Express Platinum card.

00:22:04.600 | And people are earning millions of points.

00:22:09.200 | Like I don't, how are we making money on this folks?

00:22:12.280 | I just don't understand this.

00:22:13.560 | And is it because the executives in charge now, by the time the chickens

00:22:17.080 | come home to roost are not going to be in that position anymore.

00:22:19.360 | They're just being lauded by how many new customer accounts are driving right now,

00:22:22.600 | which is a huge key metric for any bank executive is how many new accounts have

00:22:26.040 | you got, like, I don't know, it's pure speculation, this eventually has to all

00:22:30.840 | be redeemed at a real cost and I'm not sure what the banks are doing, how long

00:22:35.520 | this is sustainable, or if it's just one of those, like it's become so much money

00:22:41.280 | that it's funny money and we can figure out other metrics and KPIs to show success

00:22:46.000 | of this in market, how much market share we gained versus real dollars and cents

00:22:50.560 | that are lost.

00:22:51.080 | So it doesn't make sense to me.

00:22:53.040 | It doesn't make sense to a lot of my colleagues.

00:22:54.320 | Now we're here at built as we design a credit card and a rewards program,

00:22:57.920 | because what we want to do is be sustainable.

00:22:59.920 | And the stuff I see now just, just isn't unless there's some magic key

00:23:03.480 | that I don't know about.

00:23:04.240 | Yeah.

00:23:05.360 | Yeah.

00:23:05.760 | I want to get to built, but I'm going to get annihilated by people writing in.

00:23:09.400 | If I don't go back and say, can you walk through this 18X?

00:23:12.400 | Cause that's something that I think some people I know are going to ask me if I

00:23:15.840 | don't ask that question.

00:23:16.760 | Yeah, there was, there was a MX platinum offer that came out from resi, like

00:23:21.680 | the table, the reserve, we can make a reservation at a restaurant with a

00:23:25.120 | partnership that said, Hey, sign up for the platinum card, get 125,000

00:23:28.320 | membership rewards after the 5,000 and spend plus get 10 X points at all

00:23:33.000 | restaurants worldwide and Oh, by the way, get eight X at any small business.

00:23:37.720 | So if your small business is also a restaurant, 18 X, you can also go on

00:23:41.440 | the small business website finder that MX has, and probably a lot of the places

00:23:45.320 | that you shop all the time, don't realize that they're small businesses and

00:23:48.520 | they're throwing like huge offers at you to go and spend there as well as

00:23:51.920 | statement credits as well as MX offers to go and shop it.

00:23:54.960 | And it was just.

00:23:55.560 | Absolutely wild.

00:23:57.040 | You can just hit the Google machine, type in MX, platinum resi, small

00:23:59.640 | business, and you'll number one, have FOMO because you missed out.

00:24:02.320 | It's just, and then to my point, when I read these things go, who

00:24:05.480 | in the world is funding, who in the world is funding 18X like this stuff.

00:24:10.080 | And is that still going on?

00:24:11.520 | It's not sadly, um, about two weeks ago.

00:24:14.680 | It's gone, but a great story.

00:24:16.720 | I got to share about my friend Nick Reyes over at a frequent miler.

00:24:19.560 | He's been trying to buy a brand new car on a credit card, left my dealership

00:24:23.840 | to find the entire credit card.

00:24:25.320 | I was able to do this in 2015.

00:24:27.720 | He was very upset that he wasn't able to, so he was going to one up me.

00:24:30.520 | And sure enough, he did.

00:24:31.840 | He had an MX platinum card that had a retention offer, a signup bonus

00:24:35.400 | offer, and a small business offer.

00:24:37.320 | And he ended up getting over a half million Amex points by putting his

00:24:40.640 | entire new minivan on his MX platinum card, but two weeks ago.

00:24:44.520 | And, and it's because he was able to stack all these offers.

00:24:47.280 | And in my mind, I go, the dealership just paid three to 4% to American express.

00:24:52.160 | American express just paid out 500,000 points.

00:24:55.520 | Like everybody loses in, in the consumer wins big.

00:24:59.160 | So how is this ecosystem sustainable?

00:25:01.560 | I really don't know, but it's amazing what goes on.

00:25:04.640 | Yeah.

00:25:05.560 | But as long as it's out there, take advantage of the big signup bonuses,

00:25:09.240 | take advantage of some of these offers.

00:25:11.000 | And I assume by offers you mean you mean a lot of the offers that are in the portals

00:25:15.280 | when you log in and you, you view those, the offers that are add to

00:25:18.120 | card or there are other offers.

00:25:19.440 | There's there's MX off.

00:25:21.080 | There's, um, MX American express specifically comes out with these

00:25:25.240 | limited time, like dining credits to head last year, you get Uber

00:25:28.400 | credits to come on your platinum card.

00:25:30.320 | It seems like you need a spreadsheet to keep up with all of these things.

00:25:34.360 | City has mastercard merchant offers.

00:25:36.540 | Now Chase has offers now bank of America does that says, Hey,

00:25:40.200 | chop at this store, you spend 20 bucks and we'll give you either bonus

00:25:43.200 | miles or we'll give you 10 bucks back.

00:25:44.760 | And then what you do is you stack all of these together.

00:25:47.600 | And like, I'm going into the weeds right now.

00:25:48.680 | People, but I just want to wet the appetite a little bit to know there's a

00:25:51.740 | better way to do what you're doing.

00:25:53.000 | Most likely if, if you want to earn American airline status, for example,

00:25:57.320 | when you have a master card, say you want to buy some wine, there's some

00:26:00.360 | great wine offers out there from wine clubs, wine, ink, wink, w I N C.com.

00:26:04.920 | They have city merchant offers.

00:26:08.200 | They're going to give you bonus America miles from simple miles.com.

00:26:10.960 | And then you can shop through the advantage shopping portal.

00:26:13.240 | And you can essentially get by stacking these three deals together, like

00:26:17.520 | statement credit, bonus miles and wine show up at your door for either

00:26:21.600 | nothing or very little out of pocket.

00:26:23.480 | And Oh, by the way, you're earning American airline status

00:26:25.920 | on that as of this year.

00:26:27.000 | And it's become like fun.

00:26:30.160 | Yes.

00:26:31.480 | How, what can I do to get, like, I want to get some wine for Valentine's

00:26:34.760 | day next week as a recording this, like I went ahead and ordered four

00:26:37.560 | bottles of wine from wink, got 2,500 American miles, and then the statement

00:26:41.840 | credit from city that made it cost a dollar 50 for four bottles of wine to

00:26:45.080 | show up great, happy Valentine's day.

00:26:46.560 | Wife.

00:26:46.880 | Hope she's not listening.

00:26:50.120 | It seems like with every business, you get to a certain size

00:26:56.440 | and the cracks start to emerge.

00:26:58.400 | Things that you used to do in a day are taking a week and you

00:27:01.600 | have too many manual processes.

00:27:03.680 | And there's no one source of truth.

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00:28:19.920 | You all know, I love credit card points.

00:28:23.720 | So I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of

00:28:27.360 | my favorite tools for travel hacking.

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00:29:25.360 | you can go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers to get 20% off.

00:29:30.960 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/cardpointers.

00:29:36.000 | Have you played around with Card Pointers?

00:29:38.400 | It's an app and a Chrome extension.

00:29:40.280 | I have not.

00:29:41.120 | I have not heard of Card Pointers.

00:29:42.360 | Yeah.

00:29:43.000 | So Card Pointers launched this app and they also have a Chrome extension.

00:29:46.800 | And similar to if anyone's ever had one of the Rakuten or Shopping Portal Chrome

00:29:51.480 | extensions, they do this for the offers.

00:29:53.800 | So you're on a website and they do two things.

00:29:56.200 | One, they pop up and say, "Hey, if you're going to buy something here, this is the

00:29:59.520 | card to use."

00:30:00.200 | So you can go in and say, "I have a Platinum, a Venture X, Chase Reserve,

00:30:04.000 | whatever."

00:30:04.320 | And then they'll say, "Hey, if you're going to check out on this website, make

00:30:08.080 | sure to use this card for the most points."

00:30:09.560 | But what they also do is say, "Hey, before you check out, Amex has an offer for this

00:30:13.840 | merchant.

00:30:14.200 | So make sure you go to the Amex site and you load that offer in there."

00:30:17.720 | So I've been playing around with the app.

00:30:20.000 | Yeah, I have no relationship.

00:30:22.440 | The founder emailed me and was like, "Hey, thanks for mentioning us."

00:30:24.560 | I don't get anything for mentioning them.

00:30:26.000 | But these offers change so frequently on the card sites that if you don't have

00:30:30.160 | something to remind you, you just have to open up Amex and Chase and everything

00:30:34.160 | every morning and look.

00:30:35.120 | Yeah.

00:30:35.480 | Two things to jump back to card stuff you mentioned.

00:30:39.080 | You said they're moonlighting the Chase Reserve.

00:30:41.640 | Do you think that that card goes away or loses all of its luster?

00:30:45.760 | Because I think a lot of people listening, that's their kind of go-to card.

00:30:50.280 | I think people need to reevaluate.

00:30:53.240 | The value prop of the Chase Sapphire Preferred for, again, $450 less annual

00:30:57.800 | fee, you're basically earning the same points.

00:31:00.040 | And then the additional benefits of the CSR where people are like, "Oh, I can

00:31:04.320 | redeem for 1.5 cents instead of 1.25 cents."

00:31:07.440 | But are you redeeming 750,000 points at that marginal quarter to make the

00:31:12.520 | annual fee $450 annual fee up?

00:31:14.360 | They're like, "Oh no, I'm not."

00:31:15.200 | I'm like, "You don't need the CSR."

00:31:16.520 | I don't think the card goes away.

00:31:18.000 | I just think there's less and less incentive to hold it.

00:31:20.600 | And the sign-up bonus is never going to be 100,000 again.

00:31:23.720 | And they're going to do everything they can to their other products

00:31:26.280 | to drive people away from it.

00:31:27.640 | Which is, again, it was the gold standard of the credit card

00:31:31.400 | industry five years ago.

00:31:32.680 | So it's really interesting to see that happen to the product.

00:31:35.520 | But I just want people to take a hard look at why you're going to

00:31:37.640 | pay the annual fee for another year.

00:31:38.920 | Yeah.

00:31:40.120 | Yeah.

00:31:40.720 | I feel like Amex is in a similar boat where I find myself telling

00:31:44.600 | people, "Look, the Amex Platinum has a bunch of perks, and if the

00:31:48.080 | perks are worth the annual fee, maybe it's worth it."

00:31:50.680 | Most of the time, the reason I recommend the Platinum is because

00:31:53.240 | they're getting $150,000 or some ridiculous sign-up bonus.

00:31:56.200 | But when I think about what I spend my money on, the Amex Gold is

00:32:00.000 | kind of like, it's a trend now, is that all these card issuers launch

00:32:03.520 | these super premium cards with huge sign-up bonuses, but the card

00:32:07.560 | that most people probably should be using more regularly is their cheaper card.

00:32:10.640 | Yeah.

00:32:11.040 | Because after they issue all those points, they can't afford to keep

00:32:14.080 | paying you points in bonus categories.

00:32:15.520 | But yeah, $6.95 for the Platinum card, the vast majority of people, I would

00:32:19.000 | argue, who hold that don't need to.

00:32:21.080 | And it's just become incredibly frustrating to use the benefits or what's

00:32:25.000 | now going around as the Amex Coupon Booklet, just to try and keep up with

00:32:28.840 | everything, and then when you come out on the same day with a SoulCycle

00:32:31.840 | offer and Walmart Plus, you're like, "These are very different American

00:32:36.040 | demographics.

00:32:36.760 | Who are we going after here, folks?

00:32:38.320 | Like, who is this card for?

00:32:39.800 | Because I don't know anymore."

00:32:40.800 | And it's wild.

00:32:43.400 | For me, the Amex Platinum, it's the Coupon Booklet, and it makes

00:32:46.520 | sense if you book a lot of flights.

00:32:47.760 | If you travel, great.

00:32:49.360 | Yeah.

00:32:49.560 | I don't know where you're getting 5X on flights that you can book on the

00:32:53.200 | airline's website and not have to book through a portal, but outside of that,

00:32:56.760 | you've got to really work hard.

00:32:58.000 | I've got to work hard.

00:32:58.720 | I'm like, "What am I going to buy at Saks before the end of the year?

00:33:02.800 | I've got to spend my $50."

00:33:04.280 | And I try to justify that those $50 are worth $50, but otherwise, I'm not

00:33:08.880 | actually buying this fancy hand soap or whatever it is on the list this year.

00:33:13.360 | And the last thing, and then I want to jump to Bilt, is Citi.

00:33:16.560 | All these conversations I'm having now are Cap One, they're Amex, they're Chase.

00:33:20.880 | They're now including Bilt.

00:33:22.520 | Like, is Citi out of the game?

00:33:25.080 | Are they trying to get in the game?

00:33:26.400 | Citi's struggled a long time with who they are.

00:33:29.560 | Thank you points are a great currency.

00:33:31.240 | Their big struggle is that they don't have any domestic transfer partners.

00:33:34.080 | So if you want to fly domestically, it's a problem, which is, I think, Capital One's

00:33:37.400 | biggest knock right now for everything great they've done.

00:33:39.160 | They still don't have a domestic transfer partner.

00:33:41.440 | But thank you points as they stand on their own are a great currency.

00:33:43.640 | All the ancillaries of dealing with Citi are my problem.

00:33:48.840 | So if you've got new Citi cards about the fraud alert shenanigans that

00:33:52.400 | happened and the endless loop of trying to get out of these fraud alert

00:33:55.440 | shenanigans, Citi IT really struggles.

00:33:59.120 | And then they decimated the Citi Prestige, which was an amazing card four or five

00:34:03.600 | years ago, down to a shell of its former self and not even open for applications

00:34:06.800 | anymore.

00:34:07.200 | I don't think anybody should be ignoring Citi, Citi Double Cash or any two Citi

00:34:10.640 | thank you points on every dollar is great that you can combine with the big

00:34:13.320 | signup bonus of the Citi Premier, which has nice bonus categories.

00:34:16.080 | I think it's great, but sometimes Citi just absolutely frustrates you from the

00:34:19.360 | customer experience that you don't want to mess with them anymore, which is what

00:34:22.120 | happened to me and my wife.

00:34:23.040 | I just endless fraud alerts trying to get out of it.

00:34:26.360 | They're like, you have to give us the chase login and your chase account in

00:34:29.680 | order for us to verify you on Citi.

00:34:31.280 | It's a real story.

00:34:32.040 | And it's a real thing that they do.

00:34:33.280 | And then you like think it's all cleared up and then you go and swipe the card

00:34:36.280 | declined fraud alert, call us.

00:34:37.800 | And you're just like, okay, I'm done.

00:34:39.520 | I think it's, it's just absolutely maddening from a customer perspective

00:34:43.240 | sometime to use it.

00:34:43.960 | But, you know, I keep Citi thank you points in the bank account and sitting

00:34:47.640 | around just in case they have access to a few programs that nobody else does.

00:34:50.880 | They just really got to clean up that user experience and get them excited

00:34:54.600 | again, and again, decide who are their cards for and what do they want to be.

00:34:57.920 | Yep.

00:34:58.960 | That makes sense.

00:34:59.720 | So I want to talk about built, right?

00:35:01.520 | You guys have basically, you spent the last, you know, decade in this industry

00:35:06.160 | trying to figure out how it all works and reporting and from every angle, and now

00:35:10.120 | you're actually on the ground building a new card and thinking about it with all

00:35:13.560 | that perspective.

00:35:14.360 | So I touched on it briefly, right?

00:35:16.760 | We talked about in a past episode, I think it was Brian Kelly.

00:35:20.200 | He mentioned built, we talked about how it earns points on rent, but maybe give a

00:35:23.720 | quick recap of, you know, what the card does and kind of who it's for.

00:35:27.920 | Yeah.

00:35:28.720 | So built rewards is a standalone loyalty program.

00:35:31.960 | Anybody can participate in the built rewards loyalty program.

00:35:35.120 | If you live in the built rewards Alliance.

00:35:37.720 | So we've gone out and partnered with the largest real estate companies in the

00:35:41.880 | world.

00:35:42.160 | We have 2 million apartments in the United States.

00:35:44.160 | Now that are in the built rewards Alliance.

00:35:45.800 | If you download our app and pay your landlord through our app, and they're all

00:35:49.680 | directly integrated with this, we give you 250 points a month, cost nothing.

00:35:53.360 | There's no fees.

00:35:54.200 | We just want to give you something where you previously got nothing.

00:35:58.120 | Need the card.

00:35:58.840 | That's just the loyalty program.

00:36:01.000 | And what's happening is, and why the landlords and real estate people are so

00:36:04.360 | excited is it's really expensive in many markets to find new qualified

00:36:09.080 | tenants or to retain tenants.

00:36:10.600 | There's been no marketing lever that they can pull to say, resign a lease with

00:36:14.560 | us, except for giving cash out of their pockets.

00:36:16.640 | And it's paying a broker a month's rent, a month and a half rent to

00:36:20.600 | go and find a new tenant.

00:36:21.720 | Now they can issue built points.

00:36:23.240 | So if you're saying 250 points, isn't a lot like that's not really going to get

00:36:26.200 | me anything.

00:36:26.720 | I'll tell you what the points are worth in a little bit, but the landlords can

00:36:30.040 | say, Hey, if you resign this lease, here's 20,000 points.

00:36:32.720 | If you refer a friend to this building, we'll give you 20,000 points or

00:36:35.680 | whatever the landlord wants to issue.

00:36:37.280 | If they have really want to attract somebody 50,000 bill points to come

00:36:40.400 | and sign a lease, sorry, you had a maintenance issue.

00:36:42.320 | We had no way to make that right now.

00:36:44.400 | We're going to issue you 5,000 points and say, we're sorry that, you know,

00:36:47.120 | something in your apartment broke.

00:36:48.360 | And the landlords are like, Holy smokes, this is great.

00:36:50.680 | This is a universal loyalty program to attract and retain residents.

00:36:53.960 | We're all in to the point that some of them are now investors with us.

00:36:56.480 | But on top of that, we wanted to supersize earning ability and we

00:37:01.360 | created the built mastercard and this is a no annual fee card open to soon

00:37:06.200 | to be open to anybody in the United States.

00:37:08.160 | We've had it on a wait list for now, while we really perfect the product

00:37:11.240 | that's been out for less than a year.

00:37:12.840 | But very soon, almost everybody in the United States will be able to

00:37:16.360 | apply for the built rewards card.

00:37:18.120 | No annual fee card earns one X points on rent.

00:37:20.360 | No matter where you live in the country, any landlord, you can pay.

00:37:23.280 | You can pay in the built rewards app and we will mail your

00:37:26.400 | landlord, a physical check.

00:37:27.960 | Now you can use your built rewards, mastercard as an

00:37:31.320 | ACH and pay your landlord.

00:37:33.000 | Again, any landlord, any portal, rent cafe, click, pay all these things.

00:37:36.400 | We'll give you a routing and checking account number that will

00:37:39.080 | charge to your bill card earn one X points on rent, two X points on

00:37:42.160 | travel and three X points on dining.

00:37:43.880 | And it's a world elite card with all kinds of crazy benefits that are

00:37:48.000 | really quite absurd for a no fee card.

00:37:50.240 | But in the end, we want to give people something where

00:37:52.560 | previously they got nothing.

00:37:53.680 | I don't know how many people ask you, can they pay their rent with a

00:37:56.120 | credit card and you're like, yeah, but the fee's going to, you know,

00:37:58.680 | wipe away any value that you get.

00:38:00.200 | Well, I mean, now it's possible.

00:38:01.680 | So we're really excited about what we've done.

00:38:04.360 | Yeah.

00:38:05.280 | I've gotten that question plenty of times.

00:38:07.080 | And the answer is always, no, it's never worth it until now.

00:38:10.120 | So card makes total sense.

00:38:12.320 | You pay rent, you should have the card.

00:38:14.080 | What about people who don't pay rent?

00:38:16.520 | What about people who own their home?

00:38:17.720 | I know a lot of people listening own homes.

00:38:19.640 | Yeah.

00:38:19.960 | And I get asked 3,748.5 times a day.

00:38:24.600 | Can I pay my mortgage with this?

00:38:25.880 | And the answer so far is not yet.

00:38:28.320 | There's 109 million renters in the United States, and that is more than enough

00:38:32.360 | customers to try and go after for right now.

00:38:34.320 | But I, but I want to let everybody know that we've heard the feedback loud and

00:38:37.640 | clear, and we would love to make that happen.

00:38:39.280 | And it's something we talk about regularly, but for now, just your

00:38:42.040 | personal rent that you can pay, you know, zero one, two, three value

00:38:47.240 | proposition is the same as the Chase Sapphire preferred that gives one X

00:38:50.160 | points and I'll spend two X on travel and three X on dining, but they charge

00:38:53.840 | a $95 annual fee and we have the same and some different slash better

00:38:57.960 | transfer partners than they do.

00:38:59.360 | So to everybody that says the Chase Sapphire preferred is my go-to card.

00:39:02.840 | It's a great, it's a great card, but why would you not go to our card?

00:39:06.440 | But it's no annual fee.

00:39:07.240 | You're in the same amount of points and have access to American

00:39:10.440 | Airlines as a transfer partner.

00:39:12.200 | And it's a good conversation to get back and forth into.

00:39:14.360 | My motto has really been, we're going to wear you down.

00:39:16.640 | When we first came out in June, we continue to iterate and make

00:39:19.440 | the program better and better.

00:39:20.600 | I want to hear all the feedback.

00:39:22.120 | I listen all the time.

00:39:23.040 | I keep my head to the ground with the formal world.

00:39:25.200 | I was in to hear what people are saying and the arguments

00:39:27.160 | for and against the bill card.

00:39:28.360 | And we're constantly iterating and we're coming out with some really

00:39:32.200 | exciting new things over the next couple of months that it's going

00:39:35.680 | to be like resistance is futile.

00:39:37.200 | Like eventually the quiz is going to be like, okay, like they've worn me down.

00:39:40.200 | Like I gotta be a part of this and have access to all the great

00:39:42.640 | things that the, that the card's doing.

00:39:44.240 | Yeah.

00:39:45.520 | And you mentioned American, which I think is interesting because I've

00:39:48.840 | always had this attitude of, I want to make sure I have points everywhere,

00:39:51.360 | because if I want to take a trip in a certain place, I want to be able to do it.

00:39:54.280 | And American's been the hardest to earn points on, in my opinion.

00:39:58.360 | But there used to be these great offers for American cards.

00:40:01.160 | And I remember it used to be able to sign up for all three in one day

00:40:04.280 | and not, and only get one credit check gone, gone.

00:40:06.880 | I think are those days.

00:40:07.960 | And, and then right now with super low interest rates, I've used

00:40:11.360 | Basque bank to put some money in so that I earned a few American

00:40:14.440 | airlines points each month.

00:40:15.640 | But this is interesting because I think the lead value prop might

00:40:20.080 | turn some people away for, I don't have rent.

00:40:22.400 | It is a place where if you want for no annual fee to start earning some

00:40:25.600 | points that you can get into American, that's great, but where else can you use.

00:40:28.400 | Yeah.

00:40:29.800 | So we have seven airline, uh, transfer partners, all one to one.

00:40:33.200 | So American aeroplane, Hawaiian airlines, Virgin points, Turkish miles

00:40:37.800 | and smiles and Emirates skywards, uh, as well as flying blue and then two hotel

00:40:42.200 | partners, we have all three alliances covered plus Emirates, which is not

00:40:45.160 | an Alliance, but it has a pretty, uh, expansive and global network.

00:40:48.400 | And then between IHG and high, it's pretty much anywhere you go in the world.

00:40:52.480 | You could use bill points to book a free hotel night.

00:40:54.440 | So really exciting list of transfer partners and I'm not going to spill any

00:40:58.480 | beans, but I'll just let you know, we're never done with that list and we'll,

00:41:01.080 | we'll continue working to try and make it, make it more robust and more exciting.

00:41:05.200 | So you, you mentioned earlier, one of the problems with all these card issuers is

00:41:09.280 | that they're doing completely unsustainable things and until the bill card, paying

00:41:13.640 | rent with a credit card, any landlord that offered that would just be losing money.

00:41:18.160 | And, and as a consumer using sites like plastic, which would go pay your rent

00:41:22.400 | and, and then, you know, you're paying a fee.

00:41:24.280 | So how is this sustainable?

00:41:26.040 | Yeah, everybody, everybody asks us, how are you making money?

00:41:29.040 | So, um, let's think about all the different revenue streams that we have.

00:41:33.640 | Number one, we have a credit card, which means we get the interchange.

00:41:36.840 | Every time you swipe it, people pay interchange for that card.

00:41:40.560 | And that's how card issuers make money.

00:41:41.920 | Second, we have our real estate people that are buying bill points to issue

00:41:46.800 | to new current prospective residents.

00:41:49.040 | So it's landlord funded loyalty program on top of interchange.

00:41:52.440 | And then the aspirational award for us is you can actually redeem bill

00:41:56.320 | points for the down payment on a house.

00:41:58.360 | We can make homeownership a reality for renters.

00:42:01.080 | And we do that not only by being able to use points for the covering

00:42:04.080 | and down payment on mortgage, but we also report all of your on-time rent

00:42:07.400 | payments to all three credit bureaus, which every landlord in the country can

00:42:10.800 | do now, but 98% do not because what do they care?

00:42:14.440 | There's nothing in it for them.

00:42:16.200 | And that's going to increase your credit score significantly, which

00:42:18.240 | makes, uh, you qualify for a much more favorable mortgage and saves you

00:42:22.040 | thousands over the course of buying a home.

00:42:24.280 | Um, and with that comes the ability to be a mortgage originator and the

00:42:29.800 | mortgage origination business is huge and a very, um, profitable business

00:42:34.680 | to be in if you do it correctly.

00:42:36.280 | So between the interchange, between being a mortgage originator and between

00:42:40.680 | landlords funding the program, this is very sustainable and it's one of the

00:42:43.960 | first questions I had for our founder, when I went and met him and heard about

00:42:47.200 | this is like, I want to be something that's part of a sustainable business.

00:42:50.960 | I don't want to be hopping businesses in six months and I don't want to be on

00:42:54.320 | the current VC hamster wheel of show growth at all costs, despite if you're

00:42:57.840 | losing millions of dollars, you just need to show growth to get to the next

00:43:00.760 | round of funding, like I just didn't want to be a part of that personally.

00:43:03.200 | We did one round of fundraising last year.

00:43:05.240 | We might do another, but we don't necessarily have to.

00:43:08.160 | That's a sustainable business model and we're excited about it.

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00:46:01.320 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:46:04.680 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:46:07.520 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners,

00:46:12.200 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:46:15.480 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:46:18.920 | So one of the things you guys do that I think is fascinating is I've never seen

00:46:22.920 | a bit of content from Amex or Chase or Capital One saying, "Hey, here's how to

00:46:28.040 | get the most value out of these points."

00:46:29.520 | I feel like I'm always being pushed to use them in the worst way as possible.

00:46:32.960 | "Hey, you can use your points for this terrible redemption, buy gift cards

00:46:36.960 | online," but they're never walking you through how to transfer

00:46:40.240 | your points to other airlines.

00:46:41.440 | And I've seen a couple of videos you put out saying, "Hey, let me walk you

00:46:44.880 | through how you could use your points to get to Europe for almost nothing."

00:46:49.040 | That's one example, but I'd love if you can share how should people do this?

00:46:53.160 | What is the advice you give to your cardholders on how to maximize points

00:46:57.520 | with so many transfer partners that the average person doesn't want to log

00:47:01.000 | onto all seven sites and say, "Okay, what's it cost if I use this person

00:47:04.880 | or this airline, or if I transfer to Flying Blue, then I book on Delta?"

00:47:08.560 | It's a tough game that I used to tell people you could sign up for all these

00:47:13.440 | paid services, or you can go one by one.

00:47:15.880 | Is there an easy answer that you have for people?

00:47:18.400 | The easy answer is unfortunately no, but we're trying hard.

00:47:23.680 | So we've done a couple of things like you mentioned.

00:47:26.120 | If you go into our app, there's a flights tab where I've curated a bunch of

00:47:29.080 | content that's separated out by airline.

00:47:31.120 | It says, if you want to fly this airline, whether it's a partner of ours or not,

00:47:34.040 | click on that tile that we have in our app.

00:47:36.040 | And I've very quickly with screenshots showing you how to fly it.

00:47:38.760 | So JetBlue is not a transfer partner of ours, but you can fly in

00:47:41.840 | with BuiltPoints through Emirates.

00:47:43.240 | If you want to fly JetBlue, click on the JetBlue tile and very

00:47:45.560 | quickly, I tell you how to do that.

00:47:46.760 | The next thing we've done is we have a real-time award search functionality

00:47:50.920 | in the BuiltRewards app now.

00:47:52.040 | Right now we have American and AeroPlan on it.

00:47:54.160 | So if you search any route in the world, it will instantly show you

00:47:56.680 | both AeroPlan and American results.

00:47:59.040 | All you have to do is tab between them in the app and we're working hard to get

00:48:01.840 | our other partners involved in that.

00:48:03.400 | So that's an easy way to do one search and see at least Star Alliance and One

00:48:06.640 | World availability as quick as you can.

00:48:09.000 | But the end results of all of this and basically everything we've talked

00:48:13.320 | about today is if you want something really good, it's going to

00:48:16.360 | take a little bit of effort.

00:48:17.320 | And what my job is, and one of them is to make that effort minimal, but

00:48:20.880 | it is going to take some effort.

00:48:23.320 | Um, so through the content, through the videos that we're putting out and

00:48:26.960 | through this new real-time award availability search, we feel like

00:48:29.600 | we're on the right path and again, for being less than a year old.

00:48:32.360 | And as you said, nobody other, nobody else is trying to educate their

00:48:35.360 | members on how to maximize points.

00:48:37.160 | We feel like we're in a good spot and we're on the right path to making it easy.

00:48:39.880 | And can people do that in your app and search American and AeroPlan

00:48:43.520 | availability if they don't have the card?

00:48:45.080 | Is that something anyone can do?

00:48:46.080 | Again, anybody can download the BuiltRewards app and read all of our

00:48:48.800 | content, but you will have to join in order to get the logged in experience.

00:48:52.040 | But all of the content and that search feature is available if you're not logged

00:48:56.240 | in and you haven't created an account.

00:48:57.800 | So we just want to be a resource.

00:48:59.360 | So whether you're like, I'm not a renter, but this sounds interesting,

00:49:01.880 | or I want to learn how to use these programs, like download the BuiltRewards

00:49:04.960 | app and take a look at all the content and tools that we've created there.

00:49:07.640 | And you've been in this space a long time outside of the BuiltRewards app.

00:49:11.360 | If someone comes to you and says, "God, I got all these Amex and Chase points."

00:49:13.880 | What's your advice to them on how to, how to not get stuck redeeming

00:49:18.400 | them at, at terrible valuations?

00:49:21.000 | Yeah, there's some new technology coming out.

00:49:23.240 | This one that you, you brought it out to me, card pointers.

00:49:25.800 | I feel like there, there are dozens of people out there making great

00:49:29.800 | products to make all of this simpler.

00:49:31.480 | Um, some of the ones I'd recommend, the card curator app is a great one

00:49:36.000 | that'll guide you in how to do these points in a simple process.

00:49:39.040 | Max rewards is another product out there.

00:49:41.720 | That's helping folks make this simpler.

00:49:43.440 | And then there's some new technology not released yet that I'm excited

00:49:45.880 | about probably in the next six months.

00:49:47.280 | That will be public facing.

00:49:48.520 | That will basically tell you in real time, Hey, this is how you can use your

00:49:51.800 | points to go where you want to go.

00:49:53.040 | And you just tell them what points you have.

00:49:54.480 | So the easy answer is to go check out some of these

00:49:57.080 | technologies that I've just mentioned.

00:49:58.480 | Um, the hard answer is go to Google and search best way to use X points.

00:50:03.080 | And I'm sure the points guy article that maybe I wrote will be at the top of the

00:50:07.080 | search results, uh, giving you step-by-step breakdown, but again, Probably just like

00:50:12.040 | you, when you have friends and family ask you these questions and you try

00:50:15.080 | and make it as simple as possible.

00:50:16.280 | You can tell pretty quick if their eyes glass over in three seconds, you're

00:50:19.000 | like, I'm going to go ahead and stop.

00:50:20.020 | Or some people they light up and they go, wait, there really is something here.

00:50:23.400 | This is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

00:50:25.200 | Like this is something I can get excited about.

00:50:28.120 | I think that's a lot of people listening here.

00:50:29.720 | Hey everybody.

00:50:31.000 | I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with point dot me, my

00:50:34.120 | favorite award search tool to give you a special offer of only $1 for your

00:50:38.760 | first month of their standard plan.

00:50:40.640 | If you go to all the hacks.com/point me and use the promo code hacks again,

00:50:47.120 | all the hacks.com/P O I N T M E, or find the link in the show notes.

00:50:53.840 | So definitely take advantage of that.

00:50:55.680 | If you're planning a trip with points, do you have, you know,

00:50:58.680 | favorite redemptions right now?

00:51:00.280 | Things that, you know, despite all the devaluations and dynamic pricing that

00:51:04.560 | are just the sweet spots and in the award charts, yeah, a hundred percent

00:51:08.520 | Turkish miles and smiles to fly United specifically to Hawaii for 7,500 miles.

00:51:13.360 | That's 7,500 bill points or city.

00:51:16.520 | Thank you.

00:51:16.800 | Points transferred to Turkish.

00:51:18.000 | You can go to Hawaii and then you can fly Turkish themselves, which is an

00:51:21.560 | amazing product to Istanbul, like 33,000 points in business class from the East

00:51:25.880 | coast to Turkey, out of all their destinations, if you haven't slept on

00:51:29.200 | the Turkish miles and smiles program, now's the time to wake up and either

00:51:32.080 | fly United or fly Turkish with it.

00:51:33.800 | Beyond that American web specials, the Delta flash sales.

00:51:38.000 | If you don't have that page bookmarked that they update all the time, just

00:51:41.240 | really great domestic and international deals all the time, probably be the

00:51:45.680 | top three that I would tell folks that are most relevant that they need to check out.

00:51:48.840 | Any good deals on Emirates for people who have been buying

00:51:51.240 | that Emirates first-class experience.

00:51:53.000 | Back in the days of when Alaska charged very reasonable amounts of

00:51:57.840 | miles to fly them, it was a lot easier.

00:51:59.720 | Now it's just going to cost you a lot to skywards credit.

00:52:04.400 | They eliminated fuel surcharges, which took the program out of complete

00:52:08.320 | irrelevancy to now very relevant program.

00:52:10.400 | If you want to do Emirates first-class taking their fifth freedoms from Newark

00:52:14.200 | and JFK to Milan and Athens, it's going to be your best bet to do that under

00:52:17.440 | 200,000, uh, skywards miles, uh, or transfer from chase or transfer from

00:52:21.600 | MX or transfer from built to make that round trip, um, it's going to be your

00:52:24.640 | best bets.

00:52:25.360 | The other only thing I'll say about that is sometimes quantities can be a

00:52:28.240 | little bit better of a deal, charge a little bit fewer points, and you can

00:52:31.960 | transfer city over to Qantas and take advantage of that.

00:52:35.000 | All right.

00:52:35.320 | And any best redemption stories from your end?

00:52:37.840 | I got a lot.

00:52:39.960 | My very first trip, believe it or not, 2010, when United has favorable award

00:52:44.720 | routing rules that we call stopovers and open jaws, my wife and I flew around the

00:52:48.800 | world in business and first-class for 110,000 United miles by piecing together

00:52:53.160 | all of their, again, the routing rules.

00:52:55.400 | We did Seattle to Hawaii, to Tokyo, to Seoul, to Frankfurt, and then back to

00:53:00.960 | Seattle and Lufthansa first-class and United business class in Asia and a

00:53:06.040 | first-class, and it was just fantastic.

00:53:08.240 | Yes.

00:53:09.480 | And what, what you're talking about for anyone who doesn't know, a lot of

00:53:13.240 | airlines have these rules where if you want to fly, you can add a stopover or

00:53:18.280 | you can change where you're going to and coming from.

00:53:21.520 | So you could book instead of a round trip ticket from San Francisco to

00:53:25.400 | Frankfurt and back, you could go to Frankfurt and fly back from Milan, or

00:53:29.200 | you can stop over on your way there.

00:53:31.680 | And sometimes you can, not every airline still has these, you know, kind of great

00:53:35.160 | rules, but some of them do still, I don't know if you remember which ones do now,

00:53:38.680 | but you can still take advantage of them.

00:53:40.080 | You can add stopovers to an airplane ticket for 5,000 airplane points.

00:53:43.520 | Airplane is their newly redesigned.

00:53:46.000 | One of those programs that's headed in the right direction and just did a

00:53:48.440 | fantastic job in the redesign.

00:53:50.200 | If you're not familiar with the ins and outs, we're familiar at all with

00:53:52.320 | airplane, please go read up on that.

00:53:54.120 | Great articles out there explaining how you can get just tons of value by seeing

00:53:58.680 | multiple destinations on one ticket by using stopovers and open draws.

00:54:02.280 | It's fantastic.

00:54:03.000 | And they're transfer partners of you got chase and built and American express.

00:54:08.800 | Yeah.

00:54:09.680 | So a lot of options to get in there.

00:54:11.720 | A lot of people always tell me, gosh, Amex doesn't go to United.

00:54:14.680 | And I like to fly United and I'm like, Ooh, they go to aeroplane.

00:54:17.640 | They got United inventory.

00:54:19.600 | So don't forget that if you have a card that has access to an

00:54:22.640 | Alliance, it's not always perfect.

00:54:24.480 | Sometimes you might rather have American points than British airways points, but

00:54:28.160 | you can use BA to book on American.

00:54:30.120 | And sometimes for, I don't know if it's still the case, but BA used to be so

00:54:33.760 | good for these short flights, but if the availability is there, it's still a great

00:54:38.440 | deal, a hundred percent.

00:54:39.320 | Yeah.

00:54:40.400 | Cool.

00:54:41.040 | Quick few things before we go travel hacks, like outside of award booking,

00:54:46.600 | you've been to dozens of countries.

00:54:48.640 | I don't, I don't know how big the list is at this point, but what have you picked

00:54:51.840 | up both on the traveling, when you get to places, what are your favorite hacks?

00:54:55.960 | Yeah, it all pretty much revolves around the practical is what I like to tell

00:55:00.240 | people because there are all kinds of advanced things I get in the weeds, but

00:55:02.840 | the practical things of like, how do I get cash?

00:55:04.840 | Where do I do the exchange with the getting screwed on the exchange rate?

00:55:08.320 | So I'll tell you what to do.

00:55:09.440 | I have a USA checking account.

00:55:10.800 | You can, if you don't qualify for USA through military, you can use the Schwab.

00:55:13.800 | I go to a bank ATM in the country and pull out cash in the local currency.

00:55:19.360 | And that way it uses my bank's exchange rate, which is going to be fair.

00:55:22.480 | And it avoids all the shenanigans of exchanging cash at a desk or

00:55:26.040 | with one of these airport folks.

00:55:27.200 | And I do not use the bank or the ATM at the airport.

00:55:29.960 | I always go to the hotel and then find the most local or closest ATM, use

00:55:34.200 | my ATM card and pull out cash there.

00:55:36.120 | It's the best way to get cash.

00:55:37.480 | The second practical travel hack or piece of advice is a

00:55:40.720 | dynamic currency conversion, DCC.

00:55:43.080 | This occurs when you go to check out of your hotel in a foreign country.

00:55:46.320 | And it says, Hey, do you want to use us dollars?

00:55:48.120 | Or do you want to use our local currency?

00:55:50.200 | And most Americans go, Oh, sweet.

00:55:51.880 | I'll just do dollars.

00:55:52.720 | Cause I know how much that is.

00:55:54.000 | Don't do that.

00:55:54.960 | Always charge in local currency, because what they do is they use

00:55:59.560 | a very unfavorable exchange rate.

00:56:01.920 | They end up charging you in the local currency anyways, and then your

00:56:04.840 | bank exchange rate gets you again.

00:56:06.480 | So they make like on the order of magnitude of 10% worse than what

00:56:10.560 | the actual market exchange rate is.

00:56:12.200 | So always select that local currency.

00:56:14.520 | If you're at a restaurant or if you're checking out of a hotel in a foreign

00:56:17.160 | country, now it's called the dynamic currency conversion.

00:56:19.840 | I don't want to say it's a scam, but it is a revenue center to do that.

00:56:26.360 | It's always local currency.

00:56:27.360 | Anything else when you get to a city, how you make sure

00:56:29.600 | you have the best experience.

00:56:30.680 | One of the amazing things about the points and miles community

00:56:33.640 | is pretty much everywhere you go.

00:56:35.040 | Somebody is either there that's happy to help you, or somebody

00:56:38.280 | has detailed explanations of how they did it, things to see and things to avoid.

00:56:42.520 | So just after so many years in the community, you're very lucky that

00:56:46.160 | there's forums and places to put out a, Hey, help me post in again.

00:56:50.000 | People will jump to the rescue.

00:56:51.320 | The biggest hack for that is become a part of this community.

00:56:53.600 | There are multiple Facebook groups that you can go and join is where

00:56:56.680 | I would tell you to start, go and check out the travel on points.

00:56:59.960 | Go and check out miles to memories, Facebook group, the

00:57:02.360 | frequent miler Facebook group.

00:57:03.840 | If you're not on Facebook, you can head to the Reddit community.

00:57:07.680 | Reddit credit cards is a great place to go and check out and meet

00:57:10.920 | folks and then flyer talk.com.

00:57:12.920 | So the best way I do that is literally going to one of these communities

00:57:15.920 | and saying either searching for that city and somebody's written up a

00:57:18.600 | detailed, awesome experience or asking, Hey, I'm going to be going here.

00:57:22.080 | Does anybody have any tips?

00:57:23.000 | And people are more than willing to help out.

00:57:25.680 | That's the typical strategy.

00:57:27.080 | Yeah.

00:57:28.040 | I'm in a lot of those communities too, and we're going to be kicking one off

00:57:31.320 | for, for all the hacks here sometime in 2022, you mentioned a lot of forums.

00:57:35.360 | What about any, any blogs that you love people, people in the

00:57:38.840 | community that others should follow?

00:57:40.600 | Yeah, a hundred percent.

00:57:41.880 | We, we mentioned Gary earlier.

00:57:44.200 | He's a borderline savant when it comes to the travel and loyalty industry, like

00:57:48.640 | literally from a nuts and bolts perspective, if you really want to

00:57:51.640 | understand the inner workings of these things, you need to go and

00:57:54.000 | read view from over by Gary.

00:57:55.560 | And if you're just a crazy points and miles, I'm going to extract maximum

00:58:00.160 | value of earning and redeeming points.

00:58:02.160 | Greg and Nick over at the frequent miler is a daily must read.

00:58:06.120 | And then, uh, somebody that kind of takes, uh, a little bit of

00:58:08.800 | storytelling along with the, the nuts and bolts that are the folks over

00:58:12.640 | miles to memories that you got to follow.

00:58:14.400 | So between those three sites, you're pretty much going to get everything

00:58:17.440 | that you need on a daily basis.

00:58:18.960 | And really the boarding area network as a whole of which these bloggers all

00:58:22.360 | belong to the same network, boarding area.com.

00:58:24.800 | Just get plugged in, spend a little bit of time.

00:58:26.760 | Don't get overwhelmed.

00:58:27.640 | Read something that catches your interest.

00:58:29.920 | And sure enough, I he'll be down that rabbit hole with

00:58:32.320 | the rest of us in no time.

00:58:33.400 | Yeah.

00:58:34.400 | I'll link to all those in the show notes.

00:58:35.960 | You mentioned some hacks that just broadly for, for cities.

00:58:39.040 | What about your hometown?

00:58:40.000 | You live in Atlanta.

00:58:40.840 | I'm curious, what do you, what would you tell someone listening?

00:58:43.200 | Who's taking their first trip to Atlanta that they should make

00:58:46.040 | sure they check off the list.

00:58:47.200 | Besides checking out a world champion, Atlanta Braves baseball game, which I

00:58:52.160 | always recommend up at the new stadium.

00:58:53.680 | It's a great time.

00:58:54.240 | Atlanta, I would say five years ago as a place where people said, Hey, I want to

00:58:57.480 | come to a weekend trip in Atlanta.

00:58:58.760 | I would have been like, eh, probably not.

00:59:00.040 | Like it's just not a weekend spot to do, but Atlanta has done a great

00:59:03.800 | job of turning itself around the food scene, the revitalization of

00:59:07.880 | places like underground Atlanta, the pond city market are great places.

00:59:12.120 | You check out, we have everything Martin Luther King and the civil

00:59:15.640 | rights site and museum to go.

00:59:17.040 | And those sites to see, we have the largest aquarium in the world, the

00:59:20.520 | world of Coca-Cola, the college football hall of fame, like it's all right down

00:59:25.440 | there and plenty of things to go and see.

00:59:27.840 | So those are some of the top attractions that I think is worthwhile.

00:59:30.800 | And as far as the eats go every week and new restaurants popping up in Atlanta,

00:59:34.800 | that's the new hottest upcoming chef.

00:59:36.760 | Also the Georgia film industry has completely taken off outside of LA.

00:59:40.680 | Georgia is now the number two spot in the country for doing a movie and TV show.

00:59:45.280 | There's always celebrities in town, filming something to places, booming, man.

00:59:48.800 | Um, so I would go and check it out to a favorite restaurants.

00:59:52.520 | Marcel is a French restaurant.

00:59:54.080 | Please make reservations far in advance.

00:59:55.800 | You want to go check that out and bring your significant other

00:59:58.240 | there for a great night.

00:59:59.120 | And then, uh, Yebo beach house, Y E B O up in the city of Buckhead, where all

01:00:04.080 | the brand new hotels, the Thompson Buckhead has just opened the Hyatt

01:00:07.440 | centric Buckhead has just opened the Yebo beach house, go and get some

01:00:10.960 | amazing South African fair there.

01:00:13.200 | And you can actually walk there from the new Thompson hotel.

01:00:15.440 | It's going to be a great evening.

01:00:16.480 | So Atlanta on the up and up, man, we're excited.

01:00:18.920 | Awesome.

01:00:19.400 | This has been fantastic.

01:00:20.800 | I'm sure there's going to be some questions out of this.

01:00:22.560 | We might have to have to bring it back on or do a followup, but where can people

01:00:26.720 | find everything you're working on online?

01:00:28.680 | Yeah, of course.

01:00:29.800 | Again, download the built rewards app and check out everything we're doing there.

01:00:32.640 | But you can find me at Kerr points, K E R R on Instagram and

01:00:36.640 | Twitter is where I am most active.

01:00:38.560 | Love to hear the feedback.

01:00:40.280 | Great, bad, and ugly about built rewards.

01:00:42.680 | But also I talk points and miles and travel 24, seven, and I

01:00:47.200 | post my travel adventures.

01:00:48.640 | That sounds great.

01:00:49.280 | Thank you so much for being here.

01:00:50.440 | My absolute pleasure, man.

01:00:51.800 | Thanks.

01:00:52.160 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:00:56.000 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:00:57.480 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple

01:01:01.080 | podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it, especially Spotify

01:01:05.720 | since they just added podcast ratings.

01:01:08.000 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say

01:01:11.720 | hi, I'm Chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:01:16.280 | That's it for this week.

01:01:17.560 | I'll see you next week.

01:01:27.720 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

01:01:31.920 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

01:01:35.680 | It's called the personal finance podcast, and it's much more about building

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01:01:43.720 | about clipping coupons to save a dollar.

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01:01:50.080 | world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show.

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01:01:55.120 | I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022, but recently I listened

01:02:00.640 | to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind.

01:02:04.760 | And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating

01:02:09.720 | in their employer's retirement plan.

01:02:11.360 | And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared.

01:02:15.000 | The personal finance podcast has something for everyone.

01:02:17.960 | It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better

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01:02:25.360 | Just search for the personal finance podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or

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