Maximize Your Points: Stacking, Buyers Clubs, Redemption Hacks, and More

00:00:00.000 | If I understand this right, I can book a North America flight, even if it's a short distance,

00:00:04.080 | like San Francisco to LA, which sometimes is only 7,500 miles. And then at a date after that,

00:00:10.480 | I can book a one-way ticket, even if it connects within one region. So like you said, Cape Town

00:00:17.040 | to Kenya or to the Seychelles, places where flights are really expensive.

00:00:21.200 | And then a date after that, just book another flight within North America, LA back to San

00:00:27.200 | Francisco. Don't even have to take it. Could conceivably get both your North America flights

00:00:32.960 | and the international flight for potentially 15,000 or less miles.

00:00:37.760 | Yep.

00:00:39.680 | That's amazing. Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:43.600 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited

00:00:48.400 | you're joining me today for a conversation all about points and miles with none other

00:00:53.680 | than Julia Menez. She's the host of the Point Strategy Podcast, GeoBreeze Travel,

00:00:58.800 | where she interviews travelers from all walks of life about their points and miles tactics.

00:01:03.680 | I know I've learned some great points hacks from her, so it's awesome she's here today.

00:01:07.920 | We're going to talk about using buyers groups to earn points without increasing your budget,

00:01:13.360 | stacking deals to get more points, her best cards, Chase's 5/24 rules, some sweet spots

00:01:20.080 | to maximize your points, when it makes sense to buy points or put your taxes on a credit card,

00:01:25.440 | and a lot more. So let's jump in.

00:01:27.840 | Julia, thank you for being here.

00:01:35.520 | Hey, I'm so excited to be here and to chat about points and miles with you.

00:01:39.840 | One of my favorite topics. Julia and I, we actually met, for those listening,

00:01:45.920 | at a conference called FinCon, where we were both up for the best new personal finance podcast.

00:01:51.040 | Yours for GeoBreeze Travel and all the hacks for me. Both of us lost, but we both won this

00:01:56.560 | friendship. And I'm excited that we got that chance to meet because I've actually... Some

00:02:01.360 | of the things I want to talk about today are points and miles tactics that I had not learned

00:02:06.000 | about until following you. So I am really excited for this conversation. I just want to jump in

00:02:12.400 | and start talking about earning points. So I think one of the topics that I want to start us with

00:02:18.560 | is one I get a lot of emails about. And after I published a post about my trip to Bora Bora,

00:02:24.800 | the first question from a dozen people was, "Well, that's cool. But

00:02:28.400 | 500,000 points to go on a trip is a lot. How do you get them?"

00:02:32.160 | And I have my tactics, but I want to hear from you.

00:02:36.640 | How do you help people think about starting to earn points on a smaller budget?

00:02:40.640 | Yeah. So the signup bonuses are going to be how most people are going to earn

00:02:44.480 | most of their points. So obviously a lot of people are familiar with the signup bonuses.

00:02:48.560 | You spent maybe $3,000. In the first three months of opening your car, you're going to get 50 or

00:02:53.840 | 60,000 points. That's where a lot of your points are going to come from. But a lot of people will

00:02:59.200 | react to this and be like, "Okay, but I don't have like $3,000 of stuff that I need to buy.

00:03:04.640 | We are on a pretty tight budget. What do I do? Do I just not get the signup bonus?"

00:03:09.840 | But there's lots of ways around that. If you have a smaller budget, it's going to be really

00:03:14.800 | important to find some kind of source of reimbursable spend. And this can be as simple

00:03:20.000 | as you pay for dinner for a whole bunch of people and everybody Venmo's you back. That way you get

00:03:26.400 | the points for putting the spend on your credit card, but it doesn't really affect your bank

00:03:31.600 | account because other people are paying you back. You can plan parties. I know that we just talked

00:03:37.120 | on my podcast about you planned a whole bunch of bachelor parties for people in Mexico and got

00:03:45.360 | reimbursable spend that way. So you can earn a ton of points by doing that. You can put work travel

00:03:52.000 | on your card if your job allows it or any work-related expenses, and then just fill out

00:03:56.640 | an expense report. If you're a teacher, we have an episode, I think it's episode 56,

00:04:04.880 | featuring Zach from Travel Freely. And he was a teacher and had a very small budget,

00:04:11.440 | but wanted to earn more points. But he was also the tennis coach at that school. So all of their

00:04:18.160 | team trips, he would just put it on his card and then fill out an expense report and get reimbursed

00:04:23.200 | for it. So finding some kind of reimbursable spend is really cool. One of the more advanced ways that

00:04:31.280 | people do this is through something called buying groups, which basically there are people who

00:04:38.560 | like to resale at scale. Think like PlayStations, Apple products, cell phones, things like that.

00:04:48.640 | Most of the time, if there's a really good sale on an iPhone or an iPad, you're going to be limited

00:04:56.720 | for how many you can buy. You can't just run into Best Buy and be like, give me all your iPads. I'm

00:05:01.760 | going to resell them right before Christmas, or give me all your PlayStation fives. I'm going to

00:05:06.800 | price gouge everybody on eBay who wants this for Christmas for their kid. And so since you're

00:05:13.280 | limited for how many you can buy, some people outsource the buying to other people where they'll

00:05:20.560 | say, hey, I am wanting to resell iPads. I'm offering this much. Get me an iPad, ship it to

00:05:29.440 | my place, and I will reimburse you. And so then you go out and source all of these different

00:05:35.520 | electronics, ship it to their address, and they pay you back. So this is a way that some people

00:05:41.520 | in the points world get a lot of spend. There's lots of different channels that do this for buying

00:05:46.880 | groups. Some of them are like PFS, NYS Buyers Club, Buy For Me Retail. We have a whole master

00:05:54.960 | class about the pros and cons of each one and where you can source all of these different

00:05:59.920 | products that you then ship to these different places. But the general mechanics are they put

00:06:06.640 | out basically an ad that says, we're buying this. Here's how much we'll reimburse you for. And then

00:06:12.480 | you try to source that item at a lower cost so that you're not losing money and then ship it

00:06:17.280 | directly to them, and they'll pay you back. Do they usually pay more than it would cost?

00:06:22.480 | So there's different ways that can be done. Some of them actually pay a pretty hefty commission. So

00:06:28.640 | PFS mostly sources like collectible gold coins from the U.S. Mint. If a coin is going to come

00:06:35.680 | out, they're not going to be able to get more than one. So they say, okay, everybody buy one

00:06:41.600 | of this coin and we'll pay you the cost of the coin if it's like $3,000 for a collectible or

00:06:47.040 | something plus $200 commission. These deals are super rare, but that's the one that will actually

00:06:53.040 | pay a lot more. Some other ones, they pay a little bit less than you might just be able to get with

00:06:58.800 | a store price. But if you're using that expense to meet a minimum spend on your credit card where

00:07:05.360 | you're going to be getting $800 of travel vouchers or something, 60,000 points, it could be worth it

00:07:13.920 | if they say, well, I could buy these for like $3,000. They're only reimbursing me like $2,900

00:07:24.400 | or something, but I'm going to get 50,000 points out of it. It could be worth it. There's also

00:07:30.560 | other tricks to help make it a little bit better of a return on investment for you called stacking,

00:07:36.320 | where if you are clicking through Rakuten and earning some more shopping portal points

00:07:41.120 | for buying this PlayStation or this electronic, then that helps to bring your cost down as well.

00:07:47.040 | So that can help make up for the gap. You're also putting it ideally on a

00:07:50.640 | credit card that earns points. And I want to come back to point stacking,

00:07:54.800 | but buyers groups, it sounds like there needs to be some trust here. I see an ad on the internet

00:08:01.200 | that says, "Send all the iPads you want to this random address in this warehouse and we'll for

00:08:06.880 | sure send you back money." Are they reliable? Do you trust them? How do you know that you're not

00:08:13.520 | buying a device that you are going to mail off somewhere and never get paid back?

00:08:18.880 | So they have tracking IDs where they say, "When you order your Amazon thing, put the tracking ID

00:08:25.600 | here. Make sure you add this code into the description on the Amazon so we know how to

00:08:31.280 | pay you back." They have internal tracking and some of them will pay out faster than others

00:08:38.880 | so that you can pay off your credit card before the 30 days. And it'll vary on which ones are

00:08:46.160 | better than others, which ones are more trustworthy. The ones that aren't as trustworthy

00:08:49.840 | will lose their credibility super fast because every points person who's in the buyer groups

00:08:53.760 | is going to start complaining about them. So that's one way is to just be in the points

00:09:00.000 | community and talk to other people about which buyers clubs they're using and which ones have

00:09:06.160 | the best payouts, which ones pay out the fastest, which ones have the best offers,

00:09:10.080 | and then go from there. And when you say be in the community,

00:09:14.720 | where are you learning about all these different buyers clubs?

00:09:16.880 | So I have a Patreon where we have a lot of people who will ask questions on this.

00:09:24.240 | There's also other Patreons who will talk about buying groups. One is called the Points Analyst

00:09:28.880 | on Instagram. He has a Patreon. There's Pack Your Bag with Points. He has a Patreon or a Discord.

00:09:35.360 | And he talks about a lot of these tactics as well. And then there's just a lot of people

00:09:39.200 | on Instagram who advertise that, "Hey, you should use this credit card if you can't meet the minimum

00:09:44.320 | spend. I like to use buying clubs. Here's the ones that I use." So there's a lot of us on

00:09:48.960 | Instagram who talk about buying groups. Okay. I'm going to ask for a handful of

00:09:54.080 | links, including to your content, your masterclass, and I'll put it all in the show notes.

00:09:58.560 | But this sounds like something you could do to earn a meaningful number of points each year.

00:10:03.440 | Is that fair? Oh, of course. Yes.

00:10:05.760 | Some people are putting thousands upon thousands of dollars in this to earn lots of signup bonuses,

00:10:13.600 | just maxing out their 5x categories on Chase Freedom Flex if that comes up. Because

00:10:18.000 | one of the main places that people will source from is Amazon.

00:10:21.440 | If you are getting 5 points per dollar at Amazon, then you're going to meet that 1500 cap

00:10:29.280 | really fast on a Chase Freedom or a Chase Freedom Flex by doing buy your clubs.

00:10:33.200 | For those of you not familiar, the Freedom Flex and the Freedom card may look like cashback cards.

00:10:41.600 | When you look at them online, they say, "We get 5% cashback on these categories each quarter."

00:10:46.240 | But if you also have a Sapphire Preferred or a Sapphire Reserve, you can actually use the

00:10:51.280 | points or the cashback you earn on these cards as points and transfer them places.

00:10:55.920 | So the same goes with the Freedom Unlimited, which I've talked about a lot as a good companion card.

00:11:01.920 | So I'm slowly learning that in almost all of the programs, whether it's Citi or Capital One or

00:11:08.400 | Chase, but not Amex, that if you have cashback cards, you can usually combine the cashback perks

00:11:16.000 | with your rewards card and be able to transfer those points as well.

00:11:20.880 | There's one other app that's really good for meeting minimum spend and getting

00:11:25.920 | reimbursable spend. It's called Grabber. So if you travel to Latin America a lot,

00:11:30.000 | it's spelled G-R-A-B-R, then in Latin America, a lot of the things that we have in the U.S.,

00:11:37.920 | like iPhones, will actually cost more there because of the taxes and everything.

00:11:42.160 | So there will be people who are going to say, "Hey, are there any Americans traveling to this

00:11:47.520 | city in Brazil? I'd like to buy an iPhone. I'm willing to pay this much."

00:11:52.720 | So let's say the price in the U.S. is $1,000. In Brazil, it's going to cost them $1,500.

00:11:58.320 | They might say, "I'm willing to pay $1,250 for an iPhone." Then you put in your bid

00:12:04.080 | and then deliver it to them, meet in a hotel lobby or something in the daytime

00:12:09.360 | so that you don't meet in an alleyway, obviously, as you're turning over the phone.

00:12:14.640 | But they prepay for this. So as soon as you do the exchange, you'll get paid that

00:12:20.800 | reimbursable spend as well. So not only do you get reimbursed, but you also get paid

00:12:26.400 | a commission for delivering this, and the commission should be enough to cover any

00:12:30.080 | kinds of custom taxes that you might have to go through or just the time and effort

00:12:35.280 | for hauling stuff in a bag. Don't bring 25 iPhones into Brazil. That looks sus.

00:12:42.880 | But you can bring a couple iPhones, a couple of other things that people are requesting.

00:12:49.040 | Medical devices sometimes get requested if they just don't have access to them

00:12:53.760 | in those hospitals. So you can bring some medical devices for people in Brazil and

00:12:58.320 | they'll pay a commission for it. So that's another way to get reimbursable spend as well.

00:13:02.480 | And really just pay for a trip to Brazil or Argentina or a lot of other South American

00:13:07.440 | countries if you were planning to travel there anyway.

00:13:09.920 | You talked a little bit about stacking. And I think it would be good

00:13:12.720 | to walk through an extreme example of how valuable this can be. So maybe one of your own that you've

00:13:18.960 | had recently where you're able to stack as many points as you could on a purchase.

00:13:23.760 | Because I think sometimes we think about the most obvious way to earn points is sign up bonuses. You

00:13:29.280 | get these huge bonuses for spend and then your regular day-to-day spend. If you spend a lot on

00:13:34.240 | travel, you spend a lot on groceries, there are cards to maximize that. But every now and then,

00:13:39.760 | you're making a purchase that's large enough that you're like, "Is there another way to maximize?"

00:13:45.040 | And there are. Talk about all the ways that you know that you could stack points together

00:13:50.160 | on an expense. What I like to do for excursions a lot is I'll go to Groupon and then find an

00:13:55.920 | excursion that I want to do. It'll normally be kind of discounted. Well, then I'm going to go

00:14:00.880 | figure out what's the exact amount that I'm going to spend on Groupon. And I'll buy a Groupon gift

00:14:06.400 | card through this app called Flues because they're probably going to give me an extra 5% or 6% back

00:14:12.560 | just for buying their gift card and that I'm going to go use on Groupon.com. But I don't go directly

00:14:18.080 | to Groupon.com. I instead go through Rakuten.com because Rakuten will also give me an extra 5% to

00:14:23.600 | 6% usually for clicking through. I've gotten as high as 18%, I think, if it's like beauty salons

00:14:33.040 | and spas and stuff. So I'm earning credit card points. I'm earning points through Flues. I'm

00:14:39.760 | earning points through Rakuten. And I get a Groupon discount. So that's one example of how

00:14:45.040 | you can stack things. I try not to go super crazy with stacking like 17 steps because that's 17

00:14:53.280 | steps you have to track in each one. Like what if one thing goes wrong? But there's a lot of

00:14:57.680 | different ways to automate the stacking. It's really easy to do this with restaurants. So

00:15:04.800 | you can sign up for airline dining portals, lots of different dining portals. So you just

00:15:11.840 | have to link any credit card that you want. And then when you dine at a partnered restaurant

00:15:16.480 | with that credit card, then you're going to get extra points through this dining portal.

00:15:21.120 | So in New York, we have a lot of restaurants that are in this dining portal. We also have this app

00:15:28.480 | called Seated where you make reservations through this app. You take a picture of your receipt

00:15:33.200 | afterwards to make sure that your reservation is completed. And they will give you 23% back

00:15:42.240 | a lot of the time, sometimes up to 60% back for dining. And if you can do this on a group dinner,

00:15:47.360 | oh, I think I made like $60 in one weekend because everybody else was from out of town.

00:15:53.920 | And so there was the group bill. I took a picture of the full group receipt before we split it up

00:15:59.040 | and earned $60 from some group dinners. So you can stack Seated, you can do the dining portal.

00:16:06.560 | Can you stack different dining portals? How does that work? I know. And for anyone not listening,

00:16:11.120 | a listener, Harish, who's starting a podcast after all the... He heard all the hacks. He was like,

00:16:17.120 | "I want to do this. It'll be called Hacking the American Dream." And he was like, "Do you talk

00:16:23.680 | about dining portals? They're crazy." And so he sent me some screenshots from the Southwest Rapid

00:16:29.920 | Rewards Dining Portal. And he's like, "There's a bunch of restaurants. You might not find all

00:16:34.560 | the restaurants you want to go to and certainly don't only eat at restaurants for points. My

00:16:39.280 | advice is eat for food and go where good food is. If those intersect, that's great. But do you have

00:16:44.640 | to pick one? Or can you say, "I'm going to do the American Dining Portal and the Rapid Rewards

00:16:49.680 | Dining Portal and, and, and?" Normally, you can only choose one per card. So if I'm using my Amex

00:16:56.400 | Gold to get 4x points on dining, I can only link that to one program because most of them are going

00:17:01.920 | to go through the same central place and the same restaurants are on most of the networks. So you

00:17:07.520 | can really just choose one, unfortunately. But you can link it with another app that's kind of

00:17:13.040 | like a dining portal called DOSH, where it's the same idea. You just have to link up your credit

00:17:18.400 | card and then go to a partnered restaurant or shop with a partnered store, pay with that linked

00:17:24.240 | credit card, and then you're going to get some points with DOSH as well. And for super, super

00:17:29.680 | stacks, Episode 7 of the Geo Breeze Travel Podcast features this girl named Angel Trinh.

00:17:36.960 | You can find her on Instagram @pennywisetraveler. And she stacked like 15 things one time in a

00:17:44.080 | group outing. She did like an Uber Eats credit, DOSH, Seated, Dining Portals. I think there was

00:17:53.920 | like a Rakuten thing because she purchased a gift card to use at the restaurant there as well. So

00:17:59.360 | she was stacking so many different tactics for one dinner. So again, that's Episode 7 of the

00:18:07.040 | Geo Breeze Travel Podcast. And that goes into a much more extreme example of how to stack things.

00:18:13.040 | Awesome. Yeah, I have slowly inched my way into stacking. And the way I often do it is

00:18:19.360 | I use Cashback Monitor. So anytime Julia mentioned Rakuten, a lot of people know that

00:18:26.480 | formerly known as Ebates is a portal you can earn cashback when you're shopping online.

00:18:31.360 | Anytime I'm going to make a purchase online that costs maybe over $100, I'll go look and say,

00:18:38.080 | "Is there cashback or points?" And the thing Cashback Monitor does that's really cool

00:18:42.480 | is they'll show you what are the best places for cashback, transferable points, airline points.

00:18:49.040 | So if you're watching on video, you'll see 2 chairs behind me. But in the near future,

00:18:54.160 | you will see a sofa behind me because this recording studio/office will soon become a

00:18:59.680 | guest room as well. And so we needed a sofa bed. And I was like, "Okay, we found the one we liked

00:19:04.640 | at Crate & Barrel." And I was like, "Where can I get points?" And it turns out that, yeah, I could

00:19:09.520 | get half an Emirates point per dollar or a few other places, but I get 3 JetBlue points per

00:19:15.680 | dollar. It was the best deal. So before I bought the couch, I went to JetBlue. I logged in. And I

00:19:23.440 | ended up transferring... Or not transferring, clicking through their link to purchase the

00:19:27.760 | Crate & Barrel couch on crateandbarrel.com, but earning 3 JetBlue points per dollar.

00:19:32.880 | This is a money hack, but you might like it. One thing that I found is there are a lot of ways

00:19:39.360 | online you can earn coupons for major retailers. And so one that a lot of people know about is

00:19:45.760 | anytime you change your address, the USPS sends you a bunch of coupons to your new address.

00:19:51.280 | There are websites that sell those coupons to save you the hassle of finding them.

00:19:57.680 | And so right before we purchased the couch on Crate & Barrel, stacking the JetBlue points,

00:20:04.160 | I went to this website, and it's called saveindeals.com. Like 7deals.com, but S-A instead

00:20:11.440 | of S-E. And I tell you, this site looks like it's illegitimate. It does not look like a

00:20:17.520 | professional website. But what they do sell are Lowe's, Home Depot, and Crate & Barrel coupons.

00:20:24.320 | So I went in and I found a 15% off Crate & Barrel coupon. And for the low price of $3.99,

00:20:33.600 | I PayPaled a random address. And seconds later, I had an email with a 15% off Crate & Barrel coupon.

00:20:39.680 | Sometimes you used to be able to find these on eBay. It's become harder to find them.

00:20:44.960 | A lot of people list them on Craigslist, which is how I found them. I use

00:20:49.280 | SearchTempest and search for coupons and it searches like all the Craigslist around the

00:20:53.840 | country. So you can also stack with coupon codes. I think most people listening have probably heard

00:20:59.440 | of Honey or RetailMeNot and websites you can get promo codes for. But when you want actual coupon

00:21:05.360 | codes with unique barcodes, yes, you can do the change your address, but you can also buy them

00:21:10.880 | online on sketchy websites. One other place where you can stack so many things is in Las Vegas.

00:21:19.040 | There's so many different ways to get deals in Las Vegas. So one of my favorite apps is called

00:21:25.040 | the My Vegas app. And then you just play these free slot machine games. They give you free tokens

00:21:30.320 | every day in hopes that you get addicted to gambling and then put money in their app,

00:21:34.000 | which I've never actually done. But they give you all of these free tokens and you play little slot

00:21:38.640 | games and you can redeem the points that you get for free Las Vegas hotel rooms or food or show

00:21:46.960 | tickets, tons of different things. And it's for the MGM network in Las Vegas. And MGM has a

00:21:53.440 | partnership with Hyatt. So here's what you do. Play the My Vegas app, get a whole bunch of points

00:22:00.640 | that you can redeem for a free room or two, and then go online status match. If you have Hyatt

00:22:07.600 | Explorer list, you have Hyatt Explorer list or globalist status, then you're going to have MGM

00:22:13.760 | gold status, which means you don't have to pay any resort fees at all. So you have a free hotel

00:22:19.760 | room where you normally have to pay taxes and fees, but you don't have to do that anymore

00:22:23.760 | because it's waived with status. And then when you check in, you give them your Hyatt elite ID

00:22:31.600 | number, your world of Hyatt ID number so that you're going to earn Hyatt elite nights for staying

00:22:37.360 | at this free MGM hotel. And that brings you closer towards status so you don't have to stay at nearly

00:22:44.160 | as many different Hyatt hotels just to get like the free breakfast or the free upgrades or any of

00:22:49.840 | those other statuses for people who really want globalist status but can't afford to stay at that

00:22:55.920 | many Hyatts, don't want to put a whole bunch of spend on a world of Hyatt card through buying

00:23:00.240 | groups or anything like that. This is a really cheap way to just get elite status with Hyatt.

00:23:06.480 | How many nights could you conceivably do this for in a year?

00:23:09.680 | Like how hard is it to actually earn these MyVegas points that get you free nights?

00:23:14.080 | Super easy to earn the points, but they limit you to one premium redemption each month. So you can

00:23:21.440 | do two nights per month because some of them are for one night free, some of them are for two nights

00:23:26.640 | free. So you can conceivably get 24 elite nights this way, which is almost halfway to the 60 that

00:23:33.840 | you need. Also, you can just pay for the cheap Vegas hotel stays. You can, but don't have to

00:23:43.840 | stay there. If you wanted to just book the Excalibur for four nights on like week nights,

00:23:48.640 | it's like $20 or $30. And then the rest of the steps are the same. Your resort fees are waived.

00:23:54.320 | Make sure you give them your Hyatt ID upon check-in. Then you just get four Hyatt elite

00:24:00.480 | nights for $20 to $30 each. So you can get status really quickly that way.

00:24:05.680 | Before we jump forward, I want to just highlight some of the crazy

00:24:09.680 | amounts of points stacking deals. I'm looking at Cashback Monitor right now,

00:24:15.680 | and I'm looking at the Apple Store, for example. You buy an Apple product, and you click through

00:24:21.040 | the Chase portal. If you have a Chase Freedom card, you're going to get two points per dollar

00:24:25.200 | on Apple. Nike, three points per dollar. Also, through Top Cashback, 10% cashback.

00:24:32.240 | So this comes to a place where you're like, "Well, what do I really want? Do I want to maximize my

00:24:36.400 | points or do I want to maximize cashback?" But some of the deals I've seen have gotten really,

00:24:41.360 | really lucrative. And I just want to make sure people know that this isn't a place where you

00:24:46.080 | could earn a couple points here and there. You can earn thousands of points on a purchase you're

00:24:50.560 | already going to make. Also, sometimes Rakuten will increase the amount of points that they're

00:24:56.640 | giving for a Marriott or an IHG or something. If you already have a trip booked and the price

00:25:03.040 | hasn't changed too much for your dates, cancel that trip and rebook it clicking through Rakuten,

00:25:07.840 | because then you can get 10% back on IHG or something for a trip you are going to take

00:25:11.600 | already and you haven't already paid for. So that's another thing that we do with just

00:25:16.800 | getting more points if you're on a small budget without having to spend more than you wanted to

00:25:21.360 | spend. Yeah, keep an eye on these portals if you have big purchases. I know our couch, it's not in

00:25:27.920 | stock because of all of the supply chain issues. But they told us in our email confirmation,

00:25:33.440 | "If we have to cancel it, you're okay until it's been confirmed that it's going to ship."

00:25:38.320 | So you better believe that I was checking. If for some reason there was a 10% cashback, which

00:25:43.520 | is not unheard of on some stores. In fact, I think when we bought our first couch from Macy's,

00:25:50.080 | Macy's is notorious for having some of the highest cashback rates. And I believe we used like a 10%

00:25:56.480 | cashback link to buy the first couch. And so I would certainly cancel and repurchase the couch

00:26:02.400 | if it ended up being 10% or 20% off because of it. Every now and then I find out there are deals

00:26:08.480 | to be had that I missed out on. So the charity donation thing in December where people were

00:26:15.520 | donating money and earning crazy amounts of miles, I kick myself regularly for the fact that I missed

00:26:22.080 | out on the opportunity. Where are you staying on top of things that are very timely? I know there

00:26:28.320 | are certain sources that write really good content. But what are the places you go for

00:26:33.440 | the deals that are timely and you need to act on them quickly? Are there specific places?

00:26:38.480 | Yeah, so if you follow a lot of us on Instagram who post about these, I post about these and you

00:26:42.480 | turn on post notifications, then you'll get alerted. But you can do that with any blogs

00:26:46.640 | that you follow too. So a few of my favorites, I really like Frequent Miler and Doctor of Credit

00:26:53.360 | to stay on top of these different deals. Those are two of the ones that I follow very closely.

00:26:59.360 | I check it every day. I aggregate all of these into an app called Feedly. So I don't have to go

00:27:04.480 | to each individual blog website that I read. But you can put on notifications on your email when

00:27:10.720 | you're subscribed to their list as well if you really want to jump on things as soon as they hit.

00:27:14.960 | That brings us to another point. So you use the Feedly app. But

00:27:18.800 | what other tools do you use to organize all of this? I know there are points all over programs.

00:27:23.920 | And one of the things that I've accumulated over the years is small balances in lots of places,

00:27:29.280 | keeping track of it all. I know, I think you have a binder with lots of credit cards. How do you

00:27:34.320 | organize all this information? Are there tools that you use to stay organized with your points

00:27:39.600 | or you use to book things that you prefer? Yeah. So I have different tools for different

00:27:46.560 | purposes for figuring out how many points I have with each program. I like to use Award Wallet.

00:27:52.400 | So it's just one dashboard that aggregates everything into one place for you. So I don't

00:27:57.760 | have to go check my Chase account, then my Amex account, then my Marriott account,

00:28:02.240 | then my Hyatt account. It's all just in one dashboard. And it's free. There's a paid version

00:28:07.360 | where they'll actually send you alerts if you have points that are expiring. I like to use this tool

00:28:13.520 | called Travel Freely to check how many cars have I opened in like the last 24 months so that I know

00:28:19.440 | my 5/24 status. I like it because it sends me email reminders when I have an annual fee that's

00:28:25.520 | going to come due. So then I can decide, OK, should I hang on to this card? Am I getting enough value

00:28:29.840 | out of it? Or should I just downgrade it because I'm not getting enough out of the annual fee?

00:28:35.280 | So I like Travel Freely because it sends me that reminder to stay organized for which card to use

00:28:42.720 | for any given purchase. I like to use an app called Card Pointers. You just tell it what cards you

00:28:48.400 | have and what you're trying to buy, whether it's groceries or gas, online shopping, public

00:28:53.680 | transportation. And then it'll tell you, oh, based off of the cards you have, here's the one that's

00:28:58.480 | going to earn the most points/most value. So you should use this card for your dining purchase.

00:29:04.320 | And it just takes out so much decision making and brain usage if all of this is already calculated

00:29:13.680 | for me. They also track, in the pro version, all of those Amex credits, like, oh, did I use my

00:29:20.080 | dining credit this month? Do I have shopping credits that are left somewhere else? You can

00:29:24.480 | track those on Card Pointers. So those are three apps that I really like to use to stay organized.

00:29:30.000 | I want to come back to something you said, which in the miles and points world is really well known,

00:29:34.800 | but I think for a lot of people listening might not be, which is the 5/24 rule.

00:29:40.000 | So can you talk a little bit about the 5/24 rule and why it's important for people?

00:29:47.120 | Sure. So 5/24 rule is a rule specifically set by Chase that says if you applied for

00:29:53.600 | five or more personal cards across any bank, Capital One, Amex, Chase, Citi,

00:29:58.480 | then you will be rejected on your application for your Chase card if you've already done

00:30:04.480 | five or more applications in the last 24 months. And because of that, that's why a lot of points

00:30:10.560 | blogs will really prioritize recommending Chase cards to beginners because you can grab

00:30:15.680 | five Chase cards and then move on to other banks, but you can't grab like five Capital One,

00:30:20.960 | Amex, and Citi cards and then move on to Chase because they'll reject you. So that's kind of

00:30:25.680 | the order of operations of cards is because of this rule. This rule drives so many decisions

00:30:31.760 | that people make with points and miles. And sometimes a good offer comes up and you're

00:30:36.320 | already at 4/24 and like it could be worth it to just get the Capital One Venture X

00:30:42.320 | or something else. But that's what the 5/24 rule is.

00:30:46.400 | If you're listening and you're thinking about a Chase card,

00:30:49.760 | it's always and you think there's any chance you might have opened five cards up

00:30:54.320 | in the last 24 months, at least is it just opened or is it applied?

00:30:58.000 | Okay, so I would recommend anyone who thinks they could be in that camp to check this out before

00:31:05.600 | because you're going to get immediately denied from Chase if you have. Is there an easy way

00:31:11.200 | to find out if you forget how long you've had certain cards for?

00:31:15.200 | I like to use Credit Karma because they're going to have my entire credit history of like when

00:31:20.000 | certain accounts were opened so I can use that. But then going forward, once you know how many

00:31:25.440 | you've opened, use something like Travel Freely because it's a lot more user-friendly rather than

00:31:30.960 | going through the credit history on Credit Karma. Yeah, we're still in early days with all of these

00:31:35.920 | points and miles products. And I've talked to the founder of Card Pointers and I just wish that they

00:31:41.440 | all started talking to other services more regularly. I don't want to track whether I've

00:31:46.480 | used my dining credit or Uber credit. I want you to talk to Uber, find out if I have and remind

00:31:52.800 | me if I haven't. So I'm hopeful that in the years to come, a lot of these products start to connect

00:31:59.280 | to some of the platforms they track. Like Award Wallet connects to some of the points sites so

00:32:05.280 | that we can get kind of like really real-time notifications of things. But we've talked about

00:32:09.600 | the Card Pointers app before and I'm a big fan but I just feel like there's so much more opportunity

00:32:14.960 | as a lot of these programs open up and make it easier to share information between each other.

00:32:21.680 | It is worth noting on the 5/24 rule that business cards for Chase are subject to but do not count

00:32:28.240 | towards 5/24, which is the most confusing thing. So if you are looking at any Chase business cards,

00:32:34.960 | if you're over 5/24, you can't get them. It doesn't matter if you have like a separate EIN,

00:32:40.400 | you can't get them until you're back under 5/24. But if you're at 4/24 and then you get a business

00:32:49.040 | card from Chase or Amex or anyone with some caveats, then you're still at 4/24 afterwards

00:32:55.840 | because the business cards don't count towards the 5/24 score. There are some exceptions,

00:33:02.640 | TD Ameritrade, Capital One, Discover, I think, but nobody's really using those

00:33:09.120 | too often. So most of the time, like with Chase and Amex, you're going to be good.

00:33:12.400 | We didn't ask this, but I probably should. And I didn't even have it on my list.

00:33:15.680 | What are your go-to cards?

00:33:17.840 | Whatever signup bonus I'm working on is going to be Plan A. And then Plan B is whatever Card

00:33:23.440 | Pointers tells me to do. For dining, that tends to be my Amex Gold. For rent, obviously, it's

00:33:29.840 | going to be Bilt because that's the only one that's going to let me earn points on rent.

00:33:33.280 | Otherwise, most of the time, I'm working towards a minimum spend unless there's like

00:33:41.040 | a lot of hotel promos going on, then I'll just use the Hotel Carl Barron card.

00:33:46.480 | And when you're... Do you have a threshold for when a signup bonus is worth applying for? I think

00:33:51.680 | there's always a signup bonus you can find to earn 50,000 points. And there's rarely a signup

00:33:56.640 | bonus that'll earn over 100,000. Is there a point at which you see something and you're like,

00:34:02.640 | "Let's jump on it"?

00:34:03.920 | I try not to get shiny card syndrome for seeing different promos. So what I would do instead,

00:34:09.120 | especially for beginners, is pick a trip that you want to take and work backwards from there,

00:34:14.480 | figure out the different routes that fly into that destination, how many points those routes

00:34:19.840 | cost, what kind of points you need, and let that determine what kind of credit cards you're going

00:34:23.760 | to open. Don't open cards just because you saw a whole bunch of points influencers post about it,

00:34:30.560 | and because there's a great signup bonus, but you have no idea how you're going to use those points.

00:34:35.360 | Because let's say there's a really good Southwest promo, but you're going to be living abroad most

00:34:40.800 | of next year, do not get that Southwest promo because it's going to be completely useless to

00:34:45.440 | you. So I would say work backwards rather than chasing good signup bonuses.

00:34:50.960 | How would you recommend doing that? Let's take an example. If someone says, "Gosh,

00:34:54.560 | I'm trying to think of what I just got in my email." Someone said, "I want to go to Italy."

00:34:57.680 | So they're planning a trip to Italy. Let's work backwards on that process

00:35:02.000 | of how do you arrive at which card might make sense?

00:35:04.960 | So there's a new tool that came out. It's called Point Me, point.me. And this would be the first

00:35:11.440 | and easiest step is if you already live near a major airport, you just plug in your airport,

00:35:17.760 | you plug in wherever you're trying to fly. It will tell you what is the best route for points

00:35:22.720 | and how many points you're going to need, what kind of points transfer, what cards will transfer.

00:35:27.360 | So that's like plan A where everything works on the happy path. Sometimes it's going to give you

00:35:35.200 | ridiculous results like, "Oh, I want to fly direct from Kansas City to the Philippines

00:35:40.800 | on business class." That's just not going to happen. So then you're going to need to probably

00:35:45.600 | do a positioning flight to a larger airport and look from there. Always be open to looking at

00:35:51.920 | surrounding airports or maybe if you live like, I don't know, North Carolina, South Carolina,

00:35:58.480 | you can position yourself to New York and then fly to Italy from there. Do it in two legs and

00:36:03.360 | do two different searches rather than just looking straight from North Carolina into Italy and be

00:36:09.440 | like, "Ah, there's nothing. There's nothing." Or if you wanted to go to a specific island in Thailand,

00:36:17.120 | do not look for flights directly into that island. Look for flights that go into Bangkok and then

00:36:22.240 | take a cheap Thai Airways flight once you're there. So the positioning flights are going

00:36:26.080 | to help a lot. Another trick that's really good for figuring out who flies to certain airports

00:36:31.680 | is look at that airport's Wikipedia page because it will list all of the airlines that are serviced

00:36:37.200 | by that airport. And from there, you can kind of figure out, "Okay, are they mostly Star Alliance

00:36:44.640 | flights? Are they mostly One World Alliance flights?" And you kind of learn over time who

00:36:49.680 | transfers to who. But you can figure that out from just looking at their Wikipedia page.

00:36:54.160 | I like that. I want to talk about sweet spots for redemptions,

00:36:58.560 | especially maybe if you don't have a huge balance. I know you've dug into a lot of this,

00:37:04.800 | taken many of them yourself. What are some really amazing international redemptions?

00:37:09.920 | So for international or domestic redemptions, you can get anywhere in the US, including Alaska or

00:37:17.120 | Hawaii on Turkish Miles and Smiles for 7500 points in economy or 12,500 in business class if you can

00:37:24.480 | find the award availability. To transfer to Turkish Miles and Smiles, you're going to need

00:37:28.400 | either city points, built points, or Capital One points. The booking process is a little annoying

00:37:34.640 | because you have to call somebody once you find the availability to actually get these seats.

00:37:38.880 | But if you can get them, such good outsized redemption. You can fly from New York to Hawaii

00:37:44.240 | in business class, 12,500 points one way. So that's one for domestic. There's the

00:37:51.680 | ANA around the world redemption, which is one of the most popular sweet spots that anybody ever

00:37:57.200 | talks about. And basically if you have Amex points, you can transfer them to ANA Airways,

00:38:03.760 | which is a Japanese airline, and they will let you book up to eight legs in business class

00:38:10.160 | around the world. And it depends on like the physical number of miles you're flying,

00:38:16.000 | but it's going to be like around 125,000 points total for eight business class flights.

00:38:21.760 | So there are some rules around it. You have to be traveling continuously east

00:38:25.840 | or continuously west. You have to have at least one stop in North America, South America,

00:38:30.960 | one stop in Europe or Africa, and at least one stop in Asia or Australia.

00:38:36.960 | And you cannot cross back and forth between different continents. So like once you go from

00:38:45.200 | North America to Europe, you can't suddenly go back to North America, but you can travel

00:38:49.200 | around within Europe. You can crisscross back and forth within Europe before moving on to Asia.

00:38:54.960 | So this is one of the most outsized redemptions ever is the ANA around the world.

00:39:01.440 | You make me feel bad not talking about it before. You're like, "This is one of the

00:39:05.360 | best things." I'm like, "Oh man, this is why we have Julia on the show." Because

00:39:08.720 | I remember learning about it a while ago and haven't thought to bring it up. But 120,000

00:39:15.360 | miles for business class around the world with eight legs is unheard of. So sorry, but keep going.

00:39:23.600 | So to book this thing, what you do is you search on ANA's website to figure out what the eight legs

00:39:28.880 | you want are. And you don't have to have eight. You have to have a minimum of three, maximum of

00:39:33.520 | eight. So you find the flights that you want, write down the flight numbers and the flight

00:39:37.040 | times and the city, kind of make your itinerary. Then you have to call ANA in order to actually

00:39:43.360 | book this because their website cannot handle an eight-legged multi-leg trip.

00:39:50.000 | Also, you need to transfer in your Amex points. However, it takes three days. So

00:39:56.720 | in those three days, you have to pray that your availability does not disappear. So you should do

00:40:02.800 | this like 10 months in advance so that in case one of the legs is gone in those three days,

00:40:08.080 | you have like backup routes that you can do. Also, if you call ahead of time, like at the

00:40:15.120 | beginning of those three days, if you get a nice ANA agent, they might hold the space for you

00:40:21.200 | while waiting for your points to transfer over. I've never heard that hack of asking someone to

00:40:26.640 | hold, but be kind and maybe you'll be lucky. I think with ANA, they also have an incredible

00:40:33.680 | round trip to Japan. I don't know if it's still only 80,000 miles, but one of the better deals.

00:40:40.880 | And what I say is, look, it can be daunting. If you're transferring all the miles and points you

00:40:46.800 | have to ANA and relying on them for one specific trip that could be gone by the time three days

00:40:52.960 | pass, I don't know if that's the best use case. But if you have enough points that you could

00:40:58.560 | transfer 80,000 and you know you want to go to Asia, but you're totally flexible when,

00:41:03.520 | you can probably make it all work. But I didn't know that you could call and ask them to hold it.

00:41:08.640 | And if you can get someone to do that and take away all the risk, that's the move.

00:41:12.640 | You can also, if you didn't want to fly all the way around the world, but you just want to

00:41:17.840 | experience the actual ANA plane, which is fantastic. It's supposed to be one of the nicest

00:41:23.600 | first-class products in the sky. You can travel from the US to Japan in first class. I want to

00:41:32.240 | say it's like 120,000 points round trip, which is crazy good because these flights are $20,000.

00:41:38.560 | And sometimes you can transfer Virgin, you can transfer Amex points or any kind of points that

00:41:47.040 | transfer into Virgin Atlantic and then book ANA with Virgin Atlantic. And sometimes there will

00:41:53.840 | be Amex transfer bonus promos. So you transfer 60,000 points or whatever, you get maybe like a

00:41:59.840 | 20% bonus. So you can do that. You cannot transfer Virgin points to do ANA all around the world,

00:42:06.080 | but you can just do it if you want it to fly to Japan and back on ANA's actual plane.

00:42:09.760 | Any other amazing redemptions? Maybe if someone's trying to go to Europe,

00:42:15.040 | where's the sweet spot to book that?

00:42:16.720 | So I want to talk about a sweet spot across Europe. You can actually do this for like

00:42:22.640 | 10,000 United points in business class from like France to Greece, which is crazy.

00:42:27.920 | So this is called the United excursionist perk. We're going to start with a small example and

00:42:32.080 | then go into the super hack example. So what this is meant for is if you're doing like a triangle

00:42:38.000 | itinerary, like you're flying from New York to London to Paris, back to New York, if you do it

00:42:44.000 | all on United points, that middle leg is free as long as the middle leg is in the same region.

00:42:49.280 | So there are certain rules. We're going to assume everybody who's listening to this is based in

00:42:55.440 | North America because you can do this for other regions, but for North America, your first flight

00:43:01.280 | on the itinerary has to start in North America and your last leg has to end in North America

00:43:07.360 | and your free segment, both ends of it have to be not in North America within like another region.

00:43:15.440 | So Europe is one region. So that's why that itinerary works of New York starts in the

00:43:22.080 | North America region, fly over to London, London to Paris is both self-contained in a separate

00:43:28.960 | region, and then it ends back in New York. So you can do that. How you can super hack this,

00:43:34.720 | it does not need to be a continuous itinerary. So let's say you went onto Scott's cheap flights or

00:43:41.360 | something, found a really good deal flying into Paris and you found another really good cash deal

00:43:48.320 | from Greece back home, but you have no way to connect these two deals. You can actually fly

00:43:54.480 | across Europe for free, basically free. So here's what you do. So you're in, let's say

00:44:02.000 | you're in Los Angeles. You can book a United flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for like

00:44:07.840 | 5,000 points. Then the next thing you search for in your itinerary is from Paris to Athens.

00:44:14.880 | And then the last leg is going to be from, I don't know, another random flight from Los Angeles to

00:44:21.120 | Las Vegas for 5,000 points. That middle leg is still free because your first flight starts in

00:44:28.000 | North America from that random Los Angeles to Las Vegas flight. Your middle leg is completely

00:44:34.640 | contained in not North America, Europe to Europe, and your last leg, which is another Los Angeles

00:44:42.320 | to Las Vegas flight, still ends in North America. So then you just have to fill in the gaps of like,

00:44:47.840 | find a cheap cash flight, find another way to get from the US to France, find another way to get

00:44:52.720 | from Greece back home. But that middle leg is going to be free. Also, that's just an economy

00:44:58.720 | thing. If you wanted to book Los Angeles to Las Vegas in business class United, you can get that

00:45:04.880 | middle leg for free in business class because it'll match whatever is like the first leg.

00:45:09.680 | You have to take the first flight or it negates the rest of the itinerary, but the last flight

00:45:15.040 | is optional for you. So for people who want to just like do like a quick route, or if you already

00:45:22.160 | have to take a short domestic flight anyway, and you can plan ahead and structure these itineraries,

00:45:26.800 | you can fly Cape Town to the Seychelles, which I don't even know how expensive that would be,

00:45:32.080 | but you could do that for free if you can structure a United excursionist itinerary correctly.

00:45:39.520 | If I understand this right, I can book a North America flight, let's say even if it's a short

00:45:44.400 | distance like San Francisco to LA, which sometimes is only 7500 miles. And then at a

00:45:50.240 | date after that, I can book a one way ticket, even if it connects within one region. So like you said,

00:45:56.640 | Cape Town to Kenya or to the Seychelles, places where flights are really expensive. And then a

00:46:02.560 | date after that, just book another flight within within North America, LA back to San Francisco,

00:46:08.480 | don't even have to take it could conceivably get both your North America flights and the

00:46:14.000 | international flight for potentially 15,000 or less miles. Yep, that's amazing. That's a great

00:46:22.480 | hack. I'm going to brainstorm ways to use it. If anyone listening has creative ideas on how they

00:46:28.320 | could use something like that, definitely reach out. Would love to see all the creative ways they

00:46:32.400 | wrote about it. A few other quick things before we go. I've gotten a few questions from listeners

00:46:37.920 | that I feel like would be a great conversation. And I want to get your take on some and one is

00:46:43.200 | from Eric from Cincinnati, who, you know, I won't say the city's from everyone, but Eric's name in

00:46:48.960 | his signature or in his email from was Eric from Cincy. So I, you know, it seems fun. Asked if

00:46:56.000 | buying points ever makes sense. And I'll give you my perspective. And I want to hear yours.

00:47:00.640 | And we can go back on a few of these questions. But in general, there are always all these

00:47:05.280 | promotions that I've seen from airlines from hotel groups to buy points. And they're like,

00:47:11.680 | "Oh, it's 2x points. Everything's 50% off." My advice has always been, if you have a redemption

00:47:17.920 | in mind, it can be a really great deal. Or if the whole world is blowing up about how it's the best

00:47:23.440 | thing ever, and like, you have to do it, great, which is rare. But otherwise, I see almost weekly

00:47:30.720 | some promotion for buying points at a huge discount. And I pretty much disregard all of

00:47:35.760 | them unless I'm about to do something. What do you think? Very similar thoughts. So do not

00:47:40.960 | speculatively buy points, only buy them if you already know how you're going to use them. And

00:47:48.160 | you've done the math to make sure that whatever redemption value you're going to get from using

00:47:52.240 | those points is better than the purchase price of those points. Don't buy points for 2 cents

00:47:59.280 | for $1. Sorry, don't buy points for like 2 cents per point, and then use them on a redemption where

00:48:04.320 | you get one and a half cents per point. So just make sure that you know what you're going to use

00:48:09.360 | them for and that you've done the math on it, and then you're good to go. The two exceptions I have

00:48:13.920 | are, it might not be a great deal to buy points. But if you are trying to book a flight or book a

00:48:20.080 | hotel, and you have almost enough, you want to book an award that's 80,000 points and you have

00:48:27.200 | 78,000, and you don't have any way to transfer it in, it could make sense to pay an astronomical

00:48:32.960 | like 5 cents per point or whatever the fee is to get those last 2000 points to get you this

00:48:38.720 | amazing reward. That's generally, I think, one of the few use cases, but it falls into exactly what

00:48:45.200 | you said. Make sure you have a way you want to use it in mind before you do it. Because just like

00:48:50.800 | Mary, it's recently done some devaluation. The last thing you want to do is buy something that

00:48:55.680 | sounds like a good deal today, but the program changes and maybe it's not a good deal tomorrow.

00:49:00.080 | Absolutely.

00:49:01.600 | What about paying taxes on a credit card? I think I had always thought my whole life,

00:49:09.520 | it would never make sense to pay fees on a credit card purchase. So whenever someone says, "Oh,

00:49:16.560 | we'll charge you 3%," before the built card, it was like, "Oh, you can pay your rent, but you have

00:49:21.280 | to pay fees with plastic or other services." I was always like, "It never makes sense to pay fees to

00:49:26.560 | earn points." And then I just started digging into paying taxes on a credit card this year,

00:49:32.240 | and I'm not sure I agree anymore.

00:49:35.120 | It can be a really good way to meet minimum spend if you don't have another way to easily

00:49:40.240 | meet your minimum spend. So for example, the Amex Business Platinum has $15,000 minimum spend,

00:49:47.680 | which is a lot. And so if you don't want to do buying groups or any of the other reimbursable

00:49:52.240 | spend things that we talked about earlier on in the episode, it can make sense to just pay an

00:49:56.960 | extra 3% to get that 120,000 point bonus on the Amex Business Platinum. So if you're going for

00:50:06.960 | something like that, or you have Hilton Surpass where you get a free night if you're putting $15,000

00:50:19.680 | on the card each year, if you're going to get whatever 15,000 times 3% is at least that much

00:50:29.120 | value out of your free hotel night at some Waldorf Astoria, it could be worth it to do it for

00:50:35.040 | something like that, or just to cap it if, "Oh, I'm 10,000 of the way there. I have no other way

00:50:40.880 | of getting that 5,000." Then it might be worth it if you want to put your taxes on a credit card

00:50:46.640 | and pay that extra fee.

00:50:48.480 | So I started looking into this and I realized most of the places you pay for things online

00:50:54.080 | on a credit card, the fees are pretty high, 2.5%, 3%. I've seen 4%. What I realized was that the

00:51:00.880 | fees to pay your taxes on a credit card are actually lower than I expected. So there are

00:51:06.160 | 3 sites the IRS shows. The lowest one is pay1040.com and the fee is 1.87% this year.

00:51:15.920 | So I was thinking, "Gosh, I have a Venturex card." And at the worst case, you can redeem

00:51:23.120 | your points, which you earn 2 of at 1 penny, booking travel. So 2 cents per dollar spent,

00:51:30.720 | so 2% cash back. Also could do it with a Citi Double Cash or any card that pays 2% cash back,

00:51:37.120 | you would actually net a profit paying your taxes on your credit card.

00:51:41.200 | Now, I quickly thought, "Ooh, who doesn't want a free profit?" So I was like, "Hmm,

00:51:45.600 | what if I put $10,000?" I'm not saying I owe 10,000 or you would, but just to

00:51:50.560 | illustrate the example. And I realized if I'm going to put $10,000 on a credit card,

00:51:55.440 | and I'm going to pay a fee of $187, but I'm going to earn 2%, which is $200. I'm literally going to

00:52:03.520 | make $13. And that's for a $10,000 tax bill. So I thought, "Okay, this is not a way to make money.

00:52:10.560 | This is not a way to rack up points at the IRS's expense. But what it is, is a great way to meet

00:52:18.560 | minimum spend." So if anyone's listening, and they had a business and they signed up with Capital One's

00:52:26.400 | Spark Cash Plus card, it had the most egregious minimum spend, which was $50,000 in 6 months.

00:52:35.680 | And now all of a sudden, I'm thinking, "Maybe I should lower my deductions from work for my

00:52:40.880 | withholdings from work on my taxes so that I owe the IRS money so that I can put some spend on this

00:52:46.880 | card." But at 1.87%, I think it could work really well for meeting minimum spend and not losing

00:52:54.080 | money. But it's probably not a way to generate a return. If you overpay your taxes, the IRS will

00:53:01.760 | issue you a check back. It's very slow. They're very slow to do this. But if you wanted to pay

00:53:09.840 | them $50,000, they will probably send you a check back 6 months later for $40,000 in this example,

00:53:18.800 | and then you earned your bonus. So that is a strategy some people do. I don't want to be that

00:53:24.560 | leveraged for $50,000 for 6 months. But some people do things like that.

00:53:30.640 | Yeah, I definitely do not want to owe... Especially on a card that's a charge card.

00:53:35.200 | Maybe if it was a 0% APR card, you could carry it. But I did realize that if you're trying to

00:53:43.520 | meet a minimum spend in 2022 at 1.87% on the right card, it has to be a card that's earning you 2%

00:53:53.040 | back or more. Otherwise, you'd be losing money. But I've turned my position on this a little bit,

00:53:58.400 | and I think it could make sense. Last few things. I got an email from a woman named Brandy,

00:54:05.280 | who pointed out something that I didn't realize. I'm not in the military, nor is my spouse.

00:54:12.000 | But I recently learned and wanted to share that if you have a Chase, an Amex, or a CityCard,

00:54:18.800 | and you are in the military or your spouse is in the military,

00:54:22.240 | they will waive your annual fees on all the cards.

00:54:25.120 | I looked at the list. It's Chase Reserve. It's Amex Platinum. Real cards with high annual fees.

00:54:31.920 | I know you've done an episode on a lot of these things. I wanted to

00:54:36.160 | hear your take on this and other perks that might apply to people in that situation.

00:54:40.800 | They'll waive it on all personal cards. Unfortunately, they won't waive it on

00:54:44.960 | business cards if you're trying to get the Chase Inc. Business Cash or the Amex Business Gold.

00:54:49.440 | But for all of the personal ones, yes, you don't have to pay the $700 on the Amex Platinum,

00:54:56.320 | which is amazing. We actually have an episode that covers a lot of different military benefits.

00:55:01.360 | It's episode 67, featuring Mark White. He's in the military. He talks about the waive fees.

00:55:08.640 | You can get into different lounges for free with military ID if you're traveling.

00:55:14.400 | You can get free status with Caesars. I don't know if they still do this because

00:55:20.240 | they recently changed their program. But it used to be that you would get automatic platinum status

00:55:25.360 | for both the military member and their spouse. And each of those would get you three free nights

00:55:31.680 | at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. So six free nights for an Atlantis Bahamas vacation for a couple.

00:55:39.120 | So lots of different tricks like that. More of them in episode 67 to talk about lots of

00:55:44.240 | different military benefits and places that you can get discounts or just extra perks for military.

00:55:50.080 | And one thing you told me, there's a site called ID.me, where it's not just military. There are

00:55:56.960 | other branches of healthcare and I think education, maybe, where you can go link up your email to

00:56:04.400 | prove that you're in that group or even verify it in other ways and get access to a lot of perks.

00:56:09.200 | Yep, absolutely. Travel perks, different discounts with different stores, restaurant things. So

00:56:14.640 | if you're a student, a teacher, government worker, healthcare worker,

00:56:18.560 | military, you can go to ID.me and check for all of these different discounts.

00:56:23.360 | Awesome. Last thing I want to share is I've talked numerous times on the podcast and gotten

00:56:30.400 | so much great feedback from listeners getting upgraded around the world by sending a note

00:56:36.240 | into the hotel after booking directly with them. And people have asked me, "What is the message

00:56:41.920 | you send?" And I've always given really generic advice that was, "Oh, just say, 'Hey, I'm coming.

00:56:48.720 | These are my dates. This is what I'm doing.' And I want to share your link, which Julia has set up.

00:56:54.640 | Let us know where to go for your guide to exactly what template you should send to a hotel to

00:57:01.760 | maximize your chance for an upgrade. So I made you guys a special link. It's

00:57:04.960 | at GeoBreezeTravel.com/allthehacks. It'll take you directly to the template that I've used to

00:57:11.920 | get some amazing upgrades. I look forward to more conversations like this down the road.

00:57:17.440 | Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:57:20.240 | Thank you.

00:57:33.680 | [music]

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