Welcome back to Portfolio Rescue, our show where we take questions straight from you, the audience. Today's Portfolio Rescue is sponsored by Innovator ETFs. Duncan, pretty good timing here. So, the way Innovator ETFs work, they're these buffer ETFs, right? You have a floor on the downside, a cap to the upside.

You can go right now, they actually rebalance these on the first of every month. So, tomorrow, July 1st, these things rebalance. So, let's take an example. The way that we look at downturns in the market is, they lead to a wider range of outcomes, and not necessarily in the best direction, right?

But the stock market's already down 22%, call it, as of this morning. So, you could pick this 9% buffer and realize, okay, I'm protected down 9%. If it falls further than that, you eat the little losses. So, if it's down 12%, you're down 3%. But you have a cap range anywhere from 20% to 23% on the upside.

So, you say, "Boy, I think the market could fall out of bed a little more, but I don't want to get stuck if there's a bear market rally, a dead cat bounce, whatever you call it. I still have some upside." So, that's the way these Innovator ETFs work. You're capped to the upside, but you still have some room to run.

And if stocks fall, then you have that 9% buffer, right? Same thing, 15%, 20%, and the cap goes down a little bit. I can't predict what's going to happen in the market, but you can give yourself a little bit more protection if stocks fall out of bed a little more, which they seem to be doing.

But you can also leave some room for the upside if we do have that bounce. If Powell comes out and says, "Hey, we're not raising anymore. The stock market screams higher," you have a little room. So, check out InnovatorETFs.com. Again, every first of the month, they rebalance these buffer ETFs.

So, check it out. That's a good time to get into one of these things. Alright, a little different show today. We're going to be talking about some personal finance topics. Ben's number one rule of personal finance, pay off your credit card bill every month. But a credit card bill -- credit cards are kind of the Larry David GIF from the Palestinian chicken episode, right?

Where you can't really decide. Because credit cards are horrible for people that don't pay off their balance, because the rates are so egregiously high, and the banks take advantage of people. So, John, do a chart on this. We talked about Sun Animal Spirits last week. The current credit card rates right now are above 20%.

So, if you hold that -- I mean, you're talking about, obviously, banks take into account default rates. But banks are making Warren Buffett-like long-term returns on credit cards right now. So, if you don't pay that off, you're setting yourself up for terrible compounding. Right? It's awful. But, on the other hand, there's a lot of good things that come from credit cards.

You can earn rewards, right? You can get these sign-up bonuses from that stuff. You can get perks. There's a lot of perks that you get. When you rent a car, you get insurance on that car from your credit card. You get purchase protection. There's all these things that you can get that people don't know.

If they lose your luggage, you can get reimbursement on that stuff if you have to buy stuff. There's a lot of fine detail stuff that you don't realize that credit cards can give you. Also, one of the better things is having a credit card and paying it off each month can build your credit, which means you can potentially borrow more money at lower interest rates.

We wanted to bring in an expert. I dabble in the personal finance stuff. I kind of go in and out. I check out the credit card when there's a good sign-up bonus. But I'm definitely not following this stuff very closely. I haven't quite hacked everything. I kind of look for other people to find this stuff for me.

So, the person that I've turned to now is Chris Hutchins. Chris comes to us from All The Hacks podcast. How's it going, Chris? It's going good. So, we put it out a few weeks ago. We said, "Send us your questions." We wanted to talk about all this stuff, because I've been leaning on you lately.

I needed a new travel card. We're going to get into some of that today. But I'm guessing one of the questions a lot of people have is just, "Tell me the card I need." And we've got a lot of specific questions for this kind of stuff. So, I'm interested to hear what you have to say.

I know that you've done a lot of hacking in this stuff. You had an awesome video up on your YouTube page for All The Hacks, taking a trip to Bora Bora for, what do you say, $1,500? That could have been a $20,000 trip. Is that about right? Yeah. I mean, I got called out a little bit, just to clarify.

Yes, I could have earned cash back and to get all those points. So, maybe it probably cost me $2,500. But it certainly didn't cost me anywhere near $20,000. And if you're willing to put in a little work, I think you can make your credit card rewards worth a significantly larger amount than you would if you were just getting cash back.

If you enjoy nice vacations, traveling internationally, that kind of stuff. Yes. Who doesn't, right? I always say, look, if your only goal is to fly domestically in coach between kind of standard cities, cash back is probably your way to go. But if you want to take international trips, if you want to splurge and fly business class, you want to stay at kind of crazy luxury hotels, points are going to get you a lot further than that cash back.

Yeah. Live a little, you know? All right. We got a bunch of questions, people. So, let's dig right in, Duncan. All right. Cool. Yeah, I'm excited about today because I'm super into this stuff myself. Okay. So, first up today, we have, I'd love to hear your thoughts on a good credit card to get for a family.

We have one from our credit union that offers no perks or points. I've been considering getting a card that offers points, but would like to hear what you guys think is a good card for us. Chris, good timing for you. You just had your second child, right? You're still in it with the newborn stuff, right?

I am. Although I haven't really gotten out much, you know, like cards that are like, oh, you get a bonus if you go here, here. I'm like, oh, we're still sitting at home most of the days. All right. I'm going to give you my personal favorite for this because you don't get out much and you can tell me what you think.

So, the one that we probably use the most, what I think is family friendly, is we just use the Amazon Prime Rewards card, where you get 5% for every dollar you spend on Amazon. And it comes back in an Amazon credit. So, you can essentially think about it as 5% off your purchases that you can then use.

Because we, with multiple kids, going to the store is not all that much fun. So, anytime we need soccer cleats or swim goggles, or for you, diapers and wipes and all that stuff, we had all that on a subscribe and save. And every time we spend on Amazon, we get 5% back.

What do you think about that one? 5% is great. Like a lot of cards, it's really hard to get anything more than three points to make that match up to 5%. I can't argue. This question, you know, it always comes up. What's the best card for me? And I'd say the answer is always, well, where do you spend your money?

If you don't spend any money on Amazon, then, you know, Amazon card is not the right move. The card that I got really excited about recently, and it's the Citi Premier card. And the reason why is that, one, when it comes to getting a great signup bonus, they're giving the biggest signup bonus ever.

But when it comes to categories, I was thinking, what do families spend money on? And Citi Premier is 3x on groceries at supermarkets, 3x on gas, 3x on airfare in hotels and 3x on restaurants. And it's a $95 annual fee. So it's not in the camp of these cards where there's, you know, three, four, five, six, $700 annual fees.

And so that to me was like, that seems like a great, you know, starter one card. You know, the points can be used to buy travel, but you can also transfer them to, I'm going to get the number wrong, but let's say a dozen-ish airlines or hotel groups to use the points.

So that's one where it's like, gosh, you don't really need two cards if you did. And if you, you know, you could match it with like Citi Double Cash, which is just 2x on everything. And now there are a bunch of those, you know, Capital One has this Venture Venture X, both those cards, 2x on everything.

So what's your, what's your signup bonus in the city when you said there's a good signup bonus? That's one of my favorite things. Yeah. City bonus right now is 80,000 points. It's, you know, I would say it's never been 80,000. So this is kind of the biggest time to get it.

If you go to, I think the Citi website, it still says 60. If you go to basically any points blog, there's a link for 80,000 point signup bonus. Obviously I'd prefer, you want to go to allthehacks.com/cards, but at the end of the day, I just want you to not sign up from a Google search.

So, um, yeah, there's 80,000 point bonus there. You know, the, the old tried and true answer was always Chase Reserve, kind of in our kind of group of millennials growing up. But you know, the primary there is travel and dining. And I feel like once you have kids, you know, travel, maybe you're down to one or two times a year dining, you're probably not going out as much.

So fast casual, you want to get in and out as fast as possible. We have a, we have a specific question about that card. So we'll get to that. Yeah. So, you know, for me being able to add on gas and supermarkets is a big thing for families. Um, right.

Good one. Okay. Let's do another one. Yeah. I bet surges and, uh, gas cashback cards, uh, have been happening recently. Yeah. It just happened that, yeah, I think that's why Citi's probably taken, taking a big swing here and offering a huge signup bonus. It's worth over, you know, a thousand dollars for a new card.

So, uh, is that gas? It's probably one of the best gas cards. Okay. Let's do the next one. Uh, okay. So most credit cards charge a fee anywhere from three to 5%. When you do a balance transfer, do you know of any that do not charge a fee and give you a 12 to 18 month period of 0% APR on the transferred balance?

Or is there a better way to defer the interest a year or two out? It seems like credit card balance transfers, uh, at current interest rates are a better way of saving on interest than getting a consolidated debt loan from a bank or credit union, trying to see if there's a more effective way to manage my capital.

So I've actually never done one of these balance transfers before. So I don't know what the, so obviously it takes a fee and that at three to 5%, that's a big chunk of your balance that you're paying on top for the ability to do the 0%. So what do you look at as terms of like the breakeven or cost benefit of doing something like this?

And when does it make sense? Yeah. I mean, so the short answer to this question, so I did some research, I wasn't sure. And when the pandemic hit the, a lot of these zero fee balance transfer cards just kind of disappeared. So I looked there, there was a list I found on Reddit.

A few of them still weren't there, but the union bank platinum visa credit card, I don't make anything for saying this, right? Like the union bank platinum free credit card, 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months, but $0 balance transfer fee for transfers in the first 60 days.

So this is the card you were looking for. I believe. Uh, after that you pay that kind of standard 3% fee to balance transfer. Um, but look, if you have a credit card that's at 20 something percent APR and you have to pay a, a one-time 3% fee to get that to 0%, I think as long as you have a plan to pay that off in that 0% window, you know, this card says after the 0% it goes up to nine to 20%.

So I'm not a fan of paying nine to 20% on anything. So if you, if you could say, I have a plan to pay this off in that 15 month window, let's transfer the balance over here. In the case of this card, there's no fee to do it. If you do it right away.

Um, I don't know any better way to refinance debt than 0%. I assume no one else on this call does, especially for that long. Do you have, do you have a preferred method for searching out cards with different features? So you could click down by balance transfer or travel or hotel.

I mean, it's been a while since I've done this. I know like simple, like credit card.com was the one that I used to use. Like it's probably the last one you'd want to use now, but there's a, is there a preferred method if you want to do that? If so, I'm searching for just 0% APR, whatever it is.

Is there an easy way to do this or is Google your best friend here? So this is what I was doing last night. And the challenge is there are so, I mean, credit card affiliate revenue is real and there are a lot of sites out there that have all moved to this model where they get paid, uh, to promote cards.

And you know, to be clear on my show, like we get paid if we refer cards. However, I'm not going to just tell you to get a specific card. And that's the difference. If you search 0% balance transfer card, as I did last night, preparing to answer this question, the cards that show up are not the best cards for the circumstance.

They're often the best card for, you know, making money for the blog. So I typically always search within how I found this card was zero, zero balance transfer fee credit card site colon reddit.com because everyone on Reddit in, you know, different forums and subreddits are always posting things. They're not shilling their affiliate link.

They're actually trying to share information. So with a lot of financial information, especially I was looking for auto loan rates. I was like, you know, cheapest credit union, auto loan site, colon reddit.com. Uh, and I find it searching Reddit on Google is for some crazy reason, more efficient for me at least.

Maybe I don't know how to use Reddit search, but more efficient than searching Reddit on Reddit. That makes sense. You got to filter out your answers. I get that. No, that's, that's good advice. All right, Duncan, let's do the next one. Okay. Which I'm, I'm personally interested in this one.

I want to hear this one as well. I know. Yeah, I have this card and have some thoughts. A few years ago I signed up for a Marriott Bomboy card to get the a hundred thousand point bonus. My wife got one too, and the points were good enough to pay for a large part of two vacations.

Are there any good travel card signup bonuses today? What's your go-to travel credit card for either rewards or a decent signup bonus? So I basically did this same thing too. Cause a lot of them, they have rules. If you've signed up before, you can't sign up again for a new bonus.

So my wife and I did the Marriott Bomboy thing a couple of years ago. I think we got, both got the a hundred thousand points. Then I think you get the free year or the free stay sometimes up to a certain amount of points. And so we did this too.

Like we went to our favorite place in Marco Island at the JW Marriott there. And I think it paid for at least two to three nights each time. It might've been, might've been more before and less this time. We just went about a month ago, but it's, it's, I don't know if they still have this same bonus signup.

And obviously I couldn't get it again, but if you already use this and that's your card, what do you think in these days for travel? So you know, this is a revolving answer. So this is very timely, right? If you're listening to this and it's, it's been out for two years, I would say just ignore it.

But right now, you know, there's always going to be five or six cards with great bonuses. And so it's funny, the new Chase, so Marriott cards used to mostly be all on Amex and now Chase is kind of the big partner. And Chase has a new one, which right now is amazing.

It's five free nights at a Marriott up to 50,000 points. And if you Marriott now lets you, if you have these coupons that you get with cards to get, you know, 50,000 point night a year, you can actually top it up. So if you have some Marriott points, you can, you know, add on 15,000 points.

So right now there's a card that'll get you five free nights, uh, up to whatever 50,000 points is. That's a good one. The city premiere, I mentioned another one, 80,000 points. You know, if you're spending this on travel, that's a minimum of $800. Both the venture and the venture X are 75,000 points, which if you're using them in like the least optimal way is $750.

If you're losing, using them in a more optimal way, maybe it's close to $1,500. Um, the optimal way I guess would be you're, you're booking your travel through them. Yeah. So the, the optimal way is you're taking your points and your, let's say you want to fly to Europe and you transfer from capital one to air France and you buy your tickets with miles through air France.

Um, the less optimal way, but still totally valid and I don't want to shun anyone away from doing it, but the less optimal way is to just go into the capital one portal, go into the chase portal, go into the city portal and just search for flights and book up there.

Depending on the card and the portal, you'll get one to one and a half cents and you're not going to ever get more than that booking in their kind of dashboard. If you transfer to the airlines, you know, it could be a horrible deal or it could be, you know, close to 10 cents a point.

So it could be, you know, five, six times better just depending on the circumstances. And it really depends on, on where you're going, what the flight prices are, how last minute it is. But the big thing is that if you wanted to fly, let's say to Europe with your family and business class, there are some airlines where you can do it for 50,000 points.

Uh, you know, maybe 60,000 actually if it's a, uh, if it's air France, I think it's 57,500 each way. But like that ticket is going to cost five, $6,000. So, you know, if you needed to use your points in that portal, you're going to need five or 600,000 points to do it.

Um, but you probably could transfer and only need a hundred thousand round trip kind of with a signing bonus. So I've already done the Marriott cards through chase, right? That's where I had the bond boy ones. If chase has a new Marriott card, I probably can't get that sign up on a scan.

Is that right or not? Yeah. So depends on the card. And I would say, you know, Google is your friend here. I know for the chase reserve and the chase Sapphire cards, it's every four years. So a lot of people signed up for the chase reserve or the chase preferred more than four years ago.

You know, the move here is you can downgrade it to the chase freedom, freedom, unlimited freedom, flex, these free cards, and then open it up again and get it. Amex, depending on the card, sometimes it's a lifetime limit. You can only get the gold bonus once. Um, but you know, it just depends on the card.

So I would definitely Google it before you sign up for that card. Um, a couple other big ones right now, some kind of more high, all the cards I mentioned, um, you know, mostly a hundred dollar annual fee. The venture X is a $400 annual fee, the platinum card, if you can find a referral.

So I would say like, if you want to get the biggest signup bonus for the platinum card, don't, don't go to all the hacks.com/cards and sign up. It will help me. But if you go, uh, search for Amex platinum, 150,000 referral, there is an offer that Amex is offering only as a referral from cardholders for 150,000 points.

And, uh, I think there's a blog frequent Miler that has aggregated it's readers, referral links, and just cycles through the reader referral links when you click their signup link. So, you know, I always say look for the best bonus out there and, and find it there. And sometimes it's from a referral.

Sometimes it's from a, you know, an offer and sometimes it's, it's everywhere. And it sounds like there's obviously a lot of these places have to get that signup bonus because it's so competitive. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to get people to sign up for cards and my general rule of thumb, look, if you want to make a hundred, $200 for free, when you sign up for a card, you can basically sign up for any card.

Uh, but if you want, so my rule of thumb is anytime something crosses, like a hundred thousand is like, I will consider getting this card for a hundred thousand cause thousand to $1,500 to open a card. You know, we'll get to this on the credit question, but you know, the impact on your credit is not enough to make me shy away from getting 1500 free dollars.

Um, and so if it's over a hundred thousand, I think it's like, no brainer, let's get it. Every now and then there's a crazy one. Um, one about six months ago, there was a capital one business card that had a 350,000 point signup bonus. I was like, I don't even, of course I'm going to get this crazy deal in the world, but I'd say anything over a hundred thousand for a card with an annual fee around a hundred dollars is like amazing.

Um, anything under 75,000 and I'm just going to wait for the next one. So 75,000 is a great bonus. A hundred thousand is awesome. And anything over that is incredible unless you're looking at a card where the annual fee is really high. So if you're, you're looking at the Amex platinum $695 to get the card, you got to really make sure you're going to get a lot of the perks out of it for the 150,000 points, right?

Yeah, that one takes some math. My personal, my biggest success was one of the sapphires. I can't remember which it was years ago. I have both of them, but the bonus was so good. I ended up like flying, um, transatlantic, you know, business class just using like points from, from that bonus.

That was pretty cool. Yeah. Cause he never would have been flying business class without, without those points. The only thing I'll, I'll flag here is if you're looking at cards and they have a high annual fee, you can't cancel the card and keep the point. So if you get an Amex platinum and you rack up 150, 200,000 points and then you're like, well, I don't want to pay $700.

You know, you, you, you're going to have to either spend the points or say, I'm just going to transfer them to one of their partners. I'm a transfer them to air Canada where they can stay. And you know, it's free to open up these airline mileage accounts. So I would say early on, my strategy was like, stay within a program.

It's like, you've got your chase reserve. Maybe you downgrade open the preferred, maybe you open up a chase ink card for your business and you've kind of, you got at least one card that you're going to keep forever in that program. Uh, but with, when it comes to city and Kappa one and Amex, if you don't keep one card open in that program, you lose your points.

So, um, I like to say, don't start diversifying and trying to open points in 12 different programs till you feel like you've kind of gotten a grasp of the game. This is the one place where concentration pays. All right, let's do the, let's do another one on the airline stuff, Duncan.

Okay. My husband and I like to travel, but don't necessarily have one airline we use for every trip over certain airline rewards cards that are better than others, which airlines offer the best deals if we want to narrow it down to one. So the only, the only one I've ever really used for airlines is the Delta has an Amex one and I just use it because Delta is the one that I fly the most.

It's the only one with a straight through flight from Grand Rapids to New York. And it gets me free checked bags and priority, uh, boarding, which to me is kind of useless cause I hate getting on the plane before, but I also like to get on last. But, uh, any luck for you with, with specific airline cards or do you stick more to the other travel ones that can, you can still use to purchase airlines?

So my first rewards card was the United card, right? I was like, I lived in my parents and I grew up in the DC area. I went to school in Colorado, both United hubs. And back in the day that that was like a great move for spending money and earning points.

The problem is you look at the United card and it earns $2, two points, two United miles per dollar on United. And if you use a chase reserve card, you earn three points per dollar on United and you can transfer those points to United. So you actually earn more United points using like a chase reserve card than you do using a United card.

That makes sense. So my general rule of thumb is airline credit cards do two things really well. They get you perks like free check bags, lounge access, those kinds of things. And so if that's something you want, those cards can be great. And maybe that perk includes status. Some of these cards will maybe give you some extra miles towards getting their premier status.

The other one is sometimes they have lucrative signup bonuses. The United quest card at a hundred thousand signup bonus. Delta cards have 80 to a hundred thousand various times throughout the year. But when it comes to- So what does that mean? You look at it as basically a free flight, maybe potentially?

Yeah, I look at it as a way to get some points and a way to get some perks, but I'm not using a, if I were like, what is the one card I want to use? And I want to use it regularly to buy things. It wouldn't be a airline card, especially for the person asked this question, you know, they like to travel.

They don't have one airline. You know, if you take, let's take the chase reserve, you're not tying yourself to any airline. You want to transfer those points. You earn these points. And these are all flexible rewards cards. Capital One does it. Citi does it. Amex does it. Chase does it.

Even the built card to earn points on rent does it. And so the way it works is you earn chase ultimate rewards points or any other currencies, and you can take those chase points. You could transfer them to United and book as if you had United miles. You could transfer them to Southwest and book as if you had Southwest points.

You could transfer them to Air France. You could transfer them to, you know, each one has somewhere around, you know, eight to 20 airline partners and probably one to three hotel partners. And so you get the flexibility of being able to put miles and points in any airline program.

And I think, and I say any because all, I think every single one of the flexible currencies has at least one airline in every Alliance. So you might want to fly Delta with your points, but Delta's not a transfer partner of chase, but Air France is. Air France and Delta are both in SkyTeam.

So you can use Delta miles to fly Air France, or sorry, Air France miles to fly Delta. You can use with Amex, United isn't a partner, but Aeroplan, Air Canada's program is fantastic. So oftentimes if I want to book a flight on United with points, I'm going to transfer my Amex points to Air Canada because they're all in Star Alliance and book that.

So in that Bora Bora example, I think it was like 15 or 20% cheaper for me to book the United flight with Air Canada miles than it was to book the United flight with United miles. So all of these regular credit cards have obviously done their homework and they're more flexible.

And to your point, you get points for other things too, whether it's dining out or gas or whatever it is, the monthly categories they have, instead of just points for flying or purchases on those airlines. Yeah, you're locking yourself into one airline. So if you want to look at this purely mathematically, the points guy has this great valuation series where they go and say, okay, we booked all these United flights, or we priced them out in miles and dollars, and we figured out what's the value of a United mile.

And then they also say, what's the value of a chase point? And inevitably the chase, the flexible currencies, Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, they always come out being worth like 30, 40, 50% more because you have the flexibility to use it in any one of 20 programs. And so I tend to try to keep all my points that I can in these flexible currencies because it just gives me more optionality.

But look, if you're flying on United, definitely open a mileage plus account and credit the miles and build a balance there. And the same goes for travel. And some question I got that I think is relevant here is someone emailed me, one of my listeners and said, I'm flying on Korean Air.

Do I really need Korean Air points? I was like, well, no, no, no, they're partners with Delta. So if you have a Delta mileage account, you can credit your flights on Korean Air to Delta. You can credit your flights on Lufthansa to United. So I try to pick one airline within each alliance to try to credit my miles to, but when I'm spending money on a credit card, I try to earn them in the most flexible way.

All right. You're taking notes here, Duncan. We've got a lot of moving pieces here. Yeah. I was thinking, I just said in the chat, like the Zach Galifianakis gif with all the math equations floating around. Someone said, "This sounds more complicated than trading options." I mean, the way that I think about it, these rewards are like the original cryptocurrency in a lot of ways.

They have a lot of value, and you can port them into other things. There's no running the bank here. Let's do another one about these points, too. I think the next one is a good one. Yeah. Okay. "Has inflation hit credit card rewards points yet? Have we seen any credit card providers devalue their points systems to account for higher costs?" Okay.

I was curious about this, too, because I booked our trip to Marco a couple of months ago, and I'm talking to the Marriott person, and they said, "You should put it in today and book it because if it costs $50,000 for a room today, it's going to be $75,000 in a couple of months," or something like that.

I couldn't tell if that was a really good sales pitch or if that was true, but- Wait. You mean points, not dollars, right? Yeah. Sorry. Points. Yeah. Yeah. Not. Yeah. So, the points- Fancy trip there. $75,000. But I mean, you have to know a lot of people who've been sitting on points for a couple years because they didn't travel as much in the pandemic and have been waiting.

Are they coming back to see that their points don't take them as far? Has that been happening slowly but surely, or have you not really noticed that? I mean, it's definitely been happening. So, I think Marriott devalued points this year, Southwest last year, United the year before, IHG did it in 2020 and 2021.

So, the credit card points haven't really gotten devalued in that a chase point is one-to-one to United since they've had that flexibility. But a United point has gone down. One Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin, right? Exactly. Exactly. So, one chase point is still equal to one United point, one Air France, et cetera.

But one United point is worth less. And what's happened in the last three to five years is most of the airlines have shifted to this dynamic pricing. It used to be, if you wanted to book a flight in the United States with United Miles, and it was available in this low bucket where it was 25,000 miles round trip anywhere, or it wasn't and you had to pay 50,000 miles and you could use any seat on the plane.

Now they're like, "Well, what's the price? Let's come up with a flexible number." And there's still deals to be had, right? If there are awesome deals, if you're booking in advance or last minute or you find the right timing, but they've kind of started mimicking, "Oh, well, the prices are expensive, so we're going to need more points." And that's what happened with Marriott.

So, Marriott this year switched to, "We're going to change the number of points you need." Instead of saying category seven is this number of points, it's like, "Might be more, might be less." They did put a cap and they said, "We're not going to go too crazy in 2022, but I think in 2023, some of the really high-end resorts, the overwater bungalows, the super luxurious things, they're going to take that cap off." And I think everyone in the points world was like, "Oh gosh, Marriott's going to be totally devalued.

It's going to be gutted. Get out." And then they were like, kind of shared what they did and they implemented it. And people were like, "Well, it wasn't that bad." Like, yes, it's going to be a little more points here and there. So, in general, I think we just something got to get used to.

If you're going to take a trip next year, it's probably going to cost a few more points on whatever program. It probably changes every couple of years, but if you don't want to take the trip, don't just take a trip because you don't want to have to pay 10% more points next year.

Right. Yeah. By the way, people in the chat calling me an elitist for staying in a $50,000 night room. That's not true. And also, I'm flying from a regional airport here. I'm the one who has to take connecting flights everywhere. You people, and Chris is out in San Francisco and Duncan is in New York.

You guys are getting the best flights. I'm the one who has to get the puddle jumpers and transfer everywhere. It's true. It's true. Come on. All right, let's do another one. Okay. So, up next, we have a question from Jimmy. "My fiance and I are getting married in April 2023.

We are paying for a good portion of the wedding, so we will have tons of opportunities to spend and hit sign-up bonuses. What are the best type of travel cards that we can sign up for, and how many credit cards is too many? For some background, I currently have three credit cards, two are frozen, and my fiance only has one.

We never carry a balance on our cards, so I'm not worried about running up big balances. I just don't want opening new cards to negatively impact our credit. This might be a good opportunity for people that are totally new to this to explain what they mean by hitting sign-up bonus spending." Yeah, because that's something we haven't met.

That's why, if you have a bunch of big purchases coming up, doing the sign-up bonuses helps, because a lot of these cards will say, "You get the sign-up bonus if you spend $3,000 to $10,000 in the first three to six months," or whatever it is. They have different ranges, but I guess it used to be $3,000.

It seems like they're going up a little bit now. It might be $5,000 in the first three months. So, you have to actually spend that money on the card to get the sign-up bonus. So, if you know you have a wedding coming up, you can strategically do it. Chris, I know you've talked to me about freezing cards before and having too many.

Do you think that there is a point where you can get too many and you can max it out? What would you suggest here? One for him and one for the fiancé and get two sign-up bonuses, or what do you think? I think there's a couple of reasons where you might cap it out.

I was doing some research on this. I was like, "How many cards can someone reasonably open in a year?" There are stories on the r/churning, is the Reddit subreddit on this, where people in their first year of getting into this opened 17 cards, and they got approved for that 17th card.

So, one thing to the credit question, new credit is about 10% of your FICO score. So, when you open up a new card and people look and they say, "Oh, what's been going on here?" It does have some impact, but the amount you owe relative to the amount of credit you have is a much bigger factor.

So, if you go from having $20,000 of credit where you might spend $5,000 a month to going to $100,000 of credit where you spend $5,000 a month, that actually makes the amount you owe, your total debt to credit ratio, it actually makes it much more favorable. That's what I was going to say.

Years ago, I did a lower version of that where I signed up for five or six cards in one year when I got into this, and it actually helped my credit score because my overall credit limit went so far up. Every couple of years, you should probably ask your credit card company if you're going to keep that card to increase your limit, right?

Yeah. And the other hack here is if you're ever going to cancel a card, which I kind of recommend, if you're not using a card and it's not worth the annual fee, before you cancel it, first, see if you can call and just say, "Hey, I'm thinking of canceling this card.

One time I did this with the Platinum Amex," and they're like, "We're just going to waive your fee for the next year." Lots of stories of people that are like, "Well, if you can spend five grand, we'll give you another 50,000 or 100,000 points." So, first call, see if you can get a bonus to make it worth keeping.

Two, see if you can downgrade. If you have the Chase Reserve card or the Chase Preferred card and you've had it for so many years, the length of credit history is really important on your credit score. So, you might not want to get rid of this card. For me, the United card that I've had since college, I didn't want to get rid of it, but I could downgrade it to a no annual fee United card.

So, you could downgrade it so you don't have to cancel it. And then finally, if those aren't options and you have to cancel it, some banks, Chase is one of them, will let you move your credit around. So, before I canceled my United card, well, I didn't, but if I were going to cancel my United card, before I would, I would call and say, "Hey, can I take this $15,000 limit and move 14,000 of it over to this other card?" So, I keep my credit limit high instead of just canceling it.

So, you can move that credit over before you cancel it. But, to get back to the original one. So, one is, think about how much you're actually going to spend and you don't want to sign up for 15 cards that all need you to spend $5,000 if you're not going to be able to actually spend all of that, because if you don't get the signup bonus, it makes a lot of it not worth it.

So, that's one. And keep in mind, I thought this was a great opportunity when we did our wedding, but a lot of vendors, these vendors all have to pay 2%, 3% to accept credit cards. And sometimes they offer, they charge you that fee, or maybe they even say there's a cash discount or those kinds of things.

So, you might be surprised that you might be having a $40,000 wedding, but you might only be able to put $4,000 on a credit card. So, that's something to keep in mind. As for which cards, I think, rewind a little bit. We talked about a bunch of the cards with big bonuses.

I don't know. I think that, I'm trying to think about all the things you asked. And I was like, "Did that cover them all?" Let's do one more from Duncan, because he's going on his honeymoon soon. Duncan, you're going to London, right? So, Chris, I've heard you give your one biggest hack that's like a simple one about trying to get an upgrade, where you say, before you go, call the hotel desk, tell them you're coming in.

And a lot of times, what do you say? You can actually kind of get a free room upgrade, right? So, what can we do to get Duncan a free honeymoon upgrade? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah. So, this is, I don't know why this works so well, but it does.

So, you definitely, what you should do is, if you want to book a hotel and you book it directly with the hotel, email the hotel in advance and say, "Hey, I'm coming for this thing. I'm really excited to stay with you. Here's a little bit of information." That's it.

And then maybe follow up two, three days before. And I have heard so many amazing things. I just pulled up an email and someone said, "I stayed at this hotel. I got free parking, a room upgrade, three free breakfast coupons, a $10 voucher for food and drink at the bar, and two cocktails in my room with the check-in note," just for sending one email.

And Duncan, I think you slip in there. We're on our honeymoon. I think when my wife and I were on our honeymoon, we got there, they had champagne waiting for us. They gave us an upgrade to a nicer room because we mentioned that we're coming there on our honeymoon.

So, I do think you got to slide that in there. And I figured I'd show up with a cap that says like "Groom" or something on it. Yeah, yeah. Just married. But I think the big thing is book directly with the hotel. Okay. If you book through Expedia. Hotels.com is not going to help me.

Yeah. Look, there's a big debate about Hotels.com. The Points guy wrote this post about how his room got canceled because some mistake and the hotel was unwilling to do anything. And so, when you book with these programs like Hotels, Expedia, they have rewards programs that might be worth it, but the hotel is not interested in helping you in those problems.

And you've got to lean on everyone else. And sometimes they don't even know who you are until you check in. I did it once and they were like, "Oh, we didn't know you booked that type of room. I guess it was in the notes. Really sorry." So if you want to try to get the best experience, hotels are optimizing for people that come to their brand and they might have a chance of winning to stay at the brand in the future.

And if you book through Expedia, they're kind of like, "Well, this person didn't even go to our website." A quick follow-up on that. If you book through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal, does that count as direct with the hotel or is that not? I don't remember if it still is, but that's literally, I think, powered by Expedia.

So the short answer is no. But look, I have a Capital One Venture X card and you get a hotel credit every year. And look, I'd rather get the room $100, $200, $300 off than potentially get an upgrade. So it's not saying never use these portals. If you've got credits to book through portals and online travel agencies, it's totally worth saving.

I'd rather save 50% on a room than get a free upgrade. But if you're just going to book the room and also a lot of those OTAs, the online travel agencies, you might not be able to earn points. Technically, you're not supposed to earn Marriott points when you book through Expedia.

That doesn't mean that when you check in, you can't give them your number and maybe get lucky. But I find that some of the perks that they try to offer you to lure you into using those programs don't compare to the perks you would get if you just book directly and then you earn those points.

And then the last thing I'll say, this is kind of seems crazy and like 20 years ago is hotels really value the travel agent channel. And so working with a travel agent for high end hotels can get you a lot of perks. And it doesn't cost you anything. You're going to pay the same rate you're normally going to pay.

But you're probably going to be able to get, if you're staying at a hotel that's like five star, maybe honeymoon level, maybe four or 500 bucks a night or more, you could probably almost always get free breakfast. You could probably almost always get a hundred or so dollar credit when you're there, an upgrade, maybe early check-in, late check-out.

And if you don't, if you feel free to email me or go to allthehacks.com/upgrade, we've got a travel partner where we could just connect you and get those kind of high end things booked. And you get all those same amenities. There's probably 4,000 hotels around the world that kind of fit into that program.

See, so I've never really used a travel agent besides my parents back then. Duncan, Josh swears by it. Josh still uses one. And I know you're right, Chris, that you don't pay them. They get paid through making their bookings. I think a lot of people don't realize that if you use one, it makes a lot of sense, especially for a more complicated, larger vacation, I think.

Yeah, I think you've got to realize is they don't make money on flights really at all. And it's a lot of work to plan a trip. So if you're like, "Hey, travel agent, are you going to help me book this entirely complicated trip where I'm going to stay two nights at a Holiday Inn Express?" The kind of travel agent that's going to take that deal is probably not going to make that trip magical.

But if you're like, "I want to go to Europe and I want to stay at the Four Seasons, 10 different cities," there are dozens of travel agents who would be more than happy to help you plan that entire trip to get the commissions there. But if you're just like, "I want to stay at one of these nice resorts and I just want to get it booked easy and simple and get these perks," just email me and I'll just help you do it.

Sweet. All right, we've got one more, Duncan. Okay. "I've been using the Chase Sapphire Reserve card for a few years now and the benefits have been fading. What other options are there? I want to maximize my credit card spending as I spend around $8,000 a month. Humblebrag. Humblebrag. Humblebrag, right?

We've probably gone over the options already enough on here, but I think you mentioned the Chase Sapphire Reserve was like a millennial credit card that just blew up. I got that $100,000 bonus. I think the annual fee was like $550,000. And I realized recently, in the last couple of years, I'm not getting enough for that.

And so, you talked about negotiating, Chris. I called them a couple of times and said, "I've been a Chase client for 12 years or whatever. What do we do about getting the annual fee taken off for a year?" And they turned me down like three times. I tried. So, they just kept saying, "Go down to the Sapphire Preferred." And that's only $95 a month.

So, that's what I ended up doing. I downgraded from the Sapphire Reserve to the Sapphire Preferred. That was as easy as I could get. So, I guess Chase doesn't care about it as much anymore? Is that what the thinking is? I don't think Chase is as generous with retention as Amex.

It sounds like if you called three times, maybe you weren't threatening that hard because you ended up sticking around. And I will say, don't make the mistake, sorry, that Ben made, which is don't downgrade your Reserve to a Preferred. Downgrade your Reserve to the Freedom, the Freedom Unlimited, the Freedom Flex, which are all free cards, and earn a complimentary set of perks.

Freedom Unlimited is going to get you one and a half points on everything. So, you think that's better than the Preferred? Well, and then open up the Preferred as a new card. Oh, don't do the downgrade. I got you. The downgrade a few months ago was an 80,000 point sign-up bonus on the Preferred.

Oh, a total noob move on my end. So, the move was downgrade Reserve to something, open up a new Preferred. I think now it's still 60,000 points. The Preferred actually upped the dining bonus. So, Reserve was like 3X Travel, 3X Dining, and now the Preferred is 2X Travel, 3X Dining.

So, it's like, is it really worth getting one extra point on all your travel for an extra $450 a year? Now, I will say, a lot of people look at these and they're like, "God, $550 is a huge cost for a credit card." I'm not going to say it's not.

But on the Reserve, for example, the first $300 you spend on travel, you don't have to book it through their portal anywhere, they credit it back. Right, they get it back. So, instantly, I'm like, "Okay, it's a $250 card." Now, is spending $250 worth it if you don't use the lounge access they give you?

If you don't use it for getting a free global entry, which you can, but you don't need a global entry every year. I think it'll last five years. Yeah. So, it might not be worth keeping it open, but don't forget that a lot of these credits, some are way easier to use than others.

The Amex stuff, it's like, I was talking to my wife, "Do we cancel our Platinum card?" I get $15 a month of Uber credit each month, but we end up on the, oh gosh, it's the 30th. I was like, "We end up on the 30th of the month being like, 'God, we haven't used it,' and we order Uber Eats to deliver a pint of ice cream." I promise you, that wasn't something I would have done otherwise, so I'm not really getting $15.

So, when you evaluate these credits, you've got to ask yourself, "Is this really saving me $15, or is this giving me $2 of value, because I wouldn't have otherwise ordered ice cream at 10 p.m. on the last day of the month?" Right. Good point. So, this can be confusing to people who are just kind of dabbling.

So, remember, check out all the hacks for all finer podcasts are sold. Chris can help you with a lot of this stuff. He's helped me on a lot of this stuff, personally. If you're listening to this in podcast form, leave us a review. If you're watching on YouTube, Duncan wants you to hit that Subscribe button.

If you want some merch, Duncan and I, both. I got the Portfolio Rescue t-shirt on today. Duncan's got the Compound shirt. We've got to get Chris something. We've got to send Chris something. I just got a gray t-shirt. idontshop.com. We have the "Ben doesn't drink coffee" mug behind me here.

Keep those comments and questions coming. I know we've got a lot of good questions, actually, in the chat today that we didn't even get to. If you have a question, send us. Askthecompoundshow@gmail.com. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, and we will see you next time. Yeah, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Chris.

Yeah, thanks. See y'all. Bye. Bye.