(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins and I'm excited you're here today. So in the past, I've done a ton of mailbag episodes where I've answered questions from you all. And recently I did an episode where I just shared a few of my thoughts on things going on in my mind.

Well, I was trying to think about this week whether I wanted to do another mailbag and I had all these things to share on my mind and I thought maybe I would just combine it all together. So there's a little bit of a mailbag, a little bit of some reactions and some thoughts, some wins, some hacks and a whole lot more.

I am sure that you are going to find value in this episode because there's really a lot of content. It's mostly focused on travel and credit card points and miles and a little bit on kids and some deals. But before we jump in, I wanna talk a little bit about a few wins that I just felt like I needed to share because they were so awesome.

The first comes from Austin who wrote this in an Apple podcast review, which by the way, I so, so much appreciate when you guys leave reviews on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I love reading them, I feature them on the website and maybe I'll start reading a few more of them on the air.

So this one said, "Episode 104 saved me $15,854 a year. They said that it pointed them in a direction that cut their insurance policies in half and with better coverage and they used to sell insurance." So, I mean, this might take the top position for the most money saved from an episode, at least that I've heard about.

If you've saved more than that, please let me know or even anywhere close. I'd love to collect more stories like this. And I actually think in the new version of the website I'm building, I'm gonna highlight some of these reviews and testimonials and stories. So please send a few and you might see yourself on the All The Hacks homepage.

Next, I wanna share a story from Christopher that was just an amazing example of what can happen at a hotel. So he was excited to take a really special trip to Savannah, Georgia with his family to celebrate and thought they'd stay in a really nice place. So he was looking at the Palmetto Bluff where he said the standard king rooms were about $600 a night, but the double queen rooms were well over a thousand.

We had two kids, so the king room wasn't an option. And so he wanted to figure out what to do. He was a little bit annoyed, but he filled out the contact us form on the website and said, "It's really hard for a family of four to stay when most of the other luxury resorts in the area only charge a little bit more for a double queen over a king." And they were charging such a significant premium.

Well, a day later, the price for the two queen room was reset online to 700 a night and he made a reservation. Well, where it really gets exciting is that he found an email address for the GM of the hotel, explained that it was his daughter's eighth birthday and asked if they had any recommendations for activities or dinner to celebrate.

And the GM passed them along to a guest relations manager who just asked a few questions and made some suggestions for activities. Well, fast forward to the actual stay, they ended up getting a free upgrade to a suite that would have cost over $1,700 a night. But when they opened the door, they were greeted to the soundtrack of "Matilda the Musical," which is his daughter's favorite thing to listen to, a bunch of balloons, gifts for his daughter, and a bottle of wine for he and his wife.

This might be the best story we've heard yet of an upgrade and an amazing experience just from sending an email to the GM or to the front desk or to the concierge of a hotel. So definitely keep doing that. If you have any trips coming up, just always make sure to book directly with the hotel or through a travel agent when you're doing it.

Last, I wanna share a story from Michael who used the Card Optimizer spreadsheet I built to evaluate what the best card options were. He said that just 15 minutes with the spreadsheet added more than $500 in additional points per year versus the cards he already had in his wallet.

And while the price for the spreadsheet is actually set at pay what you want, he found it so valuable that he offered to make a donation in my name for $175 based on the value provided. He made that to Charity Water, which is an awesome organization I'm a big fan of.

So first off, I'm so excited that you got a ton of value from this spreadsheet. That makes me so happy. I wanna continue building tools like that. Second, thank you so much for the donation you made. It really means a lot to me and to all the people who are gonna have clean drinking water because of it.

And finally, if you haven't checked out the spreadsheet and want to, you can go to allthehacks.com/cardvalue and take a look. You're also gonna get the update to V2 of the spreadsheet, which I'm working on now. Thanks to some awesome feedback from listeners. So those are a few awesome wins from the audience.

Please share your wins, share your amazing stories. I'd love to hear them. I'd love to share them with others. And as you'll hear in the rest of this episode, there's gonna be a lot more. So let's jump in right after this. Signing your life away to a big wireless provider is kind of like being trapped on a roller coaster from hell.

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To get your new unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free, go to allthehacks.com/mintmobile. That's allthehacks.com/mintmobile, M-I-N-T, mobile. And cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at allthehacks.com/mintmobile. (upbeat music) Okay, I wanna start talking about travel.

Mostly because we just got back from an incredible trip to Bora Bora a few weeks ago. I am so fortunate that we've been able to go there a few times. It's crazy that from the West Coast, you can get to French Polynesia in just eight hours. And even if you're not trying to do an aspirational business class trip, you can find flights in coach on French Bee or United for less than $1,000.

So the first two trips we took were planned a bit more in advance. And this one was really last minute. I talked about it a little bit on the last episode I did like this. And it came together because I asked my parents if there was any time in 2023, they might be able to help watch our girls.

And it turned out that something sooner was actually the best for everyone. And so we started looking at where we were going. So if you wanna hear a little bit about how we decided where to go, go check out episode 124. We got an amazing deal on flights. We ended up doing round trip on United and it was only 55,000 AeroPlan points each way in business.

I'll come back to that 'cause AeroPlan has been such a great option. But the hotels was the one where I really was trying to optimize and I'll share what ended up happening. So I had hoped that as the dates got closer and closer, that the availability for points would open up.

And I actually gotten an email a few weeks ago from Jeremy who shared his experience with Hilton, which was very positive. So he said they normally stay at the Grand Wailea in Maui. Now, before I continue, I just wanna say I am so heartbroken about what's going on in Maui.

We went last October and we spent the whole day in Lahaina and it's so sad to see what's happened and the destruction from all these fires. All of our thoughts and prayers from the whole family are out to the people in Maui and Lahaina and everywhere affected. It's been so sad to see what's happening.

There are a lot of organizations you can contribute to if you wanna support the relief efforts, but I'll link to a few that we've made donations to from our Daffy account in the show notes. So when Jeremy last looked to book a trip there, the rooms were over 2 million Hilton points a night and he checked a week before the trip and rooms were down to 100,000 points per night.

He ended up booking the room with points, used a free night certificate with the Aspire card and got incredible value. He stayed the second half of the trip at the Ritz-Carlton, which he said was a great property, had really reasonable Bonvoy rates outside of peak time and one of the best brunch buffets outside of Southeast Asia he's ever had.

That was also a bummer to hear because we actually stayed at that same Ritz-Carlton and never tried out the brunch buffet, mostly because no amount of Bonvoy status gets you free breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton and I think I was just a little annoyed by that rule, but I have some regret.

I wish I had lived a little bit more of a die with zero life because the best buffet brunch outside of Southeast Asia sounds like a really incredible meal to have. So hearing a story like that, we thought if we waited till the last minute, some availability would open up and unfortunately, that just wasn't the case.

So for Bora Bora, we waited, we waited, nothing happened. We ended up just having to book the room with dollars. It was a little over $1,000 a night, but we did use the upgrade tactics. We emailed the hotel and were able to get upgraded to a deluxe overwater villa, which was absolutely incredible.

In fact, if you go back to episode 49 on YouTube, you can see I recorded the entire episode from an overwater villa in Bora Bora. That time was at the St. Regis. Bora Bora's incredible. I've talked about it multiple times, so I won't spend much time here, but on the West Coast, getting to French Polynesia is so easy.

Bora Bora, it's an amazing place to go. It's so beautiful. In fact, a lot of Tahiti is. I haven't gotten a chance to explore it as much. I think our next trip, we might spend some time in Morea or in Taha or another island to just get more of an experience.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to use our points there, but we were fortunate that at the last minute, the Hilton Tahiti, which is a property we've never stayed at, it's really near the airport, it's gorgeous. The pool was amazing. The property was amazing. Breakfast was amazing. It was just such a great experience.

And that did open up for points, which meant that I could use our Hilton Aspire free night certificate and get a free night, which saved us $400 on that hotel room. And similarly, we got a great upgrade there, thanks to Hilton Diamond status, which we also have from the Aspire card, which I think might be a good time to just briefly talk about the Aspire card, because I'd always thought it was a good deal.

And then finally going on this trip made it all come together. So it does have a high annual fee at $450, but what you get, aside from a 150,000 point welcome bonus after spending $4,000 in the first three months, you get 14 X points on Hilton hotels just from the card.

That's in addition to the 20 points per dollar you get staying at Hilton when you're a Diamond member, which Diamond status is another benefit of the card. You also get a $250 Hilton resort credit. So we instantly got that after our first night. There's also a $250 airline fee credit.

We've been able to get that back with Southwest this year. You also get a priority pass select membership. We already have that through the Platinum card and the Chase Reserve. So that one wasn't a big benefit for us. And then finally you get a free night certificate. And so if you add up what we've gotten just from this trip from that card, we got $400 off a hotel room.

We've been able to get $250 airline credit. We got a $250 resort credit. So we're already at $900, but that complimentary Diamond status also got us breakfast at the hotel for seven nights for two, which I don't actually remember the price, but I wanna say was in the ballpark of $40, $50 a person.

So there's another $700. So almost $1,600 of value from this card, not including the welcome bonus and not including the 14 points per dollar. So all in all, incredible deal. And so now I'm actually thinking Amy has one now, maybe I should get a Hilton Inspire also. And then we'd have twice the perks, twice the credits, twice the free nights.

So if you do spend $60,000 a year on the card, you earn another free night certificate. I'm not sure that that's the best deal for our circumstances but definitely something to consider. So if you're interested in the card, Amy's referral link for that card, which obviously we would both appreciate you using is allthehacks.com/hilton.

I did wanna come back to service because I know one of the conversations I have with people who've never really stayed at a five-star resort is what's really the difference? Is it really worth that $1,000 a night? And what happens that is different from other properties? Fortunately, we heard a story from a friend of ours at the exact same time as a similar thing happened to us that I think really highlights both a total win for service and a total miss.

And so it turns out that both me and my friend Liz got sunburned when we were traveling last month. And for me, I somehow forgot to put sunscreen on my neck. I have no idea how I managed to get my entire body except my neck, but I got a little burnt.

And when I went, and fortunately at the Hilton properties in French Polynesia, there's free sunscreen and free aloe at the pool. So I noticed the sunburn around 5.30, six o'clock, went to the pool, and it turned out the pool stand was closed and they'd put away the sunscreen and the aloe.

Because all the hotels are kind of secluded, there's no store I could have gone to at this time. So I went to the front desk and asked if there was any chance they could have opened up the little pool stand that was, I don't know, maybe a two-minute walk so I could get some aloe and put it on my neck.

And the person at the front desk said, "Sure, no problem, I'll send someone over." So I went over to the desk, waited for 15 minutes, no one came. Amy, meanwhile, is sitting at dinner waiting for me to join her. So I give up, I walk to dinner. It turns out that right next to the restaurant we were going to was a concierge.

So I tried that desk instead of the front desk and said, "Hey, I would love it if someone could get some aloe. You could bring it to me here at dinner, or maybe someone could send it to the room. Anything would be greatly appreciated." Well, an hour later, they came back and said they weren't able to do anything.

Not the end of the world. I survived, of course. But the story Liz told me where she was staying at the Rosewood in Mayacoba in Mexico was that she also got sunburn and didn't tell anyone about it, didn't say anything. But when she got back to her room in the evening, there was a bottle of aloe and a note that said, "We noticed you might've gotten some sun and thought you'd appreciate this." And those little touches of service are what sets apart a good luxury hotel and a great luxury hotel.

Similarly, I remember when we were in Bali, we were staying at the Four Seasons. And when I was speaking with a waiter at breakfast and mentioned that jackfruit was my favorite fruit, and I loved that they have it in Bali, but I hadn't seen it at this hotel. And he had relayed that message.

And the next morning at breakfast, not only was there jackfruit, but a different waiter came up to me and said, "I heard you really like jackfruit. We got some and we brought it in." I can't necessarily put a price on what those experiences are worth, but they just make the whole experience at a hotel incredible.

Similarly, a couple of last two anecdotes, Liz also told me that every night they parked bicycles at their room. And the next morning someone had gone by and turned the bikes around. So the bikes were facing the other direction. And then another one that I thought was so minor, but such an opportunity for a hotel to do a great job was at the Conrad.

When we first got there and checked in, they asked us, "Do you have any food allergies?" And we told them we have no food allergies. And it could have been so easy for them to mark that somewhere because every time you go to any restaurant, there's a piece of paper with every guest and it has all these secret codes about the guests.

And I was always looking at it, trying to figure them out and I couldn't. But every time we went to a restaurant, someone said, "Do you have any food allergies? Do you have any food allergies?" And I was almost wondering why they even asked us at check-in if they weren't gonna do anything with that information.

And so if anyone has some fun examples, I'd love to hear them. I always love hearing about ways that hotels can set themselves apart and what makes for an amazing experience. My daughter is only three, but she starts preschool next week. So do you want a quick back to school tip?

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That's 50% off up to $10 of value when you spend 15 or more. Promo code ALLTHEHAX. Don't forget, that's code ALLTHEHAX for 50% off your next order, term supply. You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking.

It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place and makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every purchase. You can also load it on your partner's phone so they always know the best cards to use.

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And if you decide you wanna sign up after the trial, which you probably will, you can go to allthehax.com/cardpointers to get 20% off. Again, that's allthehax.com/cardpointers. I have a few other things on the topic of travel. One, I was talking to a friend of mine named Trevor who was in Europe and had a flight home from Copenhagen to Los Angeles, but wanted to come home a week early because something had come up and he wanted to go visit his family.

And so he actually tried to call SAS, the airline, to ask some questions about changing his flight and couldn't get anyone on the phone. So he thought, "I'm just gonna go to the airport." So he went to the airport and he asked his first agent at the desk if there was any way that not only could he leave a week early, but his flight was to LA and he really wanted to get to San Francisco.

And it was part of a round trip that he was gonna use to come back to Europe, so he couldn't just cancel one leg 'cause it would mess everything up. And the first agent said, "There's no way, it's impossible. "I can't do this, I'm sorry. "Nothing can be done." So he sat down, he'd actually brought all his bags, so he wasn't quite sure what to do because he wanted to go home and he didn't have a place to stay.

So he's looking on his phone for a few minutes, trying to see if there are any other options and he looked up and noticed that about 15 minutes later, the person he'd spoke to had left. Maybe they'd went on break and someone else was working at the SAS desk.

So he went up to this next agent and explained his whole situation again, was very kind, very nice and very gracious. And that agent, despite that the other agent said it would be impossible, was able to move him to a flight to San Francisco for no extra cost to come home that day to a different airport.

So I think the takeaway for me is there's this phrase that's often used in the points and miles world, which is hang up, call again. If you call a credit card company or an airline or a hotel group and you're trying to get something done and you're just not getting the answer you want, sometimes the best answer is to just hang up and try again.

And if you see it mentioned online, it's usually abbreviated H-U-C-A, hang up, call again. And it was just cool to see that work in real life. It was wait till the agent's on break, find another agent and try again. And I'm so glad that he was able to get home because it would have been way more expensive to change and rebook his flight.

So I'm glad that worked out. Continuing on the travel front, one was around rental cars. So it turns out for whatever reason, we went to rent a car and the cheapest rental cars in Minneapolis were all electric. It was either a Model 3 or it was an electric SUV that was either gonna be a Volvo or a Tesla Model Y.

What I didn't think about in advance, but I did as we checked out, was that unlike a gas car that you have to bring back with a full tank or get penalized or pay a much higher rate for gas, when you return an electric car, there's no requirement to bring it back full.

So not a huge savings, but I just thought a really great hack if you rent an electric car, you don't have to pay for that electricity and you can bring it back empty. On the topic of renting cars, I have two hacks that listeners sent in about renting cars in Europe.

One is from Elliot, who said, "Take a look at Car to Europe," which is a car leasing company in Europe. He said that it exploits a tax loophole that allows individuals in Europe to sell cars to non-Europeans without tax penalties. And so it makes it really affordable for a longer term lease of a new car in Europe.

He had a great experience. And my friend Daniel also reached out to tell me that LIGU, L-I-I-G-U dot me, is a rental car company that he recently used in France. He used it because it was the cheapest option in Bordeaux, but after the experience, he's gonna use it as much as possible.

He said the whole thing was done on mobile. It was similar to Zipcar if anyone ever used their service. At the airport, he was able to scan all his passport, his driver's license. He got to the car, he unlocked it from his phone, took off, didn't interact with anyone, and it was the most seamless experience he's ever had renting a car.

So check out LIGU if you're anywhere in Europe and you can use that. And then a final reminder from Linda, just make sure you video the car inside and out on pickup and return. She rented a car in Slovenia and returned it back in Italy. And while she didn't actually notice that the roof had a lot of dents, likely from hail, they were on the video.

And when she returned the car, she was able to show the video, prove that they were there during pickup and didn't get charged any extra. Also on our Minneapolis trip, a few things. Actually, technically we were staying in St. Paul and we stayed at a hotel called the St.

Paul, which has that like really old school luxury feel. But when we checked in, I felt like such a rookie. They had a sign that said, you know, we're part of the I prefer hotel rewards program. And I was like, oh my gosh, I booked a hotel that had a rewards program and I didn't even know about it, sign up for it or use it.

It just felt like such a rookie move for me. And so while we were there, I did join the program. Technically the terms say that you needed to be a member before the stay to get credit for it. But I'm hoping that maybe because I joined before checkout, it will work.

The stay didn't post automatically. I sent an email to see if there was any way to add the points, but so far haven't heard back. But I will say if you're in St. Paul or Minneapolis, a few things we did that were amazing. One, the Minnesota Children's Museum is incredible.

We could have spent the whole day there if we had time. The Como Zoo and Conservatory is amazing. It's actually free or donation based. Shout out to Eric for the recommendation. All the kids in the family loved it. And then food-wise, I'll just share one restaurant that was really awesome called Moscow on the Hill.

We had a big family dinner at this amazing Russian restaurant. Good drinks, good food, good staff. It was just such a great experience. So that was that trip. One thing I noticed as I was walking through the airport, I saw one of those airport bookstores and it just reminded me of a hack that Carrie sent in, which I don't know if anyone knew because I didn't.

A lot of the airport bookstores sell books and they allow you to buy it, read it, and return it for a 50% refund at any participating airport store. So she sent me a flyer and there's a ton of airports that participate. LAX, Phoenix, Kansas City. She only sent the top half of the thing so I can't read all of them.

JFK, Kansas City, and probably a lot more based on how big I think this flyer is. So definitely a good option if you like reading physical books and you didn't know there's a read and return program. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to look up a little bit more there.

A few last quick travel things. One, Southwest just announced that they're going to start adding free standby for all passengers on all ticket types. It was more of a leak than an announcement so I don't think it's gone into place yet, but even for the cheapest Southwest fares, you'll be able to get to the airport standby on an earlier flight that day free.

Jamie sent in that if you're not already linking your Delta and your Starbucks accounts, you should so that you can earn Delta miles anytime you're purchasing at Starbucks. Easy to find the instructions there, but I'll put them in the show notes. And then last, Uber and Marriott have a promo going on right now that if you link your Marriott and Uber accounts, you get 2,000 Marriott points.

But then if you book an Uber Reserve, which is a pre-scheduled ride, you get 4,000 Marriott points for each ride up to four times. And if you do all four, you get another 2,000 points. So if you do all of that, that's 20,000 points in total. I wouldn't book Uber rides for 4,000 points you don't need, but if you already have a ride where you know you're gonna need it at a certain time, it might be a good deal.

So I think that's everything travel except a couple quick ones related to kids, and then I'll get onto some credit card stuff. So first off, if you book with AAA, you can get a car seat for free when you use their rate with Hertz. Otherwise, I know a lot of rental car companies charge 10 to $20 a day for a car seat.

We've actually started bringing the Ride Safer Travel Vest for our three-year-old. It's awesome. It takes up so much less space than a car seat. Think of it as a harness that reroutes the seatbelt so that it's safe for children. It doesn't work for a one-year-old, so we do actually bring a travel car seat there.

It's the Costco Senra Next. Basically seems like everywhere you search online, it's the recommended car seat for traveling, so we use that. The other kid travel thing I wanna share is really an amazing story. So months ago, I shared a story about a listener named Adam who found $4,000 in unclaimed money.

Everyone out there should be doing a quick search to see if you can find any unclaimed money because there's so many opportunities. But that $4,000 helped him cover the cost of the initial order for a company called 50/50 Gear, which launched backpacks designed specifically for parents to get out with their kids.

He spent three years leading the baby registry at Amazon, and he was always annoyed that no company made gear, especially like a diaper bag, that he was actually excited to use as a dad. And he and his good buddy from college decided to get together and build it. So Adam was so grateful that he was able to fund part of this company with unclaimed money that he found from this show that he sent me a bag, and on our trip to Minneapolis, we got to use it for the first time, and it's so great.

I'm really a fan of the bag. As far as storage and aesthetics, it just felt like I was carrying a backpack I would carry anyways, but it made it so easy to find all of the snacks and the diapers and the bottles and the waters and everything we were carrying for the kids.

But I actually didn't bring a backpack for myself, so I also used it for my laptop, my AirPods, my wallet, my ID, my credit cards, my sunglasses, and everything else. So huge shout out to Adam for making an amazing bag. Thank you so much for sending it to me.

And if anyone out there is looking for an awesome bag and you have kids, definitely check out 50/50 Gear. I'll ask Adam if he has any deals that he wants to offer the audience, and if so, I'll put them in the show notes and you can find them. Otherwise, I'd definitely check out this bag.

I thought it was great, and I will be continuing to use it as our primary bag for our kids. Last few things on kids. One, this sounds so ridiculous to say out loud, but we've been going to the library a lot. Both of our girls love books, but our three-year-old churns through books.

We probably read 20, 30, 40, 50 books a day, oftentimes the same book, and we just don't feel like we need to have thousands of books in our house that we've bought. And so regularly, we've been going to the library, which near us has an incredible children's section. We'll check out 10, 20 books at a time.

Next week, we'll go return them and get 10, 20 more. So if you have kids that are young and love to read and you're not using the public library, maybe I just am late to this and we just started doing it, but it just seemed like something that prior to children, I wasn't using the library as much as I should.

That said, reminder that if you're looking for books on Amazon and you use this cool browser extension, Library Extension, which I'll link to in the show notes, it'll actually tell you if you can get the ebook of any book you're looking at free from your local library. So another good option there.

Two quick things. One, hack from Yelena, who in reference to episode 124, where I talked about recording kids' stories for our Tony box, she suggested checking out a cool app called Novel Effect, which basically provides a really cool soundtrack and sound effects to stories you're reading and recording for your kids.

So check out Novel Effect if you're interested. And then last, I think anyone with kids knows that kids get sick all the time. There are two apps that we've recently tried that are kind of pediatrician telehealth on demand. One of them is called Summer Health. One of them is called Blueberry.

I'll link to both in the show notes. And the premise is you pay about $20 a month and you get unlimited access to pediatricians for all of your children. It doesn't route anything through insurance. Summer Health is all text-based. So you can send lots of messages, pictures, ask questions, get responses, pretty quick response time.

When we used Summer Health for a couple months, it was only 10, 15 minutes before someone would reply. And then a few days ago, our youngest daughter woke up with 103 degree fever, had thrown up what looked like a little bit of bile in her crib, and we just wanted to get a second check, but it was Saturday morning.

And I knew if we messaged our pediatrician, we probably wouldn't hear back till Monday. So I paid the $20 to sign up for Blueberry. And while it was a little bit of a slower response time than Summer Health, it probably took an hour to hear back from someone. They also have the option to do phone calls and maybe even video calls, but I haven't tried that yet.

So two great options for getting access to pediatrics and telehealth for a pretty reasonable cost. For Blueberry, if you actually need to do tests, they can send the orders over to Quest to be able to get results if you need to do any testing, but then also they can send prescriptions to your pharmacy where you can use your insurance, of course.

And so, I don't know, I just thought I'd share those two for anyone out there looking for options. I'll put links in the show notes. If I can find a promo code or a referral code, I'll put those there as well. How do you feel about your finances right this second?

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And they match you with your own CFP professional who uses industry-leading technology and is backed by a team of experts across investments, taxes, and more. So, tackle the uncertainty you're feeling about your finances and replace it with some real confidence about your money. Go to allthehacks.com/facet, that's F-A-C-E-T. I made sure to let them know you're on your way, and they'll even waive the $250 enrollment fee for all of you.

Again, that's allthehacks.com/facet, F-A-C-E-T. Don't leave your finances up to chance. Facet Wealth is an SEC-registered investment advisor. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities, nor is it investment, legal, or tax advice. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Terms and conditions may apply. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

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So, please consider supporting those who support us. All right, let's move on to credit cards. I'm gonna start by talking about the Credit Card Competition Act, which a few of you emailed asking my take on. So, for a little bit of history, back in 2010, there was something called the Durbin Amendment, which was part of the Dodd-Frank Act.

And what it did was really drastically restrict the amount of interchange, which I'll get to, that banks could charge on debit card usage. Now, interchange is the fees that merchants and stores pay to accept credit card payments and debit card payments. And as much as the goal was to reduce costs for merchants and lower prices, it didn't have anywhere near the effect that they had originally intended.

First off, only 1.2% of all merchants reduced prices, about 70-something percent of them stayed the same, and then close to 30% of them actually raised prices. So, if the end goal was to lower the cost for businesses so they would lower prices, totally failed there. But because banks no longer had any income from debit cards, one, they weren't able to offer any more rewards on debit cards, but the bigger impact was that average checking account fees went up from $4.34 to $7.34.

Account minimums went up, maintenance fees went up, and there were just a ton less free checking accounts, which had a massive negative impact on lower-income Americans. So, from my perspective, that amendment was not helpful at all. But now that we have that context in place, I'll talk a little bit about the Credit Card Competition Act right now.

Though, it does look like Senator Durbin was trying to get it included in the National Defense Authorization Act. It looks like it's not in there now. Though, Senator Durbin did say he's looking to find another way to get it back in. However, it's a little different from the original Durbin Amendment.

So, in this new rule, it would only impact issuers with over $100 billion in assets, which is most of the major issuers we all know, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Amex, Capital One. And what it does is limit those issuers to not having credit cards that only have access to one network.

Now, by networks, I mean things like Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover. And so, cards are no longer allowed to have one network and need at least two networks. And those two networks can't be Visa and MasterCard. Now, technically, it's that they can't be the two largest networks, but Visa and MasterCard are so far ahead that it doesn't look like there's any chance that will change in the near or even distant future.

Now, again, the goal was to give more competition to the networks that process transactions so that merchant fees can come down. But after listening to a few experts who have takes on this, it seems like a really easy solution would be for someone like Chase to have a card and issue it with Visa and Amex.

So, kind of in the way that Amex has co-brand cards where they're not part of Amex's membership rewards, but they're the network, you could actually see Chase offering the Chase Sapphire Reserve as a Visa Infinite and Amex card. Obviously, that doesn't seem normal now, but it seems like a good business for Amex because Amex would charge for that ability.

And they're probably in a pretty good negotiating place because they would be a requirement. But at the end of the day, given how unsuccessful the Durbin Amendment was at lowering prices, given the impact it had on people's accounts, and given the fact that it seems very few lawmakers want to take a stand on this because they don't wanna upset banks, but they also really don't wanna upset consumers.

Consumers love credit card rewards. They're a part of society. And I just don't think at the end of the day this is gonna actually come to fruition. That said, if it does, it doesn't seem like it's nearly as limiting as the Durbin Amendment was because it's not restricting the rates people can charge.

It's actually just requiring two networks. And so if another network comes in, then the question is just, will that network maybe reduce the amount of revenue that the issuer gets? Yes, but it's probably not gonna go from one and a half to three and a half percent like it is now down to 0.05, which is what happened as a result of the Durbin Amendment.

So if this were to pass, do we start to see some credit cards that were offering two X points, maybe offer 1.5 X points, maybe something like that. But I don't think, like some people have said, this is going to be the end of credit card rewards if it happens.

And personally, I actually don't think it's going to happen. And given that it was just taken out of the National Defense Authorization Act, I think it's even less likely, but in case it pops up again, I thought it'd be good to give it a little quick cover. Also on credit cards, you guys have sent in so many great questions that as I've been planning out the content for this show for the next six to 12 months, I've decided to do an entire, it's not really a series, maybe a set of episodes on a bunch of different topics related to credit card rewards.

It'll probably start off with, you know, kind of a basic high level 101, but I'll include one on earning points, redeeming points, meeting minimum spend, tools for booking awards, specifically on flights and hotels, and how to work with player two. If there's any other big themes of topics you have on credit cards, let me know as I'm planning all of these out.

But there were a few pointed questions that I don't think necessarily fit into those episodes. So I'm going to tackle them quickly here. So Nick wrote in because he got an email from Capital One asking if he wanted to switch his venture card from a credit card to a charge card.

And the main difference between those two things is that a charge card doesn't let you carry a balance and pay interest, which I hope for anyone listening and trying to optimize the points game, you're not carrying a balance and you're not paying interest. If you are, then that is your priority.

Don't worry about credit card rewards, pay off the credit card debt. However, with a charge card, there isn't always a limit, which means the limit isn't reported to credit bureaus. It actually means that there's a potential in the future that Capital One could decide that your limit is lower because it's not a specifically stated limit.

For me, I wouldn't accept the change because I want Capital One to report a limit on that card. The Venture and Venture X cards are actually known for having higher limits. Having a higher limit would only increase the total amount of credit you have available to you. And so I think that would be helpful.

The only argument I could make for potentially wanting to make this change is if you are using this card and constantly at a very high utilization rate on the card, let's say you have a $10,000 limit and you're always over eight or $9,000, that could have a negative impact on your credit score because you have such a high utilization that it might make sense to switch it to a charge card.

Otherwise, I'm all in on staying as a credit card. I actually think I might've gotten this email and immediately dismissed it. Another question from Lauren was, "I transferred Amex points to United or Delta "and I had to pay sales tax on the transfer. "Is that normal?" And I had to think about it for a little bit and even do a little bit of homework because I don't remember this.

And it turns out that when transferring to U.S. Airlines, not international airlines and not hotel programs, this does happen. So the easiest way to do that is to avoid transferring to U.S. Airlines, which is pretty easy. I think the best value from Amex comes from Air Canada, Air France, British Airways.

So I actually don't think I've run across this issue, but yes, it's called an excise tax offset fee. It's currently 0.06 cents per point up to a maximum of $99. You can use your points to cover the fee or you can just pay it on your balance. Next, I wanna share a handful of deals that I think are worth taking a look at.

First off, some of the transfer bonuses that are happening right now. There's three on Amex. If you're transferring to British Airways, you get an extra 30% until the end of August. If you're transferring to Avianca Life Miles, you get an extra 15%. Both of those are great options. I've used Avianca and British Airways in 2023 for booking two different types of rewards.

For British Airways, it was domestic flight on American in first to New York, which was amazing. And then I used some Life Miles just to book a flight from San Francisco down to San Diego because it was only, I think, 5,000 points and the flight was almost $300. So it was a great point value.

And if I could have gotten an extra 15%, it would have been even better. There's also a 25% bonus transferring to Hilton from Amex and a 50% bonus transferring from Chase to Marriott. The Hilton one ends at the end of August. The Marriott one ends at the end of September.

For all of these, I think the hotel ones are less exciting to me just because hotel points from Amex and Chase typically don't offer as much value as airlines, but for all of these, I think the same rule applies. None of these transfer bonuses are amazing enough that I would transfer anything speculatively.

So I would wait until you have a flight you're ready to book that you can book with these programs. And if you found them and it's a good deal, then transfer the points. Second deal that I wanna highlight, which is really cool, is that it seems like Bilt has finally confirmed a promotion that they've been offering new cardholders.

So for anyone who doesn't remember, Bilt is a credit card that offers you points on rent up to, I think, $100,000 of rent a year. That doesn't require you to use a specific portal. They will even mail a check to your landlord. So if you pay rent, I think the Bilt card is an absolute no-brainer.

It's incredible. Also, even if you don't pay rent, the Bilt card offers three points on dining, two points on travel. They do have a requirement that you use the card five times each statement period, but I think for a primary card like that, it's pretty easy to do. Bilt points probably are my favorite points currency out there because you've got a lot of the mainstays like a lot of the other points programs have, Air France, British Airways, Air Canada Aeroplan, Virgin, but you also get United, American, Hyatt, and Turkish Airlines.

So if I could get more Bilt points, I would. I wish they had 10 cards with amazing welcome bonuses, but they don't. However, you do get 5X points on all purchases in the first five days that does cap out at 50,000 points. But if you have a large purchase around $10,000 and you can time it to use it within the first five days of getting your Bilt card, I think this is an awesome option.

I'm actually so excited about Bilt points that I'm thinking about potentially getting a Bilt card just so that I can start earning more points. It'll probably be mostly focused on dining, especially whenever Amex isn't taken. I don't have another card that earns more than three points on dining. The card is also a World Elite Mastercard.

So it comes with cell phone protection, purchase protection, and a bunch of other travel benefits when it comes to trip cancellation, delay reimbursement, and things like that. So I'm a big fan of the Bilt card. If I paid rent, I would have had it the day it came out.

If they ever add points on mortgages, I will get it if I haven't already. One of the other great things about Bilt is that you can sign up for a Bilt rewards account even if you don't have a Bilt credit card. And you might think, why would I wanna do that?

But Bilt has partnered with Point.me, which is one of my favorite award search tools for finding good flight deals on points. And you can use the Bilt search to search Point.me for free without having to sign up for a Point.me account with the only caveat that it only searches airlines in Bilt's program.

But Bilt has a ton of overlap with Amex and Chase and Capital One. So if you wanna do some initial searches for free and see how Point.me works, you can create a free Bilt rewards account. They also have big promos every first of the month, which they call Rent Day, where you earn double points, 6X dining, 4X travel and 2X on everything else.

And they sometimes have some really, really crazy transfer bonuses. August 1st, they were offering between a 75 and 150% bonus on transfers to Virgin Atlantic, meaning for every one point you transferred, you'd get 1.75 to 2.5 points. I didn't really have a redemption in mind, but transfer bonuses like that are probably among the only that I would say could make sense for a speculative transfer where you don't know what you need it for, but the deal's just so good.

So as a Bilt Rewards member, even without the card, you also earn some points from referrals. So if you're gonna sign up, I would love it if you wanna use my referral link. It's just allthehacks.com/bilt, B-I-L-T. Or if you sign up and you wanna refer someone else, definitely earn yourself some points too.

Last two cards I wanna mention. I talked earlier how I love the Aeroplan program, especially with United devaluing their miles. Aeroplan's a transfer partner of Chase, Amex, Cap One, and Bilt. They also have their own credit card with Chase, and it's a 100,000 point welcome bonus. The reason I bring it up is because I think I should probably bring up any welcome bonus, especially for airlines or credit card points that hits the six-figure mark.

It's 75,000 points after you spend $4,000 in three months, and another 25,000 points if you spend $20,000 in 12 months. Like I mentioned, I was able to get round-trip tickets down to French Polynesia from San Francisco in business for 55,000 Aeroplan points in business class, where on United, that same flight, I think was about 80,000.

So really great points. So that card is something to consider. And then last, the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One. This card is my primary business card for all the hacks. Every expense that I have that isn't in a bonus category goes here. It earns two points per dollar, though technically it earns 2% cash back.

But that cash back, if you have a Venture, Venture X, or Spark Miles card, you can use that cash back as miles and transfer it. And they have a big welcome bonus of 120,000 points. It does require $30,000 of spend in three months. So it's definitely a big spend, but you do get two points per dollar on everything or 2% cash back.

So this is one of those rare cases where to hit that welcome bonus, it could make sense to pay your taxes. Pay a 1.87% fee, knowing that you're getting 2% cash back. So you're not losing money on the fee, but you're also gonna get 120,000 points. So not all of us, myself included, spend $30,000 in three months.

I am gonna do an episode on meeting minimum spend later. So hopefully that'll be helpful. But Spark Cash Plus, it's my primary Capital One card for all business expenses. It does have $150 annual fee, but 120,000 Capital One points, I value it well over $2,000. So this is a really, really big offer if you have a business.

And keep in mind, business doesn't mean you necessarily have to have a big company with employees, any type of income, or even aspirations of income from a side hustle, from driving for Lyft or Uber, from selling something online, from a blog. Maybe one day you aspire to have sponsored Instagram content, who knows?

But the definition of business is very wide. And if you search around online, there's a lot of information about eligibility for business cards, and you can do it under your own social. So that's everything credit cards right now. Like I said, there is a lot more that I wanna cover, which is why I'm gonna do a whole series of episodes on credit cards in the near future.

And if you wanna support me and the show, you can sign up for any of those cards, and really any card you're looking at, at allthehacks.com/cards. Notably, there are a few cards not on that list, like the Hilton Aspire and the Built card, which is why I sometimes share links like allthehacks.com/built and allthehacks.com/hilton.

Those are just referral links, 'cause they're not a part of that program. But I really appreciate you guys using those links and helping support the show. Actually, one more credit card adjacent thing. If you log into Amex, and Chase and Capital One have this too, but I find that Amex's deals are a lot more compelling.

There's a section of offers related to each one of your cards, where different merchants will offer deals for using your Amex card to make purchases. And when you log on, you'll usually only see 100 of them. But if you were using an app like Card Pointers, you can add all of them.

Right now, I have 280 added to my account. Also remember, one of the other perks of using Card Pointers is not only that you can add more than 100 offers, it's that they add the offers at the exact same time. Every now and then, there's some really, really compelling offers that you might wanna use multiple times.

Or if you are using a merchant that lets you split payment, you could use once, but split payment between two cards. Normally, when you click an offer, it immediately takes it out of all your other cards. But it turns out that if you were to click those buttons at the exact same time, which is how Card Pointers does it, you get to add them to both cards.

And if you haven't used Card Pointers, you should definitely check it out. There's a trial of the pro version, but you can also get 30% off Card Pointers Pro as an AllTheHacks listener. You could just go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers. I use it all the time, every time I log into Chase and Amex to add all these offers.

But two other things. One, I just played around with the beta version of Card Pointers 5.0 for the iPhone, and it's amazing. I'm so excited for this new version of the app. But also if you're an AllTheHacks member, you get 50% off Card Pointers Pro. So even better deal.

Thanks to Emmanuel, the founder, for hooking everyone up. If you're not already a member, you can go to allthehacks.com/join and get all the other deals that we have exclusively for members. And you can join a really awesome community. We're actually starting to do a bunch of breakouts within the membership.

So we're gonna do a session on both topics we've covered in recent episodes, but also other topics that are just generally interesting. Think small group discussions with people that have a common interest or question, really getting a little deeper than we get here on the podcast, 'cause it's really more focused on discussion.

All that said, let's talk about some of these Amex offers, 'cause there were some really cool ones. So if you already pay for Google One, which is their cloud storage, there's an Amex offer for 20% off. The most interesting offers, I've never seen these offers before, are there was an offer for France, Italy, and the UK, which was spend $200 in France on any one purchase and get $40 back, spend $300 in Italy and get $50 back, or spend $100 in the UK and get $20 back.

So 16 to 20% off any single transaction in those three countries. A nice restaurant could easily cover those, maybe two restaurants if you have both cards, maybe four if you're going to multiple countries. So I thought that was a really cool offer I'd never seen something like that. Also, if you're ever interested in trying out Athletic Greens, you've probably heard me talk about them.

They're a sponsor of the show. I'm a really big fan. I had one this morning, but AG1, there's an offer for $25 off, $125 for AG1. So that's interesting. You can also stack it with the All The Hacks offer for five free travel packs and some free immune-supporting vitamin D.

So that's allthehacks.com/ag1. If you're a fan of Blue Bottle Coffee, there was an offer for five off, $25. And then finally, there are a couple cool hotel ones if you have trips planned. If you're using Marriott Homes and Villas, there's a $250 off, $1,000. If you're staying at a Hilton in Canada, there's $100 off, $500.

If you're staying at a Wyndham, there's $60 off, $300. And if you're staying at a Hyatt Centric, there's $75 off, $300. Now these offers actually vary based on your individual spending patterns and cards. So you might not have all of these and you might have some other ones that are even better.

So if you ever notice a really awesome offer in there, definitely feel free to share it with me. I might not have it in my account, but I might love to tell everyone listening about it. Finally, I'm gonna start trying to get a newsletter out a bit more frequently than these mailbag episodes anytime I see some of these offers or deals that are really short-term.

So if you go to allthehacks.com/email, you can sign up for the newsletter. It'll put you on the main newsletter and it'll put you on this latest deals newsletter, which I haven't sent yet. If you ever don't wanna be on the main newsletter, but you do wanna stay on the latest deals newsletter, whenever you go to unsubscribe, you can uncheck free newsletter and leave the latest deals on.

And as soon as I start sending that one, you'll get it. And hopefully deals like the ones I just mentioned from Amex and other things will be in your inbox faster than they will be on the podcast. So that's everything cards. There are two big topics I wanted to cover today.

One is money and one is life. And within each, I have a bunch of things to cover, but I'm looking at how long we've been going and I feel like it might be better to take a break and pick this back up in a week or two and continue with money and life.

I'll tell you a little preview of what I'm thinking of doing in the episodes, but also if you have other things you'd like to hear me talk about in the money and life camps, please send them over so I can include them. On the money side, I wanna talk about when to sell IBONs.

I know a lot of us pick them up when the interest rates were so high and now have to decide when we wanna close out, sell, and put that money to work somewhere else. When it comes to putting money to work somewhere else, I wanna talk about the options I'm thinking about for earning interest on non-investments.

So that's T-bills, that's high-yield savings accounts, that's the new Wealthfront Bond Portfolio, which a few of you have asked me to give feedback on, and it's also how bank bonuses fit into this picture. I've been comparing a few of the options both for earning miles and bonuses, and I'm thinking that there are some cases where they actually might be more compelling in high-yield savings or anything else.

On the life side, after the episode with David Chang on Cooking at Home, you guys sent in some really great cooking hacks. If you have more, please share them. I'll talk a little bit about data brokers online and how I'm seeing my personal information pop up and what I'm doing about it.

I went really deep in the last few days on cell phone plans, and I've actually gotten three or four emails in the last month about them. So I'm gonna do a pretty deep dive in this next episode on cell phone plans and all the ones, at least in the states that I'm considering, how I'm thinking about them.

The only change I've made so far is that we've moved Stefania, our au pair, off of Verizon and onto Mint Mobile because it's just such a better deal. And so far, she's had no concerns with the service. She said it's been just as good, if not better, and it's literally like less than 30% of the cost.

Big fan of Mint Mobile. She's super happy. I'm happy to be saving money. So that was a good move. And by now, you've probably already heard an ad in this episode for Mint Mobile, because as you know from the past, when I find a brand I like, I really try to see if there's a way I can work with them, which I did in this case.

So you can go to allthehacks.com/mintmobile if you wanna check them out and support the show. But beyond Mint Mobile, I actually went deep on all the other plans with all the other carriers, thinking about which plans make sense for me and Amy based on international travel and a few other requirements.

So I'll go deep there. And then just a few other hacks that people have shared when it comes to shopping online. Storing photos and things like that. So if there's anything else you guys haven't heard that you love me to touch on in the money and life category, send it over quickly, because I'm gonna start recording that episode at the end of this week, and I wanna make sure I can include other things in it.

(upbeat music) That wraps up this week. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sending in all these great questions, topics. Hope you liked this episode. It was a little bit of a hybrid. Thoughts, ideas, wins, hacks, questions. I'm probably gonna keep doing these. I might even include a little bit of reflection on some takeaways from episodes recently that I've been really thinking about.

Think of it as like a stop along the way towards a best of 2023 episode that'll be coming out at the end of the year. Finally, if you're enjoying this show and you haven't left a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I'd greatly appreciate it. It only takes a couple minutes and every one of them is so helpful.

And like I said earlier, I'm gonna start featuring reviews on the homepage of the newly designed website. I'm really excited to share that with you. So there's a good chance that that review, especially if it has a really punchy, exciting title or first sentence, will make it on the website.

So things like how much you've saved, how valuable it's been to your life would be great. All right, that's it for this week. See you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)