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Again, that's longangle.com. 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 am so excited you're here for another episode where I get to answer all the questions you've sent in. And first off, thank you so much for taking the time to share them.

I've gotten so many great questions and I'm excited to dive in and answer them. As I mentioned in my last mailbag episode, I'm going to start splitting these into three different categories, points and miles, money, and life. The last one was all about money. So this one's going to be all about credit cards, points, and miles.

And specifically, we're going to focus on a few things. First, credit cards, the best ones right now, including some of my favorite two card combos, my favorite cards for families, businesses, and more, and I'll also cover some nuance around how authorized users work, especially when it comes to helping others build credit.

Next, I'll focus on racking up points and ways to earn more of them on a small budget and meet the minimum spends for these big signup bonuses. I'll address whether it ever makes sense to buy points or pay fees to use a credit card. I'll help you figure out where to earn points when flying on foreign airlines, and I'll address some questions about how it's possible to actually accrue hundreds of thousands or even millions of points.

Then, now that you're ready to earn more points, I'm going to talk about how to prevent them from expiring and answer a question about what happens to your points when you die, and finally, I'll jump into redeeming and talk about my favorite transfer partners, how to redeem for large groups, my points stack, as one listener asked, meaning what tools and services I use for points, and finally, how far in advance you should be looking to book flights with points and miles.

It makes me so happy to have all of these questions to cover, so let's get started. Actually, before we do a few things, first, if you aren't subscribed to the All The Hacks newsletter, you definitely should do that for a few reasons. First, every two weeks, I show the top deals I've found.

I'll include an example of what that looks like at the end of this episode, but so many subscribers have been using those deals to save money, and I don't want you to miss out. Also, I'm trying to take some of the best learnings and tactics from the podcast and write them up in the newsletter so you have some notes to reference.

It won't cover everything, but it will cover a lot, so head on over to allthehacks.com/email to sign up. Also, the next listener question episode will be all about everything other than money and points, so whether you have a question about life, non-points related travel, relationships, raising kids, your career, productivity, or really anything, please send them in, even if it's a quick and easy question.

I'd love to hear from you. Okay, let's get started. I'm going to start with cards because I've gotten so many questions from you guys asking what are the best cards right now with a lot of different caveats and questions, so we're going to get into all of it. I'll just start this by saying, if you're going to sign up for any card, please head on over to allthehacks.com/cards and use the links there.

It really supports the show and me and everything I'm doing, and obviously, if there's a better deal somewhere else, use that. I want you to get the most points possible, but for almost every card, I think the best deals out there are there, and so obviously, thank you so much in advance for using those links.

Let's get in. I thought it might make sense to just start with what some of my favorite cards are just broadly. Forget sign-up bonuses right now, just if you're looking to get one or maybe pair it with two cards, let me share some of my favorites. Now, in a bunch of past episodes, I've talked about why I like transferable points, so I'm not going to go too deep on that other than to say, when you get a card with Citi, Chase, Amex, Cap One, those points can transfer to lots of different airlines.

You can book travel in their portal. You can even redeem those points for gift cards and cash back, and so I love the flexibility of having cards in those programs, so those are usually what I'm going to recommend and suggest for everyone as their primary cards. I'm actually going to go through each of them and talk about what I think are the best combos of cards within those different financial institutions.

I'll start with Chase because it's what I know a lot of people started with, the Chase Preferred or the Chase Reserve, and I think those are both great cards, earning three points on dining, two points on travel with the Preferred, three points on travel with the Reserve. A lot of people listening I know spend money on travel and dining, so those are great cards.

Chase's points are super flexible. Lately, the Reserve card has been really cranking up the annual fee. It's up to $550 now. I will caveat that the first $300 you spend on travel every year gets credited on your account, so that's really easy to use up. So really, the annual fee is about $250, but you've got to ask yourself, do you spend enough on travel that getting one extra point is worth a $250 annual fee?

Yes, you also get access to lounges. Yes, you get a couple of extra perks like DoorDash, DashPass, but you have to ask yourself that question. Also, if you redeem your points in the Portal, which we've talked about in the past, you do get more value out of them. You get 1.5 cents for those points if you're using the Reserve card.

So if I'm looking at Chase, I think the Preferred or the Reserve are great options, and if I was going to pair it with one other card in the Chase ecosystem, it would be the Freedom Unlimited. And that's because you earn one and a half points on everything. It doesn't matter the category.

You also get three points on dining, which is the same as the Sapphire cards, three points on drugstores, which I'm guessing you don't spend that much, but if you do, great. And right now, if you sign up for the Freedom Unlimited, which has no annual fee, you get an extra one and a half percent on everything for the first year, up to $20,000 to spend.

And you've heard me kind of go between saying one and a half points, one and a half percent. That's because the Freedom Unlimited is marketed as a cashback card, which actually you'll hear common amongst a lot of the cards I'm going to talk about. But when you pair it with a Chase Preferred or Reserve, that cashback can be converted to points.

So if you only had a Freedom Unlimited, yes, it's a one and a half percent cashback card that in the first year earns 3% cashback. But if you pair it with the Preferred or the Reserve, you earn points instead of cashback. And as we've talked about a lot, transferring those points gets you much better value, which is why sites like the Points Guy put the value of Capital One, Chase, Amex, and Citi Points at anywhere from like 1.7 to 2 cents.

So you're getting a lot more out of the Freedom Unlimited if you pair it with the Chase Preferred or Reserve. So at Chase, my favorite two card combo, Chase Preferred or Chase Reserve paired with the Freedom Unlimited. At Citi, the Citi Premier right now has the biggest sign up bonus it's ever had at 80,000 points.

It's a low annual fee card of $95 and you get three points per dollar on gas, groceries, dining, airfare, and hotels. I think it's a great travel card. It's a great everything card because of all those things. And it pairs so well with the Citi Double Cash. So just like the Freedom Unlimited, Citi Double Cash is marketed as a cashback card, but when you have both, you can use that cashback and convert it to thank you points and earn two points per dollar on everything you spend.

So you're getting two points on everything, three X on gas, groceries, dining, airfare, and hotels. I think that's a great combo at Citi. With Capital One, I've talked a lot about the Venture X card recently because they had a huge sign up bonus and it's just a great two X on everything card.

Capital One's been adding a ton of transfer partners lately. So I think they have a really great opportunity for you to use those points to transfer to airlines and get great redemptions on flights, especially international, business class, all of that. There's two cards. There's the Venture and the Venture X.

And it's similar to the Preferred and the Reserve. The Venture has a $95 annual fee. The Venture X has a $395 annual fee, but they both offer 75,000 points sign up bonus. The main difference is that with the Venture X you're paying an extra $300 annual fee, but you're also getting $300 towards travel as long as it's booked in the portal every year, plus 10,000 miles on your anniversary every year.

You can also go to the Capital One lounges with the Venture X card, but there's only a couple of them. So depending on where you live, it might not matter. But if you have a Venture or a Venture X card, I think it pairs so well with the Capital One Saver card.

Cheryl actually wrote in and said, "Do you know if you can combine all of these Capital One card points and cashbacks with each other?" And the answer is, when you have a Capital One card that earns miles, like the Venture, the Venture X, or the Spark miles, if you also have a cashback card, you can convert that cashback to miles.

So the Saver card earns 4x miles on dining, entertainment, and streaming, and 3x miles on groceries. And it's only a $95 annual fee. It doesn't have a huge bonus like the Venture and the Venture X card. It's only 30,000 points right now, or marketed as $300. But if you combine those two cards, you're earning 4x on dining, entertainment, streaming, groceries, and 2x on everything else.

It's a great combo. The only thing it's really missing is the travel category. So if travel is a bulk of your spend, it might not be the best combo, but I think it's a really solid combo. Last is Amex. Amex Gold card is one of my favorites. It earns four points on dining and groceries.

It's got a 70,000 point signup bonus. Amex has a ton of great transfer partners. And in fact, I'll talk more in the deal section, but right now there's transfer bonuses of 15 to 30% on 12 different partners. So Amex points are really great. I'm so glad I have a bunch of them.

But when it comes to pairing with the Gold, a lot of people ask me, "Oh, do you pair it with the Platinum card?" I'll get to that later, but I don't think the Platinum card is the best earning card. In fact, the Amex Green card is kind of underlooked because it usually doesn't have a huge signup bonus, but it does offer 3x on travel and restaurants.

Obviously, if you're pairing it with the Gold card, you don't need the 3x on restaurants because you get 4x on dining with Gold, but 3x on travel makes the Amex combo really compelling. You get 4x on dining, 4x on groceries, 3x on travel if you've got the green and the Gold.

So if you're all in on Amex, I think that's a great combo. And the reason I brought up the combos is because I think when you're just getting started, before you're kind of really crazy deep in the points game, it's way easier when all of your points are in one place.

So I would say until you have maybe 100 or 200,000 points in one place, I would really encourage you to maybe not necessarily spread your points too thin across too many programs because it can be tough to redeem things when you're having to use points from one program on part of the trip and another for the rest of the trip.

That said, there are certain transfer partners like Air France where you can transfer to Chase, Citi, Amex, and Capital One points to them. So it's not impossible if you've got points across different programs. It just sometimes makes it a little harder. So those are my favorite combos. If you want to look within each institution, what's the one or two card combo that I love?

But a lot of the people that wrote me in weren't asking about the best card to use. They were asking about some of the best bonuses right now. And when it comes to the best bonuses, some of the cards with the best bonuses right now are in that list too.

So the Venture Venture X at 75,000 miles, the Amex Gold at 70,000, and the Citi Premier at 80,000 are really great bonuses. If you value those points at anywhere from 1.7 to 2 points, that means that at a bare minimum, you're getting anywhere from $1,200 to $1,600 worth of value from just the signup bonus.

As I mentioned, I didn't include the Amex Platinum in that list because the only bonus category it has is 5X on airfare. So look, if you book a ton of flights, it can be a really valuable card. Other than that, it's really more of a perks card and a signup bonus card.

Right now you can get a hundred thousand points for signing up. That's amazing. But unless you have another Amex card, you've got to keep the card open so that those points don't expire. And we'll talk about expiring points later, but it really comes down to whether you can justify the $695 annual fee.

You're getting $300 towards Equinox, $240 towards different streaming services, another $200 towards airline incidentals, but only with one airline, $200 on Uber, but only $15 a month, $189 towards Clear, $50 every six months towards Saks, $200 towards hotels, but only if they're booked on their platform and they're only a certain set of them.

The question is like, are you actually going to get enough value out of there? Because that's $695 could go to a lot of other places. So it's really something to consider. Obviously, if you're getting it for one year and you're just going for a hundred thousand points, it's probably worth it.

I'd say for me, I'm probably usually able to get somewhere around $500 of value out of that $695. So if I'm booking a lot of flights, yeah, it's still worth it to have it. Otherwise it's not though. Fun fact, if you have a business and you're using your cards for business and I'm not a CPA, but I believe the annual fees on your credit card are eligible business expenses, so maybe that saves you some money and also thanks to Brandy and Zach for writing in to remind me that Amex, Chase, Capital One, Citi, and US Bank will all waive credit card annual fees for active duty military and their spouses and Zach would know because between he and his wife, they have 20 different cards with $8,700 of annual fees getting waived, which fun fact is actually more than he even makes in a year being in the National Guard.

So maybe there's a hack, join the National Guard, open up all the high fee cards, coming back to the platinum. Obviously, if you're in the military, it's a no brainer as are any of these high fee cards that have big perks like travel credits and annual free night certificates.

Two other cards that I think are worth addressing just because they have huge signup bonuses right now in terms of sheer numbers. It's the two Hilton cards, both have six figure signup bonuses. The base one is a zero annual fee card with 100,000 points. The surpass is a $95 annual fee, but it's waived the first year and it's 130,000 points.

I think they're great cards for the points. I think they're great cards if you spend a lot of money at Hilton's because you earn something like seven to 12 Hilton points per dollar using the card, but I will flag that in general, Hilton points are worth a lot less than points like Chase or Capital One.

If you look at the points guy, Hilton points are worth 0.6 cents versus Chase points at two cents. So you really should be thinking of getting 100,000 Hilton points is almost like 30,000 Chase points. So while the bonuses look really big and if you have plans for Hilton, they can be really valuable.

It's not nearly apples to apples when looking at 100,000 Hilton points at 100,000 Chase points. The other one is the IHG card. It's 140,000 points signup bonus plus a free night every year. Plus when you're spending money at IHG, you get another 16 points per dollar just using the card.

It's a 99 annual fee card. So if you're staying a lot of IHG properties, this is great. If you just need a big boost in IHG points to make a redemption, it can be great. But again, IHG points are valued around half a cent a point. So if you're comparing this to Chase, 140,000 points might only be equal to like 35,000 Chase points.

That's not to say there's not a way to make it worth a lot more. I look at these hotel cards and I see these huge six-figure signup bonuses, and I just want to put it in perspective that the reason why is the same reason I don't love transferring most credit card points to hotels because the redemption value for hotel points is anywhere from half to a third or a quarter of the value of redeeming with airlines.

Hyatt being the notable exception. I'm a big fan of transferring Chase and Bilt points to Hyatt. The last card I'll mention is Bilt. The Bilt rewards card earns three points on travel and dining and one on everything else. But the real magic with the Bilt card is if you have rent because you earn up to 50,000 points a year paying your rent with the credit card and there's no fees.

So if you're a renter, the Bilt card is a no brainer, but that's a great card for earning points on rent and it's a great card for earning points on travel and dining and their points are super flexible. Maybe the best points of all of these programs, but just the hardest to get because there aren't multiple cards with signup bonuses.

There aren't multiple cards for different categories, but the points you do have are great because they go to Hyatt, which is my favorite hotel partner. They go to American, which isn't a transfer partner of any other card. They go to United and they go to KLM and a lot of other airlines.

I think it's a great card, but it's just really hard to get points if you don't pay rent because there's just one Bilt card. So I am quite comfortable right now, which is actually true almost every day. And that's thanks to Viore and I'm excited to be partnering with them for this episode.

They make performance apparel. That's incredibly versatile. Everything is designed to work out in, but it doesn't look or feel like it at all. And it's so freaking comfortable. You will want to wear it all the time. Seriously, I am pretty sure it's more comfortable than whatever you're wearing right now, unless you're wearing Viore, in which case you already know what I mean.

And it's not just for men. My wife is as obsessed with Viore as I am. My favorite is the Sunday performance joggers. I think I have three pairs and they are probably the most comfortable pants I've ever owned. Their products can be used for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, or yoga.

They're also great for lounging, running around town, or their meta pants can even work for a night out. Honestly, I think Viore is an investment in your happiness. And for all the Hacks listeners, they are offering 20% off your first purchase, as well as free shipping and returns on US orders over $75.

So, you should definitely check them out at allthehacks.com/viore or in the link in the show notes. Again, go to allthehacks.com/v-u-o-r-i and get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. I want to tell you all about the most amazing way to buy a second home.

And I know because we actually bought one for 1/8th the cost. And don't worry, I'm not talking timeshares. I'm talking about Picasso and I'm excited to partner with them for this episode. So how does it work? Picasso buys amazing luxury homes in over 40 world-class destinations, creates an LLC for each home, and you can buy as little as 1/8th of the property.

But it doesn't stop there. Picasso also professionally manages the home, handling design, cleaning, bills, repairs, taxes, and more, and the scheduling system makes it fair and equitable for everyone to enjoy their home. When we found Picasso, it felt like it was made just for us. That same week we found the perfect place in Napa, we toured it, and the next week we were closing.

Since then, it's truly become our second home and it's been so amazing. And it's true real estate ownership. Owners can sell at any time, set their own price, and tap into Picasso's active marketplace of buyers. In fact, on average, Picasso listings resell in 12 days with a 12% annualized gain.

For a modern way to buy and own a second home, go to allthehacks.com/picaso where our listeners will get a free Picasso access account, which means you can see new listings before they go on the website and get up to $10,000 in credit towards closing costs. Again, that's allthehacks.com/picasopacaso. So I'll transition a little bit to talk about a few of the questions I got.

So Judy asked if I had any suggestions because her daughter's just started college and she's across the country and they're going to be traveling. She asked about the American Airlines card with a 60,000 point bonus. Normally I would say you'd be much better off with any of these other cards.

But if you are only flying American and you really want American miles other than the built card, there isn't a great card to get to earn American miles. However, it's important to know that every single one of these programs, Capital One, Chase, Amex, they all have transfer partners that are in the One World Alliance.

And that means that you can use British Airways, Avios points or other One World Airline points to book flights on American. So Judy, if the reason you asked about American was because that's who you need to fly, you can book American flights with BA miles, which you can get from any of these other programs.

So I personally would rather have a card like the venture card with 75,000 points signup or city with 80,000 points signup than an American card with 60,000 points. Not just because the signup is better, but because most airline cards are only going to give you big bonuses on spending with the airlines.

For example, you actually earn more United points because Chase can transfer to United using the Chase Sapphire reserve card, booking even a United flight than you do with the United card. So I think the airline cards are great for the perks, whether it's free check bags or lounge access, great for signup bonuses, but when it comes to the best cards to get, to start trying to plan for free trips across the country.

I think the ones I mentioned earlier are a lot better. And one other question, kind of similar one from both Chase and Laura were about upcoming big spending. So for Chase, it was a destination wedding for Laura. It was a bunch of home improvements and they both asked what cards to use.

Now, one thing I'll point out is that when it comes to weddings and home improvements, they might be really big expenditures, but most of the expenses associated with them, you can't use a credit card on. So as much as they might be big expenses, it might not be possible.

Chase did mention it's a destination wedding, so he probably has a lot of travel, so there's a lot of opportunity there, but I know for our renovation, I don't think there was more than $500 I could put on a credit card because our contractors didn't take credit cards. And a lot of the people we bought supplies from didn't either.

So I think about it in three ways. One is on signup bonuses. So there's a bunch of cards with anywhere from, I'd say that the floor I like to look at is 70,000 and more points for signing up. So if you have a lot of expenses coming up, it'll make it really easy to hit those minimum spends in order to get those bonus points.

It can be anywhere from five to $50,000 of spend and anywhere from three to six months. So, you know, if you have a bunch of big expenses, I think it's a great opportunity to open up a card with big signup bonuses, or maybe even a few. If that spend is in a certain category, let's say for example, Chase, if your destination wedding means you're going to be buying 20 plane tickets for family members and booking 20 hotel rooms, then I would absolutely also consider what category you're going to be spending on and make sure you have a card that earns the most points in that category.

So for destination wedding, if it's travel, it's a card like the City Premier or the Chase Reserve or the Amex Green that are going to earn three points per dollar on travel. The last category, and it's a little bit of a weird one, but it's about using those cards to get perks or status.

So with the American, Delta and Hyatt cards, you can actually spend enough money to earn status. In many cases, it's well over $100,000, but if you really valued the status on any of those airlines or hotel groups, you could spend your way to that status. Or if you have a Southwest card and you want to spend over $120,000, you can earn your way to Companion Pass, which would let your companion travel for free for the rest of the year you earn it and the next year.

So just to recap, if you have a big set of expenses coming up, think about what kind of signup bonuses you can earn. If those expenses are in a category you can get bonuses on, make sure you've got a card that hits those bonuses. And if you care about it, you could use a lot of spending to boost your status on airlines like American or Delta, hotels like Hyatt, or to earn Companion Pass with Southwest.

Okay, Neelam wrote in asking the best card for a family of six that does a lot of grocery shopping. So there was a lot of nuance to the question, but I'll focus on the grocery part because it's an interesting category. The Blue Cash Preferred card markets itself as 6% back on groceries, but it's only $6,000 a year.

So my favorite grocery cards in Amex, it's the Gold, it's 4x points on groceries. It's capped at $25,000 a year, but I think that's enough for groceries for the year. The Capital One Saver card is 3x on groceries and the City Premier is 3x on groceries. So those are my favorites for groceries.

Last question on cards is from Jonathan and he asked about business cards. So one interesting thing to note about business cards is that you don't actually need a legally registered business to get a business card. Technically what you need is to have some sort of business that could be self-employment.

It could be freelancing, it could be consulting. There are lots of things that apply and you can do that all under your own social security number. You don't even need an EIN from a LLC or a corporation. So the reason why business cards are super interesting is because they often have really big signup bonuses.

So it's definitely something that I would say, take a look at some of the best signup bonuses right now. Chase Inc Preferred is 100,000 points for a $95 annual fee card. The Chase Inc Cash and Unlimited are 75,000 points. The Amex Business Gold is 70,000. The United Business Card, while I don't think it's going to be a great card to spend on, has 150,000 United Point bonus for a $99 annual fee card.

The Amex Business Platinum is 120,000 points. It still has a high annual fee. And then Capital One has a bunch of business cards that I think are great for everyday use. The Spark Cash and the Spark Miles card are two points per dollar or 2% back. They both have 50 to 100,000 point signup bonuses.

And Capital One is supposedly releasing a new card. It's not available to sign up for now, but it'll be like the business version of the Venture X card. It'll have a $395 annual fee, but the signup bonus is rumored to be 250,000 points. So if you don't have a Capital One business card and you're thinking about it, I would maybe wait a month or two to see if that really does come out and you can sign up for it because a 250,000 point signup bonus is really massive and something I know I'm going to see if I'm eligible for.

OK, that covers all the questions about new cards and card recommendations. But I do want to touch on one thing, which is authorized users. So Alexis wrote in asking a ton of great questions about adding an authorized user to help build credit, whether it disqualifies you from fees. So let's jump into them.

So first off, when you add an authorized user to your credit card, they don't get a credit check. So that's great. They don't have that impact on their credit report. It's not a hard inquiry, but that card usually shows up on their credit report. Now, depending on the bank, they may or may not backdate all the history of that card on this other person's credit.

So I know Amex doesn't do it, but the reports I've seen say that Capital One, Chase, Bank of America, Synchrony, and U.S. Bank do, which means that someone who maybe only has one or two years of credit history, if they become an authorized user of a card with Chase, for example, that has 10 years of history, all of a sudden they're going to have 10 years of history on their credit report.

So that can be really impactful for their credit score. Obviously, if you add a card that is delinquent and has problems, it's probably not going to help their credit score, but if it has a lot of history or a high credit limit, it can have a big impact. But I will say it does not disqualify them from getting the cards.

So I've added my wife to my Amex Gold, but if I were to take her off of that, she could actually go apply for the Amex Gold and still get the signup bonus. One thing to know is that I believe Chase does factor authorized user accounts into their 5/24 calculation, meaning that Chase doesn't approve you for a new card if you've opened up five cards in the last 24 months.

But in this situation, if you do cancel the authorized user card, you can call the credit bureaus and ask them to remove the authorized user card from your report. And that'll maybe make you eligible to open a new Chase card. Let's now talk a bit about accruing. I got an email from someone whose name I'll leave off, but they said, I just got the Amex Gold and Platinum cards and I have to do $25,000 of spend to get my bonuses, but I don't think I can get there.

And maybe I bit off a bit more than I could chew. So obviously I'm not a big fan of spending money you don't need to spend, but here's some things you might want to consider. One, buying gift cards for things that you'll need to spend money on later. Can you buy grocery store gift cards, Amazon gift cards, anything that you know you're going to need to spend money on in the future, you could offset spending money on your groceries by buying the gift cards.

Now, another one is asking friends. If you could help book their travel, you could even offer them like a 1% discount. If you're getting three or four X points on your card, become a travel agent for a few weeks, depending on what card it is and how many points you're earning, you could end up paying your taxes for 1.87%.

You're probably gonna need to wait a few months or even a year for your refund check to come back if you're overpaying. But if you're not going to get a hundred thousand point signup bonus on the Amex platinum card, because you're $4,000 short and paying $75 in fees to pay your taxes on your credit card is going to get you there.

I'd pay $75 for a hundred thousand Amex points any day because a hundred thousand Amex points is probably worth close to $2,000. Finally, if that doesn't work, or if you want to make sure you have the money sooner, you could just send money to someone you trust on PayPal or Venmo and pay the 2.9 or 3% fee again, if it's $5,000, that fee might cost you $150, but if you get $2,000 worth of points because of it, I think it's worth it.

So I hope one of those works out because there's a lot of points on the line. Landon wrote in with a really similar question, asking about how people who don't spend that much money are able to get these offers where they need to spend $5,000 in three months. So first off a few of the strategies that I just talked about could be a way to meet those minimum spends, but the other option is to just wait until maybe there's a time of year, whether it's the holidays or whether there's a annual trip you take and timing the signup bonuses with that spend.

I know I got another email from a listener named Scott just yesterday that said he's got a $4,000 purchase he has to make and wanted to know if now is a good time to do a signup bonus. So my advice is if you don't spend enough money to qualify for these signup bonuses, try to time them during points in the year where maybe you're spending a little bit more and pair them with some of the strategies I just mentioned, and maybe putting all that together can make it a bit more reasonable to spend, you know, $4,000 in three months.

Liam wrote in about a trip that he and his fiance booked to her homeland in New Zealand, and they ended up spending a ton of money on expensive flights on Korean Air, and they were trying to figure out what to do with Korean Air's loyalty program, and so the last thing you need is a bunch of random points in an airline like Korean Air, which used to be a transfer partner of Chase, but no longer is, so what are you going to do with those points?

Whenever I'm flying on a foreign airline and I'm using dollars to pay for the ticket, because if you're flying on a free ticket, you usually don't earn any miles, I always try to earn those points on an airline that I do use points in. So if it were me and I was flying Korean Air, I'd probably credit all those points to either Air France or Delta, because Korean Air is part of Sky Team.

The same thing goes if I'm flying in Europe on Lufthansa, I'll credit those points to United, or if I'm flying on any of the One World Airlines, I'll credit those points to American or British Airways, because those are the two programs that I use the most. So if you're flying on a foreign airline, you don't have to earn their miles, especially if they have partners, which even airlines that aren't in alliances often have partners, so make sure you tell the airline where you want to credit those points, and if they don't let you do it easily online, you can usually do it at the desk in the airport.

So Chad wrote in with a question, which was basically how do you accrue so many points that you're able to take all of these trips, just putting $2,000 to $3,000 a month on credit cards doesn't seem to make this possible, asked if I was getting a lot of these points through referrals or influencer stuff, so I've unfortunately never been paid in points for influencer anything, so that one's off the table.

I have made a few referrals, I've referred on my venture card to get some bonus points, but they cap that out at four referrals a year, so it hasn't been that many, most of the points I have are coming from signup bonuses, my wife and I both signed up for a venture X card, so there's $200,000 with two cards there, you needed to spend $4,000, so if you're spending $2,000 or $3,000 a month in two months, that's 200,000 points, so I don't necessarily sign up for a card every single month or every single quarter, but if between you or you and a partner, you're signing up for let's say four or five cards a year and being able to meet those minimum spends and each one of those bonuses is let's say at least 75,000 points, that's 300,000 points a year and that should be more than enough to take one nice trip every year, so that's generally how I operate and that doesn't include all the points I'm getting from putting my monthly expenses on my card and optimizing that, one other thing I did do to earn a lot of points, it's been quite a few years, but definitely worth trying out if any of you are at this stage in life, is whenever I was invited on any group trip, whether it was a bachelor party or my wife was invited on a bachelorette party or just a friend's trip, I would always offer to play travel agent for the group and book everyone's flights and hotels, most of my friends all thought it was a huge benefit because no one wants to organize all that information, but in return if we were taking a trip with 10 or 15 people, I was putting 10 or 15 flights on a card that earns three points per dollar on travel, I was putting hotel rooms or a rental on Airbnb on a card that earns three points on travel, so I did get pretty creative there for a period of time and when I was running a startup, I had some expenses I could put on a credit card, but not that many, I think signup bonuses are the bulk of the points I've earned and probably will be going forward and finally, I'll just share that I've gotten a few emails from listeners who've also done this, so I know it's possible, Alexis wrote in saying that in five months of getting into the points game, she's accumulated over 140,000 points and Marco said he's already earned 450,000 points from signup bonuses in 2022, so I know it takes work and I actually think I'm gonna do an episode about how many cards you can open at once, how long to wait before applications and everything like that, but until then I hope you guys can all start earning a lot more points, so that's a lot about how to accrue points, but I want to talk about Jason and Jeff's questions about expiring miles and how to make sure you keep them active, so most credit card companies, your points aren't gonna expire and a lot of airlines are starting to adopt policies where your airline miles don't expire, I know Delta is one of them, I think JetBlue also, but there are still some airlines like American where your miles do expire over time and so the easiest way to keep them active is to just make sure you have some activity every year or two, depending on the program, I in a spreadsheet, I track everything, actually have a comment that says when my points are expiring, for most of them the easiest way to do it is to either use a few miles, buy a few miles or find some way to earn a few miles, so if it's buying I usually go in and maybe I'll redeem a hundred or five hundred or a thousand miles for a magazine subscription or I'll go in and buy a hundred miles for a few dollars or I'll transfer some miles from Amex or Chase to that airline just so there's some activity to keep them going.

There's a couple airlines that are really obscure that I think you need some activity, I want to say there was like Aegean Air needed some activity in the account that was based on flying so I credited a really short United trip I took from like San Francisco to LA, I put in my Aegean number instead of my United number, but for the most part you should be able to go to the ways to redeem your miles and look whether there's you know sending a hundred miles to charity or getting a magazine subscription or something like that or buying a couple miles are pretty good options.

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So please consider supporting those who support us. Another one is about whether you lose your points if you cancel a card. Tontesh wrote in and said he has 60,000 Southwest points but wants to cancel his Southwest card and doesn't want to lose his points. So when you have an airline or a hotel card, all the points you earn are linked to your hotel or airline loyalty account.

So if you cancel the Southwest card, the United card, the Hilton card, all of your Hilton Southwest and United miles are safe. Obviously the card was generating points regularly, so it was keeping those points active in their program. So you will still need to make sure those points don't expire.

But canceling those cards will not lose your points. But before you do cancel those cards, there are a few things to consider anytime you're canceling a card. One is if this is a card that you've had for a long time or has a lot of credit, you might want to see if you can downgrade it to a card without an annual fee so you can call or send a secure message.

You can also call in and see if there's any retention bonuses. I got an email from Ben saying he wanted to cancel his platinum card because he doesn't really need to travel for work anymore. And I suggested he call Amex and see if there's offers. Ben actually said that Amex gave him two offers.

One was a $150 credit to keep the card open or $400 credit if he spends $3,000 in three months. He figured that the $400 credit was a way better deal, so he took that offer and that reduced the annual fee down significantly. So definitely call. The last option is if you decide you do want to cancel the card, if you have other cards with that financial institution, at least this works at Chase because I've done it, you can move credit around.

So if you have a card with a $20,000 limit and you're gonna cancel it, you could reduce the limit to a $1,000, transfer $19,000 of that credit to another Chase card, and then cancel the card. One thing I will note is if you do that, when you apply for a future card, you might not get immediately approved because Chase doesn't want to extend any more credit, but you can call the reconsideration line and you can say, "Hey, could I move credit from this other card back to this new card?" And that's a way to get approved for a card that you might not always get approved for.

Always call the reconsideration line if I don't get instantly approved for a card. And with Chase, I now have enough Chase cards that I'm almost never getting approved because they've already given me as much credit as they will give. But to get back to the question about losing points when you cancel a card, it is different with Chase points, Amex points, Citi points.

Any of those programs require you to have one card active in the program. So if all you have is a Chase Reserve card and you cancel your card, you're going to lose those Chase points. The same is true with Amex. You're gonna lose your Amex points. So what I always say is if you can get one card in the program, even if it's a less expensive card, that'll keep your points alive.

So if you don't want the Chase Reserve card, could you downgrade it to the Chase Preferred card? You could downgrade it to the Chase Freedom card, but without having a Sapphire card, you're actually not able to use those points to transfer to airlines. So Amex, for example, has lots of Amex cards, but only a handful of them are eligible for membership rewards, but you could downgrade your Platinum to a Gold or a Green card.

So if you are going to cancel a card and you have points, the one thing you can do is make sure you transfer those points out to another airline or hotel partner before you cancel the card. So if you've got 50,000 Amex points and you don't want that Platinum card because you don't want to pay the annual fee and you don't want to downgrade it, maybe transfer those 50,000 points to Aeroplan or British Airways or Air France, whatever airline you think you're most likely to use for your future trip, and then you can have those points somewhere where they're not gonna expire right away.

Also speaking of points, and maybe a little morbid or sad, is Matthew asked whether I had a plan in place to cover what happens to all of our points and miles if we die. He did the math, and if he looked at the value of his points, it was thousands of dollars, and so he felt like that was something meaningful that he didn't want to just go to waste.

So I went and actually looked at the rules because I didn't know how this worked. I have a 1Password account. All of my Frequent Flyer accounts are there. I have a spreadsheet that I link to in our Trustworthy account, so if someone has access there, they can see where all of our Frequent Flyer programs are and how many miles are in each balance.

But what I wanted to know is not just where they were so that if something happened to us, one of our family members could find those points and figure out what to do with them, but what the rules were. So I looked into this, and thank you to a bunch of blogs online, The Points Guy and others, that have done some research here.

Most of the major airlines, Alaska, American, Southwest, and United, will actually let you transfer the points if you provide them with a death certificate to a beneficiary. American supposedly will do it to even multiple beneficiaries if you want to split them across people. The only one that looks like they didn't was Delta, but Delta did say you can keep using them from the deceased's account for I think it was two years.

Another option though is to just keep using the accounts. If you have the login and you're able to log in, you can still book flights for other people with your miles. I do it all the time for my wife and our kids. So you could just keep the accounts active, but it does look like for most airlines except Delta, you could actually transfer them to someone, which I was surprised about.

Hotels on the other hand, you actually can transfer points between people, usually for free with no challenge. Although Hyatt, I'm in the middle of doing this now, and you literally have to email them a PDF, and it takes up to four weeks to transfer points. But given that they let you transfer things easily already, in this circumstance they also would let you transfer things.

It gets a little less interesting when it comes to credit card points. So Amex's rule is that when it happens, you can make a one-time redemption. So if you had a million Amex points, you can make a one-time redemption transferring those 1 million Amex points to somewhere, whether it's an airline or a hotel group or redeeming for cash.

Capital One says they automatically redeem all of your points towards statement credits, which is only gonna value them at half a cent. And Chase and Citi both say they auto-redeem those points for cash right away. Obviously those are not great options, but those things only kick in if Amex, Chase, or Capital One learn of the death of the person.

So I would encourage you, until Chase knows that, yes, if Chase finds that out, they're gonna redeem them for cash. Until they find that out, you can always log in and you can go transfer those to family members accounts. Or you can just redeem them in the portal, or find some way to use them before they get auto-redeemed for cash at a lower value.

So Matthew, I really appreciate you sending this question in, because as much as I had thought I was a little bit prepared, I don't think the information of what to do with all these points is documented anywhere. So I'm actually gonna write up a little thing. I'm gonna upload it to our trustworthy account so someone has it in case something happens, and someone knows what actions they need to do with our points to make sure they're not redeemed at half a cent, and hopefully people can take crazy, amazing vacations.

Kevin wrote in asking about planning a trip to Hawaii with a family of six and his wife's parents. So it sounds like eight people, and wanted to know how to utilize points for a large group, whether it was best to focus on flights or hotels. And honestly, when I first saw his question, I had one instinct.

And then a couple days later, I started trying to book a trip for our family, which was gonna require four tickets. And I realized how much different the game is when you're booking four tickets. You know, we're used to trying to use our points to fly internationally in business class, and we couldn't find a single place to go on short notice.

Not last-minute notice, but maybe two or three months out, where we could find four business class tickets. I wouldn't say I tried too hard, but the basic things I looked at were pretty hard. So I asked a few friends, and we came to a couple thoughts. One, we just decided that maybe we don't want to travel business class with our kids.

Maybe we don't want to expose them to those luxuries right away. And that just means that we'll sit in coach also, and it'll be less relaxing and enjoyable for us, but it'll be better for them. And we'll actually be able to find availability, because we have been able to find easier availability for coach seats for a lot of people than we have business class.

So that's just one thought. Hotels, if you have a family of six and in-laws, that might be eight flights, but it also might only be three hotel rooms. And I've had a lot more success looking for hotel rooms. So Kevin mentioned he has chase points. I definitely look at whether you could use those chase points at Hyatt.

But the other thing I'll point out is that Hawaii, depending on when you're going, can be so cheap that it might not even be worth using your miles, or it might be worth using your points in the portal if you really don't want to spend the money right now.

We're going to Hawaii next month in October, and the round-trip tickets were like $250. But when I looked at the miles, it was so much more that it wasn't actually a good deal. So if I'm okay spending money, that's an option. If I'm not, then I would just book in the portal.

And I know it's not the best points per mile, but if I was in a circumstance where I didn't have the money to take the trip and I wanted to take the trip, I'm a bigger fan of traveling than maximizing your points. So I would want to do that.

So Kevin, good luck. I will keep everyone here also updated as I figure out how we navigate the waters of booking travel with miles for big groups. Four doesn't seem that big, but compared to two people, it seems like a lot more. Another option I'll plug is check out the Straight to the Points newsletter.

I'll link it in the show notes. It's a great newsletter that shares when there's lots of seats available for different award flights. And so I've gotten a couple alerts there. And as long as you're flexible with where you go, it's a great option to be able to find lots of seats for award travel.

Adam wrote in asking, "What are the best Capital One partners to transfer points for a trip across the ocean?" And I thought about it. My favorite three Capital One transfer partners for long flights are British Airways, booking anything on One World, which doesn't mean you have to fly British Airways.

You could fly Air France, lots of great deals, especially right now. And then Air Canada, I think is a great transfer partner of Capital One to book on United, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Swiss Air. There's a lot of carriers that cross the ocean in Star Alliance. So those are my three favorites for booking international travel with Capital One points.

And to be honest, booking domestic travel as well. I actually have a transfer partner spreadsheet that I'll link to in the show notes, and I'll put it up at allthehacks.com/tp for transfer partners. And it lists out all the transfer partners of all the major credit card programs. It lists out how long it usually takes for those transfers to go through, what alliance they're in, and then I put a little asterisk next to the ones that are my favorites.

So hopefully that's helpful if you have a similar question, but instead of Capital One, you're thinking Chase or Citi or Built or American Express. Now, Noam wrote in asking what my stack was for websites and services to make the most out of my points. So I thought I'd talk about it, both the stack of services and then just some quick tips.

So when it comes to tracking, I'm aware of three services that help you track how many miles and points you have in different places. Award Wallet is one, the Points Guy app is one, and to no surprise, a Spreadsheet is another. I've struggled with Award Wallet because it's like partially automated and partially manual.

And then the Points Guy, it's fully automated, but it doesn't support everything. For example, I have some Chase business cards and some Chase personal cards, and I couldn't figure out how to make that work. I couldn't link multiple accounts from different airlines to pull in my wife's points. So honestly, Google Spreadsheets is the way I track my points and miles.

I know it's old school. It's not ideal, but you know, it does the trick. When it comes to searching for flights, before you actually go and sign up and use a service, first thing that I'd recommend doing is looking at three websites. And not because you necessarily have points in these programs, but because I think they're the best for searching the three alliances.

So Air France for searching SkyTeam flights, British Airways for searching One World flights, or American if you already have an account there and you're familiar, and Aeroplan for searching Star Alliance or United if you have an account there. So whenever I'm looking to book an international flight, if I don't want to go use a tool like Point.me, and I'll get to that, I'll just go through those three websites and say, "If I want to go to from San Francisco to Paris, go to Aeroplan.

Is there anything there? Go to British Airways. Is there anything there? Go to Air France. Is there anything there?" That's like a quick, free version. Now there are a bunch of tools out there that are paid services that help you do this easier. Point.me is one I really like.

And you can still go to allthehacks.com/pointme and use the promo code "allthehacks" at the checkout on a monthly plan to get the monthly plan down to $1. It's great because you can search across tons of airlines and they'll tell you how to transfer your points to the airlines to find availability.

It kind of takes all of that work out. There's another tool I use called ExpertFlyer, but it supports a fewer number of airlines. So I don't necessarily recommend it for that use case, but it is really great for alerts. You can set alerts for when things open up, when seats open up.

So I use it for that a lot. There are two tools that I haven't used much of, but could be worth checking out. One's called AwardLogic and one's called AwardNexus. I think they're both kind of competitors to Point.me. I think I used AwardNexus a while ago, but I haven't used AwardLogic ever.

And last is a tool that is going to make you feel like you're going back in time. And it's called KVS tool. And it's a Windows application that I think has the most versatile search across all airlines and all programs. But it is absolutely the most clunky tool to use.

And you have to search the airlines individually. It's not a simple thing, but I would say it is the most feature rich tool in terms of being able to find the most availability on the most airlines. It's just an experience. So I definitely throw that out there. I ended up having to install an emulator on my computer when I've used it in the past, but it's almost so much work that I don't think I've used it for two or three years.

The one tool that I think is also in my stack, which I'm so sad that it is no longer getting updated, but it's still about 70% correct, is a website called award mapper. And it's just award mapper.com. And it's a directory of all the hotels across all the different loyalty programs around the world.

Unfortunately, it's not updated. So there are hotels there that are no longer around or hotels that are new that aren't there or the categories have changed. So it's not perfect, but it's something and I'm hoping someone will replace it or update it in the future. Last question is another one from gnome who asked if he wants to plan for a special occasion, what's the best timing to ensure he gets the best deal?

Meaning how far in advance do you want to book with your points? So there's really three options here. One is as soon as the schedule opens up. And there's a link in the show notes to an article on upgraded points about when do airlines release award seats. And it varies, but it's all around the one year mark.

But there are some interesting hacks here where certain airlines release their schedule to certain other partners 365 days instead of 330 days out. So you might get a better chance booking those awards if you're booking them from certain partner programs. That article details a lot of that. So I'll leave that there.

So if you know far in advance more than a year out, I would say get ready, figure out the day those days are going to open up and book them at that one year out mark and even go as far as to book to one ways. So if the schedule opens up, book the outbound and then wait two weeks until you can book the return.

If it's a two week trip, most award seats now can be canceled and redeposited. So if it's a really important trip, I would do that. The second option is wait until the last minute. And this could be really daunting for a lot of people. My wife falls into that category at times, but we've taken a handful of trips where we've said this is the week or two we're going to block off.

We're going to start looking for flights now. But if we don't find something we're really excited about, we're going to check again. And we've changed where we're going as late as at the airport, you know, a few hours before taking off because availability just opens up like crazy. Now, you don't really have to wait until the day of the flight.

Usually it's within the last two weeks when airlines start to open up a lot of their award inventory. And so I would say maybe you could book one inconvenient routing or to a place you're excited to go to, but maybe you have a backup place you'd really like to go to more.

And then two weeks out, if that other thing is available, you can change your plans or switch from the flight that has two stops and coach to the nonstop in business or something like that. The other option is just whenever you can. Look, if you have flexibility on your side, whether that's where you go or when you go, I think you can find flights to just about anywhere, anytime, whether it's six months out, nine months out, three months out.

If it's during the holidays, it's going to be harder, but generally I think it's not impossible. And then the last one is just whenever you see a deal. So I mentioned the straight to the points newsletter earlier, great place where you'll get an email that says, Hey, right now there's an amazing deal going on with award availability to X or Y.

A few weeks ago, there was amazing availability on Fiji airways in business to fly from the West coast to New Zealand or Fiji or Australia. So that was something that we actually almost jumped on, but it didn't quite work with our schedule. So that would be the other. So it's as soon as it opens up last minute or whenever you see a deal are the optimal times, but I wouldn't let that discourage you.

I haven't really ever booked right when the schedule opened up and I've booked lots of things, not last minute when there wasn't a deal. So I wouldn't say anything else is bad. I would just say those are the best times to book. So I also want to share some of the latest deals I've seen in the past few weeks, but first thank you so much to everyone who sent in questions.

I love doing these episodes. Like I mentioned earlier, the next one is going to be on everything else, life, non points, travel, relationships, kids, career, productivity, really anything. So I would love to include your questions in the next episode. Please send me an email or maybe one day one of you will go to the website and use the voicemail feature and I'll play your question live in the next episode.

As for deals, first off, if you want to get these deals as soon as they come out, I send a newsletter every two weeks and I always put the best deals I find in them. So please subscribe all the hacks.com/email. Let's run through what's happening right now. The biggest one is for any of you with an Amex card.

Right now there are 15 to 30% bonuses on transfers to 12 different Amex transfer partners. That's nine different airlines, including a few I love like Aeroplan, British Airways and Air France, but a bunch of others as well. So if you're thinking about booking a trip using any Amex points now would be one of the best times to do it because there is a bonus on almost every transfer you could want to do.

Also, if you have the built rewards card, you can now earn three X points on gas or EV charging until October 31st, which is awesome. If you don't have the built card, I talked about it earlier. Amex is running a bonus for business checking accounts where you get 30,000 free Amex points for depositing $5,000 in an account and making a few transactions.

Chase has just turned on referring a friend for the Sapphire Reserve card. So if you're looking to earn some extra points and you have a Sapphire Reserve or a Sapphire Preferred card, you can get 10 to 15,000 chase points for referring your friend. And finally, there's a deal where you can get 2,500 free Wyndham points from BACT.

It's a new app. All of these deals are in my most recent newsletter, which I will link to in the show notes. There are also two deals that expired, but I figured I'll share them here just so you get a sense of what's in the newsletter. Last Saturday was National Cinema Day, so there were $3 tickets at movie theaters nationwide.

And Southwest had 25% off flights to all beach destinations, Hawaii, Mexico, Caribbean, and Central America. So that's the kind of stuff you'll see in the newsletter. I hope you subscribe and I hope you enjoy it. And please, feedback is always welcome. All right. I know we hit on a ton of questions.

Thank you so much for joining for this episode. These are some of my favorites. Do send questions for the next one and I will do my best to answer them in a future episode. That is it for this week. I will see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai