Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money and travel. If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins. And one of the things I love optimizing the most is credit card points and miles. So today I wanted to invite my good friend and absolute credit card expert Sebastian Fung, better known on YouTube by his handle AskSevi, to talk about the current state of credit cards, predictions for next year, some of the recent changes we've been seeing, I'm looking at you Delta, how to think about signup bonuses versus spending multipliers, how frequently you can open up cards and a lot more.

So let's jump in right after this. Sebastian, thank you for being here in person. Thank you for having me. For people who don't know you, I gave a little bit of an intro, but tell me about how you got into this game. I kind of started my career in finance, moved into tech, did a bunch of startup stuff, and then got very obsessed of points, mostly because my player two, Mandy, wanted to travel a ton.

And I was like, how do I do all this stuff without paying an arm and a leg? I think one big trip that really pushed it was a last minute Japan trip. And we paid something like 12 or $1,300 for economy. And I'm like, wait, why am I paying so much money for economy?

And then I fell into this whole points rabbit hole. I knew about credit cards before, but I was always on team cashback back in the day where I was like, oh, just optimize your categories and that makes the most sense. But then I realized you can get so much more value from points.

And that actually moves the needle the most compared to cashback. I like cashback. I think a lot of people can benefit from it, especially if you have a family and you're not traveling as much or you just don't care about that. But I think especially when you're young, points drive so much value and just open so many doors.

Is there a type of travel you think is necessary for points to be worth it? I think it does lean more towards aspirational business and first class type of trips or more expensive trips. For economy stuff, I still pay out of pocket generally because the value is not there, or I get okay value like maybe 1.5 to 2 cents per point, but it's not the astronomical 10 cents per point.

So for me, a lot of it is how do I as a P get the VIP experience and unlock this whole thing that I didn't think I could do. Growing up pretty lower middle class, I never thought I'd be able to fly business, let alone first. So the fact that even if it's just for a few hours, see what it's like to be on the other side and experience that and see these other people who are dropping 20K on these flights, that's nice.

It feels really good to sit next to someone and be like, how much did you pay? I haven't actually asked. I don't know if you ever asked, but I've always wanted to ask. How much did you pay for that? I've done that in Bora where we were just hanging out and talking to other people.

And then some people were like, oh, I pay 30. And then someone else was like, oh, you guys are losers. We did it through Costco and we paid 25,000. And I was like, oh, I didn't pay that much money at all. But it went first or bubble. I know, but you kind of did just to open them.

But next time, here's the tricks. A lot of people like the idea of points, but it's one of those things that you keep in mind, but you never really act on it. A lot of people will be like, oh, we can get a lot of value. That's nice, whatever.

So it is tough to make that switch. And like that first step is always harder. So I want to come back to these aspirational trips at the end. But first, I feel like there are very few people that are as in tune with everything that's going on with the points, miles, status world.

I wanted to just bring up the topic of where we're at right now. We're recording this in September 2023. Delta has just told everyone that loves flying Delta that it's going to be a lot harder to get status unless you spend a ridiculous amount of money. By this point, we probably already will have covered the major news there.

But at the high level, status is changing and it has on other airlines over the past few years. Where do you feel like things are in the world of points and miles? What's happening now? So I feel like most of the airlines have told people either intentionally or unintentionally that they actually don't care if you fly them a lot.

They care more so how much money you spend with them. So even if you look at your net, it's changed from the old system to the current one. It's very much contingent on you spending either a crap ton of money on your credit cards or flying a lot of them.

It's not even economy flying. They do want premium last minute business class type flying where you might be going to the airport and paying $1,000 for like SFO to LAX. So Delta is kind of in that same realm. They have simplified the whole process a lot more, but it's still very much targeted towards businesses.

Even back in the day, you could get two Delta Reserve cards. Spending your way there was about $240K, but it was complicated. You were learning about MQT waivers, MQM boosts and stuff like that. And now it's like just spend $400K and you get status or $350K. A lot of money for most businesses.

Do you care about status? At least let's start with airlines. Is that something you're even trying to get anymore? So I think a lot of people rightfully don't like status for a lot of good reasons because they don't get upgrades. So back in the day, we were chasing United status.

And then I think the most we ever got up to was Platinum. And then we realized that out of SFO because 43 or 50% of people flying through SFO are United. So you're never going to get upgraded because there's too many people that have 1K and global services that you can chase it, but it's not going to help you as much as you think it is.

So you pretty much want to get status with the second or third busiest airline from that airport. And for us, SFO, it was Delta. And then if you're in Atlanta, obviously, you wouldn't want Delta because there's too many Delta elite members and people who like just have unlimited corporate account money.

So for us, we got Delta status. We liked it a lot because we were getting upgraded for our cross-country flights. We also fly during weird times. So that kind of helps. But being able to get a decent business class seat for five or six hours is nice. With the new change, I think we're kind of on the fence about how to play it.

So next year, we're still going to be Delta Diamond. The year after that, I think unless we have some weird astronomical business spend, it just doesn't make sense. And then even then it's like, well, there's an opportunity cost of should I spend all this money on this card when I can just use a Citi Double Cash or a lot of other cards where you get more value, right?

We might chase American status mostly because the spend amount seems pretty reasonable for the level that we want. And then for that level, pretty much the one below eXp, so I think it's Platinum Pro, that one gets you One World Emerald status, which gets you into first class lounges when you're flying abroad.

So we go to Hong Kong like three to four times a year. And if I can scroll up into the Cafe Pacific first class lounge while flying Economy or Premium Economy, that's not bad at all. No, it's funny. My adventures with status started with let's try to chase the highest status on United because we lived in San Francisco.

And then it was, well, we're really only taking short haul trips where I just don't care, or really long haul trips where we're using our points. Forget it, no status. So for the last four or five years, no status. And the one place where it started to bite us back was now we have two kids and we have an au pair.

And sometimes we're traveling with five people, four seats. And the reality, we just did a trip with no check bags. But the reality is when you're traveling with four or five people with a bunch of kids, you got to check bags. And it was just an added fee. So it was like, do I want to get a credit card to cover the cost?

Or there was a challenge for United, which was just in reach. It was spend $1,200 in three or four months on United. And we had a couple trips planned. So I went for it. And now I'm worried that I'm kind of getting caught up in this. For anyone listening who knows United status, silver basically is free check bags.

Economy plus it check in if it happens to be available. So it's not special, but I'm finally back on that train. And now I find myself doing what I wanted to not do, which was I just want to take the easiest, most convenient flight. Now I find myself like, "Ooh, can I take the United flight?

Because I'm going to get free check bags." I'll just get a credit card then. I feel like that makes so much more sense. You get all the perks of silver or even gold status. I think it's because I had a United card for so long. And then I just forgot to put a transaction on it and they closed it.

And I was like, "Ugh, do I have to really go back and get another new United card?" It's another intro bonus. So we'll come to that. But it seemed like it fit in. So I did it. We're going to get some free checked bags out of it. But at the end of the day, the credit card can give you the low tier of status, which is like check bags.

You're probably not going to get preferred seats with any cards. But with the United cards, Delta does get you upgrades, even if you don't have status, but you're not going to get business or first. And even first is domestic first, which isn't that exciting, but you'll probably get a premium comfort plus equivalent.

So I'll probably play the cards through that. What about hotels? We don't talk a lot about hotel status. It feels like in the points and miles world, it's Hyatt, Globalist, or forget it. I think a big part of it too is because airline status is so hard to get with credit cards while a hotel status is given out willy nilly.

So you have all these cards that give you either mid level or even higher level status. Hilton Diamond being one of the prime examples, right? You're getting a top level status by getting a credit card that runs you 450. And then I would argue that the card actually is a net positive because of all the credits and the free night.

So you have all these people that have status because the math makes sense and people that watch YouTube are like, Oh, yeah, if you run the numbers, it's logical. So I think the reason people like Hyatt is because that's the one you actually had to chase and had to do, meaning that there's less people that have it, meaning that it's more beneficial because upgrades actually come to you if you have like 10,000 people that have status compared to 1000 that's up, especially in the US.

Internationally, though, it doesn't really matter because everyone else doesn't have status. So we'll go to Southeast Asia like Da Nang or something. And they'll be like, Oh, thank you for being diamond and for your two stays this year. And I was like, Yeah, thank you for having me because they don't see that many business travelers and their credit cards don't come with status like ours do.

We've had that experience in Southeast Asia also with Marriott or the former Starwood. Any status was great. And I think Marriott, you can also get platinum with one card. Marriott, you can get it with the Bonvoy Brilliant now before you had to spend 75k to get it. And yeah, now you get it, which I think is good because a lot of hotels can be free breakfast as well and then upgrades up to like standard suites.

Is there a hotel chain that if you were building loyalty, is it Hyatt? I found recently on Hilton when I dug into the terms, even if there's a nice room, they don't have to give it to you. I think a lot of Hilton's are annoying in that way because they'll lean into the terms and then it depends on who owns the hotel and their upgrade policies, but they lean very literally on the can give you an upgrade versus a will give you an upgrade.

But theoretically, it just depends on the person. And then sometimes if you're nicer to them, I find that they are more likely to give you upgrades. In the US, they just don't. Sometimes I'll open up the app and be like, Hey, there is a junior suite available. There's three of them tonight.

Can I get upgraded to this? It's like, Oh, it's not available in my system. I get that they maybe have sales quotas, but still, it's annoying on that end. Are there any chains where you feel like you haven't had that problem? Because I imagine you probably have hotel status on all of the chains.

I feel like Hyatt is one of the best ones for that. That's why I like Hyatt, but their footprint so much smaller. IHG is probably the worst with it, where even if you have like ambassador or like the top level status, they'll try to upsell you. We stayed at an intercontinental and it was empty.

It was during Christmas in Houston, and they were just trying to upsell us rooms. We're like, Oh, can we get a tour of it? And I was filming the room. So I'm like, still got a free review of the room out of it. But then it's like, yeah, that'll be an extra 200.

Isn't this nice? I'm like, I think our hotel is not that busy. It's Christmas Eve. Why are you trying to upsell me? And so if we look ahead, because I feel like you have a pretty good sense of this, we'll start with status and then we'll move into credit cards.

But where do you think 2024? What are we going to see? Are we going to see lots of big changes to programs? Do you think they've all made their changes recently, focusing airlines on spend and hotels, I guess, haven't really made too many changes? Is anything changing? American can be really smart here.

And they could actually even do campaigns where they bring TELTA people over and convert them really well. So I think they should do that, but they're not doing it. United's in a good spot where they're like, we don't really care. I wonder if Delta will backstep the decision, but I feel like they won't.

So some people pointed to the fact that like they did make some changes because people complain and petitioned and that it took two years or something. But I'm like, is it really worth your effort doing it? Number one. And number two, even if they do make a change, it's probably still going to be like a mid step where it's just not going to be good for you anyways.

So I think there are a lot of people pushing for change and telling people to call the board of directors. But it feels like a fiduciary move. They made a decision that makes sense for the company. I've heard the argument that Delta has the best product, like the best hard product on the plane, seats, service, amenities, everything.

And so they can kind of afford to do this, because if you live in Atlanta, are you really going to change what you do? And then American doesn't have the best product. And so they're like, we're going to make our program work for anyone. And Delta is kind of like, look, we're really good.

We don't need as easy of a program and it might work. And I think it will actually attract the people they want, because even if in the diamond rings, there are a lot of people that have status. So by moving the bar higher up, that means there's less diamonds, but probably more people that are higher off with businesses that spend more money that want to buy these tickets who spend a lot on their credit cards.

So it kind of just works out for them where they have a better experience within the diamond ring. So not everyone here is focused on status on hotels or airlines, but I think a lot of people here are focused on credit cards. What do you think is changing? The only big changes recently, and I say big, like if I look back over 2023, I don't feel like there was a lot that changed in the credit card game.

But what do you think? I think it's mostly the Venture X coming into the ecosystem and then disrupting everything. And now the Venture X business kind of disrupting on the business side. I would argue that even that card is actually the best business card out there. If you can use the credits and points and stuff, I think we probably at some point we'll see a bit more devaluation over there because it's kind of the Chase Sapphire Reserve strategy where you come in, break down doors, but then you have to take a few steps back afterwards and either increase the annual fee or decrease in benefits after you get the market share.

I think Citi is the big question mark that a lot of people have because they got rid of the prestige card and they haven't really been in this travel ecosystem. For a long time, they were actually in first place and the Platinum pushed past it. I think back in like 2017, all the consultants had the Citi prestige because it was like an amazing card where they had this fourth night free perk.

And if you were traveling for four nights every week, you would actually just get a ton of statement credits and kind of free money through your credit card. So the question is whether they're going to try to come back into the top three or whether they'll try to go for the top again and how they play that.

It seems like Citi has, there's rumors that a new card is coming. Yeah. The Strata Elite and Strata. Yeah. But we don't know what it is. We have no clue what it looks like or what it's going to do or whether it's going to be competitive. For all we know, they could come into the ecosystem and then if it's just like the luxury black card that is expensive but isn't good, then it's going to lose.

I've heard someone make very, very edge cases for Citi points, but if you already have some Amex points or Chase and Capital One, adding Citi doesn't get you many new options other than I think Eva Air. And then Eva Air is not even that good of an option. No.

In that case, go get a Citi card so you get some points. I just think that was the only one that stood out as the unique option. I'm at Flowny Bear. Business class on Eva is great. Even economy is great. They're just very friendly. And I think they make some of their space available just to their program.

So maybe that's a Citi point benefit. I think for most people, the reason they go for Citi is because you've depleted all your Chase options and then Amex is once in a lifetime and then it's easy to deplete those options as well because there's only so many MR earning cards and then you do Capital One generally early on.

So I think Citi is that next logical step and the fact that they do have some pretty good cards of catch all options as multipliers, double cash being the good 2x equivalent. And then the Citi Premier is also surprisingly good as a workhorse because it earns 3x on so many categories.

Gas is a big one that a lot of other banks just don't focus on or they know that it's going to be a money loser, so they just don't really focus on it at all. And the fact that Citi Premier earns a 3x on it and it's uncapped is pretty good.

For any cards we talk about, if you go to all the hacks.com/cards, you can find the links for all the cards we're talking about except Citi. We don't have any partners there, but you do. So if anyone here wants to get any of the cards that we're talking about, obviously support me, but also if it's a Citi card, I'll send them your way.

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Venturex was a big thing. I think we have two of them in our house. Venturex business, I'm torn on. It's a massive signup bonus, I think it's 150,000, but you have to spend 30 grand in three months. But I already have the Spark Cash Plus. Pretty much equivalent, but I would argue that the annual fee there is a bit higher because you don't have that many credits offsetting it.

There's one, if you spend 100k or 150k, you get 100 back or something, or 150 back. I don't know if I put that much on it. But basically there's nothing to help you offset it while the Venturex business has the same $300 and 10,000 points. So for me, that's already like, okay, that covers annual fee more or less, or you get $5 in value.

So that's cheaper on a net basis. And then you also have a priority pass card that works for restaurants. So if you don't want to run Chase Sapphire Preserve or JP Morgan Reserve, then that's an option. And does the Venturex not? The Venturex one works for only lounges. But the business is restaurants?

The business as a filming works for restaurants as well. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. And then I think one of the other big changes was Amex pulling back on Delta lounges. And was it this year where they also cut back on guest policies? Yes. I think that would be another big change.

So I think for them, they're just trying to figure out how to make the lounge experience better because if you have to wait 30 minutes to one hour to go into the lounge, then it's a lose-lose for them because people start canceling cards, people post on social media that the line sucks and that this is terrible.

So how do you make it accessible to people, but also make it a good experience? They've toyed around with increasing the annual fee. And I think that is something that we're probably bound to see in 2025. But then the platinum has done so well in the last two years because people have started doing the math and realized that it makes sense.

The platinum numbers have doubled in the last four or five years, which is a lot of people. And then the lounges have not kept up to that. And then also a lot more people are traveling now. There's also younger people who might be getting it because of the perks or the flex on people and stuff.

So it's just a lot of people have the cards and the lounge side has not kept up. So aside from lounge changes, what do you think happens with cards next year, any year from now when we're catching up? What is going to be the Venture X thing we talked about?

I think a lot of people don't like high annual fees for exchange of credits, but I think that's the most logical move for issuers and everyone. It feels like the most win. What I mean by that is, let's say you have a card that has an 850 annual fee, but you have like 1200 in credits.

So some people hate that because they're like, well, I can't use all these credits because we're conditioned to want to maximize everything. But the goal is necessarily to use every single credit to get enough value that you maybe break even for the credit card. So all the other perks and the multipliers of the card end up just being value on top positive expected value from it.

So I think we're going to see more of that. Probably Citi's going to push that, but I think that's the most logical move because issuers make money, they probably have a bit more room to give you better multipliers too. And then for the people that would benefit from those credits, it's also a win because you might come out ahead for the platinum card.

If you live in certain cities, if you don't use certain products, you might actually be losing money or you might be paying that two or three hundred dollars in order to get the card for lounge access and other perks. But there are people that live in New York and the Bay Area who already pay for Equinox where they come out ahead.

They're like, wait, I use all of these services. I use Uber. I use Equinox. I swap at Saks enough that I can use the credit. I think we're going to see more of that, which might end up pissing some people off, but it's probably a net positive move. I wish I used Equinox so that I could get the value.

I'm pretty confident that just starting to use Equinox is going to not be a net savings. So one tactic you can actually do is if you have a friend that uses Equinox, you could just let them swap your card in for a month and they'll use up the credit and then they can just treat you to dinner or something.

That's what kind of I'm doing right now. I have a lot of platinum cards and then I'm just like, hey, I'm free. You pay for Equinox already anyways. I have these eight platinum cards. You want to swap them in every single month, they use up the credit and then you can pay for sushi.

I'm just going to stand outside of the Equinox in the Bay Area. So it's a portal every month. So it's easier. And I feel like there's bound to be a lot of tech people, you know, that have it, but it's just a weird conversation. Probably not worth the brain cells if I only have one.

So if I had eight, maybe it would be worth finding that person. What do you think happens on the earning side? I know there was a big scare, I guess, when we thought this legislation was going to pass and cause all these challenges. It looks like it's not. Do you think credit card companies in the next year, do you think that comes back?

Do you think we'd see legislation to try to limit the interchange that card companies can make? I think people are still going to try to push for it, whether it goes through or not. It's the big question. If it does go through, I think it actually kind of destroys their credit card space in a lot of ways.

I think in the short term, we will see issuers just keep doing the same thing and maybe increasing the multipliers. It's really hard to do the opposite. If someone told you we're going from 4X to 3X, that's going to piss off so many people and get so much churn from it that you're probably better off keeping the numbers and then trying to make money back somewhere else, whether that's decreasing perks or increasing annual fees.

Because I think people are used to that cycle of upgrades. And then you can always argue inflation like, "Hey, technically 250 two years ago is now like 350 or 300." I think one of the hardest parts for cards is all the transfer ratios for the most part are all one-to-one and seem so simple to keep it one-to-one that they can't really pull that lever easily.

So they can pull perks. Do you think we'll ever see cards where it's like here are four perks, you get to pick two of them? I kind of wish Citi would do that or any other issuer. I think that's an interesting play and gamifies it a lot more. But I'm not sure if the normal card user that's not a super user would like that because it might sound too confusing.

But I think it's cool. I think right now you probably have at least eight priority pass memberships and you don't need them. No, not at all. I could use even a $50 credit or something per year. That would be nice. Or maybe a $50 credit for something else, Barry's Bootcamp or something.

So I think that would be cool. It just brings up a different conversation now. Because for the Platinum, the whole draw is that, "Oh, I can get $1,400 in value. I might not, but I can." So there's that potential of getting outsized value. And they love to market that.

Yes. Even for my calculations and stuff, I'm like, "You need to knock it down for your own case." We have calculators on AskSebi.com for this. I think the moment you're like, "Okay, cool. That's a 900 annual fee, but you have 800 credits, but you have to pick the ones." It ends up not being the best for the company or for people that are signing up.

It's only good for us. And I'm pretty sure they're not optimizing for us. Yes. So do credit card companies like power users because they tell their friends and their friends aren't? Or do they secretly wish that they could put a red flag on all of our accounts and close us all down?

I think we represent such a small number that they probably don't care. I think it's reminiscent of the casinos where there's people that count cards, right? You actually want people to think that they can go in and count cards and movies like that to propagate. The average person, even if they mentally can do it, they're not going to spend the time to learn how to do it or they'll think about how to do the process.

So by having this whole thing like, "Oh, you can get money, but maybe they don't do enough research," then they end up losing. But the people that watch videos and read blogs are probably already a lot ahead of everyone else. We talked about how you have eight platinum cards, which is a little crazy.

And I think one of the things that people often miss about the game is we get so caught up in, "Well, which card is going to give me the most number of points for how I spend my money?" And don't get me wrong, I've created a tool where people can actually go in and put their spend in and figure out the right optimal use of cards because at the end of the day, no one wants to leave points on the table.

However, when I think about it and I just start doing the math, even with the best card, if you could have a 5X points on everything card and your return was 5X, welcome bonuses seem to be better than that almost always. Is there an argument that all you should be ever chasing is welcome bonuses and you should not be focused on any multipliers and bonuses?

So I think it's interesting where a lot of people who spend less money focus more on multipliers when they should be focusing on intro bonuses because that drives more money. If you're spending only $500 a month, getting $200 back for that $500 just makes a lot more sense and you can actually repeat that so many times because there's so many cards.

5% on $500 is not material at all. So ironically, the people that should be focused on multipliers are the high spenders, the ones that are spending $5,000 or $10,000 a month eating out. I think some people look at that and be like, "That's absurd. Who does that?" But there are people that spend a ton of money.

For those people, the multipliers start to matter a lot more because that's already 25,000 points in one month, potentially, depending on the card. So for most people, especially when you're starting out, focus on intro bonuses. That drives the needle. That's like 20% return on spend to 40% depending on the card.

But I think once you ramp up, once you have a business, at some point, just run out of bonuses. If you have a business that runs a lot of Facebook ads and you're spending $200K a month, there's not enough intro bonuses for you to go for. So you do start to focus on multipliers or maybe getting hotel status or airline status with that spend.

But if you're someone who has dabbled, you've opened two or three cards, and maybe you're spending, I don't know, five, seven grand a month. So you're kind of on that high end, but you haven't opened up a ton of cards. Even if you're a high spender, if you've only opened up a few cards in your time, it probably makes sense to focus on intro bonuses.

I think so. I think you can argue that one a lot more because you're in that weird mid spot. But for me, intro bonuses, especially travel ones, just drive so much value. Would you rather spend maybe three or four months of spending to get the same bonus or maybe one month?

And especially if you are trying to time towards a honeymoon or any other big endeavor where you need a lot of points, it just makes more sense. So to me, I think intro bonuses are the focus, especially when you're young and you have time to manage stuff anyways. If you have kids, then obviously maybe that's not worth your time.

I would push back and say, if you're going to spend the time to figure out what card earns the most points, you'd probably be better off just getting another card unless you've played the game so heavily that you're out of cards, which you probably are. So my view is you should probably work your way to like 10, 20, or like 50 cards.

But obviously, that's not everyone and I want to be cognizant that like some people do have like lives. I like researching stuff. On a Friday night, I think we'll watch Netflix, hang out, have dinner. But then at night, I'm randomly researching stuff and going down rabbit holes. Sometimes it's not credit card related.

Sometimes it's like travel. Sometimes it's something completely different, like mechanical keyboards. I like researching stuff. I enjoy learning. But I know some people who are like, "No, I'd rather be spending more time with my kids or partying or clubbing or whatever else." So I think it just depends on you.

So you just said potentially 50. Let's pretend someone listening is like, "Whoa, I was doing this game wrong." So one, I've noticed from people that have published, "Here's me opening up a high velocity of cards over a short period of time." The impact on your credit is surprisingly positive.

So I think that was a misconception a lot of people have is, "Oh, if I opened up five, six, seven, eight cards in a year, it would destroy my credit." I'm pretty sure my experience from people that have reported it and from the few times where I did that is that the exact opposite is true.

Is that what you've seen? For the most part, yes. I think short term, you might see a dip. And then especially if you're a student, you'll see a bigger dip, and I think that's when they get spooked by it. But I think especially if you're in the 25 to 30, and especially later on range, where you already have these older cards anyways to be your anchor and your foundation, the impact is so minimal.

And unless you're shopping for a mortgage or something like that, it doesn't really matter. "Oh no, my credit score dropped from 800 to 750." And a 50 point drop like that would not be one card. That would be over a series? That'd probably be over a series unless you had a very thin file, like if you only had like one card, and then this is your second card, then yeah, you might see a 50 point drop.

And so how would you think about that sequence? If you were someone that's like, "Okay, let's get a card a quarter this year." I think earlier you referenced Capital One might be early. Is there a high level version of how you would think about where to start? I generally think of it as stages.

So Chase being the first off set of stuff because of Chase 524 and how they limit cards. And then also their business cards are pretty lucrative and you can get a lot of them while you're under 524. And we've talked about this at length just for anyone who's new to 524.

When Chase looks to approve you for a card, and it's not a published rule, but everyone has seen it work. If you open more than five cards in the last 24 months across all issuers on your personal report, they're going to stop you. So if you've opened five and you try to open a business card, they're going to say no.

But if you open a business card, it doesn't show up on your personal report on Chase. And so you could open up five business cards and then open up a personal card and be okay because the business card is not going to show up from Chase. It will from Capital One.

Yes. And some other issuers, but most issuers don't. And then once you're at 424, you go down the ink list, especially if you have an EIN and different options there. You can technically get a lot of ink bonuses from each of your businesses. You have a whole business channel on YouTube that I bet people can go deep down a rabbit hole.

Ask Subby Business. And so I think a lot of people would be surprised that they probably do something in their life that would qualify them for a business card, even if they're not running a business with employees. So that's definitely something to look at. So Chase is kind of where you start because of their kind of application rules.

So application rules and also number of intro bonuses and then the value of intro bonuses. And then the fact that a lot of their cards have downgrade paths and a no annual fee options. And also a lot of the ones that don't are just keeper cards. So ones where you get value every year by keeping it hotel cards being one of the best examples of this.

After that, I would do Capital One mostly because they can be pretty hard to get approved for if you have very high velocity and you have a lot of cards. So there are people out there who have an 800 credit score who make two 300 K, but who will not get approved for the Venture X because Capital One knows that you're not profitable.

So you generally want to get your foot in that door early on. Saver One, Venture X are all pretty good cards for that. They also just make sense. They're good cards by themselves. If you hadn't opened a lot of Chase cards and you're sitting at 024 or 124, would you make a case to maybe start with a big bonus on a Venture X upfront?

That's one of the few issuers I would consider burning a 524 slot for, but I'd probably still go through Chase personally, but depends on you. And is it as simple as Chase 524? If I'm at 124, can I just go open up four cards in the next 90 days?

You generally want to get a new card, I would say every one to three months and then for business cards every two to three months. So you kind of want to have it out based off what you're trying to do. IXG Premier, World of Hyatt are all pretty good cards.

Boundless is interesting, especially if you want to in the future upgrade to the Ritz card, which is another rabbit hole. United cards are good for the bonuses and downgrade paths and perks if you want free check to bags. Aeroplanes just a really good bonus, but doesn't have a downgrade path.

But yeah, there's like a lot of cards you can get that just provide a lot of value. I think Chase is probably the issuer with the most six figure bonuses. It's always Chase. And then if you look at bonuses across the board, who really has a lot of bonuses, it's American Express and Chase.

That's why you want to focus on Chase early on because you want to get those bonuses. And then a lot of the bonuses are also on a 24 month clock, where if you don't currently have the card and you haven't got the bonus in 24 months, you would actually be eligible for that bonus again.

So a lot of people start off Chase, go through everything else, and then you can circle back to Chase. One thing that I think you'll find if you get to your fourth or fifth Chase card is you might get denied right away. And you can often, at least in my experience, call up and the denial isn't that they don't want to give you the card.

It's they just don't want to give you any more credit. And you could say, "Oh, well, can you move some credit over from this other card I have that has a $25,000 limit?" You just put 10 there and bring 15 over. Yeah. So Chase generally wants to give you about 50% of your income as your total credit limit for them.

That's what they're willing to risk. So if you make 100, then among all your Chase cards, total limit should be around 50K. So you can also carve room, which is what I call it, where you intentionally decrease credit limits to just make it easier to get approved. So like, let's say if you have a 200K salary, you know that your cap is 100K.

If you already have 100K and you're not using all your credit limit anyways, why not just decrease one of these cards by 5K? Can you do that? Can you just ask them for a credit decrease? Yes, you can. And then that makes it easier to get approved. Obviously, some people will be like, "I'd rather call in.

I don't owe getting credit limit decreases are dumb. Why would anyone do that?" As someone who doesn't like calling in and waiting on the phone and stuff, I'd rather just send a message saying, "Decrease my credit limit by 5K." That's immaterial to me. And if it makes the approval process easier, then that's a win.

Do you think there's an argument of that actually working more often? My rationale is that it's lower risk. Because I think anytime you have more eyes on your account, it's a negative thing. So I don't want to have to call in and then ask them to move limits around and then have someone be like, "Why does this guy have 12 Chase cards?" Maybe that's another risk flag.

By me decreasing the limit, then it's the algorithm approving me. And to me, that's just lower risk. So you go Chase to Amex, I'm guessing? No. So you do Chase to Capital One. Capital One. And then I would say Citi, Bank of America, Barclays are all kind of in the same zone.

After Capital One, you can make the argument for U.S. Bank. And there's not that many cards unless you're in cashback, basically. And all the ones you mentioned, Bank of America, Barclays, U.S. Bank, are they all cashback? Bank of America would be for Alaska points because that is super valuable and they have a lot of first business class options with their partners.

We flew Alaska a lot for a few years. We had some status and I collected all these Alaska points and I never want to spend them because I feel like they're the one currency. There's just no way to get more Alaska points that I know of. Maybe Bonvoy transfer.

It's not really a good transfer though, right? It's pretty bad value to transfer. There is a case for Bank of America if you're on Team Cashback, if you want to have 100K with their brokerage, with Merrill or something. Let's come back to cashback. And any nuance with Amex? You generally want to start with the platinum card to like how they use the platinum offers to entice people to come in.

So generally speaking, if you're not a customer of them, you can get the most value generally like 125, the 150K as an intro bonus. And like they dangle that carrot because when you're not a customer, they want to bring you in. But then the moment you become a customer, it becomes a lot harder to get that offer.

You can still pull it up by using something like CardMatch. We have a whole blog post on assets that I'll be walking through CardMatch. But I think a lot of people just don't realize they see the gold card and they're like that card makes a lot of sense for me.

And then you get that card and then you potentially lose out on 75K to like 25K in MRF Platinum bonus from the platinum that you otherwise could have gotten. I just got an email today that 150K on platinum through CardMatch is a very open option. Like sometimes it's you're lucky if you get it.

Right now, it seems pretty pervasive for new customers. So I'll find a link to CardMatch for the 150K and I'll put in the show notes. If you're not a customer with them, that's generally the easiest way to get the 150K. If you are a customer, you still can get the 150K, but it's just a lot less common.

And sometimes you have to literally wait for the flyers to come in the mail, like physical paper. And after, how do you think about the strategy of going through Amex membership rewards cards or MR as you've been saying, or all their airline hotel cards? I would do the other cards first just because they have so many other rules around it.

So there's something called the 456 rule. So for their credit cards, you can only have four or five or six of them. Their MR cards don't have that rule, so you can actually get as many of them as you want at any time. So you generally want to start with the credit cards first, because that just makes more sense to start those clocks, because that's going to be your bottleneck.

And that's all the Marriott, Hilton, and I mean, there's other cards, there's like a Lowe's card. I haven't gotten that one because that doesn't matter to me. Would it be there on your quest to 50? Is there an intro bonus? There is an intro bonus, but I don't think it matters for me because I don't shop there.

What's after that? That's it, right? You either get a lease or you get into the business game, but I feel like that's it. As a parent, you've had to learn so many new skills to provide for your family, how to do copious amounts of laundry, meal plan for even the pickiest eater, and now how to protect your family's financial future.

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Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals, so please consider supporting those who support us. We didn't talk about built at all because as great as I think built points are, there's no welcome bonus.

There's a secret welcome bonus that exists, technically, if you sign up. And then oftentimes, in the first five days, they'll let you earn up to 50k points. You get 5x points. And first they announce that it's official, and then they announce that it's random and it's not official. So I don't want to promise it.

But if you want a card to earn 3x points on dining, great. But if you pay rent, it makes sense. I would still put it on the back burner after American Express, though, or maybe at the same time as American Express. The rationale being that the multiplier sounds nice on the surface, but if you're someone that's a low spender, you're better off using that rent to help hit intro bonuses.

If you're someone who doesn't spend that much on everything else, but you're paying New York or Bay Area or anywhere rent, that 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 in spend, you can earn 1x. That sounds great, but you're better off just literally hitting a full on intro bonus and paying like maybe 2% fees, if that makes sense.

So you're arguing that because the intro bonus is so big, let's use a practical example. Let's say you live in New York, your rent is 4k. You could easily use that 4k to hit the CSP intro bonus of 60k points. If you put it on the bills, you're getting 4,000 points.

So you're looking at 60,000 points versus 4,000 points. And the fact that most intro bonuses are repeatable, you're going down the intro bonus list. And going for an intro bonus each month, even if you have to pay $80 in fees, on one card, you're paying 4,000, you're getting a 60,000 point bonus and spending $80 in fees.

And on the other, you're spending 4,000, you're getting 4,000 points, but no fees. Because the net amount is positive. Even if you use enough credits to offset the fees you're paying, it just makes financial sense. The math works out. Have you done the math? What is an average percent back in points for intro bonuses?

I'd say for cashback equivalent, probably about 20% to 30%. For travel stuff, 30% to 80%. Southwest ones, we've seen some pretty crazy offers there because they also have just lower minimum spends oftentimes. Business tends to be about 11.1%, give or take. So when you say 2025, you mean it's kind of like if your Amex gold card earns four points per dollar on groceries, for the amount of money you spend on the intro bonus, you're earning effectively 25 points per dollar?

You could say that. Yeah. I mean, it's different per card. And if you spend money past the intro bonus, it's not the same. The argument, so for dining, it still makes sense that intro bonuses are better, but that's still 4x. With built, you're only looking at 1x. That is a pretty big difference to me.

I think that makes sense. That was a lot. I think people have probably been convinced at least to look into the intro bonus game a little bit more if they haven't. What's the cap? How many cards are you at? North of 50. No problems. When you were in that home stretch doing the last 40 to 50, you were still getting approvals.

That's why American Express was towards Dan. I think if you actually map out things properly, you can easily do that. It's not a problem in terms of managing. I think some people will be like, oh, that's a lot of work. You can automate a lot of it using either code or just building your own stuff.

Or even if you want to keep it very manual, you can set a lot of the dates around the same time. So for example, all my chase cards close on the first of each month or as close as I could make it to the end of the month because everything just closes there.

And then all my Amex cards close mid month. And why does that matter? Mostly just to make your life simpler. If someone's like 50 cards, how do I deal with paying these off? But you're not using all 50 regularly. I'm not using all 50. But I'm saying just mentally, if it's weird for you to be like, I don't want to look at my cards every single day of a month, potentially for some weird fraud charge or something.

It's just easier to maybe set like one or two dates in a month as dates that you even look at stuff. But you don't need to use most of the cards. I just link all my cards. I use Copilot, but you can use any other tool, link all your cards, you'll see all the transactions come up.

I don't think I've reviewed my transactions on the card issuer sites for a while. So I think that also works if you have an aggregator. But yeah, for the most part, I think it's a lot less stressful than you think it is. I think if you're coming from zero cards or like three cards to 50, that sounds very intense.

But if you're someone who's already at 8 to 10, you're used to it at this point. It's like going to the gym. And so 50 cards, that's easily, I've got to assume at least 75,000 points per bonus. Overtake Yeah, to be fair, a lot of the bonuses were easier to get back in the day as well.

Bank of America was substantially more lax with their intro bonuses and like how many cards you could get any other things to keep in mind, especially on Amex when it comes to how many times you can get a bonus. So it's technically once in a lifetime, I think there are some form inkling saying that maybe it's once every 10 years, but I just don't want to rely on an exception.

For most people, I would lean towards American Express towards the end, unless you know that you don't want to get that many cards because not everyone does, or you're just a very high spender. Like if you're a food reviewer in New York and you spend 10k a month, then yeah, the gold card probably works out for you.

And so we said we would talk about cashback briefly. If someone's thinking, this is great, I want to earn a lot of value, I want to open cards. But when it comes to using my points, I just find that I don't get the value I want. And if you're ending up using your points to just book in the travel portal on Amex or Citi, is it even worth playing the points game or is it worth considering cashback cards?

You still can go for intro bonuses, because it's the same math that drives the needle the most. Setup wise, you might be looking at different cards. So I think Chase still kind of works pretty well for cashback. Bank of America is another consideration now because they have like these really good cards that you like earn up to 5.25% on a lot of transactions and 2.26, I think.

2.625. Yeah, 2.625 on everything else. Yeah. So there's always a play for that, especially if you just want something super simple. Amex, I think a lot of people get pissed off because they're like, wait, I only get 0.6 cents in value for my points. And that's not very good.

You can get the Schwab card in order to get like 1.1 cents. So that's a bit better. And that's the Schwab Platinum. The Schwab Platinum. But then at the same time, you're like, well, if you're someone that's focused on cashback, you tend not to travel, in which case the Platinum card becomes a lot harder to recommend and use.

So that's a bigger dilemma where you're like, technically, a Platinum card might make financial sense because I spend so much and that increases my earn rate, but I don't travel. So this card is not useful other than for that earn rate bonus. If you want to earn points and you want to use them without having to go to the hassle of transferring, Chase is probably going to be best.

Cap One, Citi, and then Amex. I think it's really tough because you only get 0.5 cents per point unless you use like the saver. But the Venture X kind of becomes like out of the equation. Even if you're booking in their portal? Oh, yeah. If you're doing some form of travel, then yeah, so you have 1 cent, sorry.

But if you're like purely cashback, then I would say Capital One other than the saver or saver one would not be on my list. Citi's also not bad. Portal's still only 1 cent, but you could also cash out at 1 cent per point, which is pretty nice. Okay. So Citi's pretty good if you want credits out.

And then we talked about rent, right? One way that you could hit these intro bonuses, because some of them spend a few thousand dollars. If you don't have that spend, do a lot of them, even run some in tandem. You could just pay fees. Are there other good ways to increase your spend to hit these bonuses without necessarily adding to your expenses for the year?

I think you can speak to this pretty well. If you're the group trip planner, that works out very well, especially if you have more wealthy friends for a bachelor party or something. If everyone's paying you a ton of money, and then you're booking all the hotels, meals are obviously another one.

I think a lot of people also end up starting businesses as a means of earning more points. And then eventually, ironically, that ends up becoming like a profit center and say, oh, I can make a lot of money here. So I've seen people flip things or drop shipping style stuff where you can get a lot of points and also get money.

So I've run into people who are like, yeah, I run 100K in ads, make a crap ton of money. But I started this because I was trying to figure out how to get more points. I met someone recently who I think he said spends $4 million a month for his business on I can't remember which Amex it was.

I would be so sad if it was like a platinum card because he could just be earning twice as much. But at that point, I'm like, if you're earning $4 million, I was going to guess the business goal for ads, but then I was like, oh, $4 million is a lot.

That's a lot. I guess Amex might be the only card that would give you a limit to do that. Number one, VentureX business is also like a charge card where it's uncapped and 2x back on everything. That's what this person should have. That's why I think it's like the best new card right now or like the best business card arguably.

Same with the Spark Cash Plus. Spark Cash Plus had the best intro bonus when I got it. It was $250,000. It's just the fact that it's uncapped because Amex, unless you're doing like 5K plus purchases, then you get 1.5x on the platinum business. But everything else is capped off, like the blue business plus, that's only 50K.

You're going to burn through that. If you're a high spender, Amex doesn't have a great everything card. Surprisingly. So we talked a lot about earning points. We talked a lot about what's coming. Let's talk a little bit about how we use them. I think the two of us have gotten a chance to do a lot of exciting international, maybe some domestic aspirational trips.

If people are sitting on points and thinking, what are some amazing ways to use them? What are some of your favorites and your highlights? Whether it's airline cabins, destinations, or specific properties. If you have a player two, you should probably ask them where they want to go. That's a good starting point because for a lot of people, that's how they actually convert their partner to get into credit cards because they're like, why are you focused on these points?

This sounds dumb. But when you take them to the place they want to go, they're like, oh, this is really nice. Wow. Why were we flying economy before when we can fly business? I lean more towards hotel still in terms of value, because I think you get so much more time there.

And also you can have two people. Flights are fun, but they feel so much more finite. I think Bora Bora Maldives are obviously the go to ones. And I think some people argue it's a bit overrated as someone that likes to snorkel and enjoy the water. I really like it.

And I think the fact that I can check it off the bucket list is fun as well. No Seychelles yet. That's on the list for twenty twenty four. The new Waldorf. Oh, we did two Hilton's there. I don't know if they're both still there. I think we were looking to that initially.

And then when we heard that the water was opening in twenty twenty four, I was like, oh, OK, let's just do that instead. Some of those aspirational stays have been great. But even domestically, I feel like you've been done Ventana, which is one of the best values of high points out there, despite being a lot of hype.

I think that one's an interesting one. It's not for everyone. Like I've heard you either love it or you hate it. So I like it because it's a means for me to reconnect with environment and get away from everything as someone who's like constantly connected to technology. I grew up camping and doing a lot of that stuff.

So it was the closest I could get to that while still keeping Mandy happy, because Mandy just does not like outdoors stuff for whatever reason. She's also sitting there right now. I think that was the closest she got to glamping, which is kind of funny and also sad. I've been there for a wedding and we were too cheap to book a room at the wedding rate and there was nothing with points.

So we booked over like a room at a hotel down the street, and I have not been back yet. It's probably worth at least like one weekend. It's just a nice little escape that's nearby. So we hit the most obvious spots. Are there a few properties that aren't quite as wild as these honeymoon destinations that you think are interesting spots to check out around the world or even domestically?

Not really a points one, but you can use points to get there booking through portals. Faroe Islands is still our favorite vacation that like we pretty much paid out of pocket for. It's one of the islands that is owned by Denmark, I believe. That's between London, Iceland, and basically up there, it's like a tiny islands.

They have these puffins there. It's beautiful. Kind of what you imagine Iceland to be, but even nicer in a lot of ways. Just super picturesque. And last, what have been your top airline cabin experiences? If someone's like, I'm saving some points up and I just want to have a wild experience in the sky, where do you think your points can take you right now?

Because I know getting Emirates first used to be a little bit more accessible, fees can get pretty high. What do you think is the best bang? Best bang for buck would probably be ANA given just the ways you can book it and like the value of the cabin and also the fact that it's like one of the best first and also business class.

If anything, it's the best business class cabin right now. So I think that's where the value is. I think in terms of crazy experience, I mean Etihad first, apartments are still nice. I don't like their soft product, they were kind of mean, but it's fine. But the hard product is nice.

It's like very big. And where can you get Etihad? Americans probably the best way. Or you can book through, I think their points, but it might not be that advantageous. They used to have more routes, but then since the shutdowns and stuff, the routes only recently opened back up.

So I think London to Abu Dhabi or is it France to Abu Dhabi is the main one right now that has the new cabin. And second point is pretty hard to get. Is your stash of American points just American cards? Or how did you build up an American balance enough to do that?

It's mostly American cards and we don't have that many anymore. So sometimes we actually even buy it if the math makes sense. So they'll have promotions where they'll be like, we'll give you an extra 40% points. So for us, I'm like, all right, cool. So that means I can book first class for about $2,200.

I'm like, that still makes sense. There is a stage where if you're comfortable, especially if you're reviewing stuff, there is a case of buying points because at a certain point you do run out of points. I watched someone do the math on Wyndham points, Wyndham points using the book of Akasa.

You can get some good deals, but at times, and I think recently there was one of those times where you could book Wyndham points for less than a penny a point. And so to transfer your points to Wyndham was actually a worse deal than to redeem them for statement credits and just buy the Wyndham points.

Same thing with IHG where like their points are terrible value-wise and like there's almost no use case where you're getting at least one cent per point. So you're better off either just booking through the portal or just like cashing it out. But that's also why I'm wanting to switch from Delta because I have a lot of business spend anyways, and I'm going towards status.

For my end result, do I want to have, let's say 200,000 Delta miles or do I want 200,000 American? An American has so much more value while I'm sitting on an astronomical amount of Delta miles because I haven't had a good use case. I've been waiting for Delta flash sales to come back and they just did.

But other than that, I don't want to spend 400K for business class one-way flight. So if someone's listening and they have half a million Delta points, how do you use Delta points to get good value? It's either Delta flash sales are kind of treating them like cash and like Southwest miles where you get fixed value.

And if you're fine, if that's great, like if you're cash back focused or like economy travel, it's not bad, but like if you're looking for outsized value, it's tough. I remember we took our honeymoon to the Seychelles and it was 120,000 Delta points on Air France. Partner awards on Delta.

Are there deals ever to be had? So there used to be a lot more and it was a lot easier back in the day of partner awards. And it's not really the case anymore. Delta flash sales is like the main thing that they discontinued for like three years during the shutdowns and it just brought back in August.

That's generally when they have either Delta or partner flights that just have a lot of availability that like people aren't flying. So they end up having a sale for it and better value. I've been getting a lot of value from Delta points on just short domestic flights. It's like fixed value.

But for that, you're getting like 1.3 to 1.5 like you're not getting crazy value. I found a few close to two cent values on Delta to Mexico booking on Delta through Aeromexico. And it was actually like a two, two and a half cent value, even in business. There is also another trick that I think I haven't talked a lot about because I wasn't sure if it was a good idea.

But if you actually don't fly from the US, if you leave from Mexico, you can still get good value from business class. On Delta. On Delta. Booking Delta. Through partners. But if you flew to like Mexico City to fly some other airline to like Korea or something, then it's not going to cost you 400,000 points.

It might only cost you like 100,000 points. So if you live in Texas, it might be a good deal. Get to Mexico City and go. If you live on the West Coast and have kids, it might sound like a nightmare. I don't think I would do that if you had kids.

It's not on the table. Any other cool deals, hacks like that, you know, in the miles world that you want to share before we take off? Nothing I can think of too much right now. Yeah. I think for the most part, that's it. This is so awesome. If you want any links to any of the cards we talked about, you can go to all thehacks.com/cards except a few.

Sebastian, let people know where to find those and everything else you're working on. For city cards or for other cards where you want to run the numbers and like play off the calculator, we have that on AskSebi.com. You can find me on YouTube at AskSebi and then AskSebiBusiness. We'll link to everything in the show notes.

Sebastian, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining today. I feel like I know a lot about cards, but I still picked up a bunch of new things. And I really hope it's going to help you earn a ton more points this year and next.

Quick word of caution, I went to apply for the VentureX business after my conversation with Sebastian, but didn't realize that you're not eligible for the card or the bonus if you already have the Spark Cash Plus, which I do. So I got denied. I guess I'm going to have to cancel my Spark Cash Plus before trying again, hopefully before that bonus comes down, which right now is 150,000 points.

But you do need to spend $30,000 in the first three months. Anyways, that's all for this week. If you're going after any of these cards or bonuses, you can find links to every card at allthehacks.com/cards. And assuming the offers are competitive, I'd really appreciate you using those links and supporting the show.

Thanks in advance. See you next week.