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You heard about it here. Again, that's longangle.com. Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you on my journey to find all the hacks.

Okay. You all have amazing questions. And I thought the Q&A episode from a few months ago was so great. Well, the questions keep rolling in and I'm excited to do another episode. In fact, there were so many questions that I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to all of them.

I tried answering a couple of the crypto questions in my episode with Kevin Rose, and I may try to answer some of the money and investing ones with Josel Cihay from stacking Benjamins in a couple of weeks. But today I'm going to tackle all the points, miles, credit card, and travel questions.

That includes using points, comparing cards, managing so many cards, finding the best cards for your spending, rental car hacks, and more, including a reversal on how I feel about the new Capital One Venture X card. If you have any other questions, please send them in as I love doing these episodes.

My email is chris@allthehacks.com, and I would love to help you upgrade your life too. Also, one of the ways I earn money on this show is when you sign up for cards at allthehacks.com/cards. That definitely doesn't mean you should go sign up for a card you don't need just to help out.

But if you're already going to sign up, I'd love it if you use the link. It should have the best signup bonuses, but if not, go wherever you can get the best bonus. My priority is you earning the most points you can. So with that out of the way, let's jump right in.

All right, so let's start with the Capital One Venture X card. In my newsletter about a month ago, I said it wasn't going to be in my wallet, and I was wrong. It's in my wallet right now, and I use it all the time. And I want to talk about why.

So my default Everything Else card, where I don't have a bonus in a category, has always been the Freedom Unlimited. It earns 1.5 points per dollar, and because I also have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, those 1.5 points end up being able to be transferred to different airlines and hotels.

Or I can use them for 1.5 cents towards travel in the portal. So 1.5 cents times 1.5 points per dollar means that it's an effective 2.25% cash back, and when I thought about the Venture X card earning 2 points worth 1 cent each, I thought, "Well, this isn't better than the Freedom Unlimited, because 2.25 is better than 2." And I think it's historically that Capital One points weren't able to be transferred to airlines and hotels that made me think about the comparison on the effective cash back rates.

However, I totally forgot that you can transfer all these Capital One points to airlines. So you're getting 2 transferable points per dollar on the Venture X, and only 1.5 on the Freedom Unlimited. So apologies for that oversight. If you're in the game of transferring points to airlines, which is how I use most of my points, the Capital One Venture X is going to earn 33% more points on everyday purchases than the Freedom Unlimited.

So I signed up and I got the huge 100,000 point signup bonus they have right now, which does require spending $10,000 over the next six months, but the points guy values Capital One points at 1.85 cents per point. So that means your signup bonus is worth almost $2,000. And yes, the card does have a $395 annual fee, but you get a $300 travel credit each year, you get a free Priority Pass membership for lounge access, you get a $200 credit on vacation rentals your first year, and 10,000 bonus points each year after that.

But even without all that, you're still getting 2 points per dollar that transfer to over a dozen airlines. So I think this is a fantastic card. It'll probably be in my wallet for a while, at least until there's some new crazy offer or new amazing card. I liked it so much my wife actually signed up for it also.

So now we have two in the house. And yes, that means paying two annual fees. I'll get to that in the next question. But that means over the next six months, we'll have racked up over 240,000 Capital One points if you include the $10,000 we each have to spend to get the signup bonus.

So if you're interested in the card, I'd love it if you use my referral link to sign up, it's allthehacks.com/venturex. This is a different link than my normal allthehacks.com/cards link. And that's because the /cards link right now actually earns nothing for the Venture X signup, so /venturex is actually my personal referral link.

So after you get the card, you should start using your own referral link to tell your friends about it. They'll earn 100,000 points and you can earn some bonus points too. That's also a great segue to our first listener question from Jenny about why the Venture cards from Capital One aren't a top pick.

As you can see, things are changing. But the primary reason I still don't put them at the top of the list is that they don't offer any big category bonuses on earning. So you can get a whole lot more points on things like travel, dining, and groceries with other cards.

That said, I do think the Venture and Venture X cards are good kind of everything else cards now that you can transfer their points to airlines, and I will definitely be using them in 2022. So Sean wrote in with a great question. He's repeatedly heard from people who travel for free, having 25 or 30 cards that they track across lots of spreadsheets, and wanted to know if they all pay annual fees on all these cards, or do they cancel the cards, and is it all worth it, and what about the credit hits that they have, and do they even close cards and reopen the same ones later?

So while I've probably opened maybe 25 or 30 cards in my entire life, I probably have about a dozen right now, but when it comes to opening all these cards in the first place, I think sometimes the calculus is very different the first year than it is for ongoing years.

So in the first year, you might get a signup bonus worth a thousand, even $2,000. And so it might make sense to open up that card, meet the minimum spend requirements, collect the points, and reevaluate after one year. And at that one year point, when I get that second annual fee, which you usually have some time to be able to go back to the issuer and say, "Please, actually, I don't want to renew this card," and get that annual fee refunded.

I decide if it's worth it on an ongoing basis, and sometimes it is, because you might be getting, in the case of a Marriott Bonvoy Amex, you might be getting a free night's stay every year, and an annual fee is $95. So if the perks make it worth the annual fee, you might keep it.

Or if you spend enough money that the incremental miles or points that you get from your spend on that card is worth it, then that's another good reason. So let's take an example of someone who has a Chase Sapphire Reserve and a Chase Freedom Unlimited. So they're already getting three points per dollar on travel and dining, and they get one and a half points on everything else.

Let's say they opened up an Amex Gold to get a big signup bonus, and they're deciding whether they keep it or not. Well, with the Amex Gold, they're getting four points per dollar on dining and groceries. So that's an extra one point per dollar on dining over the Chase Reserve, and an extra 2.5 points per dollar over the Freedom Unlimited.

So do they spend enough money each year that one extra point per dollar on dining and two and a half points per dollar on groceries makes up the annual fee? Well, the Amex Gold is $250 per year, but you get $10 a month for Uber and $10 per month for Grubhub.

Now, if you're really efficient, you could get $240 of value out of that and make the effective annual fee $10, but let's say we're only able to get $100 of value here because it's hard to remember to order out from two different places every single month. That means the effective annual fee is $150.

Now, I always use the Points Guys valuations, which I'll link to in the show notes, but they say Amex points are worth two cents. So $150 divided by 0.02 is 7,500 points. So with an extra two and a half points on groceries and one point on dining, will they earn 7,500 points?

Let's say you assume a 50/50 split on groceries and dining spending, then that means they have to spend about $4,300 per year on dining and groceries for it to be worth it to keep the card. So if that makes sense, great. But another consideration is whether you need to keep the card open to not lose the points.

And if you're in a situation where you have 150,000 Amex points, but the card is your only Amex, you might want to keep it just to make sure you don't lose the points. Capital One and Chase have ways that you could transfer points to your spouse, but Amex doesn't.

So if I've ultimately decided a card isn't worth it and I want to cancel it, I first call the issuer and let them know that given the annual fee and the benefits, the card just isn't worth it and I want to cancel it. And sometimes I've been offered bonus points, waived annual fees, and other perks to keep the card open.

So I might do that. Other times I get nothing and I just cancel the card. The only exception to that is when I've had a card for a really long time, I ask the issuer if there's a free card I can downgrade to. That way I keep the really long history of that card on my credit history to balance out the average length of credit history, which helps with your credit score.

Another pro tip, if you have a few different cards with an issuer like Chase, you can actually ask Chase to move credit between them. So if you're going to cancel a card, you could move all but $1,000 of that card's credit limit to another card and then cancel it.

So to summarize and to make sure I hit all of Sean's questions, yes, I pay all the annual fees, but in the first year, the signup bonus almost always makes it worth it. After that, I only pay for annual fees in subsequent years when the benefits exceed the fee.

The value's not there, I cancel the card or downgrade it. And finally, yes, it's absolutely worth it for me because I love traveling the world for free. All right, so up next, Dick and Willie, I'm not making this up folks, both had questions about using points. Dick asked if I could recommend a company to help people use points more efficiently.

He has almost half a million points and wants to get way more value than the portal. And Willie wants to plan some trips to Mexico and Hawaii and wants the best deals as well. So this is a big topic and I'm even thinking of writing a whole guide to help out.

But until I do, here's my thoughts. Dick is correct that you get a much better value transferring points than booking in the portal. Sometimes it might be 10 or 15% better and sometimes it might even be worse. But other times it can be three or four times better or more.

For example, a colleague of mine last week was looking to book a nice hotel in Cabo for a three-day weekend next March. All of the five-star hotels were over $1,000 a night and the one he really had his eye on, The Cape, which is an incredible hotel, was $1,600 per night after taxes.

So booking in the Chase portal would have been about 100,000 points per night because he had the reserve and he got 1.5 cents per point. Well, since The Cape is a Hyatt property, he was able to transfer his Chase points directly to Hyatt and book for just 25,000 points per night.

So he got three nights for 75,000 points, which would have otherwise cost him either $4,800 in cash or 320,000 points in the portal. He got a value of 6.4 cents per point, which is amazing. And in the last Q&A, I mentioned my neighbor who booked four business class tickets to Europe that would have cost him about $20,000 or $22,000, almost a million and a half points in the portal for just 440,000 points by transferring them to Air France and booking with Air France Miles.

He got a value of almost 5 cents per point. So why isn't this easy? Well, sometimes it is. Sometimes you can just go to look at the Airline Transfer Partners websites, look for flights quickly, and you might just see a great deal for the exact times you want to fly, and if that's the case, just transfer the points and book it.

The challenge is that Chase, Amex, Capital One, each have over a dozen transfer partners, so that could be a lot of searching, and one of the keys is to be flexible on dates. So each time you search, you might search for different dates and it can take a long time.

One option is to pay for Point.me, which is a search engine, kind of like Google Flights, but just for award availability across all the transfer partners of different points programs like Chase or Amex. It costs $95 a year or $15 for five days, but it will save you so much time.

I've had a ton of success with it, and a few readers have even written in saying they've had great success too. If all that seems like too much work, then you could just use an award booking service and they'll take care of everything for you. Point.me calls it their concierge service.

I've heard great things about it. The points guy mentioned Points Pros in our interview, but there's dozens of services out there and they all end up costing a few hundred dollars per person. Now, oftentimes that's contingent on finding something, so you aren't committed to spend it all. And while that might seem like a lot, in the case of my neighbor, in the case of the trip my neighbor took, if he had spent $800 for a family of four to get $22,000 of flights for just 440,000 chase points, it would have been totally worth it.

So hopefully that helps. Of course, I always suggest starting to look at a few of the most obvious transfer partners first and comparing the number of miles you need to use on their website with the number of points you'd need to book in the portal to see if you can find a deal.

In my opinion, anything over two cents per point is good. Anything over three cents is fantastic. And if you're regularly getting five or more cents per point, let me know because you should probably be doing these episodes instead of me. So when it comes to hotels, it's all a little bit easier.

The only time I've ever transferred points to a hotel program is from Chase to Hyatt. Every other deal from Amex, from Capital One, I don't think is worth it. So if the place you're trying to stay isn't a Hyatt property, then you don't even have to worry about trying to use your points unless you're trying to book through the portal.

Hey everybody. I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with Point.me, my favorite award search tool, to give you a special offer of only $1 for your first month of their standard plan if you go to allthehacks.com/pointme and use the promo code HACKS. Again, allthehacks.com/P-O-I-N-T-M-E or find the link in the show notes.

So definitely take advantage of that if you're planning a trip with points. So Sue wrote in with another booking with points questions. She wants to take her bucket list trip to Italy next year with her two kids and wants to make sure she has enough points to do it.

Specifically, she asked whether 300,000 points is enough for four people to get to Europe. And while she already has some Amex points, she wants to know if it's better to focus on Amex or Chase and whether signup bonuses should be the way to boost their balance. This will also get at Emilio's question about issues with having points spread out across too many card programs.

First off, these are great questions. I'll start by saying if you're okay flying in coach, then 300,000 points should be enough, but if you want to do business, you're going to be short. Now let's assume she's going to be short and needs to close the gap. In general, I don't think it makes much sense to start trying to earn points in multiple programs until you have enough points in one program to cover everyone.

And that's because they don't all have the same transfer partners. For example, if you find a flight on Lufthansa, you could book it with Amex points by transferring to Air Canada, or you could book with Chase points by transferring to United, but you can't transfer to the same place.

So you'd have to end up booking part of the trip separately. Now, when you pay for flights or even when you book in the portal, booking two one-ways is often more expensive than booking a round trip. However, one of the best things about booking directly with airlines after you transfer points to them is that it's easy to book one way.

So if you had enough Amex points to book your flight to Europe, you could focus on collecting Chase points to book your return, so the exact plan might be different for each person, but either way, I do think that sign up bonuses are going to be your best bet for closing the gap, and you can find the top sign up bonuses right now at allthehacks.com/cards.

So Don wrote in with a question about booking in the portal. He pointed out that so many cards are giving big bonuses when you book in their portal. For example, the Chase reserve earned 10x on hotels and 5x on flights for paid bookings in the portal. Now that's when you're not using points.

He wanted to know when that makes sense. So this is a tough one because there's no clear answer. When you book directly with the airlines and hotels, you might earn less points, but it is so much easier if things go wrong or need to be changed. And like I've shared in the past, your odds of getting an upgrade by reaching out to the hotel is infinitely better when you book direct.

When you book with the portals, you often have to make all your changes and cancellations through the portal, which can be more difficult. For me, I already earned 5x on flights booked directly with the airlines through the Amex Platinum. So I've never actually thought about booking flights on the portal.

And even if I'm just getting an additional two points per dollar over the reserves 3x on travel, it'd have to be really, really expensive for me to do it. On hotels, I guess if the cancellation policy was reasonable and the deal was comparable or better, I'd probably go for it because I couldn't earn anywhere close to 10x points booking elsewhere.

That said, assume you're definitely not getting that upgrade or any special treatment when you check in, but it's probably worth it for all the extra points. Finally, if you have a card like the Capital One Venture X, where your travel credit is tied to booking in the portal, then I'd definitely book in the portal at least enough to earn my full credit.

Now, Jessica had an important follow-up to this. She asked if the prices are the same in the portal as they are elsewhere online. And they usually are, but it's always worth double checking quick because I definitely wouldn't want to pay extra to get a few more points. And there is one other interesting thing, not all flights and hotels are in the portal.

So if you have your heart set on a specific flight, you just might not be able to buy it in the portal, and that's just how it works. I've tried searching weird, different ways, and I could never get some of certain flights to show up. And you can find the top signup bonuses right now at allthehacks.com/cards.

Now, I also got a few questions about direct card comparisons. Steven has the Chase Freedom and has had it for a while and wanted to know about switching to the Freedom Unlimited. Now, I've had both of those cards for the past two or three years, and I use the Freedom Unlimited almost 10 times more than the Freedom.

For those of you who don't know, the Freedom is a card that earns 5X points per dollar on a different category each quarter, and since you never know what it's going to be, it's really hard to make any plans. There've been multiple quarters in a row where the card's been totally useless.

And then Q4 this year has been PayPal, which I've been able to max out. So as a compliment to the Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, I've always thought the Unlimited was the best second card. Now, that gets a little more complicated for me personally, because now I have the Capital One Venture X, and it's going to be my new everyday spending card.

So I imagine the Unlimited is really only going to be a card I use for drug stores where it earns more points than any other card, which actually means the Freedom will get a lot more usage than the Freedom Unlimited. But for most people who aren't trying to spread their points over lots of different programs and have lots of different cards, I think the combo of a Sapphire Preferred or Reserve and the Freedom Unlimited is a better combo than pairing it with the Freedom.

Now, Jessica had another question. She wanted my thoughts on comparing the Sapphire Reserve and the Amex Platinum, asking which one comes out ahead. Now on the surface, they're both premium travel cards with lounge access, but I actually think this one's a much easier question. The only money I really ever put on my Platinum card is Airfare for the 5X points.

It only earns one point per dollar on everything else, and I really view the Platinum much more as a perks card, with the primary benefit being getting access to the Centurion Lounge. And while the annual fee is high, I think if you use the credits they offer, it can come close to netting out to zero.

The same thing is true on the Sapphire Reserve in terms of cutting the annual fee down, but you earn bonuses on travel and dining, which is a large portion of my spend, so I think that one's a much easier decision, and I think the Sapphire Reserve, for most people, comes out ahead.

I hope that helps you both pick your next card. All right, so both Sherelle and Scott had questions about having multiple Chase Sapphire cards, and in both scenarios, they had the Chase Sapphire Preferred and wanted to get the Reserve. The issue is, you can't have multiple Chase Sapphire cards.

So my wife and I were in this exact situation, and here's what we did. We didn't want to lose our points, so we didn't want to just close out our Preferred cards, so we each downgraded them to no annual fee cards. I went to the Freedom Unlimited, and she went to the Freedom.

Then, after that was official, we waited a few weeks, though, if you want to play it safe, you should probably wait 30 days, and we applied for the Reserve. But there's one other important requirement. It has to have been 48 months or 4 years from the last Sapphire bonus.

In our case, we had opened the Preferred more than 4 years ago, so it wasn't an issue, but if the statement closing date, when you got the sign-up bonus from whichever Sapphire card you opened already was in the last 4 years, then you're going to have to wait. There is another option.

You can always upgrade or downgrade from one Sapphire card to the other, but you won't get a sign-up bonus when you do it. So if you really want the Chase Reserve card, you could upgrade your Preferred, but you'll miss out on that opportunity to get those bonus points, and hopefully that helps you figure out what to do.

Okay, this is a fun one because I've gone through it myself. David wrote in saying he got married last year, but he and his wife Casey still have their individual credit cards, including two Chase Sapphire Reserves. He wanted to know if there was a way to benefit from a rewards perspective by consolidating, or if he should keep them separate.

First off, congrats to David and Casey. This is a great question. So you're probably right that it doesn't make sense to be paying two annual fees for the Reserve card. But before you do anything, you'll want to make sure you're not going to lose any points. The good news is that Chase will let you transfer Ultimate Rewards points between members of your household for free.

Sometimes it doesn't work to link the accounts online, so you might have to call, but it's definitely possible and allowed. So before you cancel any cards, just make sure you move the points around so you don't lose them. Okay, so the obvious answer would be for one of you to cancel your Reserve and get added as an authorized user to the other one's card.

That's not a bad option, but the downside is that you only have a joint account, which can be frustrating for some couples, and it also means that the other person will lose their card from their credit history. Now, you could downgrade the card to a good no-annual-fee card like the Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited, but unless that cardholder has a Sapphire card also, you don't actually earn Ultimate Rewards points, so you aren't able to use your points to transfer to airlines.

So I'll throw out another option. One of you could downgrade to the Sapphire Preferred. You'd still earn 3x on Dining, like the Reserve, but you'd only earn 2x on Travel. However, most travel purchases are booked online, so you could still use the other person's Reserve card to book travel and earn 3x points.

This way, you both have separate cards, and you probably won't lose out on that many points, and you both keep your credit history. Technically, it's $20 more because the Preferred costs $95 a year and an authorized cardholder on the Reserve is $75, but both are going to be cheaper than two Reserve cards.

Another couple downsides to know about. The Preferred doesn't get you free TSA Pre or Global Entry, though I would say use that credit before you get rid of your Reserve and it's good for 5 years, and it doesn't get Priority Pass for Lounge Access, but the Reserve's Priority Pass allows for two free guests, so it's really only an issue when one of you is traveling alone.

Okay, if you want the next-level hack version, and it's been 4 years since you've opened your Reserve card, you could actually just downgrade your Reserve to a free card, like the Freedom Unlimited, and then open a new Sapphire Preferred and get the sign-up bonus on that card. Hopefully, that helps.

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That's allthehacks.com/netsuite to get your own KPI checklist. allthehacks.com/netsuite, N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E. You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking. It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place, and makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every purchase.

You can also load it on your partner's phone, so they always know the best cards to use. The app automatically tracks every category bonus and recurring credit from over 5,000 cards. And they also track and help you use your Amex, Chase, Bank of America, or Citibank offers to save even more money every day.

And with their browser extension, you can actually activate every single Amex and Chase offer in just one click. And because of that massive credit card database, you can do all of this without having to give up any personal or banking details. The app is free to download, and many of the features are free as well.

But if you want to try out the pro version, there's a free trial. And if you decide you want to sign up after the trial, which you probably will, you can go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers to get 20% off. Again, that's allthehacks.com/cardpointers. Okay, changing gears a bit, I want to move over to business credit cards.

Not just because they have some of the best signup bonuses out there, but because Braxton wrote in asking about the best cards for his newly formed LLC. Well, the first thing to know is that you don't actually need any official business registration or entity number to get a business credit card.

In fact, your personal credit is tied to most business credit cards. That means you can definitely sign up for a business card if you want to take advantage of some of these big signup bonuses. If you want some tips, I'll link to a few articles in the show notes.

As for which cards, I'll point out a few things. First off, you don't actually need to use a business card for business expenses. It definitely might help you for keeping organized and tracking things. But even when I ran my own business, I put all my flights on my personal Platinum Amex because it earned 5x on airfare.

That said, there are a few business cards I think are a great place to start. I personally really like the Ink Business Preferred the most. It has 3x on travel, shipping, internet cable and phone services, and online advertising. It also pairs nicely with the Ink Business Unlimited, which earns one and a half points on everything.

And if you have the Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, you can link up all your personal and business cards, combine ultimate rewards balances, and transfer any and all of those points to airline and hotel partners. And best of all, the Ink Business Preferred has a massive 100,000 Chase Point signup bonus right now that you can get at allthehacks.com/cards.

On the Amex side, I used to have the Business Gold, which has a really cool feature. It earns 4 points per dollar on whatever two categories you spend the most on each month from a list of six categories, which are airfare, advertising, computer hardware and software, gas, restaurants, and shipping.

One thing to note is that while your personal credit is needed to open a business card, some issuers like Chase don't actually report the card to personal credit bureaus. Okay. So Cody wrote in saying he listened to the episode about credit card points and wanted to know what to do to earn the most points for gas.

He does a lot of driving for work and wanted to get the best card. So the Citi Premier earns 3x points on gas, and the points guy values him at 1.7 cents, so that's about 5.1% cash back on gas. It's also a good card that gets 3x on air travel, hotels, supermarkets, and restaurants, and has over a dozen transfer partners.

Now, it does have a $95 annual fee, but you get a $100 hotel credit on a $500 or more hotel stay, and there's an 80,000 point signup bonus at allthehacks.com/cards. So that's one option. Another one is the Blue Cash Preferred, which gets just 3% cash back on gas. The Costco card gets 4% back, but only on the first $7,000.

And there's also a link I'll put to Doctor of Credit's website that has an updated list of the best gas credit cards. I love this next question from Sudarsan. He said, "I have a lot of cards and I couldn't find an app to figure out what the best cash back is for a retailer." He pointed out there used to be this app called Wallaby, but it doesn't exist anymore.

So I think there's two apps worth checking out here. This is a quick answer. The new Points Guy app has a feature exactly for this. You load in all your cards and you can actually pick a retailer, but it only works by picking something that's in your vicinity with your location on.

And it only works on iOS. There's another app that I just tried out that I really like called Card Pointers. Now, you can't say a specific retailer, but once you load in all of your cards, you can go through each category and it really simply breaks out the best card in your arsenal for each one.

Now, I had to go in and manually override a few of the categories, so it's not perfect. But if I were trying to find an app to do this, those are the two apps I would check out. So while we're talking about having all of these points and miles and different accounts, Alex had a great question.

He said, "I referenced a spreadsheet that I use to track all my rewards and points for all of my cards and asked if I could share my template." So first off, yes, if you want to check out the template, it's allthehacks.com/pointstracker. However, I will say that it's a completely manual template that's all tracked in a Google Sheet.

And while it's fun for me to do sometimes, I'm really excited about what the Points Guy launched with their new app, and I'm really hoping that that can replace this for me. Maybe it won't, maybe it'll take some time, but I would love to move off of this spreadsheet in the future.

Hopefully the whole spreadsheet makes sense. There's a row for all the different programs. There's columns for different people in your household. I even use the Points Guy's points valuations at one point so that I can track the value of everything. I also use colors and notes in the spreadsheet to be able to point out when things expire and whether I need to act on it soon, but hopefully this is helpful, I just can't wait till someone can build something that actually works to automate all of this.

Now, this next question might be familiar for a lot of you that live in a hub for one airline. Andrew wrote in for Minneapolis, a major Delta hub and his primary airline. He pointed out that while Amex points can transfer to Delta, he feels like he can't take advantage of some of the other exciting cards and signup bonuses he sees.

Now, I know a lot of people in a similar situation, and they feel like they've committed to one carrier for all their travel. In fact, I've lived most of my entire life near DC, Denver, and San Francisco, which are all United hubs. So you probably accrue a lot of points on your home airline, and if you're just looking for a card that helps you top up that bonus, then you need to get a card that supports that.

Delta has Amex, United has Chase, Citi has American, however, if it's really more about the status you have on that airline, then it doesn't really matter because that status will apply across all the airline's partners. So if you have Delta Platinum status, but you have Chase points, you can always transfer them to another SkyTeam partner like Air France and book with their miles and still benefit from your status across the whole alliance.

For me, I'm actually always trying to use my miles for international business, so whether I have status on United or not doesn't matter because when you book in business class, you already get priority boarding, faster security, and free check bags. So we talked so much about using points to fly internationally, but Jennifer asked if there are ever any deals for business class flights or whether the only way to do it is points.

Well, the best place I've found to find all the deals for business and first-class flights is the Premium Fare Deals Forum on Flyertalk, which I'll link to in the show notes. I'm looking at it now, and while it's a little tough to filter by your home airport, I'm seeing some crazy business class deals like SF to Madrid for $1,800 and LA to Lima in Peru for $850.

I've also seen some good deals by following the points guy or the flight deal on Twitter, but it doesn't happen that often. You can also just search with no destination on Google Flights and switch to business class and see what might exist. For example, I'm looking right now in the spring for business class flights under $3,000, and you can go to Berlin, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo, and so many other places.

Two other sites I've found, but I can't endorse because I've never tried them, but they could be worth checking out are First Class Flyer. It's a paid subscription, but it looks like they've got a 14-day trial for $1. And Mighty Travels also has a paid newsletter that I haven't tried, but it seems to focus on premium cabins and lets you specify your home airport.

Hopefully that helps, but again, I do think that the cheapest way to travel internationally is to start hacking the game with points and miles. All right, so this isn't just going to be about flights and hotels. Rick emailed in asking for rental car hacks, and I have a few I'd love to share.

So I'll start out when you're searching for a car. You can use an aggregator like Kayak to find the lowest prices, but oftentimes the discount codes get the best rates, and you can only put those in on the rental car company websites. You'd be surprised to find that you might have access to way more rental car discounts than you know.

For example, many big employers have great rates. I know I did at Google, but I also find great prices with Avis using the Costco discount. My business fraternity from college somehow offers a really good rate at Enterprise, and other organizations like AAA or USAA have discounts as well. That means that you have to go to a few rental car websites to search around, but I've seen rates drop in half using these discounts.

Also, many premium travel cards like the Platinum or the Chase Reserve come with status on various rental car companies, so that can save you money. And if you want to splurge on an Audi with Silver Car, which has been a fantastic experience every time I've done it, Visa Infinite cards like the Chase Reserve get 30% off.

Now, if you're looking at an airport and everything is expensive, you might want to look to rent downtown in the city you're flying into to save money, and then just take an Uber or a Lyft to get there. You could also check out sites like Turo, which is like Airbnb for rental cars.

I know a lot of people who've had success there, but I personally hate having to coordinate with another person after a long flight, and I just prefer grabbing something at the airport. During your reservation, if you get the option to save money by prepaying for your rental car, here's how I think about it.

Because rental car prices fluctuate so much, if I'm booking far in advance and the rate is high, I usually won't prepay, so I can check back in every few weeks or months to see if the rates have dropped. If so, I just rebook and cancel the reservation. But if I'm closer to travel and the risk of canceling the trip is really low, if the discount's big enough, I'll take it.

Also, sometimes rates for a full week are significantly cheaper. So even if you only need the car for five or six days, it might be cheaper to book for a whole week. Also, you pay for rental cars on 24-hour periods, so on the off chance you need a car for a few hours more than some multiple of 24, you're going to have to pay for a full day for that extra hour or two.

However, if you read the fine print, some companies give you an hour or two for free if you're late. So if I needed a car from 10 a.m. one day to 11 a.m. another day, I'll actually book it from 10 a.m. to 10 a.m. and just drop it off an hour late for free and not pay the extra day.

Now, before you book, I definitely recommend joining the loyalty program of the rental car company. Even the free tier often means you can pick up your car without having to check in at the desk, which sometimes might save you a few minutes, but once in Salt Lake City, the line was like 15 people long and I just skipped right past it all.

Also, like I mentioned earlier, you might actually have elite status with one of these rental car companies from your credit card and get free upgrades. Finally, since most rental car reservations come with no penalty if you never show up, they plan on a percentage of reservations never getting picked up.

That means that if everyone shows up, they might run out of cars. So I always like to call the local agency office a few days before arriving, especially if I land late in the day, to confirm that I will be coming and I will be picking up the car.

So that's everything before you pick the car up. Once I'm at the rental office, there's a few things I do. I skip the insurance and I pay with my Chase Reserve or any other card that includes rental car coverage. I never prepay for gas and I always look around the car and take photos of any dents, cracks in the windshield or anything else, and I point them out before I leave the lot.

I also once got a car with bald tires, so I always double check the tread. Okay. Hopefully that helps you save a bunch on your next rental car. There is nothing I love more than learning that something I enjoy is actually so good for you and nothing showcases that better than Puerh Tea.

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Your support of our advertisers is what keeps this show going. To learn more about all our partners and get links to all their deals, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals where the URLs, codes, and discounts are all right there. So please consider supporting those who support us. Okay, this has been a lot of fun.

For the last question, Yoshiko wrote in asking if I could share some tips for traveling during COVID, specifically around testing and making sure you don't get stuck somewhere abroad. This is a great question, and it's one I've definitely thought about before the few trips I've taken during the pandemic.

So before you leave, there's really three things that I think about. First, how serious is the situation in the country you're going to and how has that changed recently? And you can usually find that on sites like the CDC or the New York Times has a map of the world.

I always think it's good to check in on the country you're going to. Next, whether you want to take any extra insurance or health precautions in case you end up testing positive abroad. And third, if you're going to a country that requires testing, making sure you have that sorted before you leave.

So the fear a lot of travelers have is that they might end up in some remote destination and need medical care they wish they could get somewhere else, or even that they want to get back in their home country. So in the past, I've used World Nomads for travel insurance and had a great experience, though to be fair, I've only ever had to get a stolen camera and a non-severe hospital visit reimbursed.

However, the circumstance many travelers fear during COVID is that they'll test positive and not be able to come home and either be forced to quarantine or worst case, be hospitalized in a foreign country. The only company I've found that can help in that circumstance is called COVAC Global. To be clear, I haven't used it and I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but they will pay for and arrange for their members to be repatriated should they test positive for COVID and they're the only option that doesn't require you to be hospitalized for that coverage to kick in.

That means they're coordinating private travel for you to get home and they say, for example, if you test positive in Europe, they can get you back home to the US in as little as 12 hours. Now, coverage for one person on a 30-day trip is $995, which isn't cheap, but I can assure you that chartering a private jet to fly across the ocean would cost you so much more, not to mention all the coordination they'll have to do to transport someone who's tested positive.

So, if you want to protect yourself against that circumstance, it's something you could consider, but know that they require you purchase a policy 14 days in advance of travel or provide a negative PCR test within seven days of departure. As for testing before travel, every country is different, so you want to check on the latest information, usually on the tourism board website, the embassy or consulate website, or sometimes even on the airline's website.

Now, most pharmacies like CVS or Walgreens do PCR testing and you get your results in a day or two. You can also order an at-home kit from someone like Pixel or LabCorp and get results in a few days also. Or, if you need results faster than that, there's a bunch of companies with same day and one day tests, one that I've found is Worksite Labs, which has testing locations around the country and they'll get your results in as little as one and a half hours for $250 or within 24 hours for $90.

Also, many international airports have onsite testing, but they're also really expensive. For example, at SFO, you can get tested in under an hour, but it's $275. So, once you're abroad, I really hope you just enjoy your travel and that the pandemic isn't an issue and you get to have an amazing trip, but you will need to get tested before you fly home, at least if you're coming back to the States.

So, if you want to get tested before you leave, I have two suggestions. For me, I always bring the E-Med BinaxNOW tests that come with a video telehealth visit, which qualifies them for use to fly back into the U.S. That way you can do the test wherever you are on your own time and know you'll get the results right away.

You can get one to three tests from Optum.com or six tests at E-Med.com. And depending on how many you buy, they're $25 to $50 each. Or if you don't want to deal with bringing your COVID tests with you, I would just reach out to the hotel concierge and ask them to help you coordinate getting tested before you leave.

Some resorts have free COVID pre-departure testing and others can just coordinate a nurse coming to your room for testing. Okay, so hopefully that helps you have a safe and easy trip. Wow, I really forgot how much I love doing these episodes, so I'm definitely going to try to do them more often.

Or I might even try to incorporate a few questions each week or even add a shorter second episode each week or every other week just focused on Q&A. So, no matter what I do, please keep the questions coming. I really love hearing from all of you and I hope this is able to help you guys upgrade your lives.

If you enjoyed this episode or just enjoy the show, please consider sharing it with a friend or family member who might like it. It is really the best way to help me grow the show. And if you heard planes flying over in the background during this episode, I am so sorry, I live near SFO and it is raining outside and whenever that happens, they divert all the flights right over our house.

Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week. I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money. That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement. It's called the Personal Finance Podcast and it's much more about building generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar.

It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in this world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show so entertaining. I know because I was a guest on the show in December 2022, but recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind.

And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in their employer's retirement plan. And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared. The Personal Finance Podcast has something for everyone. It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with your money and grow your wealth.

So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search for the Personal Finance Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.