(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and it's been a while since I did a solo mailbag episode, and that's long overdue, but I am so excited for this one because I think the timing will be so helpful for anyone who has upcoming travel these holidays, because I'm gonna cover everything you need to know when things go wrong with your travel.

That means delays, cancellations, missed flights, sold out hotels and rental cars, some preventative measures you should take, and a lot more. I'm also gonna cover a few other travel topics, including some recent news and deals, tips for earning companion pass for two years, a card that earns three X points on everything for a year, and a lot more.

But before we jump in, I wanna share that our annual listener survey is live as of today at allthehacks.com/survey, where it's linked in the show notes, and it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could spend a few minutes to take it. Your feedback is one of the major ways I'm gonna decide how we focus all of our time and energy with all the hacks next year.

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So I really hope someone takes an epic adventure with that. Please consider taking a few minutes to take the survey this week at allthehacks.com/survey. I would really appreciate it, and we'll be emailing the giveaway winners in a few weeks. Okay, there is so much good stuff to cover in today's episode, so let's jump in right after this.

Oh, and one more thing. I got 20 free download codes for the new movie "Dumb Money," which I'm gonna talk about in the outro of today's episode, so keep listening for that. Our sponsor today, Trade Coffee, can help you nail holiday gift-giving this year. A subscription to Trade is the perfect gift for any coffee lover.

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Give the gift of better coffee at home. From now to December 25th, Trade is offering 15% off gift subscriptions at allthehacks.com/trade. Shop now through Christmas day to save. That's allthehacks.com/trade for 15% off all gift subscriptions through Christmas day. Allthehacks.com/trade. (upbeat music) Okay, so I wanted to do this episode because, well, first, so many of you have emailed asking questions about this topic, but also because there's a lot of holiday travel coming up and I really wanna make sure you all are prepared, but this information isn't just holiday specific.

So it should be helpful to anyone who has plans to travel in the future, which I hope is just about everyone listening. So let's start with a couple general tips. First, keep in mind whenever you're in a tricky situation, three P's, patient, polite, and persistent. Whoever you're dealing with is probably dealing with tons of passengers problems or other guests problems and might only have limited information for you.

So using things like please and thank you and just generally being nice, I think is one of the most valuable tactics for making sure that you have a good outcome. And if you know you're in the right and their rep who you're working with isn't doing enough to fix things, I'd say hold your ground, speak to their manager, or just try again.

The persistent thing doesn't always mean sticking with the same person. If I'm calling up an airline and someone isn't able to help and I just think I'm getting nowhere, I'll just hang up, call again, and see if I can get someone else. The next broad thing I wanna remind you about is credit card benefits.

So there are a lot of credit card benefits I'll talk about in this episode because there are so many travel perks that you get with your credit cards, but I'm not gonna go through all the nuance and detail. So episode 113 of all the hacks was about all the hidden credit card benefits.

So if you wanna go deeper on that topic, you can go there. And then on insurance, we're gonna talk a little bit about travel insurance, but I've done two episodes covering the topic in the past, so I just wanna point you that direction. Episode 104 was all about insurance, and at the end, we covered travel.

And then episode 110 with Nomadic Matt, about 35 minutes in, we talked about travel. My general thought on travel insurance is that make sure you're not paying for something that you already get from your credit cards. You'll need to go on a per credit card basis to see what's going on and what's offered, but many credit cards cover a lot of things.

However, if you're going on something specialized, if you're going on a cruise and you wanna make sure that you're gonna get a refund for something expensive, if you're trying to cover a unique sport, or you're really worried if another pandemic kicks up, all of those things might be worth a more detailed look at travel insurance.

I'm not gonna get too deep in there, but I just wanted to flag that up front. And for anytime I mention an episode, if it's episode 66, feel free to just go to allthehacks.com/66, and that'll take you straight to the page for the episode. If you click the link for Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it'll jump you right to the episode within those apps.

For other apps, you're gonna have to scroll and search for it, but hopefully that's helpful. All right, let's start with air travel. And there is a lot here. So first, I'm gonna talk about cancellations and delays. Before you go into any of these situations, I would say there are a few things that you can do to prepare.

So one is just making sure you know what's covered. So look at your credit card, look at the airline policies, anything like that. I always try to monitor my booking just to see what's happening as early as possible. Time is really, really helpful in these circumstances. So I use an app called Flighty, which is amazing, and I get push notifications from them as soon as the schedule's changed.

Oftentimes, I've gotten notifications sooner than I got them from the airline, from Flighty. I recently signed up again for TripIt Pro, which right now is about $40 a year. I think Flighty's about the same price, around $50 a year. But the thing that I'm interested in TripIt Pro, which I'll get to later in this conversation, is around price drops.

But they also have monitoring, and I'm gonna be curious to compare Flighty and TripIt Pro and the airlines the next time we're leaving. The other thing for really important travel, time-sensitive events, is booking a backup. And now, in a world where there are free cancellations, I think it's really, really worth doing if something's really urgent or timely.

For example, for this Thanksgiving, we had a really, really early morning flight, and we decided we weren't gonna take it because it's just gonna be a little too crazy. So we booked a little bit of a later flight, but the first flight was on Southwest, so I just kept it.

We booked it with points. I know if I cancel it, I'll get the points back as long as I cancel it 10 minutes before the flight takes off and so we'll just leave it there. On the off chance the flight we are taking gets canceled sometime before schedule changes something, we've got that backup.

I don't always book a backup, but especially if I make changes, I might as well keep it because it's already there. But if you have something really time-sensitive, I think booking something that comes with free cancellations or totally refundable is something you could do to protect yourself. But that's what you can do in advance.

What do you do when you find out that your flight is canceled or there's a delay? Well, in some cases, it can be a huge bummer, especially if you're right at the airport and it's messing all your plans. But if this happens in advance, it can be a huge advantage because when your flights get canceled or changed, the airlines have to help you.

So sometimes that could mean you're gonna miss your connection that you had booked because it was way cheaper than a direct flight and you can use that to get on a direct flight. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna wanna get in touch with the airline as soon as possible.

Bypassing all of the phone menus to reach a human is something that I think will be helpful. So here's how I think about it. I call and I say existing reservation depending on the airline, and I almost always just say agent or press zero until someone answers. Every now and then, maybe it's weather, maybe it's a technical system for an airline, and you just aren't gonna get a human and there's really long hold times.

Whenever that happens, I try to call one of those airline desks in another country. So for example, if you're flying on United, United has desks in Japan, in the UK. You could call those numbers for usually a very nominal fee using a service like Google Voice. I think it's usually like a cent a minute.

Some plans, if you have US Mobile, for example, just include free international calling. So that is where I go if I'm not having any luck. It's also a tactic I use if I'm trying to get an agent outside of business hours in the US. And if you're at the airport and there's a massive line at the gate, some airports have customer service desks.

And if that doesn't work, there's usually reps that can help you inside of an airline lounge. So if you have access to the United Club, when you're flying United, you could go in there. Worst case, if security wasn't that long and you wanted to talk to someone faster, you could leave security and go to one of the ticketing desks and the check-in desks.

So basically the goal here is to get a person as fast as possible. If you're 50th in line, there are 49 people that are gonna get a flight rebooked on something else before you. So if you can get on the phone to someone or get to a person sooner, you're gonna have a higher likelihood of getting a better option.

So that's how you get your flights changed. But as far as compensation, when an airline cancels the flight or makes a significant change, you're gonna be able to get a refund for sure, even on a non-refundable ticket. That's according to U.S. Department of Transportation rules. That's also true if the airline moves you to a lower class of service.

If you were flying in business class and a flight was changed, and that meant that there weren't enough business class seats and you got bumped down. But usually you can actually get a bit more compensation than just a refund, especially if you're not canceling entirely on the airline. If you're willing to let them put you on another flight, sometimes that's $100.

Sometimes that's an upgrade to first class. Sometimes that's 20,000 miles. Sometimes it's $500. It really depends. But I would absolutely, anytime an airline is inconveniencing you, ask them for something for that inconvenience. Even if they don't give you something in the moment, I would follow up by email, follow up by a phone call, and you'd be surprised what happens.

I know right now we just booked flights next year on Delta, and we took $375 off those flights because we had $325 certificates from Delta because there was a major change to a reservation we had earlier this year. Also, if missing the flight is your fault, there's this thing that I just recently learned when doing some research called the flat tire rule, where most airlines have some rule that will help you get on another flight, whether it's a rule or just a common practice, if you miss the flight.

So on American, if you arrive within two hours, you can get booked on the next flight as a standby traveler with no extra fees. One time, I went to the wrong airport in the DC area. I was supposed to go to Reagan National Airport, and I went to Dulles, and I was able to get on a flight.

I can't even remember what airline it was, but it was one that flew to both DC airports, so I was lucky there. So I would say, if you're gonna run late and you're gonna miss your flight, at least try calling before you get there, but I'd say you probably have a decent likelihood of being able to stand by.

That doesn't mean you're gonna get on, but you probably have a good option. And if all of these things happen and you're really struggling and you need to buy something last minute, I'll just throw out there that last minute flights using points and miles can sometimes, not always, but sometimes be a really great deal.

So Drew wrote in talking about how he had this exact situation. He was going on a trip for work that he was linking together with a personal trip and the work side of it canceled. So they actually canceled his ticket back home, and he was about to be stuck buying a $387 plane ticket, but using American Airlines points, he was able to get that same flight for 7,500 points, which is 5 cents per point in value, which is awesome.

And while I usually try to save my points for big trips that I'm planning in advance and business class and premium cabins, if something happens on a domestic trip and last minute you need to use some miles, it can be a great way to use up some miles in a program that you don't have a huge balance on.

So that 7,500 miles that Drew needed for his flight is something that you might have in an airline you don't fly that often that might be able to be a great way to use those points. As I'm dialing in my health, I'm starting to see firsthand how important it is to replenish electrolytes, which is why I love Element, an electrolyte drink mix that tastes great, has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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You must go to allthehacks.com/element, L-M-N-T. When I decided I wanted to go full-time on the podcast, I had no idea what it could turn into, but now we have a newsletter, a membership, we're organizing trips, and one day we might wanna open up a store online. So if you also have business dreams in your future, you should absolutely be checking out Shopify, who I'm excited to be partnering with today.

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at allthehacks.com/shopify. Go to allthehacks.com/shopify now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. allthehacks.com/shopify. Next, I talked briefly about credit card benefits before, but specifically, a lot of cards have trip delay and trip cancellation insurance. You'll be able to get reimbursed for any non-refundable or prepaid expenses if you have to get canceled for a situation.

Cancellation is often more for you, like an unpostponable jury duty, or a hospitalization, or a major injury. Sometimes includes severe weather or named storms. Usually doesn't include fog and basic stuff like that. It's a pretty common insurance that covers $3,000 to $10,000 so that's something worth keeping in mind.

I think the best insurances I've seen are probably from Chase and Amex, but even Capital One has trip cancellation insurance as well. When it comes to delays, it's another common coverage, which you can be reimbursed for reasonable expenses usually. So if you were delayed and you had to spend the night at a hotel that wasn't covered, or if you needed to even sometimes buy a meal, that can be covered.

So oftentimes, this is a much smaller coverage, so maybe $500 a person, and might require a really meaningful delay, six to 12 hours, not just two hours. As for getting compensation, if you're trying to get compensation from an airline and you're not having success, it's definitely worth filing a complaint with the Department of Transportation.

That can sometimes get more eyeballs than you think, and it actually counts against the airlines. So I think they really try to respond to these if it gets to that, but I've never had to go to that point. So hopefully you don't as well. And by the way, if you're doing all of these things and if flights are canceled and you need to move around and you've already checked your bag, usually you'll have to go back to the baggage carousel to pick it up and then reload and recheck it on.

Some airlines might also try to just reroute the bag to your final destination if you're staying on that airline, but just keep that in mind during this process. It's one of the reasons we used to never love checking bags, and then we had children and now it's not really an option, so we're checking bags, but I'll get to what to do with bags in a little bit.

I mentioned if you do miss your first flight, but what about when you're on a layover? So first off, I think it's really important to consider planning for layovers properly. I think we used to plan for them differently without children than we do now, but I always try to have enough time.

There's something called a MCT or a minimum connection time where different airports have an amount of time at which they'll let you book a connection, but some of those minimum connection times are totally crazy. Especially in Europe, there are times where I've seen connections that I know are gonna be across a very large airport and it's allowed to book something for 45 minutes.

I can't remember what the minimum connection time is for Charles de Gaulle in Paris, but if I were to book a flight and it said, "Oh, it's okay to book a 50-minute layover in Paris," I wouldn't book that flight. Our au pair is going back to Italy over Thanksgiving, and there are a few options that were bookable with 45 to 60-minute layovers in international airports.

I just wouldn't book that because it seems like you're putting yourself in a situation where you are likely to have an issue. So I try to plan a buffer. I also like to just search online for how long it takes to walk between terminals. Anyone who's been to a very small airport knows that a 30-minute layover could be fine.

So sometimes if you do a search online, either results on Reddit or TripAdvisor or Flyertalk come up, but I'll search LAX, how long to walk from terminal two to terminal seven. And you'll usually find someone out there on the internet who has done that or even asked that question before and someone who responded.

So that's great. If you do miss a connection, one other important thing is sometimes I will try to save money by booking two separate airlines and connecting them. Obviously, if you check bags, you're gonna need a lot of extra time to go retrieve your bags and recheck them 'cause airlines usually won't connect through.

Maybe if they're on the same alliance, but often if they're on separate tickets, that's gonna be tricky. One important thing to remember in that circumstance is that because you are on separate tickets, the second airline isn't just gonna automatically care that the first airline was delayed. They're gonna treat you just like you missed your flight, got to the airport late and potentially slightly worse for not just booking the entire flight through that airline.

So I would leave a ton of extra time if you're connecting between two airlines that aren't partners that weren't booked on the same ticket. But if you are on all the same airline and you are missing a flight due to a late takeoff or some other mechanical issue, the airline is responsible for getting you on the next flight and even offering you accommodation or meal vouchers if you're stuck overnight or at a long period at the airport.

So keep that in mind. Depending on where you're traveling, it might not be required, but it's pretty standard practice. So I would just push for it if it's not being voluntarily given to you. If you do have to cancel a non-refundable ticket and it ends up happening after the flight is taken off, I would try to contact the airline as fast as possible.

It's very likely you're not gonna get anything back. Though sometimes in Europe, if you have a non-refundable ticket and you have to cancel it, you can at least get your taxes back. That's not always true in the US, but in Europe I've had that situation where it's still worth canceling a non-refundable ticket to at least get your taxes back.

Debbie wrote in asking for a rule of thumb on layovers. My general rule of thumb is at least an hour if I'm very comfortable with the airport and I know how it's laid out and I know I'm not gonna be running between terminals and I'm not traveling for some super sensitive timely thing, 30, 45 minutes is okay.

One of the really cool features of a lot of travel apps, but specifically within the Flighty app is that you see the average delay times. You can see how frequently this flight gets in early or late. And if you're on a kind of route where it's constantly late, that might make you feel differently versus I know a lot of times long flights between Japan and the US typically get in a little bit early so you might feel a little better there, but obviously you're gonna have to go through immigration.

International is a whole different bag, especially in other countries with immigration that you're not sure how long it may or may not take. The only hacks I have there in the US, the US Passport app and Global Entry are great options to speed up time. And then if you are eligible for the APEC Business Card because you do business overseas in Asia or any of the APEC region, you can upgrade your Global Entry to have an APEC Business Card and that'll get you expedited immigration, basically letting you in the crew lines in APEC countries.

Now, let's talk about bags a bit more. If you do have your bags lost, delayed, damaged, the first thing you're gonna need to do is find the baggage desk of the airline that operated your last flight. And that last flight part is important because if you're flying on a ticket that was booked on two passengers, you wanna make sure you, even though your bag might've been lost by the first airline, the operating carrier of your last flight is the one who's ultimately responsible for getting the bag to you.

I don't envy anyone in this situation, but that's who you're gonna wanna talk to. You're gonna wanna make sure you file a report before you leave the airport. If they tell you they're gonna email you something or ask you to do it later in your hotel, don't leave the airport without filing that report.

For both insurance purposes and tracking purposes, it is absolutely something I would want to give them. Make sure they have an address for you so they can get your bags to you. Airlines generally are pretty good about this. When we landed in Hawaii, United didn't get our car seat to us in time.

We had checked that bag. And so a few things I learned there. One, they were really great about offering to get the bag delivered to us the next day. They even offered if we didn't need the bag to hold it back in San Francisco so that we could just get it when we get home.

Unfortunately, we had booked a flight from San Francisco and back to Oakland. So we needed that car seat to get home when we landed in Oakland to put in a Lyft or an Uber. But they ended up delivering it to us the next day. They also offered to loan us a car seat.

It turns out a lot of airlines have loaner car seats for this exact purpose. So that's something to keep in mind. I didn't know that and had already gone to the rental car counter and had already paid $120 to rent two car seats for the week. Fortunately, United also took that receipt.

They didn't reimburse it directly at the airport, but I uploaded it online, got a check in the mail, and it was totally covered. So shout out to United for at least handling that situation as well as they could have outside of the fact that they did not bring the bag.

So when you do have these situations, you are eligible for some kind of compensation. Every airline has a different policy. United is for expenses based on proof of claim. Delta allows reasonable expenses, and they generally say about $50 a day. It really depends on the circumstance and what was in your bag and what was necessary.

I would make an argument that if you had an important meeting and you needed a suit, like renting one or buying one might be a reasonable expense, but if you're going on vacation, buying a suit probably wouldn't be. So I haven't had a lot of experience with lost bags.

So I don't have a lot of anecdotes here. Feel free if you have specific ones to share them so I can let people know, but in general, I would definitely try to get some sort of reimbursement for anything that you needed. But honestly, the hassle of talking to someone and going through this process, if you're just trying to get reimbursement to get reimbursement might not be worth it, though some of these airlines make it really easy to do online.

When it comes to reimbursement, delayed baggage is actually something that is not very common on credit cards. I have seen a few chase cards with it, so take a look, but it usually requires at least a six hour delay and it's capped at $100. So it's not gonna be that big.

But one really important thing is keeping track of receipts. Depending on the airline, they may or may not need receipts for a lot of things. I can't remember the threshold at United, I think it was over 75 or $100 they needed a receipt. But if you're going out to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, whatever that is, just keep a receipt so you can make sure to get reimbursed.

If your bags are lost or damaged, that actually is something that is common, credit card benefit. So if the airline's not gonna cover that, your credit card probably would. But I'm not sure actually how hard it will be to prove what was in it and how much it's worth.

One quick thing, kind of like rental cars that I like to do now is if I'm gonna check a bag, I'll just take a picture of the open bag before I close it, just so I can at least have some documentation of what was in there. But in general, I'm not putting expensive things in my bag because if it gets lost, at least a bag that's checked, I don't have high expectations that something expensive will be covered.

As for how to avoid this, well, obvious, don't check bags. That's an easy one. But for some people, that's not possible. What I try to do is keep anything valuable and really important in carry-ons. I also try to think about a simple journey. So if you're gonna save $50 to take one or two stops, keep in mind that there's a chance that that affects the likelihood that you get your bag.

And I'm sure in that moment, it won't be worth it. If you're gonna save thousands of dollars, then absolutely. I also put Apple AirTags in all of our bags so that at least I have a good sense of where they are. From all the experience of people I know, it doesn't actually help get anything resolved other than knowing where things are, but there is some peace of mind being able to sit on the plane before it takes off and just say, "Yep, I know my bags are on the plane." And some airlines actually scan at all these intervals and will update the mobile apps with bag is on the plane, bag made it here, bag's on the carousel.

So that's something to keep in mind as well. Now, if your travel does go awry, one awesome recommendation from Katya who emailed in said that she has a little hack she's been doing with her daughter. And anytime they have a challenge throughout the trip, she pretends with her daughter that they're on an amazing race adventure.

So for example, she'd experienced a mechanical issue as they were gonna take off and they had to spend a night in a hotel at Heathrow in the UK. And so because British Airways didn't make everything clear, she kind of made it a game with her daughter. And she was like, "Here, we have to get to this hotel.

"How are we gonna get there? "What's the best way?" And it kind of became a fun event for the family and it was a lot less frustrating. So awesome idea. Obviously, I hope no one has to use it, but if so, might make traveling with kids in these circumstances a little better.

So let's move on to hotels. In general, I think we're not as used to hotel problems, but there are a few reasons why a hotel might not end up having your reservation. So administrative errors is one, which is getting better with confirmations. Booking through third parties is another. For example, I actually helped someone make a reservation just last week and we called up to confirm something and the hotel didn't have it.

And we had a confirmation from a third party, but we did not have a reservation confirmation with the hotel. So in general, I would say, if you're booking on a third party, which sometimes can save you a lot of money, can get you a lot of perks, is totally worth it, you might wanna make sure you call the hotel just to make sure they have your reservation.

Some hotels intentionally oversell to maximize profit. And then sometimes you have guests that just don't check out. I know that might sound crazy to some of us, but any of those could result in your room not being available. And similar to guests overstaying, I guess you could also have health, cleanliness, mechanical issues.

So if a room was no longer able to be used, maybe they didn't oversell the hotel, but now the hotel has less capacity because one room's out of service. So unlike airlines where there are really clear rules about what happens and what rights people have, there's no government regulations in this area.

You're almost always gonna be able to get a refund if a hotel can't honor your reservation, but I would be pushing a lot harder for compensation in that circumstance. And I would certainly be asking them to book me in a comparable or better hotel nearby. And I would be pushing the front desk, the manager, the GM, or worst case, calling the hotel loyalty program, someone in central reservations at Marriott or Hyatt to see what can be done.

If your room class isn't available and all they have is suites, I wouldn't expect to pay any extra for that. So keep all of those things in mind. Every hotel chain has some rules published about what they will do, some of them more clear than others. But in general, I've found that most hotel chains that you work with will probably find some way to take care of you, but it's up to you to push for it and make sure that you get something reasonable.

As for how to avoid this, when hotels have to decide how to walk guests, there are a few criteria I know they look at. People who have booked through a third party, who aren't part of their loyalty program, who have never stayed before, who are only staying for one night, or who have really, really, really discounted rates are often reasons that you could be chosen for someone who's walked.

So I think the easiest way to solve that is to just make sure that you join all the hotel loyalty programs and add a number to your reservation. That one is one where I think it's going to have a huge impact for a very little cost. In addition to that, calling ahead, confirming your room, even calling early in the morning and getting a room assigned if you're really, really worried could be something that could help.

Some hotels allow you to check in online, you could check in early, or you could just book direct. I think booking direct is always gonna give you a little edge here, but at the end of the day, if you can save 30, 40% booking elsewhere, I think that could be worth it.

Just know that in these rare circumstances, you might not be on the same playing field as someone who booked direct. Last on hotels is just when things go wrong in the hotel. If you check into your room, something's not working, there's a weird smell, I've had a couple of situations like this.

In that circumstance, I wouldn't try to wait it out. I would just immediately call down and say, this is what's wrong with the room, can you get me in something else? Oftentimes that something else will be a little bit nicer, or you'll get some bonus points, or some free drinks, or something like that.

I don't try to use this to my advantage. I'm not looking for problems in a room when I'm going into them. But when we were staying in Bora Bora, the air conditioner wasn't working. And so that was certainly a reason to ask for a new room. And we tried calling to get it fixed.

It was late, we were trying to go to bed, someone came, they said they fixed it. And if it didn't work in 30 minutes to call back, we called back in 30 minutes, it wasn't fixed, no one answered. And so we actually ended up staying in the room. And the next morning, I went to the front desk and said, hey, our room's air conditioner isn't working, can we get a new room?

They were great, they put us in a new room. And I asked them, I didn't demand it necessarily, but I said, hey, given that last night, the air conditioner wasn't working all night, do we need to pay for that night? And they said, no, no, no, we'll take that night off your bill, which was awesome.

I wasn't gonna put up a fight if they said no, but it never hurts to ask. If my voice sounds a little different right now, it's 'cause I'm recording this after I recorded the whole episode. But on the topic of hotels, I wanted to share something I've been working on for a while.

If you've listened, you know that we have a luxury upgrade program that can give you access to some really awesome exclusive benefits at about 4,000 luxury hotels around the world. Think five-star hotels like Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Ondas, St. Regis, Ritz-Carlton, that kind of stuff, as well as some boutique hotels.

And you usually get daily breakfast for two, a $100 property credit, free wifi, and a free upgrade if it's available, and early and late checkout if those are available. And so the way this had worked before is you have to send an email and include all this information, and we try to help you out with it.

Well, I'm really excited that we finally built a site where you can do all of this on your own. So if you go to hotels.allthehacks.com, you can actually do a search yourself for these exclusive deals and perks and benefits. You can either search by property or search by city, and when the results come up, just make sure to click View Details, and you'll get a list of all the rooms, and you'll see whether they have all the Hacks Preferred rates or Virtuoso amenities.

And when you click View Full Description, you'll get all the details. So for example, I just quickly searched for London, and the first hotel that pulled up was the Great Scotland Yard, which is a Hyatt hotel, and it says one king bedroom, highlights, Hyatt Privé breakfast for two, welcome amenity, $100 property credit, early check-in, late check-out, room upgrade.

So hopefully this is an awesome tool for anyone looking to book a luxury hotel and get some extra perks. The rates are not gonna be any different than you would find for a standard rate on the website, but you are gonna get some benefits. If you've already gotten perks like this through a program like Amex's Fine Hotels and Resorts, or what Chase and Capital One have offered, you'll be familiar.

The only difference here is I'm pretty sure we have about 4,000 hotels, and each of those programs has anywhere from 300 or 400 to I think Amex has a little over 2,000. So we have a bit of a broader set, and from what I've been told from the travel partner we're working with, that because all these reservations are actually getting routed through a boutique travel agency, you'll probably have slightly better preference or priority over the reservations going through a bigger platform like Amex or Chase.

That said, find the best deals you can, but I just wanted to let you know that we made this site available to everyone, and hopefully it can hook you up on a future trip. All right, let's move on from hotels. There is nothing like watching your kids grow up so fast to make you realize that you're not getting any younger either.

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So join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/allthatmatch. Meetfabric.com/allthatmatch. That's meetfabric.com/allthatmatch, M-E-E-T fabric.com/allthatmatch. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day, but the reality is I'm not.

But if you're a longtime listener, you might know I've been drinking AG-1 for about two years. When I started drinking AG-1 daily, it was to help with daily nutrition, but I also felt a real difference in the energy I had every day. So it's been in my routine ever since.

And that's because AG-1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that supports your body's universal needs like gut optimization, stress management, and immune support. Since 2010, AG-1 has led the future of foundational nutrition, continuously refining their formula to create a smarter, better way to elevate your baseline health. Every morning, I mix it up with some cold water, add a few ice cubes because it's so good cold, and head to my office feeling focused and energized for the day, which is a feeling I absolutely love.

I also love that AG-1 is raising the standard for quality in the supplement category with less than one gram of sugar and no GMOs, nasty chemicals, or artificial anything. It's just another reason I'm excited to be partnering with them for this episode. If you wanna take ownership of your health, it starts with AG-1.

Try AG-1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG-1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to allthehacks.com/AG1. That's allthehacks.com/AG1. Check it out. I just wanna thank you, Quick, for listening to and supporting the show. 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. All right, moving on to car rentals. We did a really deep dive episode with Jonathan Weinberg from Auto Slash in episode 66. So if you wanna go deep on car rentals, check that out. But a few tips here. One, a lot of rental car reservations require no upfront payment and there's no cancellation fees.

So if you're really worried that your car might not be available, you're welcome to book a backup. Some rental car companies might look at a backup under the same name at the same place negatively. So you could book it in a spouse's name or book it at two companies.

Two companies might be a little bit safer because if a rental car company just doesn't have a car for you, then it doesn't matter if you have one reservation or two. There are some policies that seem like they might be changing, not necessarily to not give you that flexibility of booking backups, but saying if you don't cancel before you're supposed to pick it up, you might get charged a fee.

So definitely keep an eye on those rules as they might evolve. And by the way, that's exactly why I think some of these can be problems with so many people being able to book car rental reservations and no penalties for not canceling them. It's really hard for rental car companies to manage inventory.

So they're obviously gonna be overselling and when everyone picks their car up, they're gonna have an issue and you're not gonna have a car. So in that circumstance, if a car rental runs out of cars, absolutely, if they offer you an upgrade to a next class, make sure that you're not paying for it.

If they say we don't have your class, but we can put you here, that is an immediate, I would be happy to upgrade, but I would like to have that upgrade for free. It's pretty standard industry practice to go book you into a car from a competitor. So if they don't have a rental car, I would ask for that and I would push for it.

If you have to take a cab or go farther to get to your other rental car, I would expect that rental car company to cover that as well. If you're looking in advance and you just don't see cars because you didn't book early enough, a few options here. One is to widen your search.

Don't just look at airports. A lot of times the airports are sold out, but for example, in Park City one year, we just couldn't get an SUV for the family at the airport. They were all sold out, but we looked in downtown Salt Lake City and there were plenty of cars.

So actually, as soon as we landed, one of us took a lift over while everyone collected bags and all that stuff and then we came back and picked everyone else up. So that was a good option if you have a lot of stuff. If you don't have a lot of stuff, you could just all head there.

But looking at those neighborhood branches can help. If you do have elite status with rental car companies, which a lot of credit cards, the Venturex, the Amex Platinum, include some coverage, some of them actually include coverage that guarantees you a rental car. So even though you might look online and see it sold out, you might be able to call up and guarantee yourself a reservation.

So that's one. And then in general, just when it comes to things going wrong, if you rent a car, I would absolutely make sure that you either are insured through their program or use a card that includes insurance. I go a little bit deeper in this in the insurance and rental car episodes, but primary rental car coverage is awesome.

There are a lot of cards that cover it. I highly recommend using that to save having to pay for the collision coverage from the rental car company, which is usually a lot more expensive. But if you don't have a car insurance policy for your own vehicles, then you'll wanna make sure you have liability coverage because that is not covered by credit cards that offer rental car coverage.

They're only covering damage to the vehicle. They're not covering your liability if you get an accident and cause damage to someone else. So a few things you can do in advance, confirm your reservation, make sure that you have everything written down. If you're worried about your phone dying, print it out, arrive on time, checking in as early as possible.

You don't wanna give them any reason to think you're not gonna pick up your car. So if your flight's late, you could call and let them know you're running late and then have a plan B. So always be thinking about what's an option. Do you wanna back up? Is there a cab?

How is that gonna work? So it really depends on the type of trip you're taking and how necessary it is and how mission critical this is and how sold out they are. If you look for cars a couple of days before your trip and they're all super cheap, then it's not a problem.

If a couple of days before your trip, you do a quick search for cars at the airport you're going to and it's completely sold out everywhere or they're all hundreds and hundreds of dollars a day, that might be a circumstance where I'd be thinking about backup options or I'd be thinking about calling ahead just to try to make sure I have something.

And finally, two tips here. When you do rent a rental car, I would always make sure you take pictures and walk around. And if you notice any damage, make sure to flag it before you leave. When we were in Hawaii, the rental car had a bunch of dents in it.

And so I just made sure that we stopped before we left the lot, right at that gate where you're about to roll over those crazy spikes. And they brought out a piece of paper. We marked all the dents. I took pictures of them. We drove off. The last thing you wanna do is return a car and then have to get into an argument about whether you caused damage or it was already there.

And then especially if you're in a foreign country and you get in an accident, always try to get a police report. Some countries that's very, very necessary to get anything covered. Not usually in the US, but overseas it can very much matter. So that's something that I would do if you were getting in a car accident with a rental car.

So that's the main stuff. Let's talk about a few other ways things can go awry. Getting lost. One of my tips here is Google Maps has offline maps. So get that all figured out in advance. Download all those maps. That way, whether you even are traveling with data on your phone, you'll be able to find your way around a city.

And then last, if you're abroad and something happens, one of the places that can be your best friend is the local embassy for your country. So I can't remember the name of the listener who shared a story that I mentioned earlier, but they had a problem and they worked with their embassy and they were able to get a lot of support, getting things resolved, helping find the right departments within the country to talk about.

That's just something that I think they're there to help you when you're traveling if something goes wrong. So that's something that I would keep in mind. As for holiday travel, general tips, book things in advance. One thing that I don't always think about booking in advance is airport parking, but there are both two reasons to do it.

Sometimes you can save money. I know I got an email from the Oakland airport saying book it in advance and save some money. So that's cool. But also you can sometimes guarantee a spot. Getting to the airport a little extra early. When we went to Hawaii, I saw the longest lines we have ever seen for security.

It blew my mind. Even with pre and clear and some basic status on United, it was at least 45 minutes to go from getting dropped off at SFO through security, which was absolutely crazy. What we ended up doing, which certainly saved us time because we actually tracked the people that were getting in line at the same time as us.

And this doesn't always work at every airport, but you can go through any security. So at SFO, for example, terminal three is the domestic terminal for United, but it's connected to the international terminal, specifically the G gates. And so we saw these ridiculously long lines. There must've been at least 50 to 75 people just in the clear line for TSA pre-check plus clear.

So we actually walked from terminal three to the international terminal where the line was two people, went through security and then just walked back over to terminal three. I'm a hundred percent sure we saved time doing that. If we didn't check bags, we actually would have made it through a lot faster, but the line just to be able to drop your bags, even if you tagged them yourself was so long.

So going forward with kids and checking bags, I unfortunately think gone are the days of getting to the airport last minute. When it's just me, I'm traveling solo. I don't have any bags to check. Sure, I might show up 45 minutes before the flight, but around the holidays with family, check bags, that you just can't do that anymore.

So definitely consider pre-check and clear for your next trip. You don't need to enroll your children, I believe under a certain age. Definitely consider that. If you get global entry, you get free pre-check, but if you're not gonna be traveling internationally, I have heard that the wait times to get your appointments and everything for global entry can be a lot longer than pre-check.

So you could just go pre-check. However, there are two tips for getting global entry appointments faster. One is you could just do it on demand. So if you get global entry, your next time you're coming back from an international trip, you could just go do your appointment there. And then two is appointmentscanner.com is an amazing website that'll monitor your local global entry appointment center and send you an email as soon as there's an appointment.

I've been able to get appointments within a few days using that tactic in the past. Those two things will certainly help get you through airport security in advance on your next trip if you don't already have them. So that makes up a lot of the when travel goes awry, but there is a bunch of other stuff I wanted to cover in this episode.

So let's jump through it quickly. First off, two awesome wins. One from a listener who's asked not to share their name, but in the 18 months since they started seriously playing this game, they have now booked over $115,000 worth of travel with some points left for other things. I'm so glad this podcast has helped you save that much.

Obviously, you might not have spent that much on your own, but it's awesome to see what you've been able to do. Finally, awesome email from a family of four that was able to do a trip to LA, Tokyo, Singapore, and Bali, they have two young boys, and they were able to do it all with a bunch of deals and hacks using points, using discounts, using perks from the upgrade program.

If you're not familiar there, allthehacks.com/upgrade will allow you to book travel and get perks like free breakfast, property credits, and whatnot for over 4,000 hotels worldwide. They ended up saving over $15,000 on that trip. So awesome, awesome, awesome to hear that story. It makes me so, so happy. They ended up doing that whole two-week trip for only $3,500.

They priced it out otherwise, and it would have been $18,500. Next, I wanna share a mix of deals, travel stuff, and a few awesome tips. The first is an awesome bonus for new cardholders for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card, and that is that you get double cash back, which is actually the same as double points for your entire first year.

And they say there's no limit to how much you get. So this card typically gets one and a half points on everything, three points on drugstores, three points on dining, and five points on travel through their portal, which means you're actually gonna get 2X all of those numbers, which is really, really crazy.

The downside is there's not a big welcome bonus, but being able to get 3% on everything, 6% on restaurants and drugstores is a huge, huge, awesome deal all at no annual fee. It's only for one year, but I think if you are spending a lot and are looking for just an everyday workhorse card that you can use, being able to get 6X on restaurants and 3X everywhere else is really unheard of.

The other really cool thing is that for the first 15 months, there's 0% intro APR. I never really thought about it from this perspective until someone reached out to me and proposed this, which I will share probably in more detail in the future. But if you wanna think about the benefit of not having to pay off your card in full each month for 15 months, taking all the money you would have otherwise paid it off for and putting it in treasuries or even a high-yield savings account, earning an effective 5% or more, that could be a meaningful amount of money too.

While it doesn't have an intro bonus, if there's a card that let's say you put $2,000 a month on, you can only make minimum payments, let's say that allows you to carry a balance of $20,000 for on average, let's say seven or eight months. Well, that $20,000 at 5% for seven months is over $500.

So pretty cool little hack for playing the 0% APR game as a way to take your money, invest it and earn a return that potentially, this is where I wanna go deeper in a future episode, could rival the points you earn. But in the case of the Freedom Unlimited, you're getting the points and getting the ability to invest your money instead of pay off your bill.

So really great win for a card that doesn't have a welcome bonus or an annual fee. And in general, if you're playing the Chase ecosystem, the way this card works is it's marketed as a cashback card, but it earns ultimate rewards points. And if you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve or an Inc Business Unlimited, you can transfer all your ultimate rewards points to airline partners, including the ones you earn with the Freedom Unlimited card.

So all the links to all the cards that I'm gonna talk about are at allthehacks.com/cards. Signing up with those links does support the show. So I appreciate you going there. For the Freedom Unlimited, this deal doesn't show up at first on that page, but I promise you, if you click through enough, learn more and get started buttons, you will land on a page that has that bonus listed.

So that's one cool card. When it comes to transfer bonuses, there are a couple right now. On the Amex side, you're getting 25% bonus going to JetBlue, 20% to Marriott, and 30% to Hilton. None of those are exciting enough to get me to want to make a transfer, but if you have something in mind or you need just a few more points to be able to get to the threshold to book a hotel or a flight, it could make sense.

On the Chase side, you get 25% bonus to Air France KLM's Flying Blue program. That's only through the end of November, but I'm really interested in that because Air France and KLM Flying Blue also just confirmed that they're gonna change their pricing model for award flights, and those changes are gonna result in needing 66 to 71% fewer miles than you needed before.

So I'll post an article in the show notes if you wanna read more about that, but really cool combo here, transferring to Air France KLM, getting bonus points, and then needing less points to book your flight. Along the lines of airline program changes, anyone that's a Delta flyer probably already knows this, but Delta made a bunch of changes to the negative, then walked back those changes, and in some ways walked them back so far that the new ability to earn status from credit cards is even better than it was before.

So there are a lot of changes. I won't go into all those details here because if you're a Delta flyer, you've probably already read about them. I will link to a couple articles in the show notes, but I will say one interesting thing is that if you were to get two Delta cards, you'd be able to get Delta silver status easily next year.

And if you were to get all four Delta platinum reserve, business, and personal cards, you'd actually get Delta gold status from those four cards. So that's something to keep in mind as well. If you really want Delta status, but you're not gonna fly them, though I will say silver status on Delta is not gonna get you a whole lot more than free check bags, which you can get with one credit card anyways.

Speaking of which, the Delta platinum card and the platinum business card is something that right now, I never thought I would say 'cause we don't fly Delta that much, but it's something that's probably on my list for my next few cards to sign up for, primarily because we have a Delta trip next year.

The free check bags is valuable. The platinum companion certificate is pretty interesting. You get one companion flight, and then you also get 15% off all of your award trips. So I factored in how many miles I have, what that 15% would be worth. It's probably gonna save us close to 200 bucks in check bags as well.

Plus, depending on the bonus that you are targeted for, you could be looking at anywhere from 50 to 100,000 points. So I have links for those. There is also a website that I will link to that you might find a better bonus for. But all in all, I think that card is actually pretty decent if you're gonna be traveling for Delta enough, but not enough to meet status.

There are also a bunch of changes to the Amex Hilton lineup. And so with really no notice, they made changes to the Aspire and to the Surpass card. The Aspire is actually one of my favorite cards because the benefits from the card have historically really outweighed the annual fee.

That said, the annual fee is going up. There's still a great welcome bonus, but the annual fee went up from 450 to 550. And how it's gonna work now is you're gonna get a $200 resort credit at Hilton twice a year. You're gonna get a $200 flight credit, but $50 a quarter.

However, in the past, these Amex flight credits have only worked on fees and these are gonna work on any airline purchase. I just used our Hilton Aspire to buy, I think $50 of United Travel Bank credit and that triggered the credit. So that was great. You're also gonna get a free night with the card and then another one at $30,000 a spend and another one at $60,000.

And that's a free night at all Hilton properties at their standard rates. And then finally, you're gonna get an annual reimbursement of Clear. So if you're interested in Clear status, this could kind of combine with that. And you also get national executive status for rental cars. So it's still becoming a bit of a coupon book to put piece together.

But if you stay at a couple Hiltons a year, it would be hard for me to imagine you don't get value from this card. And the biggest perk I forgot to mention, you also get Hilton Diamond status, which is their top tier of status. You won't see this card on allthehacks.com/cards.

We don't have any partner links for this card, but my wife's referral link is at allthehacks.com/hilton. So if you're gonna check it out, you can check it out there. And right now I think the bonus is 180,000 Hilton points, which is pretty cool. On the surpass card, annual fee went up from 95 to 150.

You now get $50 of Hilton credits each quarter. So you're gonna need to be staying at Hilton's a lot for that to work. And you lose lounge access, but get national executive status. So I still think that if you're gonna be staying at Hilton enough, you'll get more value out of the Aspire, getting the free night and the other credits.

But just figured I'd share some of those changes. Coming back briefly to the airline conversation, Southwest has made it a little bit easier to get A-list and A-list preferred, which are their two elite statuses, which have a few better perks like upgrades and free drinks. But the big status that everyone's targeting on Southwest is companion pass.

And towards the end of the year becomes what I'll call companion pass season. And that way it works. And I'll probably link to an article in the show notes 'cause I've talked about this a few times, but very high level. If you get 135,000 rapid rewards points, you're able to get a companion pass with Southwest.

You get it the year you qualify and the following year, and you can nominate one person. You can change it up to three times a year, but in that person will fly free for you except for taxes. And so the reason why it's so popular to talk about now is that if you were to get two Southwest credit cards and wait until January 1st to complete the minimum spend and earn your welcome bonuses, those welcome bonuses will post in January or maybe February, you'll earn your companion pass and you'll get it for the entirety of 2024 and 2025.

And right now all three Chase consumer cards are offering a 75,000 point welcome bonus. The business cards are at 60 and 80,000 points. So if you have a business, you can get one personal, one business. I've done this in the past. That'll quickly get you well past your threshold.

And not only do you get companion pass, but you will have all of those points from those signup bonuses to be able to use on Southwest. And companion pass works on points reservations. So those two welcome bonuses will get you probably close to $2,000 of Southwest credit in the form of points.

Southwest program is pretty fixed. So you get about 1.4 cents per point, no more, no less, within a range sometimes maybe 1.1 to 1.5, but you're never gonna get outsized value. So that could be a way to travel almost for free for two years with two signup bonuses, which is something that in the past we've definitely taken advantage of.

I'll link to a full guide to Southwest companion pass from the Frequent Miler blog, which is really good. And last for Southwest people, there's a hack I wanted to share, which is Southwest lowest tier of ticket, the wanna get away fares. The one downside to them is that if you cancel your flight, that credit you have is only eligible to be used by you.

You can't transfer it to anyone else. However, the trick here is you can use that credit to buy yourself a ticket on a wanna get away plus fare, and then cancel the wanna get away plus fare and get transferable credit. So that's been really handy for a couple of situations for us this year.

Last, there's one more card that's on my radar for the rest of this year or next year. And I've talked about it a lot. It's the built card. And if I paid rent, I would absolutely have the card. It's the only card out there that earns points on rent.

I think you're gonna earn up to 100,000 points a year. You earn one X point per dollar on rent. You also get three points on travel and two points on dining. Not too different from Chase Sapphire preferred reserve. So might not help you there. But a couple of things that Built's been doing that makes me just really want Built points is they have a stellar lineup of transfer partners.

In addition to a lot of the common ones that everyone has, British Airways, Air France, Air Canada, they also have United, which only Chase has. American, which they're the only card that has American as a transfer partner, which is a really big standout perk. And then they have Hyatt, and they just added Marriott.

With Marriott, you get the one-to-one transfer, which I don't think is necessarily that compelling. But if you do transfer in batches of 20,000 points, you get an extra 5,000 points. So it's one to 1.25. You do get 100 points for linking your Marriott account as well as all your other accounts.

So even if you don't have the Built card, I think it's worth signing up for a Built Rewards account. Every first of the month, they have rent day, and they have games, and you can earn points. And while it might only be 100, 200, 300 here or there, over time, they add up.

And if you ever do get the Built card, you can start stacking those. Also on rent day, they've had some crazy, crazy promotions that are really the reason why I'm thinking I need more Built points. In addition to doubling all your points, meaning you're getting 6x on dining, 4x on travel, and 2x on everything else, they've been offering some transfer bonuses that are unbelievable.

So they've had ones where not just your standard 25, 30% transfer bonus, but they've recently had transfer bonuses as high as 175% bonus, meaning one point to 2.75. They did a 100% transfer bonus to Air France, which I wish I had the Built points to do. So those are all really awesome.

And then last, one really cool perk of just being a Built Rewards member, which is totally free, is that using the Built Rewards travel search, you can actually search for flights and hotels using Point.me and Aways free of charge. So instead of needing to buy a Point.me account, you can use it through the Built app.

It is only limited to Built's transfer partners, but you get it for free. The same thing is also true for Aways, which is an awesome award hotel search site. And now that Built has Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott, you can search all three of those on Aways for free through Built.

So overall, everyone should just go get a Built account for free searching tools and some extra points. But if you wanna start earning more Built points seriously, I would obviously love it if you wanna use my referral link, which is allthehacks.com/built, B-I-L-T. And I'd encourage you, once you sign up, to share with your friends.

Okay, last I'm gonna run through five quick things with the one that's gonna save me the most at the end, which is really awesome. So first, I never knew this, but Odessa emailed in to let me know that a lot of local libraries have museum passes. And so sure enough, I looked up our local library and they have a partnership with a program called Discover & Go that has free passes you can check out and borrow virtually to really great museums.

So California Academy of Sciences, SFX, the San Francisco Exploratorium. So definitely make sure you go look at whether you can get access to local museums from your library. If you have an Amex Platinum right now, you might've known that you get access to Walmart Plus for free. We don't really ever shop at Walmart, so I never really activated it, but Walmart Plus has a partnership with Paramount Plus so that with a Walmart Plus membership, you get Paramount Plus free.

So if you do have an Amex Platinum, you can go through that double link and get free Paramount Plus, which is interesting. They are not a partner of the digital entertainment credit that Amex provides. But I will say if you do have an Amex Platinum and you are using your digital entertainment credit, which gets you $20 a month on New York Times, SiriusXM, Wall Street Journal.

I noticed my New York Times subscription went from, I think it was like $18 every four weeks to 25. And I went online and said, "No, that's too much." And they said, "Well, what if it was $4 every four weeks?" And I was like, "Well, I'll take $4." So that's one way to kind of lower that.

I will say that I don't know if you have access to all the online cancellation options on the New York Times website unless you live in California. So I would say either VPN to California, if you have a VPN or ask a friend in California to do it for you.

Otherwise, you might have to do a phone call or a live chat. There's some law that requires you to be able to cancel subscriptions online in California that doesn't apply everywhere. That might've changed, but at least a couple of years ago, that was true. So one app I've been loving lately is called DaisyDisk.

If you have a Mac and you wanna just figure out what's using all your hard drive space, it's really great and better than all the other ones I've tried. It even supports Dropbox and Google Drive to analyze where your space is going there. And then last is a site I'm really excited about called OwnWell.

The way this works is in a lot of states, you can appeal your property appraisal and therefore lower your property tax. I didn't realize how possible this was. For people who live in Texas, I guess you get a lot of mail about this. In California, you don't. But I got connected with the founder of this company because one of his investors is one of the investors of my last company.

And effectively, they go out and do all the work to create the comps and the data and the backend, file with the county or whatever the regulatory body is. And if it gets to a hearing, we'll represent you at the hearing to help push for lower property appraisals. So I went through this entire process with them and the amount we're pushing for on our property is about 17% lower than what we're currently at, which would save us meaningful amounts of money every year.

And thanks to Prop 13 in California, if you do this once, it'll go on forever. They also operate in Georgia, Texas, Florida, and parts of New York, Illinois, and Washington. The service is free, but any amount of money that they save you on your property tax, they take 25% of for that first year.

So you can go through this entire process yourself. I started doing it just to try to understand it. And then I realized the number of hours I was gonna spend to go build these models and do them in the very specific way that the county requires, which isn't always published, is just too much work.

So big fan of them. I actually asked him if he could do anything for our listeners, and he offered to put $25 off any of the services anyone uses. So if you go to allthehacks.com/ownwellocean, O-W-N-W-E-L-L, you can sign up and get that deal. Wow, okay, that's it. I was long overdue for one of these episodes.

I really hope it was valuable. I love doing them, and I'm gonna start trying to do them a bit more regularly. Keep questions coming, keep your tips, hacks, and wins coming. All of those can come to podcast@allthehacks.com. And two more things. First, if you have a few minutes this week, I would greatly appreciate it if you could fill out the All the Hacks survey.

It would mean so much to me. You can do that at allthehacks.com/survey or the link in the show notes. And I will keep you guys posted by email if you are the winner of a $100 Viore gift card on any Day Essentials cookware set or a free ticket on United.

Second, as for the giveaway I mentioned earlier, if you haven't already seen the trailer, there is a new movie out called "Dumb Money," which I'm really excited to watch. The movie chronicles the meme stock craziness back in 2021, and specifically the GameStop short squeeze and the journey of Keith Gill, AKA Roaring Kitty.

It's got an 84/85 on Rotten Tomatoes, and the cast includes Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, Shailene Woodley, and a bunch more. If you wanna check it out, I have 20 free download codes for you all. I'm gonna put them up at allthehacks.com/dumbmoney. And if you go to that URL and it ends up redirecting you to the All the Hacks survey, then you'll know they've already been claimed.

Also, just for full transparency, the PR firm for the movie didn't pay me to talk about this, but the movie actually looked really good, and they offered 20 free download codes for listeners, so I figured it'd be worth sharing with all of you. Okay, thank you so much for listening.

That's all for this week. I will see you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (birds chirping)