A quick word from our sponsor today. I love helping you answer all the toughest questions about life, money, and so much more, but sometimes it's helpful to talk to other people in your situation, which actually gets harder as you build your wealth. So I want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Longangle.

Longangle is a community of high net worth individuals with backgrounds in everything from technology, finance, medicine, to real estate, law, manufacturing, and more. I'm a member of Longangle. I've loved being a part of the community, and I've even had one of the founders, Tad Fallows, join me on All The Hacks in episode 87 to talk about alternative investments.

Now, the majority of Longangle members are first generation wealth, young, highly successful individuals who join the community to share knowledge and learn from each other in a confidential, unbiased setting. On top of that, members also get access to some unique private market investment opportunities. Like I said, I'm a member and I've gotten so much value from the community because you're getting advice and feedback from people in a similar situation to you on everything from your investment portfolio, to your children's education, to finding a concierge doctor.

So many of these conversations aren't happening anywhere else online. So if you have more than 2.2 million in investable assets, which is their minimum for membership, I encourage you to check out Longangle and it's totally free to join. Just go to longangle.com to learn more. And if you choose to apply, be sure to let them know 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. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am so excited you're here today for our first live episode. Now you're probably not hearing it live right now, but it was recorded live on Monday with a bunch of All The Hacks listeners joining in.

And I wanted to do that because this is a really special episode. Last Sunday marked the one-year mark from when I started the podcast. So this is a big celebration for me. And first off, I am so appreciative of everyone who has supported me along the way, made this possible, written in questions, feedback, hacks, all the guests out there who've been on the show.

A tremendous thank you to everyone for everything you've done to support me and the show. I am so excited to be doing it more and more. I want to just share some of the exciting stats from the last year. I went into this thinking, "Okay, let's do four or five episodes, see what happens." And it's been 55 episodes.

For anyone that is doing the math, that is not 52. I did a few experiments throughout the past year where I'd post a small episode on a Thursday or on a Monday. So that's the few extras. The show has gotten over one and a half million downloads, which is about one and a half million more downloads rounded off than I anticipated getting started because I didn't know where this would go.

A couple of stats that I'm most excited about, I've had over 100 people have emailed in sharing stories of getting upgraded or going on a free trip that they otherwise wouldn't have. And this took a little time, but I went and looked at all the emails I've gotten of people that have gotten signup bonuses or signed up for new cards.

And by my calculation, there have been at least 20 million points earned. I hope that it's a lot more than that because I'm sure some people aren't writing in. I'm excited for all the trips everyone's going to be taking and everything people can do. And I don't have a metric for how much money we've saved collectively as a group, but I'm just going to make up a number and say it's in the millions of dollars as well.

A few check-ins for me, when I reflect over the past year, I thought about trying to summarize everything I've learned, but I feel like that would just literally be impossible because every episode, I'm learning so many things and actually putting them to use. But I will say that thanks to the episode I did with Marshall Allen, number 34, I have so far gotten most of my medical bills from having to go to the ER twice reduced to nothing.

So that's been great. I think I still have one out there that I'm trying to figure out, but I'm still optimistic that that will come down. So I'm very appreciative of that and actually want to give a quick shout out to a listener. Prema emailed me just in time last night to say that she's been fighting bills with all the tactics from episode 34.

And she was more successful than I was in that got the entire thousand dollars of medical bills reduced to a $20 copay. So hearing stories like that are amazing. I just got another one from Paul, who's a listener who took advantage of this upgrade program we launched recently, where if you're looking to book a five star hotel, we've got a network of thousands of hotels that we can help get upgrades at and free breakfast.

And he said that on his trip to Southern California, he and his wife were the most relaxed they've been in over 10 years, which I think it was their first trip without children. So I can't say that we're responsible for that as much as being able to take a trip without their kids, but it really makes me so happy to hear any of these stories and all of them about people being able to put some of these tactics, some of these lessons into good use and really, really enjoy life even more than they could have otherwise.

I also want to touch on a couple things before we jump in to questions. There are a few things that I'm thinking about for the upcoming year that I just want to share. I've gotten so many people reaching out, asking questions, wanting to understand how other people are doing different things in the community.

And so I'm going to commit that this year, I'm going to try to launch -- not even try -- I'm going to launch a community for everyone, listeners, subscribers to the newsletter, etc. And I'm trying to find the best platform and way to do it. That means something where people can ask questions, people can interact with others, people can share the best deals they have.

A lot of the hacks I share are hacks that people have sent me. So I want a place for all those things to live. And this might not be as soon, but I really want to make becoming a part of the community beneficial for everyone. So trying to negotiate and secure deals that are exclusive to the community, offers, things like that are all things that I'm trying to think about with all the hacks for year two of the existence.

I've spent a lot of time thinking in the past year about the podcast and the newsletter and how to bring those together so that people can get value from both, but they're not necessarily completely distinct. And I'm going to keep doing that. And hopefully people can get a lot from both those channels going forward.

Finally, another big thing. I don't yet have a second baby. Maybe by the time this airs, I will, who knows. But at least during this live stream, I don't. But bear with me for the next month because when baby two comes at any point in time, I don't know what that means.

Maybe an episode doesn't get out on time. Maybe a newsletter doesn't get out on time. But I really want to make sure that I'm there and can prioritize that moment. If I go radio silent for a week or two, that's why. And then none of this would have been possible.

I wouldn't have the time and the energy to do all of this without the support of a lot of people that also need to be mentioned. Mauricio, Eric and his team at UpFire have helped with production and editing. There's been a handful of people that have helped put together notes and ideas for some of the newsletters.

There's also a whole bunch of people helping with interviews. Nancy's been helping. Jenna Savage is helping. There's a bunch of people have written in to offer to help and I appreciate that. The kinds of things, if you're interested in supporting the show in the future, that are the most are little simple things like sharing it with someone.

That is literally the most meaningful thing anyone can do because my goal is to grow the show and create something bigger. The bigger the community is, the more I can try to secure better partnerships, better deals, better discounts for everyone in the community. So helping me grow and share the show is the biggest thing you could do to help out.

And then a big thank you to all the sponsors we have on the show. I don't think this would be possible without them. I spend a lot of time looking at sponsors and vetting them because I don't want to have just anyone backing the show. I want products I care about.

So a huge shout out to everyone that's done that. We actually have a few of them who are going to be doing some giveaways as part of this, so I'll just mention it on the outset and then I'll explain a little more details at the end. But Viori, which I'm literally wearing a Viori shirt and Viori pants right now, is going to be giving away a $100 gift card as part of this celebration.

Emmanuel from Card Pointers, who's I know in the live stream right now. It's a fantastic app. We're going to talk about that. He's going to give away a free lifetime membership. And then I figured why not? I give back. I'm going to just take 10,000 Capital One points and just transfer them to someone.

So I'm giving away some Capital One points. Unfortunately, Capital One, if you're listening, I would much rather you give them away. But since you're not interested, or at least I'm not aware, I'll give them away myself. So that's going to happen at the end. I'll give all the details of how that's happening.

But to all the other sponsors that have made this possible, thank you so much. I want to jump in. I got a few questions by email, so I'm going to start with those. But hopefully everyone's here because they have things they want to know. So first question, I got a couple emails about this over the years.

So Colin wrote a question in a few days ago asking about how to maximize points trying to buy a house. And this is a kind of question where I don't have a good answer for you. I have bought a house a few times and in none of them was I able to maximize points.

I am not aware of a single way that buying a home can help you earn points, which is a bummer because it's a massive purchase other than using services that charge fees. So that's not a rewarding answer. There have in the past been banks that offer really big sign up bonuses to get a mortgage.

So they'll say, "Get your mortgage with us and we'll give you 100,000 points." But all of those things have always come at the cost of usually the interest rate or closing costs or fees. And so I think that is just not something worth it. The follow up to that was, "What about buying a car?" And Colin asked the same question.

That on the other hand, I think it is a negotiable thing. So when you buy a car from a dealership, the dealer will often take some portion of a down payment on a credit card and they're just going to eat the fee. But that's something you can negotiate. So unless you're buying a Tesla online where I don't think there's a way to do it, it is possible to put part of your down payment for your car on a card.

And I would say the limit there might only be the limit of your card and the limit of what you can get the dealership to accept. So if that's something you're thinking about, I would definitely encourage you to push and negotiate there. Actually, I stand corrected. Michael in the chat just shared that if you're buying a Tesla, if you remove the add-ons like full self-driving from the purchase price, you can actually upgrade it after and pay with a card.

Given that it costs about $10,000, you could probably meet a full signup bonus minimum spend in one go, though it'd probably mean you won't be able to finance it, so keep that in mind as well. I love learning these kind of hacks from listeners, so please keep them coming in the chat, by email, Twitter, Instagram, DM, or anywhere else.

I might actually use Michael's hack if the Tesla we ordered that keeps getting delayed ever ends up coming. So thank you so much. I'm going to do one more email one, which was from Chad about flexibility and what being flexible means when it comes to booking. He pointed out, rightfully so, that you have to be flexible.

And he's like, "Hey, you took this trip and you waited until the last minute. Is that always possible? What about for hot destinations versus not? Having backup destinations, how that works?" So what I always say with points is there's kind of two times that are the most ideal. It's like as far out as possible and as last minute as possible.

Now that doesn't mean you can't use points other ways. And that doesn't mean I haven't taken trips with less flexibility than that. But anytime you can reduce one area of where you want to go, when you want to go, what airline or what type of travel you want to take, whether it's in business or coach, reducing one complexity makes things easier.

If you can reduce more, it's even better. I always say if you're looking to be flexible, that doesn't mean you have to plan super far in advance. It might mean you need to be flexible with what day of the week you're traveling. It might mean you might need to be flexible with taking a layover somewhere else, or maybe even buying a ticket, often called a positioning flight.

So if you live in, let's say, Las Vegas, you might not be able to find the award flights you want, but if you're flexible to buy a $100 ticket to LA or to San Francisco, or maybe to Phoenix, you might be able to get an award flight you wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

So when I think of flexibility, it's in all of those ways. If you're willing to fly anytime, anywhere, I think you can probably go wherever you want. And the big cool thing about last minute stuff and the positive outcome for at least award travel with the pandemic is that with a lot of change and cancellation fees being waived, you can book with miles.

And then if something opens up better, you can usually change or cancel and rebook at the last minute. So there've been times where I ended up booking a flight that I didn't think was as ideal as the alternative. It was maybe two layovers and then went to the airport one day, like four hours early, something opened up, canceled and rebooked at the airport.

I was flexible in the last minute to change because I was flexible early on to take something that was less than ideal. Okay. So I'm going to scroll up, hit on Weber's question. Thanks for asking, "Where would you stay in London for a luxury splurge?" Well, this is a question I definitely have no clue how to answer.

The last time I was in London, I distinctly remember being very young and having a Discman and listening to Alanis Morissette's new album that just came out, which can tell you how long ago that was. So I literally have no idea where I would recommend staying, but I'll tell you how I would if I were taking a trip.

So Weber's got 150,000 Marriott points, 100,000 Chase points and 80,000 Amex points and can transfer to British Airways to take the nonstop flight from Austin, but what do you do for hotels? So when I'm thinking of hotels with points, it's unfortunate that there aren't a ton of great options.

I've accumulated some Marriott points. And so using those for Marriott, great. If I have Chase points, transferring those to Hyatt is great. And Weber, I'm trying to make this as broadly applicable. I know some of this might not be relevant, but I want to emphasize that outside of using points in a hotel chain that you already have or using the hotel credit card to earn them and transferring points to Hyatt, I don't actually think using points to book hotels is the best way to use points.

I wish it was, it just unfortunately is not the best transfer rate. So I typically, if I'm not doing Hyatt or Marriott, I'm looking to pay for hotels and when I'm looking for deals, I'm using sites like Google hotels, like the same kind of common search engines to find them.

And then using the tactics we've talked about a number of times on the show of booking directly with the hotel, reaching out and looking for the upgrade. So hoping for the upgrade helps a lot of times, if you're looking for luxury, that's one of the things that we have a partnership with Savanti, the company that Lee Rowan, who's been a guest on the show a few times, runs where we can try to help hook up the different types of upgrades, early check-in, late checkout, free breakfast, sometimes a property credit, all that kind of stuff.

So if I'm looking at you with 150,000 Marriott points, I would do that search on Marriott. If the chase points are available, I would transfer them to Hyatt and I would just try to find the best thing you can, otherwise I'd be searching for the cheapest prices for the best hotel and reaching out to try to get deals.

All right, Mallory, I don't know where you are to unmute you, but feel free to unmute and ask this question. 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 my question is when you're at the beginning of a trip plan, where you've just decided the location, but don't really know what you're going to be doing or where you're going to be staying, what's your process for figuring out what cards to get and when to open them, what order and how long to wait in between opening them?

Like, for example, I'm trying to plan a big trip to Japan next winter, but I really don't have any idea of where to start card-wise for making sure that I can cover most of the trip with points. So great question. And if anyone listening hasn't been to Japan, you're on the right track.

It's amazing. So when I'm thinking of a trip and trying to figure out how I can make the trip free, I sometimes like to do some quick searching about award sweet spots for Japan, right? In your case or any country. And you'll try to get a sense of "Is there an airline that has some of the best flight deals with points to Japan?" So I happen to know that ANA is one of those airlines, and I can't remember the exact number of points off the top of my head, but I think in business class, it's something like 80 or 90,000 points round trip, which is way better than a lot of other options.

So if I found a country I was going to, and there was a particular airline that was like the best deal for booking, I would consider trying to earn points in a program that will transfer to that airline. So in this case, Amex is a partner of ANA, 100,000 Amex points might get you to Japan in business class because you can go through ANA, but 100,000 Chase points might not because there might not be a Chase partner that has as good of a deal for booking flights to Japan.

When it comes to flights, that's what I'm thinking about. The other aspect is just what's most flexible, right? Earning United points would be much less flexible than earning Chase or Amex or Built or Capital One points because you can only use them on one airline versus a lot. Second, I would be thinking about is what are the big offers right now?

I'd rather have 100,000 Amex points than 50,000 of almost any other point. So when I think about trying to plan a trip this far in advance, I'm thinking, what are the big signup bonuses that are available right now? The Chase Sapphire Preferred at 80,000 right now is a big one.

I think that Amex Platinum is still at 100,000, which is a big one and just depends. I think the Venture X card is still at 75,000 points, which is another big one. So I try to keep track of what's a big opportunity right now and then be opportunistic. If there's a card that launches something with a huge signup bonus, maybe be ready to take advantage of that.

And as many of you know, I have a page set up at allthehacks.com/cards where I link to the latest signup bonuses and card offers. When you sign up for a card there, you're supporting me and the show. So thank you so much to those of you that have done it already and to anyone in the future who does it.

I really appreciate it. As far as waiting between card signups, I've kind of heard it's best to wait 45 to 60 days between signups. It usually takes me at least that long to spend enough to meet the minimum spend. So that's how I think about it in advance. When it comes to hotels, I think it really is location dependent.

Some locations, even really nice hotels are cheap enough that it might not even make sense to worry about points. There are a lot of really high end hotels in Thailand that using points might not even make sense. If cash flow is a thing, use the portal to book them, then even worry about transferring them.

But for example, you mentioned Japan. The Park Hyatt's are like thousand plus dollar a night hotels that you can book with 40,000 Hyatt points. If you want to go all out, I was lucky to stay at the Park Hyatt in Kyoto. And it's literally like the nicest hotel I've probably ever stayed at and was a great deal with points.

And that was with Hyatt. So I would be thinking if there's a hotel that I'm really excited about, I would be trying to earn the points in that hotel program. Maybe that means getting the Hyatt card because those points are gonna be extra valuable or chase which transfers there.

If there were a Ritz Carlton or a St. Regis, I might look at a Marriott card because I have a particular use case for those points and get that in advance. Then I leave some room for flexibility. You said you're going to Japan. I don't know exactly which city.

I would be open to starting to think about where I want to go and building that around availability. So sometimes there might be, "Oh, well, this one hotel is only got these four days. Maybe I plan around that. I only find flights this week. Maybe I plan around that." I think if you have enough flexibility, you could kind of organize the trip in the most cost effective way for your points by maybe changing the order of the cities you visit or the day you fly.

And then I wouldn't be afraid to not always use your points. So like the train in Japan is really efficient. I don't think there's a good way to use your points on it. I wouldn't force yourself to try to use your miles to fly between cities if the train's more convenient.

Also, the experience of the train in Japan is worth taking. So I think, yeah, that's what I often do. Awesome. Thank you so much. I do have a follow up question, if that's OK. OK, so it's given me a lot of anxiety to try to figure out all the rules, especially like Chase 524 in relation to this trip.

I've already used a lot of Chase spots for a past Disney trip that I covered with points. So now I'm afraid if I use the American Express points, that's all you can get. You get them and then that's it. It seems like especially now, since there's a lot of stipulations on cards, if you get one IHG card or Southwest card, then you can't get another type of rewards card of that same family.

I'm very new to it, so I'm still trying to figure all that out. I don't know if you have any advice on that aspect of it. There are a lot of rules about this. The big one, 524 is Chase has a rule that I just talked about at length with Julia on a recent episode.

It was the last episode, if you're here live. So definitely listen there. I would say there are apps and one of them is doing a giveaway today. Card Pointers, it's an app where you can add these cards, keep track of your 524 status. We're going to give someone here or that enters from the podcast a free lifetime subscription to Pro.

I use it to track what are all my cards, where am I going to spend for different categories, what credits am I using, how long has it been since I opened this card. So one answer, which isn't the full answer, is to track everything in one place. The other answer is you're going to have to look around because the rules change and the rules are different.

So it's not the perfect answer to say, oh, go search IHG card. What are the rules? Chase, what are the rules? But the one thing I will say is if you are looking to get a card, there are cards that business cards often if you're in the situation to have a business and a business doesn't mean you own a business with thousands of employees, it could mean you have a freelance business, you generate some kind of income, you don't even always need an EIN from the IRS to get a business card.

And they don't usually count towards the 524. So if you've already opened up five cards in the last 24 months, it can be hard to get approved for a chase card. But if you open a business card, that doesn't count towards the limit. So if you're at that four, you're like, I've opened four chase cards, you can open a business card, you'll be able to get it because you're under five and then it won't count towards the five and you can get another one.

So I typically say open up the chase cards first, accept business cards before that so that you're staying under those limits. Perfect. Thank you so much. I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day, but the reality is that I am definitely not. So I love having an easy way to get my daily nutritional insurance, which is why I kickstart my day with Athletic Greens and I am excited to be partnering with them for this episode.

I started taking it because I wanted to see what all the hype was about and I've kept it in my daily routine for months. Every morning I mix it up with some cold water, add a few ice cubes. It tastes so good when it's cold and I head to my office feeling focused and energized for the day, which is a feeling I absolutely love.

I also love that it's made from 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, and super foods and contains less than one gram of sugar. It also has no GMOs, nasty chemicals, or artificial anything. To make giving it a try easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

All you have to do is visit allthehacks.com/athleticgreens. Again, that's allthehacks.com/athleticgreens to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. 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. Brandy says, "How do you decide personally when to maximize points and when to just spend the money? You could spend hours maximizing points, but at some point, the value of the savings is probably outweighed by the value of the time.

How do you avoid becoming obsessive?" This is a skill that I am still working on. I think the answer I would give for someone thinking about this is to always kind of think about what your time is worth. I know it's difficult and we typically undervalue our time. But one thing that helped me was when my wife was working at Lyft, I signed up to be a Lyft driver.

And I was like, "Okay, now I know exactly how much at a floor I could make going to do something at any time." So if I'm going to spend more time than I would make doing that as an hourly rate, that gave me a mental answer. And then I looked at my options.

So there are services where point.me as a concierge, Book Your Award, I can link to more in the show notes that will go through this entire process of "I want to book a flight here, go search all the options and come back to me." And they typically cost anywhere from $100 to maybe $300, depending on the complexity of the trip, the number of people and where you're going and what cabin you're traveling in.

And so I'm like, "Okay, if this is going to take me 30 hours, it's probably worth it to hire a service to do this." And many of them come with a guarantee that if they don't find something either better than you've already found or something at a reasonable price, they'll refund you.

So my approach typically is, "Let's do a search on my own. Let's spend half an hour and just see if I find anything good and get a sense of how hard it's going to be." Like when we were going to Bora Bora, it's like, "Are there flights every day or are there flights like once a month?" And if I do a search and it's every day, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to be able to handle this." If it's like once a month, I'm like, "Okay, if I have enough flexibility, maybe it's easy.

But if I didn't have a lot of flexibility and it looks like there's not a lot of availability, I would definitely try to hire a service to help out." However, early on, I wanted to understand how it all worked. I was fascinated by it and I loved spending time on it.

So I would just go down the rabbit hole. And if I spent 10 hours checking 100 sites, it didn't feel like work to me. But now that I think I have more responsibilities in life, I just can't spend 10 hours going down that rabbit hole. That's a little bit about how I think about booking an award versus hiring someone to help book an award.

When it comes to just spending the money, I get a pretty good sense when I'm looking at a flight, whether it's going to be available at a lower cost. And what I mean by that is on United, you can book almost any flight with miles. It just sometimes might cost an insane number of miles.

And if you look at Hilton, when we're looking at Bora Bora, it wasn't that you couldn't book it. It was just that on the days that it wasn't 100,000 points a night, it was a million points a night. And so if I start to realize that all the days I'm looking for are going to be at that like insane, crazy price, then I usually will just say, "If this is a trip I need to take on these days, then I'm just going to pay for it." There's not a cents per mile where it makes sense.

Sometimes it's, "I just want this trip to be free. And I don't want to deal with the expense of the trip this month." And it's okay if it's at a lower number of points per mile. I'd rather you take the trip than get the most out of your points because I think travel is amazing.

So Jared asked about elite status and whether I value them. I'll just talk broadly for a moment. I think there was a time in my life where I was traveling a lot for work and status on airlines and hotels was really, really important. And I remember going on a mileage run where I just flew to Kansas City for the day.

I didn't even have to go to Kansas City. There was nothing to do. I just flew there, sat at the airport and flew back so that I could get, I think, United status for that year. And I got to a point where it just felt like you now need the highest, highest tier of status on any airline to ever get an upgrade.

And it can never be reliable. And I got to the point that I was like, "I either want the upgrade or I don't care." And chasing status with airlines just wasn't worth it. And so I was like, "If I have the miles or the points, I'll just use them to fly in business if I want to.

And I'm not going to worry about trying to chase the status to maybe get the upgrade." And most of the time, I think that in the long run, that's been the better decision. So that's how I think about airline status. Hotel status is a little different because the highest tier of hotel status on most chains usually includes breakfast at the hotel.

And that has a tangible value. So for me, I think if I'm going to stay at enough hotels in the year, I know how to calculate that. So Marriott status, for example, I've had for almost 6 years. And it's been worth trying to stay at a few extra Marriott's to get free breakfast.

But I'm slowly coming to the point that I think I would be happier if I just prioritize the hotel I want, the place I want, and take away some of the stress that we talked about earlier in Brandy's question of like, "Oh, now I need to book in this chain." So for me, I think I started out valuing elite status a lot more.

And in the past year, I think I've just let it become less important, maybe the last few years. Andrew said, "My company likes us to use IHG for work travel. So I have elite status and the points there already. And the discussion here is about Hyatt and Marriott. Should I try to get out of IHG or is there a good way to leverage my perks?" I actually don't have a problem with IHG as a hotel chain.

The challenge is if you don't have IHG points, then I think it's really tricky. So you already have IHG points, which is fantastic. The reason why is that a lot of times, if you look at how many points you earn per dollar on a Marriott card or an IHG card, depending on the card, it can be on a hotel stay, you end up earning like 10 points per dollar on some of these hotel stays when you combine the hotel, the card, and everything.

When you're looking at spending money on a regular card, you're earning 2, 3, maybe 5 points if it's an Amex on a flight. So you can earn a lot of hotel points on different chains at a much higher rate on the per point level staying at them. So if I were saying a lot of IHG points, you could rack up a lot of IHG points and have awesome trips and there's some amazing IHG hotels.

The challenge is when you go to transfer points to IHG from their partners, which off the top of my head, I can't remember, but let's pretend it's Amex, you're just going to get one IHG point per dollar. So I don't love using flexible points with Chase or Amex or Bilt or anywhere else to transfer to hotel partners that are not Hyatt because I just don't think the rate is good.

Like a hotel on Hyatt, the highest end is like 40,000 points and a hotel on the highest end on Marriott and IHG and Hilton can be over 100,000. So if I'm using Amex points or Chase points and they're going to one to one, it's just not a great value transferring to IHG, transferring to Marriott.

Whereas when I can go one to one from Chase or Bilt to Hyatt, it is a really good value. That said, if you can stay at a lot of IHGs and earn points there, I'm all for going deep on IHG, getting the credit card, earning the bonus points, working for elite status.

And that's kind of in effect what I've done with Marriott for almost half a decade or more is stay in lots of Marriott, use the Marriott card, earn over a million Marriott points. I've just never transferred points from credit cards to Marriott because I don't think it's a good deal.

So I would say if there's a hotel chain that you're fond of that isn't Hyatt, that doesn't mean don't use it. It just means the best way to earn those points is going to be from staying at that chain or using the card for that chain. And it's not going to be from flexible points programs.

I'll just share. Jared said, if you can find someone with an Amex gold, they're running a 90,000 point signup bonus plus 20% off restaurants for a few months, if you can get referred to the card by someone with that offer. That's awesome. I don't think I knew that. I have an Amex gold.

I'm happy to refer people, but this is exactly why I want to build this kind of all the hacks community. I want to be able for Jared, who I'm guessing knows this because he has one, to be able to share that link with the community, share this stuff with people.

And this is kind of what an experiment that I wanted to run is what happens when you get a few people in a room and I'm seeing people sharing ideas. And that's what I'm really hoping to do. So hopefully before the end of the year, there's a place for those kinds of tips to be shared, for people to share those with each other and help everyone out.

Also, Emmanuel from Card Pointers pointed out that there's still a resi offer for a 75,000 point Amex gold offer with 20% at restaurants. So if you search that, I'll also link it in the show notes. Brandy said a competitor to Card Pointers doesn't allow you to track points from the two different accounts at the same bank.

Does Card Pointers allow for that? So Card Pointers, to their benefit, but maybe to the detriment of the feature you're looking for, relies on a massive database. They've got like 4000 different cards in their database. So you don't actually have to link your accounts. So Card Pointers is not a place to track your points amongst all of your balances in one place.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a good solution for that. I know that the Points Guy has an app that does it. I know Award Wallet does it. And unfortunately, I don't think any of them work across everything. So you're having to do some stuff manually. So sadly, I end up just doing it all in a spreadsheet.

What Card Pointers does is says, "Okay, we know you have an Amex Platinum. We know you opened it when the 100,000 point signup bonus was there. And we know that means you need to spend 6,000. So make sure you do that and let us know when you do and we can check that off your list." But it's not tracking it in real time by linking with your banks.

I don't know of a great service that can track across multiple banks, across multiple accounts. Award Wallet would be the closest thing to that. I would love someone to build that. I think the Points Guy wants to, but I have the same concern there, which is I use their app and I can't sync both me and my wife's stuff.

So and then below that, and I'm going in order, Emmanuel said he's working on a specific card recommendation system, which takes into account all the bank rules. So to the question before about managing all those rules, it sounds like that's coming in the next big update for Card Pointers.

JC asks, "How do I keep all the information notes for a podcast organized?" I want to do an episode in the next month or two about all the tools I'm using for everything. But specifically for the podcast, I run everything through a product called Notion, which I think it's like Google Docs/Wiki.

I don't really even know how to pitch it best. So if Notion, if you're out there and you want to sponsor the show, I promise I'll do a better job because I love the product. But I organize everything. It's kind of has its own mini databases where I can link things.

So I actually have a whole like a Kanban board, which is like I move cards through different stages of guests and where are they? Have I reached out to them? Did we commit to a time? Have we recorded? And then that pipes into another database that I use for each episode so I can line up that interview of a guest with a specific episode.

There's another database of sponsors. But it all works together and looks mostly like Google Docs does or kind of like an old school wiki where you can edit things, have collaborators and comments and everything. So I go into each guest's page on Notion and I put in notes before the interview.

And I keep that pulled up during the interview so that I can reference it. I go in and I write down notes about sponsors and I even track which ones I'm excited about coming up, all of that, all in Notion. So if you have any project, I highly recommend Notion.

My wife and I use it for all kinds of other stuff with our family. So we actually have a Hutchins and Fox family Notion board where right now we're going back and forth commenting on baby names. We keep all of our like frequent flyer numbers in one place. We used to use it to track things when we were having the first baby of all of our registry items and things we need to buy.

So Notion is the place I go for all of that kinds of stuff. But I do want to do an episode where I dive into all of the different tools. So expect that, let's call it sometime this summer. All right, Mallory, another one. "Any tips for low income individuals using points for travel, especially from slower spending to reach the sign on bonuses, the cards with higher annual fees, figuring out spending that just isn't covered by points when traveling?" So I'm a big fan.

Episode 5 with Scott Kyes, Scott's Cheap Flights is an awesome newsletter that I've used just to track for years about best deals. So when it comes to flights that aren't with miles, I found some great deals there. The Google Flights destination search where you could just leave a destination off and find where is this cheapest place to go is fantastic.

In the episode 55 with Julia, we talked about buying clubs, which is something that I am not the expert on, but I would definitely recommend a listen for helping meet minimum spend. There are these clubs where effectively, people who often for export reasons, want to buy like a lot of a certain thing that's limited like an iPad or something like that, they will basically pay you to buy it and ship it to them.

So that's a way to earn minimum spend. If you have a card that pays cashback or points, I don't typically encourage or like to buy points unless you have a redemption in mind. But a card like the Venturex card, which earns two points per dollar that you could cash out, you can pay your taxes on them.

So if you owe taxes, if you don't mind giving the government a loan, you can pay your taxes. Even if you overpay them, you'll get a refund and they'll send them back to you. So I don't like doing that to earn points because I just don't think paying 1.87% to earn points is worth it.

But if it's a 2% cashback card that you need to hit a minimum spend on, then you could use paying your taxes as a way to hit that minimum spend and get the big bonus. That's another tactic. I think Julia and I talked about a few other ones, so I would reference that episode.

But if that doesn't cover it, I will think of other ideas for a future episode and share. So Yevgeny, hopefully I got that right, asked if I could talk about BlockFi alternatives since they no longer accept signups for the interest account. This is a great question and one that I think will change over the next few months.

So ultimately, I think it's a bit strange the way regulators have approached this in preventing BlockFi from operating, not preventing other companies who are offering a similar thing from operating, but saying it's not allowed. My guess, I don't have any inside knowledge, is that in the coming weeks/months, most of the BlockFi alternatives out there are going to have to go through the same kind of securities registration process BlockFi is.

And the best alternative will be to sign up for the new version of BlockFi that will be coming out once they finish that process. Until then, there are sites that offer yield on crypto. And I think it's a short win to get yield there for now because I think it's going to go away.

So for me, for new dollars that I want to earn interest on, I've just kind of been waiting. The interest rates just from the Fed have gone up. So I know Wealthfront last week raised their cash rate to 0.85%. And if you look, there's a really cool site that I'll link in the show notes.

It's called the Countdown to the FOMC. It's like this FedWatch tool that shows the odds on what is going to happen at upcoming Fed meetings. So you can kind of get a look at what they think will happen. So the June 15th meeting, it looks like the expectations are that interest rates, 94% of people are assuming they're going to be in the 1.25% to 1.5% range.

By July, that goes up to 1.75% to 2%. And then by September, it's over 2%. So not a perfect alternative. But I think sometime over the next few months, also, you're going to see high yield savings rates all across the country at various different banks, online banks go up as well.

So I think that'll be an alternative that will probably cross that 1% mark pretty soon in the future. Okay, Peter, "Any tips for a student who doesn't have established credit? He tried to sign up for the built card to pay rent and the application is pending." I'll give two things.

One, anytime you sign up for a card, if your application doesn't get approved, I guess if it's in a pending state, I would search. I don't know if Built has this, but I know Chase and Amex, they all have reconsideration lines. So if you apply for a card and it doesn't get approved, I would definitely call the reconsideration line.

I know I basically never get approved for any Chase cards anymore because Chase has basically given me all the credit they're willing to give me. So I call the reconsideration line. And then we go through this process of "Okay, where do I want to move credit? I'm going to take $5,000 of credit from my Chase Freedom Unlimited card, and I'm going to move it to this new card." So I have to call Chase every time.

I never get approved. So I wouldn't say not getting approved means you got denied. It means you might need to call and understand what they need. I also keep my credit frozen. And every now and then, I'll apply for a card and forget to unfreeze it, which happened with the VentureX card from Capital One.

So I called and they said, "We didn't approve you right away because your credit was frozen, so we couldn't do it." So I had to unfreeze it and have them rerun it. So I'll flag that if you don't get approved right away, there might be reasons that aren't due to your established credit.

Otherwise, this is not a great answer. But if you're new to this, it's finding a card that has lower credit requirements. I know the Credit Karma app will actually recommend cards that you can get approved for or even have pre-approval offers. I would try to find the best one that falls into that bucket so that you can start building up credit.

I will say that the mileage may vary on this trick and it requires someone that trusts you. But I know that when you become an authorized user on cards, it shows up on your credit report. And so if you've ever gone through your credit report, and you and a partner maybe share a card and have one or the other as an authorized user, you'll actually see that card on both credit reports.

So if you have someone who has a card that they've had for a really long time... I know this worked really well 20 years ago or 30 years ago when my dad added me to his card just to help me build up credit. So that's another hack that I would consider trying.

I would spend some time Googling around to make sure that whatever issuer you're about to do it for does report authorized users. And the trick is they don't even have to send you the card. They could add you as an authorized user if it's free and not actually give you the card to go spend money on.

That's one that's worked in the past. Otherwise, I would just say get the card you can get, pay it off on time, ask for credit increases at certain intervals so that you can try to establish more credit. So Benji, you asked about cashback debit cards. I don't have an answer for you right now.

I understand that if credit is hard to get right now, that a debit card might be a great place to try to earn points because you don't have that alternative. I will share 2 thoughts that I have. One which is the Extra card, extra.app. It's a product that's a debit card that helps you build credit.

So while you're not going to earn points, if the reason you're using a debit card is because you want to try and build your credit so you can actually get approved for credit cards, check out the Extra card. I don't have any affiliation with them. I can't endorse them.

But I know that it's a card that helps you build credit with debit. Outside of that, I don't know if I have a good example. I think there are a few like FinTech platforms that offer like 1% cashback on some debit cards, but they usually require a ton of purchases or joining a membership or something like that.

So I haven't found a good one, but I'm also not looking for one. So I don't have a good answer there for anyone. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be. I get it. Life comes at you fast. But trust me, your friends are probably desperate for a good hang.

So kick 2024 off right by finally hosting that event. Just make sure you do it the easy way and let our sponsor Drizzly, the go-to app for drink delivery, take care of the supplies. All you need to come up with is the excuse to get together. It doesn't even have to be a good one.

It could be your dog's birthday, that the sun finally came out, or maybe you just want to celebrate that you got through another week. With Drizzly, you can make hosting easy by taking the drink run off your to-do list, which means you can entice your friends to leave their houses without ever leaving yours.

And since I know you like a good deal, Drizzly compares prices on their massive selection of beer, wine, and spirits across multiple stores. So when I really wanted to make a few cocktails while we were hosting family last week, not only could I get an Italian Amaro delivered in less than an hour, but I found it for $15 less than my local liquor store.

So whatever the occasion, download the Drizzly app or go to drizzly.com. That's D-R-I-Z-Z-L-Y dot com today. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. Before we get back to the episode, I just want to thank you for listening to and supporting the show. 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. Mallory, I see another question. Jump in. Yes. So this one's more on mindset and personal finance.

So me and my husband, we have limited resources and we've built up a list of about 70, 80 goals that we want to financially save for. And it's been rather difficult to just sit on those goals and not be able to get them because there's some that are just like $30 for a lunch or something small like a lunch box or new slippers.

There's bigger ones that are like the trip to Japan. And I didn't know if you might have any hacks for ways to think about this sort of thing. How to approach having so many goals but limited financial resources, that sort of thing. My quick reaction to that is that's a lot of goals.

I struggle to have more than like 3 goals at any given time. So I would consider maybe could you bucket some of those goals together and say, "We have a short-term goal of trying to save X to do these 5 things," and then just focus on the X number instead of the individual ones.

I would also consider trying to just automate the savings away and say, "Okay, I'm just going to put money in these 3 different savings accounts." When I was at Wealthfront, we built this feature called Autopilot. So you could literally open up all of these different virtual accounts linked to your cash account and say, "I'm going to put $10 a month in this one until it reaches $1,000.

I'm going to put $20 a month in this one until it reaches there." So just trying to automate it so that you're not trying to think about it every day. You might have all of these goals, but if you could not have to think about them every single day, it'd probably be less stressful.

So if you could try to automate the behavior of saving, it might make that a little bit easier. If I was achieving them faster, I would say... I have this episode coming up that I haven't recorded yet with a woman named Jen Glantz. And she had been a bridesmaid for a handful of people and realized that her friends got so much value out of her doing that, that she started a company that at the time was totally different than anyone else out there.

And she started Bridesmaids for Higher Business, where she posted on Craigslist, "If someone needs a bridesmaid to help them get through this craziness, I will help." And she ended up turning that into an entire business. So the other way I would say, it's hard to cut your spending more and more and more.

It's definitely easier than making more money and that there is a specific way to do it and you could start tomorrow. But I would consider if you're trying to achieve goals faster, think about are there skills or hobbies or passions that you have that maybe you've never thought of turning into a side hustle that would be able to help you get there faster.

And I did an episode with Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation, all about that. And I would definitely say check that out. And he has a whole podcast all about this. And JC, thanks for noticing the new crate and barrel couch back here. We got 15% off buying coupons online.

It's doing great. Although, if anyone has a hack, I'm going to ask. If anyone knows where to buy sofa bed sheets that actually... Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe you just buy the regular size. But I was blown away that I couldn't find a mattress topper or sheets or basically anything the size of a sofa bed mattress, which is like 10 inches shorter than everything else.

So there's certainly an opportunity out there. Based on how long it took me to get this couch delivered, there are other people out there with sofa beds. So I highly recommend someone doing that so that one day we can buy a sofa bed sheet set that actually fits the bed.

So Weber, best card for earning points when shopping on Amazon? I think there are 2 answers there. One is there's a 5x on the Freedom Flex and Freedom cards on Amazon right now for this quarter. And then there's 2 other approaches. Buying Amazon cards at grocery stores is one.

So use a card that earns 4 or 5x points on grocery stores or office supply stores and buying Amazon cards and putting them in. I will say that I don't actually love that approach for certain types of purchases, primarily because I love the purchase protection that a lot of credit cards come with.

Great example is I bought an iPhone. I didn't buy this from Amazon, but the same thing would apply. And I dropped it like 2 months later and the screen broke. And I used my Chase purchase protection to go in and get the screen repair paid for. So I was able to get a screen repair, which unfortunately now costs 200 and something dollars for free because I bought it on a credit card.

If you go buy Amazon gift cards and you use them to buy on Amazon, then you don't get that purchase protection from your credit card. So I would say I have no problem if you're buying your groceries on Amazon using a gift card because you're probably not going to try to do a warranty claim on your groceries.

But I do think that if you're buying anything that you might want to extend the warranty or replace if it's broken, I would definitely try to use a credit card. And I actually use the Amazon Chase Visa. So someone asked about cashback and I'll hit on that. But I'm not typically a fan of cashback.

But the alternative to earning 5% cashback, if the alternative is earning 1x points, I'll just take the 5% cashback from Amazon. And so that's what I do on Amazon. It's the only cashback card I use because there isn't another option. When there's a quarter and the Chase bonus is 5x points on Amazon, then I'm switching the card for that quarter and I'm using my Chase cards, the Freedom and the Freedom Flex to earn 5x points.

Also, Andrew mentioned that Discover has consistently had 5% back on the last quarter of the year at Amazon. So it actually comes to another question I got about Discover cards. And someone said, "You never talked about Discover cards. What's the deal?" And honestly, I've never had a Discover card.

So I don't really have a good answer. But I often try to prioritize the cards I'm getting with trying to earn the most points I can. And I know Discover just doesn't have a flexible points currency. So for me, it's been something that I've never focused on. And that question was from Leslie from Massachusetts.

So thanks for asking it by email. It's never been a thing I had. So I know that it sounds like from Andrew that they've got good cash back and if cash back is what you're focused on, it could be an option. And I just haven't spent a lot of time focused on that.

So sorry, I don't have a better answer. Actually, it looks like Emmanuel from Card Pointers has something to add. So let's jump to him. Can I throw in one thing about Discover real quick? Yeah. So as much as it doesn't have a transferable currency, Discover, you can redeem the cash back that you earn for some gift cards.

And they change that. But oftentimes, there are bonuses, like you can get a Nike gift card and get 20% or 40% more value. So in fact, it's like you're earning 1.2, 1.4X. And Discover has a rotating category that gives you 5X, which is really good. Sometimes, I don't know if they still do, but they have a double your cash back in the first year.

I think that was about 1.5% to get 3% cash back. So it can be an interesting one. And that's actually my oldest credit card is a Discover card. So I've had that one forever. Awesome. Thank you. And to the question earlier about building credit, the reason I'm sure Emmanuel is not canceling that card ever is because it's one of his oldest cards.

So friendly reminder that if you have an old card that you opened up to start building credit, if you can get a no-fee version of it, which you can often do by asking to downgrade or maybe it is a no-fee card, I would try to make sure you put a purchase or two a year on it just to keep it open to help keeping your credit high.

Another asked, "What are some good free cards that have good benefits like extended warranty?" And that's a question I'm going to punt on because I want to do a whole episode about card benefits to address everything from purchase protection to extended warranties, travel coverage, things like trip cancellation, rental car, and more.

So stay tuned for that one. Marlon just asked -- he's about to go remodel something and wants to pay cash. Any good ideas for a remodel card? I have a hard stop today at 1.30 because we're in the middle of a remodel and I asked if I could have a break from the demolition from 12 to 1.30 so that I could record this.

And there is not a good answer. I don't think this will work for remodeling. But I have found that if you ask services that maybe ask you to not pay with cards to pay cards, maybe one in three or one in four times, there's an option. So I ran a little promotional thing for all the hacks in a podcast app called CastBox.

And I just asked them. They said, "Hey, here's the invoice. Pay with check or ACH." And I was like, "Okay, can I pay with a credit card?" And they're like, "Sure." But they didn't mention it out in the outset. So it's always worth asking just to find out if there's an option.

If not, I would say I don't have a good answer other than if there are things that you can buy. So just because the contractor might not take card doesn't mean you can't pay for a lot of the stuff. So the plumbing fixtures, the vanity, you could ask if there's any stuff you can pay for directly instead of them.

And if you have to buy that from a plumbing store or anything like that, you could certainly put that with your cards as well. So definitely worth doing that. So Emmanuel shared a hack of people buying $500 gift cards and paying with those. You could certainly say, "Hey, could I pay you in Amex gift cards or gift cards that you get at the store?" Or even ask, "Is there a gift card that you're particularly interested in?" That might have a similar effect to paying cash to the contractor in that this is not advice, but it was something told to me when we were Airbnb in our place, someone from Germany said, "When you pay cash, it's often tax neutral." And so what I would say is if someone really wants to get paid cash, and you could say, "Look, I can't pay cash, but I could pay you in gift cards.

Pick any type of gift card and I'm happy to do that." Maybe you could find a negotiating point there where it feels like cash to the person you're paying if it's a small project, but you're able to put those cards on your credit card. I think that's everything. Thank you so much for everyone being here.

I'm going to talk a little bit about this giveaway. I'll mention it in the episode also. But I've got three things to be thankful for this giveaway. One, early on, I used my referral link and some people signed up for the VentureX card. So I'm going to give away 10,000 of those Capital One points to people listening right now and in the future.

I'm going to thankfully be able to, from a manual support, give away a lifetime membership to Card Pointers Pro, which is just really generous and I appreciate him doing that. It's a great app. If you aren't the one who wins it, I still think you should check it out.

There's a trial if you want to check it out and see how it works. And if you go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers, you can actually also get what I think is the biggest discount there's ever been to get 20% off Pro, whether you want to do it monthly or a lifetime membership.

So there's that. And then another really big thank you to Viori. I literally wear Viori every day. This is not like the sponsors paid me. In fact, all the Viori clothes I have, I actually paid for myself. But I reached out to them and said, "Hey, we're doing this live episode." And they offered to give $100 gift card to Viori to someone.

So huge thanks to them. If you haven't checked out their clothes and you don't win allthehacks.com/viori, which is not spelled like it's pronounced, it's V-U-O-R-I. So allthehacks.com/viori, V-U-O-R-I. And I think they're literally the most comfortable clothes. I just wear black t-shirts and gray t-shirts that happen to be there.

So it's probably not obvious to you that they're comfortable, nor are the joggers I'm always wearing. But definitely check them out. And thank you so much to Viori for offering that this episode. I think that's all. The way I'm going to do the giveaway, if you go to allthehacks.com/giveaway, there's a quick form, it's four questions.

It's "Which things do you want to enter in?" The Card Pointers Pro membership, the Viori gift card, and the 10,000 Capital One miles. The reason I had it set up like that is because Capital One will let you transfer miles to people but only people who have a Capital One account.

So for the sake of the people who do, I want to make sure that whoever wins can actually use them. And many of you probably already have a Card Pointers Pro membership. So maybe that's not the right one. I need your email. And then I'm actually doing something different.

I'm going to do a drawing and the drawing is going to pull from everyone, but you're going to get multiple entries for different things. So if you subscribe to the newsletter, if you subscribe to the podcast, if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, if you write a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, and if you attended this, each one of those is going to count for an entry.

And then I just have like a fun "Please certify that you actually did these things." I might check before we give things away, but it helps me grow the show and I really appreciate it. The one last thing I want to share is that there is an awesome deal happening right now.

This week is Rakuten's Big Give Week and it ends May 16th. So why do you care? Well, first off, if you don't have an account already, you get $40 for free in your account after you join from a referral and spend $40. So if you want to use mine, it's allthehacks.com/rakuten or click the link in the show notes.

But more importantly, they are offering 15% cash back at hundreds of merchants. From Ace Hardware, to Under Armour, to Walgreens, to Dick's Sporting Goods, and so many more. And best of all, you can choose to earn Amex points instead of cash back, which I think makes this deal twice as valuable.

So definitely check it out. All right, that's it for this live episode of All The Hacks. I would love to hear what you thought, so please shoot me a DM or email and share. Again, thank you so much for all your support over the past year. Please don't forget to enter the giveaway for a chance to win $10,000 Capital One Miles, a $100 Viore gift card, or a free lifetime membership to Card Pointers.

And I'll see you next week. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it. And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi, I'm Chris@AllTheHacks.com or @Hutchins on Twitter.

That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.