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Again, that's longangle.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you here. As I mentioned in my short episode a few weeks ago, I want to bring more travel and credit card points content to this show in 2022.

So I am excited to be joined today by Richard Kerr. Richard's a veteran Naval officer who left that career behind to become one of the top experts in the world on travel loyalty programs, credit cards, and points strategy. He's the founder of the Award Travel 101 Facebook community and spent six years at the points guy as a contributor, an editor, and the director of travel partnerships.

He's now at the up and coming credit card company, Bilt, running travel rewards. We're going to talk about where he thinks points and miles programs are heading in 2022. We're going to hear some of his favorite redemptions out there, learn all this travel hacks, both on the booking and travel side and get an update on the new Bilt card and how to get off the wait list.

I am sure I'm missing a few things because there is so much to cover. Let's jump in. Richard, thanks for being here. Hey man. My pleasure. And that word you use to describe your show, upgrading. I'm all about it. Yeah, I'm constantly seeking out upgrades in all aspects of life.

So before we get started, I would love if you could just share what led you down this rabbit hole. Yeah, a really long story short is I was in the Navy. And at one point I had to choose between spending $3,000 on last minute economy tickets to see my family after I had not seen them for a year because of deployments or just skipping Christmas and not seeing them.

And I chose to spend the $3,000 from my wife and I thought there has to be a better way. Luckily I found that better way. And for whatever reason, it clicked with me and down the rabbit hole. I went spending the next almost seven years in the Navy, being able to travel around wherever we were stationed, having family travel, thanks to points and miles and I took it and literally and proverbially ran with it.

And can you briefly touch on what you were doing before points and miles? Yeah. So before doing points and miles full time, my last job in the Navy was the logistics officer for Marine one, the president's helicopter. I got there when president Obama was leaving office and president Trump was coming in and I had a lot of jobs there to make sure that helicopter could fly the parts gas all over the world, but the one thing I'll let you, the inside tip on that president Trump loves his tropical starburst and his Pringles.

The man hammered them. So we had the credit card of which was of course not earning any points because it was a government card, but a lot of starburst Pringles for Marine one in my last year, the week would finish and I would have a trip plan to hop somewhere for the weekend, wherever we were, of course, on points and miles and my love and decided that I want to do this full time.

Navy has been great, but I'm out. So you've, you've built up probably an arsenal of knowledge that, that few others have. So just to kick off, I want to talk about the current state of things and the points and miles world, and maybe recap where we're at and what some of the big things happening in the last few years are.

And maybe we start with airline and hotel programs and I'll kick us off saying, I think one of the biggest trends I've seen, and I'd love to hear your kind of take and maybe explain what it means is this kind of trend towards these fixed redemptions to a more dynamic program.

Yeah. You know, it's what the programs in my mind should exist to drive a recurring business. And you might think that's very simple. What is turned into for many airlines and hotels is it's a revenue arm more than anything else. And in the case of most of the big airlines and some of the hotels, the revenue arm that is the loyalty program is worth more than the airline itself.

We saw during COVID several of the large carriers take out loans against their loyalty programs to get cash, to keep operating. And once that they figure this out through all kinds of deals and partnerships and, you know, passengers and hotel guests being willing to buy points at what I think are crazy rates that said they honed in on it.

And that's led to the state of what we see today and most large loyalty programs, which is nothing is fixed. Nothing is predictable and everything is designed to drive maximum revenue rather than, in my opinion, in most cases, earn repeat business. Now you might think that's really bad thing at the end of the day, you and I, and people who listen still get to do amazing things because of points and miles.

So it's not all doom and gloom. It's just a different environment than we're operating in. Yeah. So a couple of listeners have sent me this YouTube video that I'll link to in the show notes where I can't remember the name of the guy who did it walks through here is exactly how these businesses work and why you should really think of the miles programs as banks almost.

And so I'll put that, yeah, I'll put that in the show notes, but, and just to clarify, it used to be that there was a chart and it said, Hey, if you want to travel from the United States to Europe, it's this many miles. So that's what it is.

And now I don't know if there's any airline that's fully a hundred percent dynamic dollar for point other than the ones who've always done it Southwest and JetBlue. But, but the main American Delta United, you can still get some of those low cost non-dynamic awards, but they've taken all of the award inventory that's not at the low price and made it seemingly sometimes, at least with Delta, it's I'm not going to spend a million points to fly to New York this weekend.

Yeah, no, there's overall, there's still deals to be had. And actually bring up the point of Delta. I can't keep Delta miles in my account because I'm constantly redeeming them for economy domestic flights. Because in the world of dynamics, as high as things may be, there are still low deals out there all the time.

And maybe it's because I'm an Atlanta guy, but oftentimes Delta is the most expensive out of Atlanta. But to your point, every currency and program now almost has its uses. If you want to fly luxury premium classes, don't collect Delta sky miles. If you want to get your family of four to the beach or grandma's house a few times a year, I think sky miles can make it happen.

So along with the bads of, you know, now some redemptions are crazy priced. Almost every program does have the great deals. American has these web fair deals where you can fly one way in the U S for 5,000 miles to like really good, like on the weekends on holidays.

So it's just kind of wild. And to my mind comes back to, there's, there's no predictability left. You're not really sure what to prepare for. And what do you think about hotel programs? What's been going on with hotel loyalty? I always try and figure out a better and more polite way to say this, but I usually fail, unfortunately, Marriott has destroyed its program to a point where I don't know why you would invest in the bond boy program anymore, and I'm sure you have lots of listeners who are going to be up in arms about that because they love their Marriott, but we're a couple of weeks out of time of recording from award charts, being completely Marriott it on a good day is a broken disaster.

The phone agents are not empowered. Social media team can't do anything for you. Probably a high likelihood, your points are going to be calculated incorrectly from every stay and goodness. If you have certificates in points that you want to combine or use do anything outside of the norm. It's just not going to happen.

So it's really a shame because SPG was amazing. Marriott rewards is pretty good. They've combined them and they've just, I have no idea what the strategy has been over there, except trying to minimize costs for hotel owners. So Marriott, I'm sorry. I just, I'm going to go to the portal and earn 10 X venture rewards rather than trying to collect the points.

As far as everyone else goes, there's still a gold standard in my mind of, of hotel programs, which is the world of Hyatt and their points are just incredibly valuable. You can book luxurious aspirational stays as easily as you can book again, that room for your family where you just need to stay next to the airport for one night and then everybody else has got their uses.

I mean, Hilton continues to offer huge signup bonuses to continue to be able to find value there as a traveling family. Again, you can now book connecting rooms with points, which we just did in Orlando, which is great. I'm not a big fan of what they've done with some of their elite benefits, like not giving free breakfast anymore, but it's fine because I just go and stay at Hyatt.

So overall, I think it's still a war charge going by the wayside, except for Hyatt. It's not predictable how many points you're going to have to need or you're going to need anymore. And it's all about maximizing the revenue off of these programs rather than encouraging repeat loyalty. So it's very interesting to see how quickly it's changed.

And what do you think happens in the coming years? Are, is Hyatt going to follow the way of Marriott is what changes do you think happened 2022 and I guess beyond to these programs, both airline and hotel? We can talk for a very long time about the difference with hotel loyalty programs is that the majority of the hotels in these programs are not owned by Hyatt or they're not owned by Marriott.

They're owned by individual investors who pay marketing and licensing and program dollars to the big corporate. But ultimately they have a huge say to Marriott that says we're not going to do this elite breakfast because it's too expensive for us. And you don't reimburse us enough. And the corporate tie hands are tied a little bit, as far as most of the programs go.

I think what we're going to see happen, which we've seen a really big uptick in 2021, the beginning of 22 is hotels actually leaving programs like Marriott. They've lost a couple hotels in Venice in the last few weeks, and they've lost tons of properties to Sinesta. And if you haven't heard that hotel chain Sinesta, I guarantee you, you're going to hear it over the next couple of years, that they've almost tripled in size in just the last two years by acquiring hotels that are leaving programs like IHG and Marriott.

And unless those franchise agreements are fixed, I don't see things getting better. Now what Hyatt has done a good job is their franchise agreements and their terms and conditions of the program are written so that there's very little gray area, like the properties know what they're getting into, they know what they're going to get reimbursed.

And Hyatt does a great job of making sure that things are executed well. So I don't think, and I don't hope we're going to see Hyatt go the way that other programs have gone because of how they've structured these agreements with the property owners and how popular that program really is and continues to be with its members, like the program really does drive repeat guests.

So I hope we see things kind of stay where they are. Um, as far as these programs are going to continue to struggle in this program's going to continue to do really well. Do you think anything changes with flights and flight airline loyalty this year? If you'd asked me that last year, I would have said no, but then American came out and said, we're going to completely redo how elite qualifying works in our program, and it's really quite interesting, and I think it's great.

If you're not familiar with American loyalty points, give that a quick Google on the machine and read up, but basically you don't need to fly American anymore to get elite status, which is really quite amazing statement to say you can earn status off of spending on their co-branded cards, off of shopping with their partners, booking hotels and vacations through them, and you can go fly American twice a year and have top tier status.

I would argue rather easily, um, for anybody that's really trying. So that's really interesting. And it's going to be, uh, even more fascinating the rest of this year to see how that goes and how it's picked up and typically in the airline industry, it's rather copycat what airline aid does, at least amongst the big three BNC are quick to follow.

So I'm sure Delta and United are watching with great interest, how this is working and what kind of revenue is going to drive for the advantage program, um, of which I'm a loyal member of American, which we can talk about for several reasons, but I think it's great. I think it's interesting and we will see American could turn around if they don't like what they see after the first year and say, that was a really interesting experiment, but, uh, no more, or we could see Delta United go, you know what?

That's a great idea. Let's follow. And you don't even need to fly airlines anymore to get status, which again, is a remarkable statement. Yeah. Yeah. I hack here. I have listeners sometimes write in and say, you know, I have this business. I'm spending millions of dollars a year, and it seems to often be on categories that are nothing right.

This, someone said, I'm a contractor. I spend almost a million dollars a year on hardware and supply stores, and I could put it all on a credit card. What should I do? And I, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to do. It kind of is a very personal question, but if you value status on American and you've got a bunch of spend, that's not going to earn you five points.

There's four points or three points. An option is to use that spend to buy yourself American status at least this year, and, and we'll see how long that lasts. Yeah. Cause on top of that, you get redeemable miles as well. And American miles are fantastic. Great value to do luxury or weekender flights around.

So I find myself very much more engaged with the advantage program, which is what they're hoping for, you know, shopping portals and things like that, American offers earn you status. So I could tell the wife, Hey, if you're going to be doing any shoppers, we can, you know, to go to that advantage shopping portal, right?

Cause we want status again next year. Yeah. The shopping portals, I think are, are underrated in that sometimes it's, it's a point here. You could, you could use Rakuten or anything to get a point. And sometimes you get these crazy offers where it's 10, 20 miles per dollar. And so, you know, it's frustrating to look, I think there's a site I'll link it in the show notes and I want to say it is cashback monitor cashback.

And they'll, they'll give you both the shopping portals and the cashback portals for both of them. And it's pretty cool. They, sometimes those I've gotten 10, 10 points per dollar before on, I think, I think American. So at the end of 2021, a crazy deal came out. That was for every dollar you donated to conservation international which is like a featured mastercard charity.

You got 40 miles per dollar and you're thinking, Hey, that's pretty good. But at the end of the year, American also had a five X on all portal bonuses going on as well. So you got 240 American miles per dollar donated to conservation international. Um, and American honored it and people went all in on this thing.

Like I have friends and colleagues that donated $25,000 to conservation international to get millions of American miles at they, they prefunded five years or 10 years of travel for 25 grand all in business class, by the way. Cause once you have 20 million American miles, like it doesn't matter.

You can book whatever you want, whenever you want. And it's really quite fantastic. It sounds like a story from days of the past, but this was six weeks ago. And I did get a little taste of it. I did donate, uh, I think 300 bucks and got 72,000 American miles, which is more than enough to fly business class across the Atlantic.

So I look at just buying business class for 300 bucks. That's crazy. Yeah. I've been trying to think about, I've never been the social media person is just like all over it. I looked at a survey I did with listeners and they're like, that's what they want. So I'm going to start using my social media solely to just post when these crazy deals come out.

So, so, you know, give me a follow. If you want, I'll stay on top of them. Sorry. Sorry for everyone who missed the American one. I also missed it at the end of the year. It was just too crazy. But, um, you know, on top of that, I guess you probably get a tax write-off on the donation.

You do, it keeps going and going. And if you look at, there's some great websites out there that rate charities. Like I always go and look at the charity navigators. One of them that tells you like the expense ratio, like conservation international was an a plus plus in every category.

So you felt confident giving that money to this. I just want to know who was the guy or gal that set this deal with American. What kind of Christmas party did conservation international have after probably getting millions of dollars of donations over the course of a couple of days, like good job over there.

Who lost out in that? Like, is this American losing money? No, there's some really great insights into this deal. Specifically by my buddy, Gary left at view from the wing who wrote several articles over who was funding this. What basically happens is the charity paid none of it because they wouldn't agree to be in these portals if they were taking a lump of it, but it basically came down to mastercard funding it because this was done through the mastercard website called simply miles where you link a card and anytime you use it at a participating merchant, you get bonus miles, great details of the math.

How basically nobody lost to believe it or not in the way that this works again, because of tax write-offs and the pricing that you can have when you control it in the way that you can carry that liability of these miles. And while we think it's millions and millions of miles is a big deal from these promotions, the grand scheme of things, the amount of miles that were given out on this based on how many miles are outstanding in the American books was inconsequential.

And then if you ever want to go into loyalty accounting, who it is a complex and a rather amazing space about how they can defer the liability of these unredeemed miles to where nobody took a hit for this happening in the charity. One really fascinating stuff. Wow. Okay. So I'm going to link to that Gary's article.

What fantastic blog at the end, we'll recap some of the favorite people you follow in blogs, but that's all hotel loyalty. I think a big thing that everyone listening here wants to talk about is credit cards. So I kind of want to talk about the space cause we'll get to built, but a lot of crazy things have been happening in credit cards in the last few years.

And it feels like all of the issuers, the big issuers or the big four, at least are merging to the same place. And then city is just like, went on the side. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Wilting on the side. Where do you think we're at?

It seems like the average person that used to collect five or six cards now has three priority past memberships could buy global entry for their entire family. Yeah. I'm curious what you think of the state of cards. And one way, I think it's a race to the bottom. You cannot have the customer acquisition costs that these cards are now having and expect to make money because the demographic that's getting these cards in large part, they're not going to revolve, meaning they're not going to pay 25 to 30% interest and you're just getting the interchange off of them.

So looking at recent examples of the capital one venture X, you cannot go in an airport, turn on a sport show or look at commercials right now without seeing the same, it was like what in the Rose bowl, capital one venture X. I was in the airports this weekend.

I see it. That's on top of giving people a hundred thousand venture miles, which costs capital one money on top of a $200 vacation rental credit on top of paying blogs and content creators, who knows how much per card approval. So with all of that marketing, tangible signup benefits and everything like the quick numbers show you they're over $2,000 per customer acquisition costs.

I don't know how they make that back. I really don't. And I think it's the, the, the, uh, chase Sapphire reserve reincarnated. When that thing came out in 2016, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, everybody had to have it, but then that first report came out that showed how much money chase loss on the customer acquisition costs and how far it like to the magnitude of 20 X, what they expected to lose, to get these customers.

And what do we see now, five years later, that car is being moonlighted because it's losing a ridiculous amount of money customers are not revolving. And we've seen the value propositions of the chase Sapphire prefer move to be arguably better for $95 annual fee, rather than $550, which is why I really scratched my head when I see capital one, come out with this and go great for the consumers, don't get me wrong, like my wife and I both picked this thing up and now we have hundreds of thousands of venture miles, but they're not making any money.

So why wouldn't they take all of these efforts and make the venture card, which is a wonderful card for, especially for people who just don't want anything complicated and want to get miles and all the great improvements capital ones made with their loyalty program and replay the chase Sapphire reserve playbook, where you go awesome, but just make the venture card better, not do this luxury card thing to your point that like, I don't need another priority pass membership.

I don't need another global entry deal. What are we doing here? Is it because FOMO is because you just have to have something out there as a loss leader to get new customers. So what do you think, man? Like why, why, why throw this out? And no, you're probably not going to make money.

Yeah, I guess my perspective is that if I look at all these cards and I talk to people, I know everyone seems to have come to the terms that they're going to hold a card that has a 500 ish dollar annual fee. And because capital one didn't have one, it was kind of like, well, it doesn't make sense.

Like even, even if the extra incremental perks for the card aren't worth the extra fee, it just feels to me like it's never felt like capital one had a card worth holding and what was funny. So then VentureX comes out, huge signup bonuses. I get one, my wife gets one.

I tell my sister to get one. And my sister's not thinking about the bonuses as much as "Is this a card I'll spend on?" And she looks at the card and she's like, "Well, it seems like the Venture card's just as good. Like, I don't... There's three lounges. I've already got priority pass." So I was looking at it and I was like, "Man, I guess it was just like it convinced me to sign up for the huge bonus.

But I see, I feel like it's gonna be hard at the end of the year to not consider downgrading to just have the Venture card for, for less, but assuming they allow downgrading, I have a card. No, I agree. Like, why would you hold a VentureX long-term over the Venture card?

I don't, I don't know. The bonus earnings, the portal grade, et cetera, et cetera. But overall it's the competition of massive signup bonuses. So we've seen American Express the last six months has just let the wheels off and been like with the resi and small business offer, if you sign up for the right referral Platinum card at the right time, you could be earning like 18X on almost all spent.

Like 18 points per dollar on your American Express Platinum card. And people are earning millions of points. Like I don't, how are we making money on this folks? I just don't understand this. And is it because the executives in charge now, by the time the chickens come home to roost are not going to be in that position anymore.

They're just being lauded by how many new customer accounts are driving right now, which is a huge key metric for any bank executive is how many new accounts have you got, like, I don't know, it's pure speculation, this eventually has to all be redeemed at a real cost and I'm not sure what the banks are doing, how long this is sustainable, or if it's just one of those, like it's become so much money that it's funny money and we can figure out other metrics and KPIs to show success of this in market, how much market share we gained versus real dollars and cents that are lost.

So it doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to a lot of my colleagues. Now we're here at built as we design a credit card and a rewards program, because what we want to do is be sustainable. And the stuff I see now just, just isn't unless there's some magic key that I don't know about.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to get to built, but I'm going to get annihilated by people writing in. If I don't go back and say, can you walk through this 18X? Cause that's something that I think some people I know are going to ask me if I don't ask that question.

Yeah, there was, there was a MX platinum offer that came out from resi, like the table, the reserve, we can make a reservation at a restaurant with a partnership that said, Hey, sign up for the platinum card, get 125,000 membership rewards after the 5,000 and spend plus get 10 X points at all restaurants worldwide and Oh, by the way, get eight X at any small business.

So if your small business is also a restaurant, 18 X, you can also go on the small business website finder that MX has, and probably a lot of the places that you shop all the time, don't realize that they're small businesses and they're throwing like huge offers at you to go and spend there as well as statement credits as well as MX offers to go and shop it.

And it was just. Absolutely wild. You can just hit the Google machine, type in MX, platinum resi, small business, and you'll number one, have FOMO because you missed out. It's just, and then to my point, when I read these things go, who in the world is funding, who in the world is funding 18X like this stuff.

And is that still going on? It's not sadly, um, about two weeks ago. It's gone, but a great story. I got to share about my friend Nick Reyes over at a frequent miler. He's been trying to buy a brand new car on a credit card, left my dealership to find the entire credit card.

I was able to do this in 2015. He was very upset that he wasn't able to, so he was going to one up me. And sure enough, he did. He had an MX platinum card that had a retention offer, a signup bonus offer, and a small business offer. And he ended up getting over a half million Amex points by putting his entire new minivan on his MX platinum card, but two weeks ago.

And, and it's because he was able to stack all these offers. And in my mind, I go, the dealership just paid three to 4% to American express. American express just paid out 500,000 points. Like everybody loses in, in the consumer wins big. So how is this ecosystem sustainable? I really don't know, but it's amazing what goes on.

Yeah. But as long as it's out there, take advantage of the big signup bonuses, take advantage of some of these offers. And I assume by offers you mean you mean a lot of the offers that are in the portals when you log in and you, you view those, the offers that are add to card or there are other offers.

There's there's MX off. There's, um, MX American express specifically comes out with these limited time, like dining credits to head last year, you get Uber credits to come on your platinum card. It seems like you need a spreadsheet to keep up with all of these things. City has mastercard merchant offers.

Now Chase has offers now bank of America does that says, Hey, chop at this store, you spend 20 bucks and we'll give you either bonus miles or we'll give you 10 bucks back. And then what you do is you stack all of these together. And like, I'm going into the weeds right now.

People, but I just want to wet the appetite a little bit to know there's a better way to do what you're doing. Most likely if, if you want to earn American airline status, for example, when you have a master card, say you want to buy some wine, there's some great wine offers out there from wine clubs, wine, ink, wink, w I N C.com.

They have city merchant offers. They're going to give you bonus America miles from simple miles.com. And then you can shop through the advantage shopping portal. And you can essentially get by stacking these three deals together, like statement credit, bonus miles and wine show up at your door for either nothing or very little out of pocket.

And Oh, by the way, you're earning American airline status on that as of this year. And it's become like fun. Yes. How, what can I do to get, like, I want to get some wine for Valentine's day next week as a recording this, like I went ahead and ordered four bottles of wine from wink, got 2,500 American miles, and then the statement credit from city that made it cost a dollar 50 for four bottles of wine to show up great, happy Valentine's day.

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Yeah. So Card Pointers launched this app and they also have a Chrome extension. And similar to if anyone's ever had one of the Rakuten or Shopping Portal Chrome extensions, they do this for the offers. So you're on a website and they do two things. One, they pop up and say, "Hey, if you're going to buy something here, this is the card to use." So you can go in and say, "I have a Platinum, a Venture X, Chase Reserve, whatever." And then they'll say, "Hey, if you're going to check out on this website, make sure to use this card for the most points." But what they also do is say, "Hey, before you check out, Amex has an offer for this merchant.

So make sure you go to the Amex site and you load that offer in there." So I've been playing around with the app. Yeah, I have no relationship. The founder emailed me and was like, "Hey, thanks for mentioning us." I don't get anything for mentioning them. But these offers change so frequently on the card sites that if you don't have something to remind you, you just have to open up Amex and Chase and everything every morning and look.

Yeah. Two things to jump back to card stuff you mentioned. You said they're moonlighting the Chase Reserve. Do you think that that card goes away or loses all of its luster? Because I think a lot of people listening, that's their kind of go-to card. I think people need to reevaluate.

The value prop of the Chase Sapphire Preferred for, again, $450 less annual fee, you're basically earning the same points. And then the additional benefits of the CSR where people are like, "Oh, I can redeem for 1.5 cents instead of 1.25 cents." But are you redeeming 750,000 points at that marginal quarter to make the annual fee $450 annual fee up?

They're like, "Oh no, I'm not." I'm like, "You don't need the CSR." I don't think the card goes away. I just think there's less and less incentive to hold it. And the sign-up bonus is never going to be 100,000 again. And they're going to do everything they can to their other products to drive people away from it.

Which is, again, it was the gold standard of the credit card industry five years ago. So it's really interesting to see that happen to the product. But I just want people to take a hard look at why you're going to pay the annual fee for another year. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like Amex is in a similar boat where I find myself telling people, "Look, the Amex Platinum has a bunch of perks, and if the perks are worth the annual fee, maybe it's worth it." Most of the time, the reason I recommend the Platinum is because they're getting $150,000 or some ridiculous sign-up bonus.

But when I think about what I spend my money on, the Amex Gold is kind of like, it's a trend now, is that all these card issuers launch these super premium cards with huge sign-up bonuses, but the card that most people probably should be using more regularly is their cheaper card.

Yeah. Because after they issue all those points, they can't afford to keep paying you points in bonus categories. But yeah, $6.95 for the Platinum card, the vast majority of people, I would argue, who hold that don't need to. And it's just become incredibly frustrating to use the benefits or what's now going around as the Amex Coupon Booklet, just to try and keep up with everything, and then when you come out on the same day with a SoulCycle offer and Walmart Plus, you're like, "These are very different American demographics.

Who are we going after here, folks? Like, who is this card for? Because I don't know anymore." And it's wild. For me, the Amex Platinum, it's the Coupon Booklet, and it makes sense if you book a lot of flights. If you travel, great. Yeah. I don't know where you're getting 5X on flights that you can book on the airline's website and not have to book through a portal, but outside of that, you've got to really work hard.

I've got to work hard. I'm like, "What am I going to buy at Saks before the end of the year? I've got to spend my $50." And I try to justify that those $50 are worth $50, but otherwise, I'm not actually buying this fancy hand soap or whatever it is on the list this year.

And the last thing, and then I want to jump to Bilt, is Citi. All these conversations I'm having now are Cap One, they're Amex, they're Chase. They're now including Bilt. Like, is Citi out of the game? Are they trying to get in the game? Citi's struggled a long time with who they are.

Thank you points are a great currency. Their big struggle is that they don't have any domestic transfer partners. So if you want to fly domestically, it's a problem, which is, I think, Capital One's biggest knock right now for everything great they've done. They still don't have a domestic transfer partner.

But thank you points as they stand on their own are a great currency. All the ancillaries of dealing with Citi are my problem. So if you've got new Citi cards about the fraud alert shenanigans that happened and the endless loop of trying to get out of these fraud alert shenanigans, Citi IT really struggles.

And then they decimated the Citi Prestige, which was an amazing card four or five years ago, down to a shell of its former self and not even open for applications anymore. I don't think anybody should be ignoring Citi, Citi Double Cash or any two Citi thank you points on every dollar is great that you can combine with the big signup bonus of the Citi Premier, which has nice bonus categories.

I think it's great, but sometimes Citi just absolutely frustrates you from the customer experience that you don't want to mess with them anymore, which is what happened to me and my wife. I just endless fraud alerts trying to get out of it. They're like, you have to give us the chase login and your chase account in order for us to verify you on Citi.

It's a real story. And it's a real thing that they do. And then you like think it's all cleared up and then you go and swipe the card declined fraud alert, call us. And you're just like, okay, I'm done. I think it's, it's just absolutely maddening from a customer perspective sometime to use it.

But, you know, I keep Citi thank you points in the bank account and sitting around just in case they have access to a few programs that nobody else does. They just really got to clean up that user experience and get them excited again, and again, decide who are their cards for and what do they want to be.

Yep. That makes sense. So I want to talk about built, right? You guys have basically, you spent the last, you know, decade in this industry trying to figure out how it all works and reporting and from every angle, and now you're actually on the ground building a new card and thinking about it with all that perspective.

So I touched on it briefly, right? We talked about in a past episode, I think it was Brian Kelly. He mentioned built, we talked about how it earns points on rent, but maybe give a quick recap of, you know, what the card does and kind of who it's for.

Yeah. So built rewards is a standalone loyalty program. Anybody can participate in the built rewards loyalty program. If you live in the built rewards Alliance. So we've gone out and partnered with the largest real estate companies in the world. We have 2 million apartments in the United States. Now that are in the built rewards Alliance.

If you download our app and pay your landlord through our app, and they're all directly integrated with this, we give you 250 points a month, cost nothing. There's no fees. We just want to give you something where you previously got nothing. Need the card. That's just the loyalty program.

And what's happening is, and why the landlords and real estate people are so excited is it's really expensive in many markets to find new qualified tenants or to retain tenants. There's been no marketing lever that they can pull to say, resign a lease with us, except for giving cash out of their pockets.

And it's paying a broker a month's rent, a month and a half rent to go and find a new tenant. Now they can issue built points. So if you're saying 250 points, isn't a lot like that's not really going to get me anything. I'll tell you what the points are worth in a little bit, but the landlords can say, Hey, if you resign this lease, here's 20,000 points.

If you refer a friend to this building, we'll give you 20,000 points or whatever the landlord wants to issue. If they have really want to attract somebody 50,000 bill points to come and sign a lease, sorry, you had a maintenance issue. We had no way to make that right now.

We're going to issue you 5,000 points and say, we're sorry that, you know, something in your apartment broke. And the landlords are like, Holy smokes, this is great. This is a universal loyalty program to attract and retain residents. We're all in to the point that some of them are now investors with us.

But on top of that, we wanted to supersize earning ability and we created the built mastercard and this is a no annual fee card open to soon to be open to anybody in the United States. We've had it on a wait list for now, while we really perfect the product that's been out for less than a year.

But very soon, almost everybody in the United States will be able to apply for the built rewards card. No annual fee card earns one X points on rent. No matter where you live in the country, any landlord, you can pay. You can pay in the built rewards app and we will mail your landlord, a physical check.

Now you can use your built rewards, mastercard as an ACH and pay your landlord. Again, any landlord, any portal, rent cafe, click, pay all these things. We'll give you a routing and checking account number that will charge to your bill card earn one X points on rent, two X points on travel and three X points on dining.

And it's a world elite card with all kinds of crazy benefits that are really quite absurd for a no fee card. But in the end, we want to give people something where previously they got nothing. I don't know how many people ask you, can they pay their rent with a credit card and you're like, yeah, but the fee's going to, you know, wipe away any value that you get.

Well, I mean, now it's possible. So we're really excited about what we've done. Yeah. I've gotten that question plenty of times. And the answer is always, no, it's never worth it until now. So card makes total sense. You pay rent, you should have the card. What about people who don't pay rent?

What about people who own their home? I know a lot of people listening own homes. Yeah. And I get asked 3,748.5 times a day. Can I pay my mortgage with this? And the answer so far is not yet. There's 109 million renters in the United States, and that is more than enough customers to try and go after for right now.

But I, but I want to let everybody know that we've heard the feedback loud and clear, and we would love to make that happen. And it's something we talk about regularly, but for now, just your personal rent that you can pay, you know, zero one, two, three value proposition is the same as the Chase Sapphire preferred that gives one X points and I'll spend two X on travel and three X on dining, but they charge a $95 annual fee and we have the same and some different slash better transfer partners than they do.

So to everybody that says the Chase Sapphire preferred is my go-to card. It's a great, it's a great card, but why would you not go to our card? But it's no annual fee. You're in the same amount of points and have access to American Airlines as a transfer partner.

And it's a good conversation to get back and forth into. My motto has really been, we're going to wear you down. When we first came out in June, we continue to iterate and make the program better and better. I want to hear all the feedback. I listen all the time.

I keep my head to the ground with the formal world. I was in to hear what people are saying and the arguments for and against the bill card. And we're constantly iterating and we're coming out with some really exciting new things over the next couple of months that it's going to be like resistance is futile.

Like eventually the quiz is going to be like, okay, like they've worn me down. Like I gotta be a part of this and have access to all the great things that the, that the card's doing. Yeah. And you mentioned American, which I think is interesting because I've always had this attitude of, I want to make sure I have points everywhere, because if I want to take a trip in a certain place, I want to be able to do it.

And American's been the hardest to earn points on, in my opinion. But there used to be these great offers for American cards. And I remember it used to be able to sign up for all three in one day and not, and only get one credit check gone, gone. I think are those days.

And, and then right now with super low interest rates, I've used Basque bank to put some money in so that I earned a few American airlines points each month. But this is interesting because I think the lead value prop might turn some people away for, I don't have rent.

It is a place where if you want for no annual fee to start earning some points that you can get into American, that's great, but where else can you use. Yeah. So we have seven airline, uh, transfer partners, all one to one. So American aeroplane, Hawaiian airlines, Virgin points, Turkish miles and smiles and Emirates skywards, uh, as well as flying blue and then two hotel partners, we have all three alliances covered plus Emirates, which is not an Alliance, but it has a pretty, uh, expansive and global network.

And then between IHG and high, it's pretty much anywhere you go in the world. You could use bill points to book a free hotel night. So really exciting list of transfer partners and I'm not going to spill any beans, but I'll just let you know, we're never done with that list and we'll, we'll continue working to try and make it, make it more robust and more exciting.

So you, you mentioned earlier, one of the problems with all these card issuers is that they're doing completely unsustainable things and until the bill card, paying rent with a credit card, any landlord that offered that would just be losing money. And, and as a consumer using sites like plastic, which would go pay your rent and, and then, you know, you're paying a fee.

So how is this sustainable? Yeah, everybody, everybody asks us, how are you making money? So, um, let's think about all the different revenue streams that we have. Number one, we have a credit card, which means we get the interchange. Every time you swipe it, people pay interchange for that card.

And that's how card issuers make money. Second, we have our real estate people that are buying bill points to issue to new current prospective residents. So it's landlord funded loyalty program on top of interchange. And then the aspirational award for us is you can actually redeem bill points for the down payment on a house.

We can make homeownership a reality for renters. And we do that not only by being able to use points for the covering and down payment on mortgage, but we also report all of your on-time rent payments to all three credit bureaus, which every landlord in the country can do now, but 98% do not because what do they care?

There's nothing in it for them. And that's going to increase your credit score significantly, which makes, uh, you qualify for a much more favorable mortgage and saves you thousands over the course of buying a home. Um, and with that comes the ability to be a mortgage originator and the mortgage origination business is huge and a very, um, profitable business to be in if you do it correctly.

So between the interchange, between being a mortgage originator and between landlords funding the program, this is very sustainable and it's one of the first questions I had for our founder, when I went and met him and heard about this is like, I want to be something that's part of a sustainable business.

I don't want to be hopping businesses in six months and I don't want to be on the current VC hamster wheel of show growth at all costs, despite if you're losing millions of dollars, you just need to show growth to get to the next round of funding, like I just didn't want to be a part of that personally.

We did one round of fundraising last year. We might do another, but we don't necessarily have to. That's a sustainable business model and we're excited about it. There is nothing I love more than learning that something I enjoy is actually so good for you. And nothing showcases that better than Pu-erh tea.

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Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. So one of the things you guys do that I think is fascinating is I've never seen a bit of content from Amex or Chase or Capital One saying, "Hey, here's how to get the most value out of these points." I feel like I'm always being pushed to use them in the worst way as possible.

"Hey, you can use your points for this terrible redemption, buy gift cards online," but they're never walking you through how to transfer your points to other airlines. And I've seen a couple of videos you put out saying, "Hey, let me walk you through how you could use your points to get to Europe for almost nothing." That's one example, but I'd love if you can share how should people do this?

What is the advice you give to your cardholders on how to maximize points with so many transfer partners that the average person doesn't want to log onto all seven sites and say, "Okay, what's it cost if I use this person or this airline, or if I transfer to Flying Blue, then I book on Delta?" It's a tough game that I used to tell people you could sign up for all these paid services, or you can go one by one.

Is there an easy answer that you have for people? The easy answer is unfortunately no, but we're trying hard. So we've done a couple of things like you mentioned. If you go into our app, there's a flights tab where I've curated a bunch of content that's separated out by airline.

It says, if you want to fly this airline, whether it's a partner of ours or not, click on that tile that we have in our app. And I've very quickly with screenshots showing you how to fly it. So JetBlue is not a transfer partner of ours, but you can fly in with BuiltPoints through Emirates.

If you want to fly JetBlue, click on the JetBlue tile and very quickly, I tell you how to do that. The next thing we've done is we have a real-time award search functionality in the BuiltRewards app now. Right now we have American and AeroPlan on it. So if you search any route in the world, it will instantly show you both AeroPlan and American results.

All you have to do is tab between them in the app and we're working hard to get our other partners involved in that. So that's an easy way to do one search and see at least Star Alliance and One World availability as quick as you can. But the end results of all of this and basically everything we've talked about today is if you want something really good, it's going to take a little bit of effort.

And what my job is, and one of them is to make that effort minimal, but it is going to take some effort. Um, so through the content, through the videos that we're putting out and through this new real-time award availability search, we feel like we're on the right path and again, for being less than a year old.

And as you said, nobody other, nobody else is trying to educate their members on how to maximize points. We feel like we're in a good spot and we're on the right path to making it easy. And can people do that in your app and search American and AeroPlan availability if they don't have the card?

Is that something anyone can do? Again, anybody can download the BuiltRewards app and read all of our content, but you will have to join in order to get the logged in experience. But all of the content and that search feature is available if you're not logged in and you haven't created an account.

So we just want to be a resource. So whether you're like, I'm not a renter, but this sounds interesting, or I want to learn how to use these programs, like download the BuiltRewards app and take a look at all the content and tools that we've created there. And you've been in this space a long time outside of the BuiltRewards app.

If someone comes to you and says, "God, I got all these Amex and Chase points." What's your advice to them on how to, how to not get stuck redeeming them at, at terrible valuations? Yeah, there's some new technology coming out. This one that you, you brought it out to me, card pointers.

I feel like there, there are dozens of people out there making great products to make all of this simpler. Um, some of the ones I'd recommend, the card curator app is a great one that'll guide you in how to do these points in a simple process. Max rewards is another product out there.

That's helping folks make this simpler. And then there's some new technology not released yet that I'm excited about probably in the next six months. That will be public facing. That will basically tell you in real time, Hey, this is how you can use your points to go where you want to go.

And you just tell them what points you have. So the easy answer is to go check out some of these technologies that I've just mentioned. Um, the hard answer is go to Google and search best way to use X points. And I'm sure the points guy article that maybe I wrote will be at the top of the search results, uh, giving you step-by-step breakdown, but again, Probably just like you, when you have friends and family ask you these questions and you try and make it as simple as possible.

You can tell pretty quick if their eyes glass over in three seconds, you're like, I'm going to go ahead and stop. Or some people they light up and they go, wait, there really is something here. This is not a multi-level marketing scheme. Like this is something I can get excited about.

I think that's a lot of people listening here. Hey everybody. I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with point dot 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 all the hacks.com/point me and use the promo code hacks again, all the hacks.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, do you have, you know, favorite redemptions right now? Things that, you know, despite all the devaluations and dynamic pricing that are just the sweet spots and in the award charts, yeah, a hundred percent Turkish miles and smiles to fly United specifically to Hawaii for 7,500 miles.

That's 7,500 bill points or city. Thank you. Points transferred to Turkish. You can go to Hawaii and then you can fly Turkish themselves, which is an amazing product to Istanbul, like 33,000 points in business class from the East coast to Turkey, out of all their destinations, if you haven't slept on the Turkish miles and smiles program, now's the time to wake up and either fly United or fly Turkish with it.

Beyond that American web specials, the Delta flash sales. If you don't have that page bookmarked that they update all the time, just really great domestic and international deals all the time, probably be the top three that I would tell folks that are most relevant that they need to check out.

Any good deals on Emirates for people who have been buying that Emirates first-class experience. Back in the days of when Alaska charged very reasonable amounts of miles to fly them, it was a lot easier. Now it's just going to cost you a lot to skywards credit. They eliminated fuel surcharges, which took the program out of complete irrelevancy to now very relevant program.

If you want to do Emirates first-class taking their fifth freedoms from Newark and JFK to Milan and Athens, it's going to be your best bet to do that under 200,000, uh, skywards miles, uh, or transfer from chase or transfer from MX or transfer from built to make that round trip, um, it's going to be your best bets.

The other only thing I'll say about that is sometimes quantities can be a little bit better of a deal, charge a little bit fewer points, and you can transfer city over to Qantas and take advantage of that. All right. And any best redemption stories from your end? I got a lot.

My very first trip, believe it or not, 2010, when United has favorable award routing rules that we call stopovers and open jaws, my wife and I flew around the world in business and first-class for 110,000 United miles by piecing together all of their, again, the routing rules. We did Seattle to Hawaii, to Tokyo, to Seoul, to Frankfurt, and then back to Seattle and Lufthansa first-class and United business class in Asia and a first-class, and it was just fantastic.

Yes. And what, what you're talking about for anyone who doesn't know, a lot of airlines have these rules where if you want to fly, you can add a stopover or you can change where you're going to and coming from. So you could book instead of a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Frankfurt and back, you could go to Frankfurt and fly back from Milan, or you can stop over on your way there.

And sometimes you can, not every airline still has these, you know, kind of great rules, but some of them do still, I don't know if you remember which ones do now, but you can still take advantage of them. You can add stopovers to an airplane ticket for 5,000 airplane points.

Airplane is their newly redesigned. One of those programs that's headed in the right direction and just did a fantastic job in the redesign. If you're not familiar with the ins and outs, we're familiar at all with airplane, please go read up on that. Great articles out there explaining how you can get just tons of value by seeing multiple destinations on one ticket by using stopovers and open draws.

It's fantastic. And they're transfer partners of you got chase and built and American express. Yeah. So a lot of options to get in there. A lot of people always tell me, gosh, Amex doesn't go to United. And I like to fly United and I'm like, Ooh, they go to aeroplane.

They got United inventory. So don't forget that if you have a card that has access to an Alliance, it's not always perfect. Sometimes you might rather have American points than British airways points, but you can use BA to book on American. And sometimes for, I don't know if it's still the case, but BA used to be so good for these short flights, but if the availability is there, it's still a great deal, a hundred percent.

Yeah. Cool. Quick few things before we go travel hacks, like outside of award booking, you've been to dozens of countries. I don't, I don't know how big the list is at this point, but what have you picked up both on the traveling, when you get to places, what are your favorite hacks?

Yeah, it all pretty much revolves around the practical is what I like to tell people because there are all kinds of advanced things I get in the weeds, but the practical things of like, how do I get cash? Where do I do the exchange with the getting screwed on the exchange rate?

So I'll tell you what to do. I have a USA checking account. You can, if you don't qualify for USA through military, you can use the Schwab. I go to a bank ATM in the country and pull out cash in the local currency. And that way it uses my bank's exchange rate, which is going to be fair.

And it avoids all the shenanigans of exchanging cash at a desk or with one of these airport folks. And I do not use the bank or the ATM at the airport. I always go to the hotel and then find the most local or closest ATM, use my ATM card and pull out cash there.

It's the best way to get cash. The second practical travel hack or piece of advice is a dynamic currency conversion, DCC. This occurs when you go to check out of your hotel in a foreign country. And it says, Hey, do you want to use us dollars? Or do you want to use our local currency?

And most Americans go, Oh, sweet. I'll just do dollars. Cause I know how much that is. Don't do that. Always charge in local currency, because what they do is they use a very unfavorable exchange rate. They end up charging you in the local currency anyways, and then your bank exchange rate gets you again.

So they make like on the order of magnitude of 10% worse than what the actual market exchange rate is. So always select that local currency. If you're at a restaurant or if you're checking out of a hotel in a foreign country, now it's called the dynamic currency conversion. I don't want to say it's a scam, but it is a revenue center to do that.

It's always local currency. Anything else when you get to a city, how you make sure you have the best experience. One of the amazing things about the points and miles community is pretty much everywhere you go. Somebody is either there that's happy to help you, or somebody has detailed explanations of how they did it, things to see and things to avoid.

So just after so many years in the community, you're very lucky that there's forums and places to put out a, Hey, help me post in again. People will jump to the rescue. The biggest hack for that is become a part of this community. There are multiple Facebook groups that you can go and join is where I would tell you to start, go and check out the travel on points.

Go and check out miles to memories, Facebook group, the frequent miler Facebook group. If you're not on Facebook, you can head to the Reddit community. Reddit credit cards is a great place to go and check out and meet folks and then flyer talk.com. So the best way I do that is literally going to one of these communities and saying either searching for that city and somebody's written up a detailed, awesome experience or asking, Hey, I'm going to be going here.

Does anybody have any tips? And people are more than willing to help out. That's the typical strategy. Yeah. I'm in a lot of those communities too, and we're going to be kicking one off for, for all the hacks here sometime in 2022, you mentioned a lot of forums. What about any, any blogs that you love people, people in the community that others should follow?

Yeah, a hundred percent. We, we mentioned Gary earlier. He's a borderline savant when it comes to the travel and loyalty industry, like literally from a nuts and bolts perspective, if you really want to understand the inner workings of these things, you need to go and read view from over by Gary.

And if you're just a crazy points and miles, I'm going to extract maximum value of earning and redeeming points. Greg and Nick over at the frequent miler is a daily must read. And then, uh, somebody that kind of takes, uh, a little bit of storytelling along with the, the nuts and bolts that are the folks over miles to memories that you got to follow.

So between those three sites, you're pretty much going to get everything that you need on a daily basis. And really the boarding area network as a whole of which these bloggers all belong to the same network, boarding area.com. Just get plugged in, spend a little bit of time. Don't get overwhelmed.

Read something that catches your interest. And sure enough, I he'll be down that rabbit hole with the rest of us in no time. Yeah. I'll link to all those in the show notes. You mentioned some hacks that just broadly for, for cities. What about your hometown? You live in Atlanta.

I'm curious, what do you, what would you tell someone listening? Who's taking their first trip to Atlanta that they should make sure they check off the list. Besides checking out a world champion, Atlanta Braves baseball game, which I always recommend up at the new stadium. It's a great time.

Atlanta, I would say five years ago as a place where people said, Hey, I want to come to a weekend trip in Atlanta. I would have been like, eh, probably not. Like it's just not a weekend spot to do, but Atlanta has done a great job of turning itself around the food scene, the revitalization of places like underground Atlanta, the pond city market are great places.

You check out, we have everything Martin Luther King and the civil rights site and museum to go. And those sites to see, we have the largest aquarium in the world, the world of Coca-Cola, the college football hall of fame, like it's all right down there and plenty of things to go and see.

So those are some of the top attractions that I think is worthwhile. And as far as the eats go every week and new restaurants popping up in Atlanta, that's the new hottest upcoming chef. Also the Georgia film industry has completely taken off outside of LA. Georgia is now the number two spot in the country for doing a movie and TV show.

There's always celebrities in town, filming something to places, booming, man. Um, so I would go and check it out to a favorite restaurants. Marcel is a French restaurant. Please make reservations far in advance. You want to go check that out and bring your significant other there for a great night.

And then, uh, Yebo beach house, Y E B O up in the city of Buckhead, where all the brand new hotels, the Thompson Buckhead has just opened the Hyatt centric Buckhead has just opened the Yebo beach house, go and get some amazing South African fair there. And you can actually walk there from the new Thompson hotel.

It's going to be a great evening. So Atlanta on the up and up, man, we're excited. Awesome. This has been fantastic. I'm sure there's going to be some questions out of this. We might have to have to bring it back on or do a followup, but where can people find everything you're working on online?

Yeah, of course. Again, download the built rewards app and check out everything we're doing there. But you can find me at Kerr points, K E R R on Instagram and Twitter is where I am most active. Love to hear the feedback. Great, bad, and ugly about built rewards. But also I talk points and miles and travel 24, seven, and I post my travel adventures.

That sounds great. Thank you so much for being here. My absolute pleasure, man. Thanks. 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, especially Spotify since they just added podcast ratings.

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. I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement. It's called the personal finance podcast, and it's much more about building generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar. It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in this world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show.

So entertaining. I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022, but recently I listened to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind. And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in their employer's retirement plan.

And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared. The personal finance podcast has something for everyone. It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with your money and grow your wealth. So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search for the personal finance podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.