(upbeat music) - 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 so excited you're here today for an episode all about the hidden benefits you get with your credit cards. And when I say hidden benefits, I'm not talking about the main perks that cards market, like lounge access or free checked bags.

I'm talking about all the others, like travel insurance, purchase protection, which I've used to repair multiple iPhone screens for free, and lots of other perks you might not know about, like rental car discounts, concierges, free wine tastings, free credit scores, and a lot more. I know I've saved thousands of dollars using all these hidden benefits, so I am excited to share them with you so you can do the same.

But two quick things. First, you probably know I've been on a quest to hit 1,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts. And as of this recording, I'm at 993. So thank you to everyone who's left a rating or a review. It means so much to me. And if you haven't done it yet and wanna be one of the last few people to help me get over the edge, that would be amazing.

Second, one of the best travel cards out there, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, just increased the signup bonus to 80,000 ultimate rewards points. I know many of you already have this card or have the Chase Reserve, but if not, this is a fantastic bonus on a card that earns 3X on dining, streaming, and online groceries, and 2X on travel, or 5X on travel if you book in the Chase portal.

While I've been able to get as much as 4 to 5 cents of value for my Chase points, if I'm being conservative, I can value them at 2 cents because of their flexibility to transfer to so many great partners like Hyatt, United, Air France, which makes that signup bonus worth at least $1,600 in my eyes.

Now, I know Chase has a few important rules that I wanna make sure you think about before you think you can just jump in and get this bonus. First, as is true for all Chase cards, you can't have more than five cards opened in the last 24 months, including being added as an authorized user.

That's the 5/24 rule, so if you're already at 5/24, you have to wait. Second, you can't have more than one Chase Sapphire card, so if you already have the Reserve or the Preferred Now, you're gonna need to downgrade to something like the Freedom or the Freedom Unlimited, and you'll probably wanna wait a few weeks or maybe even one statement cycle before applying again.

And finally, you can't have earned a Chase Sapphire bonus in the past 48 months, which starts when the statement closes that you earn the bonus, not when you actually open the card, so it might be a little more like two or three months after when you first opened that card.

So if given all of that, you're still eligible, this is the best bonus I've seen online for this card, and if you wanna support me in the show, you can sign up at allthehacks.com/cards and use the links there, but as much as I'd love you to use those links, I have heard that you can get a 90,000 point bonus on the Sapphire Preferred by applying in a Chase branch.

It's not a guarantee, it's one of those things where some people have had success and some people haven't, but I want you to get the most points possible, so if going to a Chase branch is worth getting those extra 10,000 points and it's nearby, that might be a great option for you to at least try out.

Okay, those are my two quick announcements, let's talk about these credit card benefits right after this. Okay, so almost every card out there has a guide to benefits that you get when you first open the card that explains all the benefits. It looks like one of those terms and condition docs and many of us just throw them away, so you can usually search online to find yours, I'll include a few links in the show notes that'll help you find one, and some issuers make it really easy.

If you just search Chase Sapphire Reserve Guide to Benefits, there's a PDF, it's so quick and simple. Some make it a little difficult, you might even have to call or send a message to get it, and then there's Capital One, which is a whole different beast, and I honestly didn't actually know this about Capital One until I started preparing for this episode, but when you apply for a Capital One card, you might not actually know whether it's gonna be a Visa or a MasterCard, and within those issuers, they have different tiers, there's Visa Infinite, Visa Signature, MasterCard World, MasterCard World Elite, and you don't actually know which one of those cards you're gonna get until you go through the application process and the underwriting and get the card, and then you'll find out.

So when you actually go to look at the list of the Guide to Benefits for Capital One cards, they actually just give you a list that says, "Hey, if your card's a MasterCard World Elite, "here's the Guide to Benefits," but you won't know which one it is until you get the card and are approved for it.

So Capital One makes it extra difficult. As I go through this episode, I would love to be able to tell you for every specific card what perks and what benefits you have, and it would be amazing if I could somehow custom use AI to automatically generate the content in this episode just for you and your cards, but we're not there yet, so I'm gonna do my best to tell you everything you need to know, and I'll put as many links in the show notes as I can to help out.

First, I'm gonna start with purchase benefits. For so many cards, there are a ton of benefits you get anytime you buy something with your card, and the requirement is usually only that you put the cost of the purchase on your card, and all these claims that you might have to do to get money back are pretty easy to do online.

I've filed at least four or five purchase protection benefit claims online and have been reimbursed well over $1,000, so it's definitely worth taking advantage of these if you wanna make sure that you're getting the most out of your credit cards for the next time you have an opportunity. And just to be clear, when I say put the purchase on your card, that's important because if you're buying something on Amazon and you end up using your Amazon gift card instead of using your credit card, you're not gonna get all these perks, and for some of these protections, the amount that you're able to be reimbursed is limited by the amount you put on the card, and others, it's just a requirement that you put a purchase of any amount on the card.

So for example, for a lot of the travel protection benefits, as long as some aspect of the purchase is on your card, that could even mean just the taxes and fees of a ticket that you bought with miles, you're covered. For some things, you might need to put the entire purchase on if you wanna maximize the benefit.

The first benefit I wanna talk about is purchase protection. This is one of my favorites because it means you can get reimbursed to repair or replace items that you bought on your card that get stolen or damaged within 90 to 120 days of purchase depending on the card you have.

This is a common benefit offered on so many different cards, and it usually requires the entire purchase to be on the card, and is often limited to up to $10,000 per item and up to $50,000 per year, which is a lot. Now, there are a ton of exclusions for things like animals, software, perishables, vehicles, but most common purchases like electronics or home goods are covered.

I've used purchase protection to replace an SD card that I ran through a washing machine to repair at least three cracked iPhone screens. Note that normally the screen needs to have been cracked within three to four months of the original purchase. However, one time I actually cracked my phone screen nine months after I bought the phone, so it wasn't covered.

But then I managed to drop my phone again and crack the screen just a few weeks later, and so I was able to get the second repair covered by pointing out that the screen that was cracked wasn't the original phone that was nine months ago, it was the screen that I had bought a few weeks ago as a replacement.

So I know that might seem a little crazy, but when there's a few hundred dollars on the line, it's definitely worth trying to see if you can make it happen. Also, I promise, I don't really break my screen as much as this might seem. I've probably done it three or four times in my life, but it just happens that I take advantage of this perk all the time, and for some reason, it seems like it always breaks within 90 days of buying the phone.

Also, if you're outside of that 90-day window, later in this episode, I'm gonna cover cell phone coverage, which actually might cover you, but with a deductible, whereas Purchase Protection has no deductible. So that's Purchase Protection, definitely an awesome perk. Another one I love is Extended Warranty. This is another common benefit that increases the manufacturer's warranty of an item by an additional year, or on a lot of city cards, by an additional two years.

So similar to Purchase Protection, it's often limited to $10,000 on an item or $50,000 in a year. This is something that's come in handy for me, especially with things like a computer. I bought a MacBook Pro a handful of years ago, and sometime in year two, after Apple's one-year warranty was up, something went wrong.

And Apple, of course, was gonna charge me to fix it because it was outside of the warranty, and I didn't pay for AppleCare, but I used the Extended Warranty Protection on my card, and that covered the cost to repair the computer. In researching this, I didn't actually realize that city cards had two years of additional warranty.

So if I were gonna buy something like a computer where the cost to repair it in years two or three could be pretty expensive, I'd probably prioritize putting that on a card, like a city card, so that I could get the Extended Warranty Protection for two years, even if it meant getting less points, because it's just, I like that safety, and the only other alternative is paying for something like AppleCare, which is gonna cost way more than the points I would otherwise get.

There's also a benefit called Return Protection. It's a commonly offered perk that extends the return window of something, or even creates a return policy where one didn't exist, either because the retailer doesn't accept returns or something was final sale. I actually haven't used this benefit yet, but in the past, I've probably been hesitant to buy things that are final sale, thinking, "Oh, if I actually don't like this, "there'll be no way to return it." And I don't think I need to be worried about that anymore, as long as I put it on a card with Return Protection.

No, however, Return Protection, unlike Purchase Protection, Extended Warranty, usually has much lower limits than other benefits, often 250, $300 per item, and usually caps out at around $1,000 a year. So that's one I haven't tried yet, but stay tuned if I do. The last one in this group is called Price Protection.

It's much less common now that a lot of cards have been taking it away, but it reimburses you the difference when the price of something you purchased drops within a few months. It was really common, and now it's only on a handful of cards, mostly obscure ones that I don't think are very common, like the UBS Visa Infinite card.

Some Capital One cards actually do have this perk, but I can't tell you which ones, because as I mentioned before, it's a perk tied to a specific type of card, like a MasterCard World Elite, but I don't actually know if that's the card that you have, because you might have a Quicksilver card that is a MasterCard World Elite, while someone else might have that exact same card, and it's just a regular Visa Signature card.

So you're gonna have to look up whether your Capital One card has this by going to the Guide to Benefits. I'll link to that in the show notes, and matching it up with which kind of card you have. One hack, if you're not eligible for this, I have had so much luck chatting, or emailing, or even calling a retailer to just ask them to refund the difference when a price drops, especially if it's within the return window of buying something.

Most retailers would much prefer to just give you $10 back, then have you send something back, then repurchase it to save $10, because they're probably gonna spend more than that in shipping. So that's an option if you want some price protection, and you can't actually get it from a card.

Now, all these benefits, like I said, you need to put the purchase on the card, so I'm really cognizant when I'm buying something to make sure I'm not using gift cards if I want these benefits to kick in. So if someone gives me an Amazon gift card, I'm much more likely to use that Amazon gift card to buy groceries with Amazon Fresh than I am to buy electronic product that I might wanna use these perks for, because I'm really not expecting to be able to need extended warranty protection on bananas, or anything else I'm buying from the grocery store.

So that's one thing to keep in mind, especially with things like if you're buying something and you wanna try to get an even better deal, so you're gonna buy gift cards. I know I always talk about the strategy of buying gift cards at the grocery store, so you can get 4X points with an Amex Gold.

Keep in mind that for some things that's fine, but if you're buying gift cards so that you can buy things to get these benefits, you might not get those benefits if you're paying with a gift card. Now, you could potentially read the terms and conditions, see whether it's capped at the purchase price or not.

If not, then make sure you put at least some of the purchase on your card. So that's one big category of benefits I've used a ton. It is astonishing how much of our personal information is online, and in the last few months, I've been trying to remove as much of Amy and my info as possible.

I also did the same for our parents, and in total, after reviewing over 20,000 listings, we found over 1,000 pieces of personally identifiable information. Thankfully, it's all getting removed, and instead of spending 50-plus hours searching and filing requests to do that, it only took a few minutes because I used Delete.me from Abine, and I am so excited to be partnering with them for this episode.

Delete.me is an amazing service that will not just find and remove your personal information from over 500 data broker websites, but they'll continuously scan for new data that shows up and get that removed as well. On average, Delete.me finds and removes over 2,000 pieces of data for a customer in their first two years, and to date, they've removed over 35 million pieces of data for their customers.

So if you wanna get your personal information removed from all these listings on the internet, go to allthehacks.com/deleteme and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. Again, that's allthehacks.com/deleteme. With Mother's Day around the corner, I'd be crazy not to share an absolutely amazing gift idea, which also happens to be one of my favorite brands as well.

It's something Amy and I use almost every day, and I know it would make a great gift for anyone. But what is it? Well, it's really anything Viore makes. They're one of my all-time favorite brands, and I'm so excited to be partnering with them for this episode. Viore makes performance apparel that's incredibly versatile.

Everything is designed to work out in, but it doesn't look or feel like it at all, and it is so freaking comfortable you will wanna wear it all the time. I know because I do wear it all the time. In fact, I'm wearing my Sunday Performance Joggers and a Strato Tech Tee right now, and like I said, it's not just for men.

My wife will vouch that everything she's bought, from their joggers to their hoodies to their tops, have been an amazing purchase. I think at least half of our weekly wardrobe is Viore because their products are incredibly versatile and can be used for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, or yoga, but they're also great for lounging, running around town, and they even have polos, button-downs, and nice pants you can wear for work or a night out.

Honestly, I think Viore is an investment in your happiness, and All The Hacks listeners can get 20% off your first purchase, as well as free shipping on any U.S. order, over $75, and free returns. So definitely check them out at allthehacks.com/viore, V-U-O-R-E. Again, go to allthehacks.com/V-U-O-R-E, and get yourself or your loved one some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet.

Another one that is really common on a lot of cards is all of the travel benefits you get. There are a lot of different types of coverages. I haven't tested most of these, but I've definitely heard enough success stories that I wouldn't hesitate to rely on them and file a claim if you wanna make sure you get some money back.

Most travel cards have these, except Citi, because Citi cut all the travel benefits from their cards a few years ago. First, one of the most common ones is rental car coverage. So first off, if you already have auto coverage for your own vehicle, that coverage will likely carry over to a rental car.

Though, if you're renting a more expensive car than you drive, you might wanna supplement it. And also, if you're filing a claim on a rental car using your auto insurance company, it's very likely that those rates on your auto insurance might go up, so I personally don't like to rely on that as an option.

Also, when you're renting overseas, your US insurance might not cover you at all. So, given all of this, I always try to make sure I have some type of rental car insurance on a car I'm renting that isn't relying on my personal auto insurance. And I do that by using a card that offers primary rental car insurance.

It's very common on a lot of cards, Chase Sapphires, Capital One Venture, Venture X, Built Rewards. It is notably not included with most Amex cards. To get primary rental car coverage with an Amex card, you're gonna need to pay for premium rental car protection. And while it's probably a much better deal than paying the rental car company for coverage, it does cost about 12 to $25 per rental, so I'm not using my Amex cards to rent cars.

I will also point out that once you turn on premium rental car protection on an Amex, every time your card is used at a rental car company, whether you want that rental car protection or not, it gets automatically added, so be careful there. And to be clear, the difference between primary and secondary coverage, because there are a lot of cards that also have secondary coverage, is that with secondary coverage, it kicks in only if all of your other insurance policies don't cover the accident.

So for me, like I said, I don't wanna have to reach out to our insurance carrier, which is USAA, if we get in an accident, so I'm looking for a card that has primary rental car coverage. And all you need to do for this coverage to kick in is decline the collision damage waiver when you rent the car and put the whole rental car on your card.

However, there is one important caveat. Collision damage waiver is the type of insurance when you rent a car that covers damage to the car. There is another type of coverage called liability coverage, which covers damage that you do while driving the car to someone else. Credit cards are not going to cover your liability coverage, and that's what you're gonna need to rely on your auto insurance for.

Depending on the state you rent a rental car in, it might by default come with liability coverage, though the limits might be very low. And in other states, it might not be there at all. So you can't rely on your credit card for liability. And if you don't have your own auto insurance, because maybe you don't own a car at all, I would definitely make sure that you either get liability coverage from the rental car company, or you can actually get a non-owner's auto insurance coverage that's fairly inexpensive, that will cover you when you're renting a car for liability.

That's rental car coverage. It's an awesome perk. Every time I rent a car, I always decline the coverage, and I rely on my Venturax or my Chase Sapphire Reserve. Next is delayed luggage. So I've only seen this on Chase cards, but definitely check your guide to benefits. It covers the cost of anything you need when your bag is delayed.

Change of clothes, toiletries. It usually requires your bag to be delayed at least six hours and covers you up to $100 a day, which is probably less than you're gonna be able to get if you really push the airline, but it's nice to have there as a backup. There's also lost and damaged baggage coverage, which is common on Chase and Amex cards.

It's also secondary as a backup to whatever the airline provides if your bag gets lost or damaged or stolen, but it usually covers the cost of the contents and replacing or repairing the baggage itself. Now, most policies have a maximum coverage of anywhere from 500 to $3,000 a person, and all that you need to do is make sure that the flight that you took was booked on the card.

And for a lot of these, the flight doesn't have to be entirely on the card if you book it with miles and you pay just the taxes and fees that'll cover it, or if you use a credit for part of it and put the rest on your card, but definitely read into it, but that's normally the case.

There's also trip delay coverage, which is another common coverage on many travel and rewards cards that'll reimburse you for any additional reasonable expenses that occur as a result of the trip delay. That could be your flight gets delayed or canceled and you have to rebook something else. Most cards require a delay of at least six to 12 hours, and the coverage is usually capped at about $500 a person.

Now, there's also trip cancellation and interruption insurance, which will provide reimbursement for non-refundable or prepaid travel expenses when you have to cancel or change your trip due to a covered situation. Those covered situations typically include most major medical situations or injuries, severe weather, named storms, jury duty that can't be postponed, death or the hospitalization of travelers, and sometimes, depending on the policy, family members.

Now, for the pandemic, many of us learned that this doesn't include pandemics. It also doesn't include if you just don't wanna take the trip, but this coverage is common on many travel and rewards cards. It usually covers anywhere from three to $10,000 per person, but do note Capital One does offer this, but their covered situation list is much, much smaller and is primarily only for major medical situations or injuries to a traveler.

So depending on the card you have and depending on the kind of protection you want, this is where travel insurance could come into play as something you wanna get. But when I think about all of these perks, and there's still actually a few more, it begs the question of do you need travel insurance and what do you need it to cover?

And so I wanna do more in a future episode about travel insurance because there are things like canceling for any reason or pandemics that you might want to supplement, but at least know that if your card has these kinds of coverages, you are protected for many situations. Another one is emergency evacuation insurance.

So if you're in need of serious medical attention, this benefit covers the cost of transportation to the nearest medical facility capable of proper care. Now, this probably isn't necessary on a trip to Paris or Tokyo, but if you're on safari in Africa or in a remote island, it could be really, really expensive to get you from wherever you get injured or have something happen to you to a quality medical center.

The Amex Platinum is the most generous card for this benefit that I've seen. There's no cap on the cost and they don't even require you to have used the card to pay for your trip. Other cards like the Chase Sapphire have a cap and they require you to have paid for at least part of the trip with your card.

And while many of these benefits can be claimed after the fact, this is one where you absolutely need to coordinate with the card benefits team before using it. For anyone that hasn't looked into what emergency evacuation flights would cost, these can often go into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So definitely don't just book a flight like that and expect to get reimbursed. Definitely call the card issuer and make sure that you can coordinate everything in advance. Next, I'll talk about accident insurance. While I don't know anyone who's ever used this coverage, the ideas that it would pay out in the case of death or losing eyesight or a limb while on travel booked with your card, the coverage varies widely by cards.

Some cards don't offer it at all, like Amex. Chase offers up to a million dollars in coverage and there are some exclusions about things happening when cars and taxis, but hopefully this never comes into play. In some of these coverages, I hope you don't have trip delays, I hope you don't have to be evacuated, but I just wanna make sure you at least know of all the benefits that are in there related to travel.

Finally, not necessarily on the insurance side, but while we're on the topic of travel, most travel cards that have an annual fee over about $300 include some type of lounge access. If you have a branded airline card, it's usually access to that airline's lounge. Otherwise, it's almost always access to a priority pass, which is a set of lounges you can use while you're traveling.

There isn't actually much benefit to having multiple of these, although some people listening might have two or three cards that offer priority pass. It is worth noting that there are subtle differences on the types of lounge access you get. For example, the Platinum card from Amex also includes access to Amex Centurion lounges and some other lounges in their network, but their priority pass membership doesn't include getting credit and reimbursement at priority pass restaurants, whereas I believe Capital One does include that.

So whenever you get any of these cards, make sure you activate the priority pass benefit. You can link it up in the priority pass app and see what you have access to. But definitely when traveling, if you have a card with a high annual fee, make sure you're taking advantage of the fact that you probably get access to lounges when you're traveling in most major airports.

Another common benefit of cards with a higher annual fee is a free Global Entry or TSA Pre. If you travel and you're eligible for TSA Pre and Global Entry and you haven't enrolled, you really should consider it. There are 37 different cards that cover the cost of getting TSA Pre or Global Entry, so it's very possible you have a card that offers this.

And since many people have multiple cards that cover this cost, it might not even be hard to find someone that could do it for you. One important thing to know, if you have Global Entry, you get TSA Pre included, so I definitely recommend doing Global Entry instead of TSA Pre so that you can skip the lines coming back into the United States.

Those memberships usually last for five years, so the perk usually only is eligible to be used once every four years. So don't think that just because you have it, you can use it every year for you and your family members. You'll need to use it once every four years.

Now, I know one of the challenges with that is actually finding a Global Entry appointment. So to solve that, definitely check out Appointment Scanner. It is an awesome product that monitors all the different Global Entry appointment times and sends you an alert right away as soon as one opens.

Sometimes it looks like there might not be appointment for six months, but I know in my experience, even though that was the case, I don't even think there was a single appointment any time at San Francisco Airport. I signed up for Appointment Scanner. Within the first day, I was able to get an appointment that week.

So it was a really awesome service. You do have to be able to jump on top of making those appointments the second you get the notification, but they support email and text, so that's a great option. One other thing that I recently learned, which I haven't been able to test yet, is if you have Global Entry and you log in, there's a thing called the APEC Business Travel Card.

It's a reciprocal program as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and it facilitates short-term business travel within the APEC region, which is most of Asia and Australia, New Zealand, as well as Mexico. It's kind of an interesting thing that I've been told is a really great travel hack if you're eligible.

So it costs $70, but if you have a card that reimburses Global Entry, or maybe you even have more than one, you could use this to cover that fee. And the idea is if you are traveling for business to these regions, then you are eligible to apply and get an APEC Business Travel Card.

Now, you need to go to an interview and you need to show documentation that you actually do travel for business to these regions for reasons that are included, which are many different reasons. And in return, you're able to skip through most of the immigration lines in all of these countries and use the diplomatic and crew lines to cut through immigration.

It's supposed to only apply to the individual with the card, but if you read through some of the forums, I'll link to them on Flyer Talk, there are people that in some countries have had success having their family come with them. Definitely something that if I start to do more business travel to Asia.

One more travel perk that most of these premium cards offer is around hotel collections. So Capital One, Visa, MasterCard, and Amex all have their own hotel collections. And depending on the program, it might be a few hundred hotels or a few thousand hotels. And depending on the type of card, you're probably gonna get a set of perks that looks like this.

You get early check-in, late checkout, upgrades, all those being of course, if available. And then you'll usually also get free breakfast and some type of property credit that's often just $100 that you can use in the spa or the restaurant or something like that. So the way this all works is that hotels really value channels who have high value customers.

Credit card companies do that, and so do travel agents. And so if you book through the right travel agent or the right credit card portal platform, you're gonna get all those perks I just mentioned. When you're booking high-end hotels, four and a half, five-star hotels where the room rate is 300 to $1,000 a night and up, they do this 'cause they wanna build a deeper and longer term relationship with those booking channels.

Now, from my experience and talking to people in the industry, the highest likelihood of those perks like upgrades, confirming is to go through travel agents, not through the hotel portal. Not to mention that if you go through the right agent, there's probably somewhere around two to 4,000 hotels that you can get all of those benefits and perks at.

And most of the property collections linked to the credit cards. So I think Visa has about 200, Amex has about 1,000, are a little bit smaller. So I partnered with Savanti, which is a company that multiple-time guest, Lee Rowan manages, who has those relationships. And so if you're looking to book a luxury hotel, we have a collection of over 4,000 high-end, four or five-star hotels around the world where you can get all those perks.

Breakfast for two, property credit, free Wi-Fi, upgrade, early check-in, late check-out. So if you wanna take advantage of that, you can use the credit card platforms by all means. But if you wanna potentially get more access to more hotels and support me and Lee, you could just head on over to allthehacks.com/upgrade and I have details of how the whole thing works right there.

Last on the travel side, aside from all of those benefits, many cards offer different types of travel discounts that are worth checking out. For example, Visa Infinite cards, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, get you up to 30% off on Avis, Hertz, National, and Silver Car. World Elite MasterCards, like the Citi Premier, give you status and discounts with Hertz, Sixth, and Avis.

And the Amex Platinum offers you status and discounts with Avis, Hertz, and National. So as you can see, depending on the type of card you have, you might get a bunch of different benefits. Now, most of the benefits and perks that I've talked about so far in this episode fall into those two big buckets of different types of purchase benefits and protections and travel benefits and protections.

And most cards with annual fee, except Citi, have perks in both of those categories. Depending on the card, you might get more or less, but there are a bunch of other benefits that I wanna run through that I think are super interesting that don't apply to all cards, but I think that are worth going through.

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 wanna try out the pro version, there's a free trial.

And if you decide you wanna 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. 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 Drizly, 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 wanna celebrate that you got through another week. With Drizly, 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, Drizly 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 Drizly app or go to drizly.com. That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. I just wanna thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

So please consider supporting those who support us. So first, let's talk about a fun one that's near my neck of the woods, and it's free wine tastings in Sonoma. So in Northern California, there's a Sonoma wine region. It's very close to Napa, but different. And if you have a Visa signature or Visa Infinite card, you get two for one tastings and $1 ground shipping from 50 plus wineries in Sonoma.

I'm gonna put a link to the map of all the wineries, as well as a link to all the details in the program. But that is an awesome thing. If you're up in wine country, I definitely recommend you use a Visa signature or Infinite card to get a deal.

I have done that a ton. Another one that is pretty common that I think is super helpful if you're outside of the 90-day window for purchase protection is your cell phone coverage. So depending on the card you have, if it has this perk, there's usually a 25 to $100 deductible, and it covers up to 800 to $1,000 in damages or repairs twice a year for any phone on your plan, as long as you pay for that plan's monthly bill on your card.

Now, I know with Verizon, they give you $10 a month discount if you pay with a debit card or their credit card. So you're gonna have to do the math on whether you'd prefer saving that $10 per line per month each month or putting it on a credit card and getting protection from cell phone coverage.

So this is a great option. I know that Venture X, the Built Rewards, Amex Platinum, Chase Freedom Flex, Chase Inc Business Preferred all have this perk. Notably, the Chase Sapphire cards do not. So they are not cards that I put my cell phone bill on because I wanna make sure that I get this protection.

Another one that I've talked about a ton in the past is all of the shopping discounts that you get on the portal that are kind of like cash back or points back. So every single issuer has a different collection of these merchant offers, and they can be a lot more valuable than you think.

I looked at my Amex offers and across all of my cards, I've earned almost $1,000 back through different rebates from purchases at places like Home Depot, Best Buy, Delta, and Marriott. The offers actually vary by card. So if you have multiple cards, it's worth checking each one. And if you're new to these offers, I'll put a link in the show notes to how they work on Chase and Amex, Citi, and CapOne.

There are a bunch, they change all the time. But if it's a pain for you to go monitor all of this, I definitely recommend checking out the Card Pointers app. If you install the Card Pointers extension on your browser, it will actually auto enroll you in all of these perks.

And you don't have to go in manually and select them. And the extra benefit is that if you have multiple cards on Amex or Chase, when you activate one of these benefits, so sometimes I've seen ones where it's like $100 off a $300 Delta purchase, which is great if you have a bunch of Delta flights.

But as soon as you activate it on one card, you can't activate it on the other. But Card Pointers actually activates them at the exact same time across your cards. So you end up being able to use those offers more than once, which is amazing. So definitely check out Card Pointers.

You will need to use the pro version of Card Pointers, which has a free trial. But the biggest discount he's ever offered is to All The Hacks listeners and members. So if you're a listener, you can get 30% off at allthehacks.com/cardpointers. And if you're a member of the podcast, which you can do at allthehacks.com/join until the end of April, so you only have a few more days, you can get 50% off Card Pointers Pro.

So huge shout out to Emmanuel, who I know listens to the show for supporting the community and giving everybody a discount. It's really awesome. I love this app. I use it to add all of these offers. And multiple times, I've ended up getting cash back on things that I didn't even know that I had added as an offer.

So that's a great one. They also have shopping portals for every card that's similar to these offers, but where you can go and click through links to go buy things at retailers like Nike or Apple and earn points and miles with your credit card programs. I always go to Cashback Monitor, which lets you compare for any retailer where you're gonna get the most rewards.

So if you're buying something from Nike, it might be cool that you can get two chase points per dollar you spend, but it might be better to get 10% cash back on Rakuten. Another perk is concierges. So most travel rewards cards offer a 24/7 concierge service that you can use things like restaurant reservations, vacation requests, personal shopping, or event tickets.

And while I probably don't use them as much as I could, there is one request that I often use them for, and that's making a reservation in a foreign country where they might have someone local on their team that can speak that language. I've also used them in the past to do some basic research, like find a store in San Francisco that's open on a Sunday that sells an inflatable balloon with a number one.

I'll send some links in the show notes with some articles that might give you a little bit of inspiration, but many of the travel cards cover this. In fact, now's probably a decent time to kind of explain where a lot of these perks come from. So on the MasterCard and the Visa side, there are three tiers of cards within those payment networks.

So on the MasterCard side, there's standard, there's world and world elite, and on the Visa side, there's traditional, signature, and infinite. And then Amex has its own system that's unique to each card, so there's not a specific tiering system within Amex. And a lot of these perks are tied to those tiers within the payment network.

So MasterCard world elite has a concierge, Visa infinite, Visa signature has a concierge, and a lot of the benefits here, like I mentioned in the wine tasting, those are benefits of Visa signature and Visa infinite. So just something to understand how this works, and like I mentioned with Capital One, you might not know what tier you're in until you actually get your card and look at it, but the card on Visas above the Visa logo will say signature or infinite, and then on MasterCard, either near the logo or on the back, you'll see world or world elite.

So a few other perks that come with those programs that are really relevant to getting the most out of your credit cards. On the shopping side, World Elite MasterCards and a lot of American Express cards get you a free membership to ShopRunner, which is a site that just gives you free two-day shipping and return shipping on over 100 different retailers, like Saks and Allbirds and CB2 and Under Armour.

So I'll put a link in the show notes where you can sign up for that. I know I've used that in the past to get free, faster shipping. And then there's a service called Shipt, which offers same-day delivery from tons of stores locally, like Walgreens, Target, Safeway, CVS, and Visa has a partnership to give you some amount of free time with Shipt.

If you have a regular Visa card, you just get one month free. If you have a Visa signature card, you get three months free. But if you have a Visa infinite card, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you actually get Shipt free through the end of 2024. So we've used this a ton to get free same-day delivery from Target.

So I've actually been really happy with this perk, but I didn't know about it till I did a little bit of research, but it's not well-promoted. So definitely worth looking into. A couple other perks. So if you have a MasterCard World or World Elite card, you get $5 of Lyft credit.

It's a little tricky. You have to take three rides in a month, and then you get a credit that you can use on your next ride. So if you're taking a lot of Lyfts and you have a MasterCard World or World Elite card, it could be worth it. But if you're a much more casual user, then it might not actually get you much.

Chase, on the other hand, separate from the tiering structure, has a perk with Lyft where, depending on your card, if it's a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you'll get 10X points on Lyft, and you'll get Lyft Pink for two years for free. And if you have a Chase Ink or Freedom card or a Chase Sapphire Preferred, you get 5X points on Lyft, but you don't get the Lyft Pink free membership.

That Lyft Pink free membership actually is good for two years, as long as you activate it by the end of 2024. There's also a perk with DoorDash. So on DoorDash, if you have a World Elite card, you get three free months of Dash Pass, which offers you savings on DoorDash orders.

And it looks like you also get $5 a month off using your World Elite card at checkout. Chase also has a deal with DoorDash going on, which is separate from that, which if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you get Dash Pass membership through the end of 2024, plus you get $5 a month in DoorDash credits.

And those credits actually last three months each, and it'll go through the end of 2024. So you can stack up three of them, use them for $15 off and repeat. Your Chase Sapphire Preferred and most co-brand cards, like United, Marriott, Southwest, also will get you the Dash Pass membership for free, but no credits.

And then the Freedom Unlimited and Flex cards will get you three months off, and then 50% off after that, but not quite as good as the other cards. All you have to do to use those is just add your payment method to DoorDash, and it automatically kicks in. So those are some of the perks that you get as part of those kind of tiered systems.

A few other last perks that are related to credit cards. One is a free credit score. So while sites like Credit Karma offer you free credit scores, they're almost never showing you your true FICO score. And instead, they show you a score called the Vantage score. And I'll put a link in the show notes to the differences.

And while those sound similar, many lenders are still using your FICO score for making banking decisions. So I like to be able to know what that score is as well. Amex, Bank of America, and Discover all give you access to your FICO score for free. I'll put a link to all the providers that do.

Almost every card issuer these days gives you access to your credit score for free, but only those issuers and a few others actually give you your FICO score. Next, I'm gonna talk about museums. If you have a Bank of America credit card or even a debit card, they have a program called Museums on Us, and they've been doing it for 25 years.

You get free general admission during the first full weekend of every month to more than 200 institutions across the US. So you can go to their website, I'll put it in the show notes, and you can see a list of all the museums you get access to. The next weekend from this recording is May 6th and 7th.

So that's something that's really interesting. And if you have a Capital One card and you wanna go to museums, one option is you can be part of the Cultivist Community, which is something that you get a six-month complimentary membership to as a Capital One cardholder. And that gives you access for you and up to three guests to more than 100 museums around the world, including the Guggenheim, the MoMA in San Francisco, the Louvre in Paris.

It's normally $40 a month, but you can get a six-month free membership. I'll put the link in the show notes. Great option if you're traveling to somewhere where you're gonna be doing a lot of museums and you wanna get a good discount. So there are probably tons of other perks and benefits that I didn't include.

I tried to highlight the ones that I think are the most valuable, the most likely to use, the most interesting. If there are ones I missed, definitely send me a note. I'd love to add to the database so the next time I talk about this or write about it, I can include them.

And finally, one perk that's included with many of these cards, if not all of them, is called emergency card replacement. So if you need to get access to your card and it gets stolen or lost, they'll actually send it to you anywhere in the world. Might not always be overnight, might be two or three days, depending on how far and remote you are, but you are able to get your card replaced almost anywhere in the world if you lose it.

So don't forget that you have that. On the back of your card, there's usually a number you can call, even call Collect if you don't have access to international dialing. You can use services like Google Voice that make it really, really cheap or even free to call U.S. phone numbers.

So that's another option if you don't want to have to rely on calling Collect. Hopefully this was helpful. The idea was to give you a real deep rundown of all the types of benefits and perks you might get from your credit cards that you're not using. If you have any great stories of using these and getting a great deal or even having problems with them, shoot them my way.

I'd love to make sure everyone is as informed as possible on everything that's happening. I appreciate it. And I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you again for helping me get to a thousand reviews. I'm guessing by the end of the week, I'll be there. So I just really want to thank everyone for your support and your help there.

It means the world to me. Have a great week. See you next week. (upbeat music) (electricity buzzing) (birds chirping)