Elite status with airlines and hotels. Who needs it, right? Well, six months ago, I would have said not me. But somehow, heading into 2025, I've racked up status on four airlines and four hotel groups. In this episode, I break down exactly how it happened, the unexpected perks, and whether chasing status is actually worth it.

Plus, I'm sharing some incredible listener wins, the biggest loyalty program devaluations you should know about, and my new approach to actually using points instead of just collecting them. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe.

Okay, so in episode 182, I went over almost a dozen different ways that you can fast track your way to elite status. But I actually remember saying that I didn't care about elite status that much because I don't travel that much, and we had so many points and miles saved up that we often use them to fly in premium cabins, business class, first class.

And that gives us a lot of the features we would get with status. And so if you asked me on the street six, seven months ago and said, Oh, how do you feel about elite status? I would say, it doesn't really matter. I'm not focused on it. Well, I found that funny because I started looking at where I ended up for 2025.

And it completely contradicts that thought. I looked and I ended up having status on four different airlines and four different hotel groups. And I want to talk about how that happened, what it means for the future and how it might impact your life. And I also want to share a few amazing takeaways I've gotten from listeners that you've all sent in, as well as some of the interesting things that are happening in the world of travel points, miles, cards, some of what we've been sending out lately, and some of the things I've been doing about it.

So let's jump straight into airline status. And I'll talk a little bit about what's going on. So first off Southwest, I don't think I have ever actually had Southwest status. I've gone for companion pass. But for those who aren't familiar, companion pass actually is separate from their status, you can earn companion pass just by spending on a credit card, get a free companion you can add.

It's an awesome deal. We've done it multiple times, highly recommend if you're traveling a lot with the same person to places Southwest flies. However, the points you earn to get companion pass are different than the tier qualifying points you earn for status. And I rarely fly Southwest enough and on expensive enough tickets to earn anywhere close to what you need for A-list.

However, there was this promo last year that I caught wind of in a Facebook group about Southwest, where transferred points from hotel groups were actually counting as tier points. And there was a separate promo where credit card spend was almost earning twice as many tier points as normal. Now, this was a really tight window from when I learned about it.

Unfortunately, it never made it to the podcast because it was such a narrow window to act. I did share it with the membership. So something worth taking a look at if you want to get alerted when I find these wild things. But what happened was I transferred points from Marriott to Southwest and from Choice Hotels to Southwest.

And those cleared as tier points. And so very quickly, I was on my way to A-list. And then I have a Southwest credit card and I spent a little extra on that than I normally would. And by the end of last year, I found my way to A-list. Now, why did I even do this?

Well, the primary reason I did it was because Southwest had already announced that they were making a bunch of changes coming up this year. And one of them was that there was going to be seat selection, including extra legroom and preferred seats. And that was the main big change they were going to do.

There was no more pick your own seat. Boarding isn't going to operate how it used to be. And I thought, gosh, if I have this limited opportunity to get Southwest A-list, maybe when they make that change, I'll be able to pick seats and board and do all these things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

Now, I didn't know how much Southwest would end up changing between that point in time and this year. And specifically in the last week, for anyone who hasn't seen, Southwest has basically gone the way of every other airline and almost feels like it'll be indistinguishable from other airlines because all of the things that Southwest used to do that made them so Southwest are either things that other airlines have already started doing or that they've gotten rid of.

So going forward, and I can't remember the exact start date. Some of these are flights booked after May 28th, 2025, but no free checked bags. There's one advantage to this, which I didn't realize, which is that you have to pay these airline taxes and fees when you sell tickets.

And even if bag fees are part of those tickets, you have to pay those taxes. When you unbundle those, you don't have to pay all those taxes on the bag fees. So there is some rational economic argument to do that. You will going forward still get two bags with A-list preferred and one with A-list or a credit card.

A Southwest card is an easy way to avoid that. They're going to add basic economy. They've already really slashed the earnings of their most inexpensive fare class in terms of number of points you'll earn. Flight credits you get from canceled reservations or refunded flights are only going to last one year or even six months with those fares.

And so lots of changes. So having A-list will actually avoid a lot of these. You'll get to pick seats, change your flights, early boarding, free checked bags and all that stuff. So I'm actually really happy that I ended up with this status this year because once these changes go into effect, this will add some value and who knows where we'll be traveling on Southwest later.

That said, it's kind of what made Southwest. And now Southwest just feels like every other airline. Every other airline now made all of their flights cancelable and refundable into credit that last one year. All the other airlines have no free checked bags unless you have a credit card status and they have basic economy and all these seat rules.

So not sure what would make Southwest any different or preferable other than maybe a slight preference for less mechanical issues because they seem to only operate one or two airline types. So I know that is one of the reasons they've done that. But for the most part, sometimes if we're going on a trip during ski season, we think Southwest's great.

We get all these free checked bags and we're going to be needing them. Going forward, that's just not going to be the case. So a little bit of a segue, but that was how I ended up with Southwest A-list status this year. I also ended up with United Silver.

And based in the Bay Area, United is probably the best airline for coverage in terms of direct flights from SFO. And I don't know how it happened because I don't fly that much, but I just barely made it into enough premier qualifying points to end up with silver, which is their lowest tier of status, gets you almost no benefits other than a checked bag.

And you can pick preferred seats. You can't even pick economy plus seats with extra leg room until 24 hours before departure, at which point they are almost always taken or only middle seats left. And so I think the reason I got there was that I was right towards the end of the year.

And I was close enough that if I paid, it was like $150 to upgrade a flight from economy to business for a flight where business meant nothing, like flying down to Los Angeles from San Francisco, but that pushed me over the edge. And I figured depending on how much we fly United this year and whether we're checking bags and traveling as a family and wanting to pick good seats, probably worth it for a couple hundred dollars, especially when that hundred dollars comes with some benefit and additional miles crude.

So probably $80 or something. And now, sure enough, we are flying United in the near future and we'll be checking a few bags and that will probably have ended up saving us more money than it cost. Next, I ended up with Delta status. Shout out to Josh, who I met on our Iceland trip.

He was trying to strategize his way to get to Diamond on Delta. And I spent a lot of time brainstorming some ideas and giving him some tools that he could probably use to make that happen. And as a thank you, which was not necessary at all, he used one of his Delta medallion benefits from hitting Diamond to gift me gold status.

And so I'm going to do my best to put that to good work. I mentioned Josh, who I met on Iceland. We met so many awesome people on Iceland that I'm sure I will be friends with for a very long time. If you want to go on a trip and meet interesting people that are also listeners of this show, highly recommend checking it out.

We have, I think, two or three spots left on the second Iceland trip this year, leaving September 28th. So you can go to all the hacks.com slash Iceland. If you want to have an experience like that, it was absolutely incredible. One of the best trips I've ever taken. Then next there was Alaska MVP.

Now I did a status match from built and that expired in January. So I went into the year with that status. But if you asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said, didn't matter. I don't really fly Alaska a lot. And then somehow just in the first two and a half months of the year, almost every trip I've needed to take, I've been on Alaska and I'm already halfway back to MVP status on Alaska.

And so just to make sure that I had enough points to get there, because for whatever reason, it seems like I'm flying Alaska a lot. And I already have some flights in later in the year on Alaska. I ended up picking up the Alaska business card, not only because it had a great signup bonus of 75,000 points, you get a companion fare.

So for $99, I think you get a buy one, get one. But you can earn up to 30,000 elite qualifying miles with spend. So that'll make sure that I get over the hurdle to get back to MVP, maybe even MVP gold, which based on how much I'm flying Alaska might actually be the primary airline I fly over United.

Built also has a promo that I didn't realize was recurring, where you can status match to Air France and get gold status there. I thought it was a one time thing. But the more I read about it, it seems like you can do it every single year. But until I book a flight on Air France, it doesn't seem like there's any benefit to doing this, especially if I have Delta status, you know, the Sky Team status from Air France wouldn't matter either.

Funny enough, the one airline that I probably haven't flown in the last five years, which is American, and obviously, there's plenty of airlines around the world that I haven't flown, but the one US based mainstream airline that I haven't flown is the one I'm most intrigued about trying to earn their status.

And for people who don't know, American implemented this loyalty point system where you can earn almost every tier of their status except for their kind of coveted hidden invite only concierge key just by spending on a credit card, or earning points from shopping portals, booking hotels, all that stuff.

You don't actually have to fly the airline at all. And I thought going into the year once I was booking these Alaska flights that it might be the right path because almost every benefit of Alaska elite status is also given to people with American elite status. And so I ended up also getting the American business card this year, they do have this really interesting promo going on this year, where best I understand, at least on the business card, when you add an authorized employee card, whoever the employee is earns loyalty points, and the main cardholder does.

So if I were to use that card and try to earn loyalty points, using an employee card for my wife, we would both end up with American status. There are milestone rewards along the way. So we both get those milestone rewards. For some reason, that makes no sense to me.

And I'm going to come back to this at the end of talking about all these statuses. I want to do this. I don't fly American, their route network from the Bay Area is pretty terrible. The only place I've ever considered flying them is to Los Angeles, where every time I've done that five, six years ago, it seems like you always land at a remote terminal that you need to take a bus to, which is the most inconvenient thing.

It's certainly not fast. And so I have no idea why I'm interested in this. But it does seem a little bit like a game, right? Going down the path of Oh, what kinds of things can I do to earn extra loyalty points? I signed up for this newsletter called loyalty point hunters.

And so I get these like, Oh, here's this offer where you buy a meal kit. And the discount basically makes it $5. But you get 1000s of loyalty points. And a part of me just really wants to play this game. And then a part of me thinks it's absolutely crazy, because I never fly American.

So I'm going to address my own problems after I run through this inventory. But I figured it's kind of helpful to hear where all these statuses came from how I ended up with them. Because they do provide a ton of benefit when you have a lot of statuses, you're boarding early, you're earning more points, you're not paying for check bags, all kinds of things like that.

I am happy I have them. I just think to some extent, it's a little crazy, given that we're not flying that often. On the flip side, I really love it. And it's kind of a game. So if I treat it from that perspective, then it's really interesting. This episode is brought to you by thrive market.

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Okay, when it comes to hotels, I'll start with Marriott because one of the perks of hitting Marriott Titanium, which requires 75 nights, is that you actually get United Silver status. So one of the things I was thinking about last year was, gosh, if we fly United enough that it would be valuable to pick the right seats, get free check bags, all those kinds of things.

Should I just get it by trying to do more Marriott nights or should I get it by going for United status itself? Because it's not reciprocal the other way. I don't think United Silver gets you anything meaningful on Marriott. I do think if you earned high enough United status, you would, but I certainly haven't.

To do that, though, you need to spend 75 nights in Marriott, which I probably spent nowhere near 75. However, with the right set of Marriott cards, you get a huge head start. So most of the consumer cards give you 15 nights towards your status. And then on top of that, if you get the Bonvoy Brilliant card, that gets you 25 nights.

And then the business cards will also get you 15 nights. So if you have both, you can get 15 nights. And if one of your consumer cards is the Brilliant card, then you get 40 nights. The funny thing is, though, if you're really chasing that status, that Brilliant card also comes with Platinum status, which I think is the most important status for Marriott stays because it gets you the free breakfast, the upgrades and late checkout and all those things.

Do you have a higher priority on those upgrades with higher status? Yes. But it clears the hurdle of I'm staying at a resort, I want the free breakfast, I want a lot of those perks. And so you just get that with the card. So if you're someone who cares about Marriott status, that card will just get it to you.

You don't have to worry about anything. The other thing that's interesting is Marriott does have this lifetime status program. And I'm at the point going into this year, I had eight years of being Platinum. Last year, I didn't have it. So I ended up opening up the Brilliant card, because that would clock me in at Platinum status for 2024.

I would have it also in 2025. So that would take me to nine. And next year will take me to 10. And so by holding that card for what will end up being about 15 months, that should put me over the threshold to have Platinum on Marriott for the rest of my life.

And I will never have to hold a card or think about status at all. So I'm really excited about that. Now, does it make sense to push for titanium on Marriott or, you know, silver on United? I'm not sure. I still have to think about that. Because I'm starting out with 40 nights, that still is 25 nights in a Marriott, which is a lot of nights.

There is one credit card, I can't remember the name of it. It's a chase one that lets you earn elite nights by spending, but it is almost prohibitively expensive. That's something I'm thinking about. But Marriott is a program where recent devaluations, which I'll talk about in a bit, have just made it a little tricky to be really loved.

In fact, in the points and miles world, anytime a loyalty program does something that people don't like, the term that I've now heard everyone using is that they've gotten bond void. Because Marriott just continues to make things difficult for everyone. There's literally a matrix that I'll link to in the show notes that you need to follow to try to figure out whether you're actually going to get a free breakfast based on how you booked your reservation, where you're staying, what chain, etc.

They don't make things simple or straightforward whatsoever. So that's Marriott. Where I actually switched all my loyalty this year to was Hyatt. So last year, going into the year, I thought, this status of Hyatt seems to be the thing everyone in the points and miles world loves. I've never had Hyatt status.

I rarely had ever stayed at a Hyatt hotel. And it was very hard to get. And so the reason why most people seem to love this status is because you really get treated like an elite member of their loyalty program, because it's a lot harder to get. Marriott, you can get, you know, platinum status with a credit card.

Hilton, you can get diamond status, their top tier with a credit card. I think IHG, you can also do that. So if you want to get top tier status on Hyatt, it is way harder. You need to spend 60 nights in a Hyatt, or you need to augment those 60 nights by spending a ton of money on one of their credit cards.

And each one of those credit cards for every $10,000 you spend, you get five elite nights, which means to get all the way to 60, you need to spend $120,000. Now, if you have a lot of tax payments, business expenses, or you're running a gift card site, you might have the spend to do it.

But you might be asking yourself, is it even worth it? Now, if you're earning one Hyatt point per dollar at 1.7 cents per point, depending on who you ask, maybe you could call it 1.3, 1.5. It's not as good as other cards that might earn you three or four points until you think about it in the context of getting all the way to the status.

So when I mapped out, what would it look like to get to 60 nights? How would I make it happen? Along the way, Hyatt gives you all these milestone rewards, right? For every 20, 40, 50, 60 threshold, you're getting sweet upgrade awards. You're getting free night certificates. You're getting bonus points.

You're getting these things called a guest of honor certificate, which I will probably be doing a giveaway for later this year, where you can gift someone else globalist status for a stay up to seven nights. And so when you add all those in, I put the value of spending money on that Hyatt card at about 3.4% back because you were getting the points and those perks, which made it worth going for.

But it was over $100,000 of spend, which I didn't have entirely. Now, I did have some stays at Hyatt, so I didn't need to spend all of them. But I ended up doing what I'd always heard people do and never done myself last year, which was I ended up going on what's called a mattress run.

And so I found a category one property, which is the lowest tier. I found it at an off peak time. And I found it locally. So I only had to drive 20, 30 minutes to get to. And I ended up checking into this hotel for about three or 3,500 points a night.

And one of the perks of the Hyatt business card is you get a 10% rebate. So 3150 a night, which those points were points I'd already used from spending on the card. So it kind of felt like a free stay. And I drove down, I checked in for a seven night stay.

And I never stayed at the hotel once. I went to the front desk and I told them a story of, I'm checking in this hotel, I don't know if I'm going to stay here. And I don't know how many nights I'll be here. But if you could leave this room available, I will check in with you regularly.

So you know that I might come back, I would really appreciate it. I put the do not disturb sign on. And every two days, I would text the front desk and say, I don't know if I'll need this room, but please keep it open for me. And they had no problem.

The seven nights posted. And it was a lot easier than spending an extra, I don't know, for seven nights, you could probably call it somewhere on the order of $15,000 on the card. So ended up going for that. I'm really excited to put that to use this year, especially because one of the features of Hyatt that is unique is it's very easy to book suites.

And so if you're traveling with a family, and you have kids that go to bed early, and you don't want to have to spend the time after they're in bed in a quiet, dark room sitting there being silent, not even being able to see much, you can book a suite.

And Hyatt lets you confirm those suites at booking, or use suite upgrade awards to confirm them for no additional cost. And so doing that is just such a great experience when traveling with kids. So that's one of the reasons I'm excited about Hyatt Globalist, among lots of others. So I will probably share more about that at the end of the year once we've been able to use that status.

On the other two hotel statuses, there was a built promo to get a core platinum status. So I did that. And we have the Hilton Aspire card, which includes free Hilton diamond status. And those Hilton cards, which right now have really great signup bonuses, you can go to all the hacks.com slash cards and check them out.

But they just make it so easy to earn free nights. And as much as I love Hyatt, for certain reasons, married for some reasons, the thing I love about Hilton is that their free night certificates are good for any category hotel, as long as they have standard room availability.

So we use those hotel certificates last year to stay at a hotel that was three or $4,000 a night. And right now open a card, the signup bonus includes a certificate. Some of the cards, you get another one when you spend $15,000. Some of them, it's $30,000. It really depends.

There's a different flavor of card for everyone. But the Aspire card also comes with diamond status on Hilton, which is their top tier. So that's how we ended up with four hotel status tiers. I guess I don't have any IHG status, but haven't stayed in an IHG hotel for a really long time.

So I thought it'd be interesting to share all of that, because that's how I ended up where we are today. And I did all of that despite feeling like status wasn't an important thing. And I'm not really sure why we didn't even have a lot of travel planned this year.

And as I reflect on this, and in the spirit of my conversation with Simon Sinek, I will try to be a little bit more vulnerable. Like, I think I just have a little bit of a problem where I enjoy figuring out a system and trying to kind of level up in the same way as a kid, I enjoyed playing Super Mario and trying to get to the end of the game.

It was figure out all the strategies and the tactics to get through the level and get to the next one and get to the next one. And then at the end, you win, and you save the princess and everything's great. And each one of these challenges to get these statuses feels like that.

It's like, oh, I want to get Hyatt status, but I want to find out if it's worth it. So I get to build this model and I get to figure out whether the ROI is good. Well, the ROI is good in that the amount of Hyatt points and milestone benefits I've earned are technically worth an amount that is greater than what I would have gotten if I used 3% cashback card.

However, it's only greater if I actually use those benefits. And right now, we're sitting on millions of points and miles that we haven't used. And so I have to ask myself, if I look hard in the mirror, am I actually getting the value that I believe I'm getting? And in the points and miles world, if you talk to people that play it really, really hard, earning millions and millions and millions of points a month, what they find out is that they can't use the points fast enough and they end up cashing them out in various ways at way lower value than what you think there should be worth.

Right? If you're someone who only has a million Amex points, you might be able to use them for travel for the next three or four years. But if you had 50 million Amex points, you might never be able to use them for travel because there's just too many. And so even though there might be some amazing redemption that gets you two or three or four cents per point, if you're never going to take that redemption because you have too many points, then it's not worth that.

And so I'm at a point where looking hard in the mirror is telling me that I should probably earn less points. I should probably stop chasing these statuses, even though I get a ton of satisfaction out of it. Or, and this is where I convince myself the alternative, we just say every year the kids are out of school, we just take a really big trip where we're staying in lots of hotels, using up all these points, traveling a lot, and really focus on going lots of places.

And I rationalize some of this to myself saying, well, by earning status and earning points across tons of different programs, we have the ultimate flexibility, right? I tell myself that because we have points in, I don't know, probably five hotel groups and 15 airline groups and five transferable points groups, I now have the flexibility when we travel to stay anywhere we want because of all these programs.

But that's not really true. Because we were talking about wanting to go visit the island of Lanai, or I think it's actually pronounced Lanai in Hawaii. And I'd heard a story of a trip report on another podcast where someone said it was the most magical trip they've ever taken.

They said it was one of the best islands, you have to check it out. I actually have some friends that work to help design one of the hotels on the island. Turns out, they're just two Four Seasons hotels. And so no amount of Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, you know, IHG points or Amex points could be used for anything other than maybe booking in a travel portal a room at the Four Seasons.

And so I think sometimes points are also restrictive. And what I've come to the conclusion of recently, is that I need to let go of those restrictions. And so one thing that I will start doing more of is using my points, even if it means in the travel portal for one and a half cents, when I know they probably could get more value, but just sitting there, they're not.

And so that's something that I'm going to be making a change. Obviously, we haven't planned out all our travel for this year, but things will come up. So I assume that these statuses will get put to good use. But I really think I need to start using these points, even if it's not the perfect redemption, because just letting them sit there, you know, they're constantly getting devalued, which I will talk about in a minute.

And if that money was sitting in cashback, it'd be earning interest. So I owe it to myself to actually try to bring down the balance of points. So stay tuned on how successful I am at this and really changing a little bit of this behavior. But after I prepped for this episode and thought about how I should really be rethinking these, I met with someone and they talked to me about how there's a way to earn Japan Airlines status for life with one of their credit cards.

And the renewal fee ends up being about 2000 miles. So you can earn Japan Airlines status for life, which translates into a one world status that would give you priority seating and free check bags on American, on Alaska, lounge access, all of those things forever. It was a huge spend requirement.

But I came home and I was like, hmm, I just prepped an episode where I said I should stop thinking about this. And here I am again, wanting to go chase status on an airline that isn't even based in the US, which has reciprocal benefits on most airlines that I'm not flying when I'm also chasing status on an airline in that alliance separately.

So we'll see where it goes. But one of the things I just mentioned was the reason to be using your points is that they're always getting devalued. And I sent this in the newsletter and something I'm going to try today is I'm going to try to run through some of the most interesting things that have been happening as well as some amazing listener stories.

Some of these things have been in the newsletter. So if you're subscribed, a couple of them you might have heard, you might not have heard the commentary I'm going to give, but I've shared them a bit. But if you're not, and you want to make sure that when things like this happen, you hear about them, go to allthehacks.com slash email and you can sign up.

So devaluations are something that happens all the time. And last year, we saw a handful of them across tons of different airlines. Just in 2025, we've already seen a few. Avianca, which was one of my preferred ways to use miles to fly on United or Air Canada or Lufthansa because they had such great deals.

They just increased their award prices in business anywhere from 8% to 15%. In first class, all the way up to 25%. So that kind of stuff happens all the time. It's one of the reasons that I love transferable points, because if you keep your points in Amex or Chase, and this happens to Avianca, well, now you can prioritize Air Canada, or you could prioritize United.

Whereas if you accrue in one airline, and this happens, it makes it really difficult. On the hotel front, Marriott had big devaluations, they fluctuated a lot of the things, they've introduced dynamic award pricing. So it's not always clear what number of points you need for a room. There is a secret award chart that I'll link to in the show notes, but they've made some devaluations this year.

Hilton increased the points required for most premium properties, with some top tier hotels going way over 100,000 points a night. And then just recently, Hyatt did some category shifting, they moved 151 properties, 118 of which are going up in price. 33 are decreasing, but the vast majority are going up.

So this is always happening in the industry. That's why I love the transferable points. But it is another good reason to not stash and hoard points, because you're just going to get stuck with them being worth less and less over time. Whereas had you earned cash, you would have been seeing them worth more and more over time.

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This episode is brought to you by built rewards, which is an amazing points program with so many ways to earn including on your rent where you don't even need to check with your landlord. So let me explain. First, there's no cost to join built and as a member, you'll earn valuable points on rent and on your everyday spending.

Built points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world you can redeem your built points toward. Points can be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only built members can access.

So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is why not? Start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to chrishutchins.com slash built. That's chrishutchins.com slash built, B-I-L-T. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you chrishutchins.com slash built or the link in the description to start earning points on your rent payments today.

A few other things in the newsletter before I share some really creative ways that a lot of our listeners have earned millions of points. And there are actually ways that you can use as well. One, there are some really awesome card-linked offers right now. So I'm not going to go through all of them because they're often only good for a month at a time and they change depending on who you are.

So some people are targeted for some, some aren't. Each week in the newsletter, at least each week that I find relevant ones, I'm sharing some of the best ones. I'm trying to go through as a filter because you might have four or five hundred card-linked offers on any given one of your credit cards, but they might be for products and services and brands you don't have any interest in.

I'm trying to find the ones that I think have the most broad appeal that you should know about. One trick that I like to use, and it saved me probably at least a few hundred dollars if not more, is use an app that automatically adds all of your card-linked offers to your cards.

So the wild thing is there might be an offer on your Amex, U.S. Bank, Bank of America card that you just haven't activated. Even if you go spend money at the merchant that there is an offer and you haven't activated the offer, you won't get the cash back or the bonus points.

And so I really like an app called Card Pointers. You can go to allthehacks.com slash cardpointers to get, I believe it's 30% off. Members actually get 50% off. Or there's a new one, I think SaveWise is also offering this service. And there's an app called Max Rewards that for kind of security reasons, I can't endorse that app right now, though I know lots of people that have had a good experience.

But there are three offers that are really interesting that are probably a lot bigger than most of them. You'll see an offer that's 10% off or 5% off or $10 off. But there's three right now that are really big. One of them is for Calm. And if you have either the Chase Reserve or the Chase Preferred card, you can get 50 to 100% back on an annual membership.

So the Reserve is going for a full 100% back on a Calm annual membership through the end of May. So that's really awesome. The Preferred only gets 50% back. And they're all kind of in the health and wellness area. The next one is for a company called Lifeforce. So I haven't actually used this product.

But I'm prepping an episode about all the different kinds of health diagnostics you can do. So I've been trying a lot of things out. They have a diagnostic where you do 50 plus biomarkers, blood tests, service, and then you get a consultation with a clinician. It's $599. But there's an offer right now on both Chase Reserve and Preferred for $300 back.

And then the last one is with Pronuvo, which I've talked about in the past, I've done a full body MRI with Pronuvo two times in the past. Normally, that would cost $2,500. And if you do have a Chase Reserve card, you get a $600 back offer. So that brings the cost down to $1,900.

However, one thing not everyone might know is that Pronuvo, like many other health services, is eligible for an HSA or an FSA. So let's say you were to spend that $2,500, but reimburse yourself from your FSA or an HSA, depending on your tax bracket and where you're at, that could bring that cost down, maybe at the highest tax bracket in California, in half.

Maybe in other places, it comes down a third. But just for the sake of argument, let's say you bring it down in half to $1,250. So you've saved $1,250 in taxes on that Pronuvo scan from using tax-advantaged accounts, but you're also going to get $600 off. So if you stack those two offers, it can really bring the price of that service down.

I have had one friend whose full-body MRI resulted in learning about something that very likely would have been a tumor that killed them in the next six months. It was pretty serious and resulted in some kind of very, very last-minute surgeries. And most people have found very few things.

If you're someone that learning about a few things that might be off would really make you nervous, then it's probably not for you. But I imagine if you're more like me, where more information is better, it's been really helpful to know what areas of your body are things to focus on.

It can obviously spot things much earlier. There's so many amazing stories of people whose lives have actually changed getting a Pronuvo scan. In fact, I just pulled up on the website. There's tons of stories you can go read, but they're saying one in 20 scans result in a potentially life-saving diagnosis.

Super interesting service. I have done it before in the past. Full disclosure, one of them I paid for, one of them I did not. I had met someone connected to Pronuvo and told them I was doing this health diagnostics episode. And they said, Josh, if you haven't gotten a scan in the last year, why don't you come in and get one so you can talk a little bit more about the experience we have today.

They also did set up allthehacks.com slash Pronuvo, which has a discount. And so I actually, I think you could potentially stack a discount plus the Chase rebate, plus your HSA, FSA, and get it even lower. But just make sure that the requirements of the card linked offer don't require you to spend an amount that a discount might bring you below.

So just make sure you could do that. I don't want you to get a $100 discount that prevents you from getting a $600 savings. Also on the note of card linked offers, I finally opened my first Citi thank you points card, which was the Citi Premier card. It had a 75,000 point offer, which I took advantage of.

And so now I have not been able to talk a lot about the Citi thank you point experience. And now that I have a card, I'm going really deep on it, I might actually do a series where I go down the rabbit hole of the entire rewards program for every single major issuer.

So do one for Citi and for everyone else. So stay tuned for that. A few other things that I've shared in the newsletter that I thought would be fun to share here. One of my favorite things about the Animal Spirits podcast, which is really about markets and investing, is that they always talk about their favorite shows.

And so I started adding that to the newsletter. And I realized people wrote me back every single time saying, Oh my gosh, I love that show. That was such a good tip. Or I love that show to check out this other one. And those things never made it to the podcast.

And I don't really know how to fit them into the format of the show we do regularly. But I will just say that a few of the shows that recently I've loved that I've been sharing on the newsletter were Paradise. I think see episode seven of Paradise was one of my favorite episodes of television.

And so highly recommend don't even look up what it is because I loved being surprised. I had no context going into it really like Landman about the oil and gas industry silo day of the jackal. Those are all great. There's more recommendations that are regularly coming in the newsletter.

If you have any show recommendations based on those, and other ones you've seen me mentioned, definitely send them my way. Another little tip I shared recently is that Uber, if you're traveling abroad is starting to add a one and a half percent fee for the convenience of displaying prices in your home currency.

Everyone's automatically getting opted into that. So anyone who travels internationally and uses Uber, go into your app, go into the wallet and select no preferred currency and save yourself one and a half percent on those rides. This episode is brought to you by Viore, which is amazing because they are one of only the few brands I wear almost every single day.

I've got a shirt on. I've got the core shorts on. I love Viore and I love that they bring a new perspective on performance apparel. It's so versatile. It can be used for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, swimming, yoga, or even lounging or running errands or going out to dinner.

Seriously, I wear my meta pants out for dinner all the time. But today I want to talk about their dream knit collection because it's amazing. It is super soft, lightweight, moisture wicking, but also has this amazing four-way performance stretch that makes it so comfortable. While it's almost impossible to narrow my Viore recommendations down to just one thing, I want you to check out the Ponto performance jogger for men or the performance jogger for women.

I know me and my wife, Amy, absolutely love them and wear them all the time. Seriously, I think Viore is an investment in your happiness. And for everyone watching, they're offering 20% off your first purchase plus free shipping on US orders over $75 and free returns. So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at chrishutchins.com slash Viore.

That's V-U-O-R-I. Again, that's chrishutchins.com slash Viore to discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions and find the link in the description. Finally, one tip I've shared multiple times on the podcast and multiple times in the newsletter that I think is really worth sharing again is to go check for unclaimed money.

And the way this works is there are circumstances where someone might owe you money, they can't get it to you, or you haven't cashed a check. And so they pass it over to the state. This might happen with a cable bill or a medical bill that you overpaid or you canceled an insurance policy and they owe you a refund.

And why I share this is because even though I've shared it multiple times in the newsletter, I thought I'm going to share it again. And I'm actually going to do a quick poll of how much unclaimed money people found. And while 47% of the people subscribed found no money, which kind of made sense.

I've shared this in the past. Not everyone finds it. The results of the other 53% were super interesting. So 31% found less than $100. 15% found 100 to $500. 3% found 500 to $1,000. And 5% found over $1,000 of unclaimed money in their name. And we had 250 people respond to this.

So 250.05. That's 12 people. 12 people found $1,000 just by going to their state's unclaimed money site and searching. If you haven't done that before, highly encourage you to do it for yourself, for your spouse, if you have old enough kids that they might be in this circumstance, for your parents, for really anyone.

I've always said in the past that it's kind of a fun party trick. If you show up to someone's party, you can bring them a bottle of wine or you could check in advance and see if they are owed thousands of dollars. And obviously, I don't know about you, but $1,000 seems like a much better gift than a bottle of wine.

So each week, we're sending out all kinds of stuff like this, whether it's new card offers, gift cards, deals, promos for bonus points, freebies. A couple of weeks ago, there was free Starbucks and Febreze plugins and Slurpees, transfer bonuses and all that. So allthehacks.com slash email if you want them more regularly.

I've even considered doing a little quick Saturday episode that just runs through the highlights of the offers for the week. It wouldn't be edited. It wouldn't be produced that well, but it would be turned around really fast. So something I'm considering. But for now, it seems easier to write them and email them out because it's more time sensitive.

Okay. Last thing I want to cover is a question that I get from so many people. And it's about getting started and whether all the crazy things I'm doing are really even possible for the average person. And so in the spirit of all this talk about earning the most, having the most amazing experiences, I want to share five short but incredible stories from listeners about how they were able to save a combined $100,000 doing various points and miles things as people that aren't me.

They're not going down the rabbit hole as deep as I am. Some of them just got started in the last year and they've had really, really incredible experiences. So first, Winnetta took her honeymoon in Bora Bora and a baby moon to Greece and Croatia. So congrats, double congrats. To get to Bora Bora, they transferred Ultimate Rewards points to United for the first flight.

They managed to find three nights at the St. Regis, getting 2.9 cents per point, saving over $9,000. When they went to Greece and Croatia, they did 10 days back in 2024 and they credited episode 166, which is where we went through all the best tools for the way they were able to book this just three weeks in advance.

So they used PointsYah and they found an amazing deal. They used the Venturex for lounge access. They used the travel credits for their rental car. And then the cash value of the whole trip was way over $6,000 they saved. But the real treat of all of this, and this is why I love the Points Game, is that they said they got to travel more and in style that they never would have for so much less.

And I think there's something to be said for the fact that many times, maybe you would have had more money than you would have spent on a trip, but you might not have taken the trip or you might not have taken the trip in the style you want. And sometimes those little luxuries and that extra trip make the year, the month, the whatever period of time so much better.

So one of the reasons I love Points and Miles, so glad you got to take both of those trips. Congrats. Next one is from Corey, who basically had an almost free honeymoon in Japan. They did ANA's The Room, which was an incredible business class or I guess first class product I've never taken.

They booked an older business class product on ANA on the way back. And they did four nights at the brand new Hotel Indigo in Shibuya in Japan, two nights at the Intercon Beppu, then some nights at the Grand Hyatt Fukuoku, the Hyatt Place Kyoto, and the Andaz Sol. They said almost the entire thing was free.

Over $20,000 of value from signup bonuses on a few cards, the only thing that wasn't covered was they did stay at a Four Seasons in Seoul, but they used their Amex Platinum FHR benefit to get $200 a night off. So that's awesome. Nothing like taking a $20,000 honeymoon for a significant fraction of that cost.

Next, I want to share what Jake did, which was really awesome. He took three trips last year, burned 1.3 million points, went to Japan, inspired by episodes 101 and 102, which are, I assume, the ones I did with Brandon Presser. Two business class tickets for 400,000 points, 150,000 points to stay at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, which I think right now is under renovations.

But when it's done, I think it's supposed to be really, really nice. Did another trip to Prague to go do IVF. He actually was a little bit of the inspiration for this medical tourism episode because he said, hey, did you know it's way cheaper to go to Prague to do IVF than it is to even just do it in Houston?

He's like, our system's really broken, but you should do an episode on that. And that kind of led down to this rabbit hole. But in specific numbers, he said the quote for IVF at home was $30,000 to $50,000. And they spent $5,000, had a great experience in Prague. And when you include everything, treatment, travel, food, they still spent less than half the cost of IVF at home and got a trip out of it.

Did three legs on KLM with points and got a really great value saving thousands of dollars there. And then finally, they went back for the IVF transfer and spent some time in Budapest. So that's awesome. Glad you were able to take advantage of medical travel. I'm actually looking at the recap.

They said they got an average of four cents a point from all 1.3 million points. And a lot of these people said that this is not something that they've been doing for a while. And they said just listening and taking the leap has been what made this happen and really stoked.

Kieran wrote in saying they weren't really into points. It was a thing, a hobby of the past. And just last year, they got into it. And then by the end of this year, already set to accumulate a million miles. From a combo of signup bonuses and spend, they're really racking it up.

So that is awesome. I know for some people hearing this, they think a million miles, it sounds so unachievable. It sounds so crazy. And then I think of myself, a couple days ago, I did what is often called an Aparama. But I basically opened up a Bank of America, Alaska business card and a city American card.

And the signup bonus on all three of those totaled about 225,000 points. And both my wife and I this year opened up an Amex business gold when it was a 200,000 point signup bonus. So last year, those five cards, which weren't all the cards we opened up last year and includes none of the spending was already over 600,000 points.

And so and that's just one under my wife. So if she had just done the exact same thing as I did, probably easily be at a million. And that was just what we did in the tail end of the year. So definitely something that's possible, even if you don't have a ton of business spend to do.

Last is one of my favorite stories. So Brandon sent in this epic photo, which with his permission, I will put in the show notes, they had a contractor who was building out some renovations or their house. And he asked if they could pay for the building materials. So their contractor wouldn't let them pay by credit card, but they were willing to let them go to Lowe's and pay for the materials themselves.

And so they had about $170,000 to spend at Lowe's. First, they bought all the Lowe's gift cards they could at a deal. Unfortunately, they were only able to get up to 5,000. This was before I had launched the gift card site. And then they put the rest on their credit cards.

And between him and his brother, they stacked out a bunch of different credit cards, rang it up to $170,000. And if you just assume an average return of let's call it two points or two and a half percent, they earned back over $4,000 of value. I didn't ask him which cards.

I'm going to hope there were a bunch of signup bonuses in there. If there were five or six signup bonuses, well, that could have been, you know, millions and millions and millions of points. But I didn't ask which cards there were. If there were a bunch of signup bonuses in there, who knows?

It could have been a million, 2 million points. It really depends on the spending patterns. But $170,000 for just asking a question, I encourage everyone to try to do something similar themselves. Anytime they're playing any time they're trying to earn more, there's always something that comes from asking, can I pay you with a credit card?

What would that cost? Is this possible? There are some banks that let you pay bills by credit card. Never hurts to ask. So really, really stoked to hear all those stories. If you have any similar stories of huge wins in the points and miles, in the health, in the any category we've ever discussed on the show, send them in.

Podcast at allthehacks.com. I love hearing them. Thank you so much for joining this week. I will see you next week.