Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: Optimizing Your Credit Card Points

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

On today's show, we are joined by Chris Hutchins, Host of All The Hacks Podcast to discuss: credit card point devaluation, the best cards to optimize spending, where you should book flights, transferring points for better redemptions, the best card for families, cash back on rent, and much more!    Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Wealthcast Media, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We're joined to today by Chris Hutchins.

Chris is a former fintech founder. He's worked for fintechs. He's invested in fintech startups. He's more knowledgeable at credit cards than anyone that I know. When I needed to get a credit card in recent months, I asked him which one I should get. He has a great podcast called All the Hacks. Did I forget anything there, Chris? I mean, there's probably a million things I've done, but that's my thing.

I love credit cards. I love points. I love miles. I love deals. Thanks for having me. All right. Here's where we're going to start. We've noticed this, too. Someone sent us a question last week. Are we seeing outrageous inflation in the value of your points? Another way to ask this, do your points not go as far with many credit card operators now? It feels like they've been jacking things up. It costs more points to say at hotels or buy airline tickets.

Is this a trend or is this just of certain carriers? It's a trend, right? This just a few weeks ago, United started adding 30% more miles to go on flights. Coach, economy, international, everything. Hyatt raised the number points you need for different hotels this year. Last year, Marriott did it. Delta's done it basically every year the last three or four years. We switched to this thing called dynamic pricing. So it used to be like a domestic flight is 25,000 points. And now it's kind of like, if it's at the lowest availability, it's 25. And if not, it could be any random number of points based on the actual dollar cost. The only good news, the Senate Commerce

committee is actually proposing a piece of protection for consumers that would require frequent flyer programs to give you 90 days notice of devaluing your points. Okay, so you could get ahead of it a little bit and book some stuff. The banks always win is really the bottom line here, unfortunately. Yeah, I think the takeaway I have is that there's really two kinds of ways to earn points. You can earn a specific point, like you can earn a United Point, you can earn a Delta point, or you could earn points in one of these flexible programs. Chase has ultimate rewards, Amex has membership rewards, Capital One, City. That's like hedging your bets, right?

If you earn all your points in United and all of a sudden, United says you now need 30% more, you're kind of screwed. But if you had chase points, you could say, okay, well, now I'm just going to transfer my chase points to Air Canada and book that same United flight for less points. So the way to hedge against devaluation of your points is two things. One, use them. Don't just sit on them forever. And then the other is try to get them in a place that they're as flexible as possible. And the third is we need interoperable points on the blockchain. Oh, man.

Well, to your point about using them, I had some friends this weekend say, hey, we have like 240,000 Marriott points. We've never used them. Not to brag. But they've been sitting on them for like seven years. And I thought, too, like I kind of get mine and use them relatively quickly because I'm worried about the inflation. So like they've been sitting on them.

They probably missed out on a few good deals over the years. For sure. Yeah. If you, I mean, I've been sitting on points for a long time, especially like, last, between the pandemic and two kids under three, like, we've just been not using the points. I think there's an interesting case to be made for cash back if you're just not going to ever use your points, right? Like, if you're not, sure, you could get a lot more value from points than cash back, but if you're not going to use them, all of a sudden they devalue, you know,

it's not really as compelling of a narrative, I think. So you've got to, I saw somebody say that points back, or, I'm sorry, cashback is not a taxable, is not taxable income. Yeah, neither are a point. So basically, rebates are not considered taxable things. And so the credit card company, it's classified as a rebate technically is why you're not taxed on your cash back or your points back. But if you refer people and you get some referral bonuses, those are taxable. So I got some 1099s last year. What do you think it is about the rebate? If you frame it through that lens, you're basically paying yourself. Right now, a lot of these fees are generated through customers that don't pay their bill. That's where the balance comes from. We'll get into that later. But

there's a huge psychological dopamine hit when you book something through rewards even if so I am I would say I'm almost the opposite of you Chris I was listening to you on making media which is awesome and at the end the guy one of the guys were saying like I'm totally I don't I'm like don't optimize for anything and I'm sort of the same way so um but there's a big there's a big benefit like I feel great about using my points even if it's total bullshit. or they're getting, like, more expensive. Like, what do you think it is about rewards that people love so much? Because is it just, it feels free.

Yeah, people love getting something for free. People, you know, hate the banks, right? Like the lowest satisfaction of anything. So the fact that you're getting a little bit of extra free, it just makes people so happy. I remember talking to a friend that worked at Credit Karma, and he was saying they're trying to get people to get lower prices on their car insurance. And they were trying to figure out what copy you could show them that would get them to like check their car insurance rates. And he was like, what they found was they find out

what the DMV has on you, did the best. People just want to like stick it to someone. They want to understand where, you know, how the system works. They want to get a deal. I know people that will charge thousands of dollars to run like a sponsored post on their social media accounts, but like we'll run a sponsor post for free if they get like a dinner. You know, like it makes no sense. Like they're willing to do all kinds of crazy things for free. Well, the, like, epicenter of that sort of psychotic behavior about what things people will do to get free shit is at a sporting event, where people will facepom a grandma to get a free t-shirt, like a nighttime t-shirt. Like people go nuts for free shit. Yeah.

So, and every time, if anyone runs a business that accepts credit cards, you know you've got to pay, you know, probably around 3% to take a credit card. So we've all been to the store where they're like, oh, if you pay with your credit cards. credit card, you need to spend $5 or we're going to tack on a fee, which technically some of those things are not allowed in their merchant terms, but I wouldn't pick a fight with the store owner. And so it's like, if I know I'm going to be paying this fee indirectly, why not get something back? Like, at a bare minimum, if you're not getting 2% back on everything you spend, you're doing it wrong. It feels to me like there's collusion going on where one airline or credit card company will jack up their points needed to get something and then they all kind of do it. Are there any

cards or providers right now that are still like the best bang-free buck or do you kind of get the feeling that most of them fall in line and devalue when the other one's devalue? So I think almost all of my spending is on a card with these flexible points. So one of the Chase City, Capital One, Amex or the built card. And the reason why is because it doesn't really matter. You're getting a chase point. Chase is never going to necessarily devalue the point, but the places you can use it might get devalued. So I think that's the hedge. The hedges, don't try to put all your eggs in the United Basket, the Delta Basket, or Hyatt or American, or it doesn't matter. Just make sure you put it somewhere where you have a lot of options. And in that case, I haven't seen a lot of

devaluation. If anything, you know, there have been a bunch of bonuses for some of these transfer bonuses. So it's like, oh, if you transfer your chase points to Air France this month, you get 30% more points. So you've got a lot of options there. And I have this page. If you go to all the hacks.com slash TP or slash transfer partners, you can see all the airlines and which transfer to which cards. And you can see why it's a lot better option to have a card that gives you flexibility. Is there, so we'll link to that in the show notes.

That's great. Is there a service where you can link or you can check a box to say that you have the following three cards and I want to take a trip, where's the most bang for my book? like, should I use my Amex points? Should I use my chase points? Is there any site that offers that service? There's two tiers of the services you're talking about. So one is like a search tool.

So there's one called Point Me. There's one called Rome Travel. There's one called Seat Spy. They all have their individual nuances that make them better or worse for certain scenarios. But they require you to say, I want to go here. You know, I want to go from San Francisco to Tokyo. And, you know, they'll say your best use is, transfer your chase points to Air Canada and book that flight.

That's how those sites work. And they all have a different, like, kind of cool things. So seat spy will show you a year of availability at once, and point. dot me will search like third, but they'll only search one route and one airline. And point dot me also only search one route and one date, but they'll show you 35 different airlines. So that's one option. Yeah, what's the other?

The other option is to go and just pay someone to do the search for you. Whoa, is this like a points broker? I need one of these. So you basically, the cost is somewhere between $25 and $50 as like a down payment, just like a good faith commitment. And then if they find something for you, it costs somewhere between $150 and $200 a passenger. And so you figure, why would anyone do this?

You can do all the searching yourself. Yeah, it sounds like a lot. If you're trying to take your family, let's say, to Europe. So we took a trip to London and Paris last year. with two little kids, which I don't necessarily recommend. But we did it in business class, and it was 420,000 points round trip for four people. Those tickets, had I used 420,000 chase points to just like give myself cash back or something, maybe I'd get four grand. If I booked in the travel portal, maybe I'd get six grand towards flights. But four business class tickets in

December were something like seven grand each. So it was like $28,000 worth of flights. Now, If I was someone who wanted to do that anyways, I'd be better off paying someone $800 to set that all up for me because I'm going to, the delta between those two things is over $20,000. So I'd say if you have a lot of points and your alternative is redeeming them, why not spend the $25 or $50 to see if there's an option? And if there is, you're going to save a lot more in the long run. So that's the other option. You mentioned transferring your chase points to an airline.

So when I use my chase points, whether it's the reserve or the preferred, I go in through Chase and I go to like redeem and I go to the flight through there. Is that what you're talking about? Or is there something else that I'm not aware of? So this is like the meta hack is Chase Amex, they all have these travel portals. And if you book through the travel portal, you get some value. So in Chase, if you have a Chase reserve, you get one and a half cents per point. We want to talk about that too after this.

So keep going. Yeah. So the travel portals are like the easiest way to use your chase points. You always get one and a half cents with a reserve. You get 1.25 cents with the preferred, and you can book most flights. The back end is powered by this company CX loyalty, but it used to be powered by Expedia. In general, you're getting the same prices you're going to get if you search online for flights. The interesting thing is there are some sweet spots where if you just take those points and you say, let's move them over to British Airways.

Let's move them over to Air France and book directly with their mileage program. you can get crazy deals that are much, much better. Often if you're booking last minute or you're booking in a premium cabin or you're booking like kind of some obscure routes that sometimes are just really, really expensive. Like my in-laws live in a ski resort and sometimes it's really expensive to pay with dollars and it can be pretty cheap with miles, that kind of stuff. The value you can get there on a cent per point basis can range from terrible, like the same one, one and a half cents you'd get anywhere else.

all the way up to 10, 14 cents per point. Those are extreme examples. But I'd say on average, most of the redemptions I'm doing are in that like two to four cents per point range. So if you got a card. Do you go through Chase or do you go to the airline and then? So you go to Chase's website and you say transfer points and it'll say which airline do you want to transfer it to?

You put in your Air France number and you transfer there. So when we did it, when we did it, we booked, we transferred Capital One points to Turkish Air. I'm not flying Turkish Air. We used Turkish air to book a United flight from London back to San Francisco, but it was 45,000 points, which in the portal would have gotten you like 600 bucks, 700 bucks. But it was an international business class flight from London to San Francisco,

and like, we all know that you can't get that for 600 bucks. So that's the way to do it. And you can either learn how to do it. You can go play with these tools. You can go to United's website, just pretend you have United Miles. And if it's a good deal, then go transfer your chase points to United. Does your wife get excited by this? Or is she like, just leave me alone, dork?

The searching, no. But when we like hop on a plane and we have four business class seats and she knows we didn't pay for it and like we go stay at the St. Regis and Bora Bora. And she knows that we didn't pay for it. Like she's pretty stoked. So she's like, yeah, take your time and go do all the searching. But if I was like, you have to search, she'd say, just let me pay someone $200. I don't want to do with this. Do you think that it still makes sense to book through though the Chase or Amex or whoever?

Does that still make sense beyond getting the points? Because a lot of people have asked us, like, I feel like I used to get a better deal going through them. And now it feels like you just pay the same price, but you can use your points. Is there any benefit to still doing that? I would say the exact opposite is probably true. We went on this trip a couple weeks ago with a bunch of guys,

and we were going down to Cabo. And everyone booked a different way on the exact same flight. We show up at the airport. The flight's like three hours late, and they're like, our plane's not here. We're going to send a plane up from L.A. we're like, this isn't going to go well. And we looked online and United had the same flight for the exact same price we all paid for it. So we're like, everybody cancel your Alaska

flight. We'll walk over the other terminal. I booked two one ways on Alaska. So I just called Alaska and said, hey, your flight's delayed and they canceled it refunded. One guy booked in the Amex portal and he booked a round trip flight. And they're like, well, one, we can't cancel one leg because it's round trip. And two, we can't really do it because it's Alaska's fault. You got to call Alaska. And he was on the phone for like up until the door closed. He was trying to negotiate with Amex to get his flight canceled. And so in general, if you want to book anything, flight hotel, you've got to book it direct unless the deal is so much better.

And the only reason the deal would be better is, you know, Capital One gives you a $300 travel credit with the Venture X. If you could book a flight on their portal and the flight's free because you have $300 a credit, great, that's awesome. But I would never book in any of those portals if I'm just paying dollars. So this is really important because I always book through the portal. Now, when I'm using points, I always book through the portal. Are you saying, like, don't even do that?

Are you saying to transfer your points and then book it through the flight directly? Or not, I'm just hearing you. Transferring your points is definitely like a level two thing that's going to take work and time, and you might not want to play that game. So if you're able to use your points, get one and a half cents, book in the portal, that's not the end of the world. But if you've used up all your points and you're just like, I need to buy a flight to, you know, to Miami, definitely don't just randomly book in the portal.

There are a lot of people out there that book their flights on Amex, travel just because they think it's like a better place to book flights. Actually, what we're on this? What's a bad move? What do you think about using sites like Expedia versus going directly to the airline? Is there anything that we should know about that aspect of it? I love Google flights. They have like the best search and you can search for multiple airports.

Google Flight. You don't use Google Flight? That's what I used too. I used to be a kayak guy, but not I'm all Google flights. So let's say you live in New York. You go to Google flights, you type in, you know, LGA, comma, J.F. K comma EWR, and then you can leave the destination empty and you can say like July 15th to 20th search and it'll just show you a map of the whole world. You could filter the world and say,

I only want nonstop flights and I want it to be less than 600 bucks. What? Now, once you found that, book with the airline. I'm never booking anywhere except with the airline because when something goes wrong, you've got to go deal with whoever you booked with and I'd much rather deal with the airline. And most of the times it gives the option, like book through this Airlines.com or whatever, or straight through Delta. And yeah, you can just click from Google right through Delta. This is, this is, I'm learning a lot, Chris, already. Thank you.

I wish we did this a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I are going away next month. We haven't been away since before Logan was born. Actually, that's not true, but it's been a few years. And so I just start randomly entering destinations in the Caribbean. Like, oh, no direct flights there. Oh, nope, this doesn't work either. Had I known what you just said, I could have just done JFK LaGuardia this day.

I don't care where I go. I'll go anywhere. But anyway, great, great tip. Yeah, flight connections.com or flights from.com or two other sites, they don't let you search for prices, but you can put in an airport and it'll just say, here are all the nonstop flights. If you're just like, where can I fly from JFK nonstop? You know, if you're just curious, just brainstorming, you could do that.

Google flights will do it more from a pricing standpoint. Yeah, I don't search for flights anywhere except for Google flights. Or if I'm trying to use my points, I'll go to airlines' websites because Google Flights just shows the dollar amounts. Ben, why have you never told me about this? I feel like you're in the go. Who doesn't know about Google Flights? Really, you didn't know this?

But is it also better to go? I've heard too that it's better for most hotels if you're not using points to just book directly through the hotel as well, right? That can probably get you a better deal. Here's the hack. One, book directly with the hotel. Email the hotel.

Assuming it's not like, you know, just a one night where it doesn't matter at like a small like you know cheap hotel email the hotel and say hey i'm really excited to stay with you guys if you're celebrating something let them know but you have to book direct that's a trick and then maybe three or four days before follow up and say hey just want to remind you i'm coming this week and i'm really excited that's all you have to do i have had hundreds of listeners email me and say we've gotten a free upgrade we've gotten free breakfast they paid for our parking someone and this is i can't tell if this is awesome or weird but they embroidered their initials on their pillows which

I thought it was kind of weird. I would have taken champagne over embroidery, but yeah, you can get a lot because hotels don't know really anything about you when you book through Expedia or kayak or anything, so they can't really build that relationship. But when you book directly with them, they're like,

oh, this person took the time to come to the Marriott website. They probably created a Bonvoy account. We can try to build a relationship with them. Let's treat this. Like, they're still in the hospitality game. And so I would always book direct. Also, a lot of the portals that you book through, you might not earn points.

It's like a mixed bag of whether if you book on kayak, whether you're always going to earn Marriott points if you stay. So I always booked for a act. You know what I've learned is disappointing? So I have a Hyatt card and a Marriott card. And oftentimes, a lot of their hotels just don't take points, period. Yeah, so there's another site. It's called Away-Z.

If you go to all the hacks.com slash deals, I tried to get a deal for all these award booking sites and all the stuff. You could go there. There might be some discounts. I know a ways has one. It's basically like that for hotels so you can go and search. I want to go to some crazy hotel.

You want to go to St. Regis Borobora. Just show me a calendar for the next year of when I can use my points to go for like 80,000 points a night instead of sometimes. Like Hilton is notorious for this. You'll search for a hotel and it'll be like,

you could use your points. It's only 1.3 million points per night. I saw this recently. I was looking for spring break stuff. That's what it was. It was like 2.5 million points a night. I'm like, uh, what? Yeah, but there are nights.

where it's only 50,000 points. And the whole hack about all of the way user points is airlines, hotels, they all have this like saver availability. And it's like they have a few seats or a few rooms that they price at this really reasonable, incredible price. And then all of the other ones, they price at this egregious price you would never use ever. And so the whole game is finding that savor availability.

Your best option is booking like 12 months out or booking two weeks out because come last minute, it's really easy. A lot of airlines and hotels just open up the doors and say, we want to fill these rooms so you can use her points for everything. And recently, during the pandemic, a lot of airlines and hotel groups basically made cancellations really easy. So if you want to cancel your flights, especially if you book with points, you can almost always get your points back or your money back, maybe on the money side in the form of a credit. So I always say, look, you can always book a trip and then check. You know, you're going on this Caribbean trip. Check a week before. If all of a sudden you can get the thing for half off, whether it's the

flights or the rooms, you can go cancel and rebook. Or I do this a lot of times if there's just no great business class availability with points. We'll book an economy, but two weeks before, we'll look and almost always something opens up and we just change. Here's a good one for you that someone asked me recently. Best way, because you mentioned taking a trip to Europe with kids. Obviously, it's way more expensive if you have kids. I have three kids. So the flight thing is almost as expensive as a hotel sometime. Are there any cars that make this easier for doing big, big kind of families, whether it's hotel or flights or you have to save a lot. I was thinking about

this. And I was like, you asked me like, what are the best travel cards for kids? I was like, well, I got a couple ideas. So one, we never checked bags. We didn't have kids. Never made sense. Why we checked bags? We don't lose their bags. So much stuff with you and you have kids now. So if you're, if you live in Denver and you're always flying United, it might make sense to get the United card just so you get free check bags. You know, you don't have to spend any money on the card. You don't have to use the card. In fact, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, because you can transfer the points of United, you often earn more United points using the Chase Reserve than you would a United card. But you might get free check bags, which might

make your life a little easier. That's one. We won't go into the nuance of this, but there is a way to open up a couple Southwest cards and boost your points balance in one year and get quickly towards companion pass. So if you were like, gosh, my partner and I, we decided we're going to take our two kids this year, and we're going to do a lot of traveling, you could each open up, like, two Southwest cards and get really close towards companion pass for both. And when you get companion pass on Southwest, you can name a person, and that person travels for free. That's the heck that I've done in the past where I open one card and get the points for me,

then another one in my wife's name and get the points for her. That's the kind of thing, you have to, like, combine, right? When you have player two, you get to do everything twice, which is like the industry term we call is like you have player two. And sometimes you have a consenting player, too, that's excited. and sometimes you're just like, give me your social and when the card shows up, let me know. How often can you do this, though,

where how often do the credit cards, like if you do it every 24 months, is it at a certain point where you can't get the bonus signups anymore? Are they pretty good about letting you have it if it's a totally different card? If it's a totally different card, it doesn't matter. Like, all the rules are on a per card basis. So I was at dinner with someone the other night,

and I was like, he's got like 37 credit cards, and he's like, I just can't get any more because I've actually gotten all of the bonuses. Like, there just aren't anymore. I've had every card. But unless you're the kind of person that is carrying around a briefcase of your credit cards and you have 20, 30 cards, there are always new cards and new bonuses.

And the interesting thing about bonuses is it kind of blows the whole way you spend money and earn points out of the water. So take the Capital One Venture X. You spend $4,000, I think, in three months, and you get $75,000 points. So, and you get points for that $4,000 also. So you're going to earn like $83,000, $75,000 plus 2x points on the $4,000. on $4,000 to spend, you're getting 21, about 21 points per dollar. So, like, even like a Chase Sapphire Reserve, 3X on travel and dining, it does nothing

to compare to the kind of points you earn from these sign-up bonuses. So if you want to ask points people, like, where are you getting all these points? You know, you could spend $4,000 and get $75,000, or you could spend, you know, $37,000 and get $75,000. And so, and there's not really a cap. Like every issuer has some rules. Like, I think Capital One, you can't open a new card, you know, more than every 30 days or something. And Chase won't approve you if you've had five new cards in the last two years.

But, you know, they're, if you wanted to get really aggressive about it, we have listeners who've written in and said, hey, I've never really played this game. I've opened up five or six cards. And in the first year, I've got half a million points. So it's possible. I've never done this before because we've only taken one trip. Eh, one or two trips with the kids. instead of checking bags, I had an idea to just like send the luggage ahead of time

directly to the hotel for 100, 200 bucks and save yourself all that hassle. It's not a bad option. I think it's going to cost more, but sometimes it just feels like we've got to the point where we're just enough able to pack lightly that we don't need one of those carts through the airport. But if I was in like cart territory or if I had, you know, more kids,

I just don't, I think it would be something I would consider. In Japan, if anyone listening is going to Japan, you can actually have this very sophisticated system to pick up and deliver luggage between hotels anywhere in the country. I can't remember the exact name for the system. So instead of like taking the train, because in Japan, you're probably taking the train, instead of trying to lug all your family luggage on the train, you could pack like an overnight bag, they'll pick up your bags and it'll show up the next day. And then your whole train experience to get somewhere is really easy.

So, you know, I would definitely, in other countries, it might even be easier. But, gosh, I mean, shipping your bags, if you're going to go to, like, Europe, it's going to be insane. Yeah, forget about it. Hey, Chris, so you have a podcast called All the Hacks, and you might be, I might be, you might be converting me. A lot of, a lot of hacks on today's show has definitely piqued my interest. What else do you talk about? What else are passionate areas of yours aside from credit card rewards? Yeah, so my theory was that there are a lot of people yourself included, right?

You're like interested in points of miles, want to get a best deal. but you don't want to listen to a podcast every week about points of miles. Like, it would just drive you nuts. So I was just, I'm passionate about optimizing everything. So whether it's, you know, how I spend my money, how I invest, Ben's been on a couple time to talk about that, whether it's getting the best insurance policy. I did this crazy deep dive and or I like talked to 50 carriers and, you know, a dozen brokers to try to figure out what is the absolute best way to get deals on all your insurance policies.

But also food, I've got an episode that maybe will have come out probably by the time this comes out with David Chang talking about. cooking at home, the guy from Momofuku. So I'm just trying to find every aspect of your life and figure out how to optimize it, upgrade it, make it more efficient, and get the best deal. What's something recently that you found that you want to share with our audience? So I think something everyone here should be doing if they haven't. I can't remember if I've heard you guys say it on your show is to go check for unclaimed money. It sounds so ridiculous, but I've had people find $4,000, $5,000. That was a MEPA thing a while ago, right? You just

type it in by state and name, right? And you can see if you can see if you're there's a paycheck or a dividend or something waiting for you? Yeah, this guy's launched this travel bag gear and he's like, I want to send you a bag because I launched this entire startup on unclaimed money that I didn't know I had that you told me about. Wow. That's one. If you're sitting with a card like an Amex gold, this is a fun hack, and you earn four points per dollar on groceries and you need to go, I don't know, you got to redo your house. You want to go buy some at Home Depot. Go to the grocery store, buy your Home Depot gift card, get 4x points on groceries, then go to Home Depot and use the gift card.

Oh, that's good. Now we're talking. You've, like, you get into, like, the nitty-gritty of the details on this stuff, and you've gone, like, totally deep dive. I'm sure you've heard from people who have taken it even further. Like, what's one of the crazier ones you've heard of someone who just went, like, over the top to get points or somehow got a, like, crazy deal that even you were impressed with?

There used to be these amazing stories of, people still do this with, like, the mint, the U.S. Mint. They sign up for, like, quarters or whatever? They sign up for like the waiting list for these new coins and the U.S. Mint will sell them and then they'll go like reselling stuff is the stuff I just haven't taken the time to get into. It's like finding things that are purchasable on a credit card that are going to be worth more because of limited supply or arbitrage. Are you talking about Bitcoin? No, Bitcoin. I don't think you buy Bitcoin with credit card, at least without paying fees. I met this guy in L.A. and he runs this whole warehouse where he just buys stuff in the U.S.

and sells it internationally. But he can't buy enough of it because he's looking to get, like, you know, AirPods and they're on sale at Costco. So he puts out, like, to a WhatsApp group. He's like, if anyone wants to buy AirPods at Costco and mail them to me, I'll pay you, you know, like 5% extra to cover, you know, the credit card processing fees. So all these people are doing this. And Costco is trying to chase down the different warehouses he has set up so that, you know, People aren't, they don't allow people to ship to him. Going down that path of like trying to find ways to manufacture all this spending to get more points is like the, the highest level of it. And for me, it's just, you know, I haven't gotten every credit card that's going to give you 50 to 100,000 points for signing up for it.

So why am I, why am I playing on the edges there? I'm not going to try to run a wholesale, you know, like drop shipping company in my backyard. For a while there, the millennial card of choice was the Chase Sapphire Reserve. And that was like a big, I remember that back on, that was like a really big deal. And you'd bring it somewhere and people would like hit it against the table because it was hard and it was metal or whatever. And like that was like the millennial status symbol almost for a while if there was such a thing. Has that card come back down to Earth a little bit and there have been other ones that have surpassed it? Or is that still like the gold standard?

They raised the annual fee on it. They did two things that I think took a knock to the Chase Reserve. They raise the annual fee, and then they added 3x on dining to the preferred. So if you have the preferred with a $95 annual fee, you get 3x on dining and 2x on travel, and then you bump up to the reserve, you pay $5.50 a year, and you get 3x on travel. So you get extra point per dollar on travel. I think they kind of took away a little bit of the edge on the card. Like, it's just not as good as it used to be.

It's still great, and that annual fee is offset by a $300 credit that's almost basically impossible not to use. It's like spend $300 and you get it back. So that's great. I think the combo there, like the best chase combo, if you've got that card and you're like, how do I level up my game, add the Chase Freedom Unlimited, which is one and a half chase points on everything. Now it's marketed as a cashback card, but the like secret trick with all of these issuers is if you have one card that earns points and you pair it with a cashback card from the same issuer, you can convert that cash back to points. So the Freedom Unlimited earns one and a half percent cash back, but you can transfer

that to Chase points. And Michael, like you said, you book in the portal, you get one and a half cents per point. It makes that Freedom Unlimited a 2.25% card. Because, you know, you get the one and a half for each point and you get one and a half points per dollar. Chris, are you, are you, are you, are you, are you, do your friends bother you all a time about this? Yeah, I mean, I would say the reason I started the podcast was that At dinner every time, someone's like, tell me about this latest cool deal you found. Tell me about how to optimize this.

And then during the pandemic, I was like, gosh, I'm never going to tell these people these things. And they're like, well, I still want to know. And I was like, what have I just started a podcast? I just start talking about it to everyone. And it just took off like beyond, you know, it's my full-time job now. Like I worked a wealth front for three years and now I didn't have time to do both. And so, yes, I get constant questions from everyone. And sometimes they're snarky where it's like, how much would you hate me if I asked you three credit card questions?

But at the end of the day, I think for the same reason you guys probably have run your podcast, I just love helping people live more optimal lives in different ways. So I love those questions. You can email them. You can at reply me. You can send it in. We do mailbag episodes on all the hacks. Happy to answer those things.

So I would say the Chase Reserve is still a great card. I did this analysis the other day. So I built this kind of weird model where it was like, let's take the average spending of an American household that I think earns over 100 grand and from the Bureau and Labor Statistics. And let's apply that to every single credit card's earning power and figure out what the best two-card combo is. So if you could have two cards, you want the most points per dollar, obviously it's very

unique to you. If you spend all your money on flights, the answer is not going to be the same. And funny enough, the two-card combo had no Chase Sapphire reserve in it. it was the amex gold and the capital one venture x and those are the two cards i carry my wallet um venture x is two x on everything so like no thinking about anything just get two x you don't have to worry and then the gold is four x on dining and four x on groceries i think that combo is really awesome uh it yielded compared to other cards uh i think the average return was 2.49 points per dollar the average American household spending. So you're beating the 2% cash back with those two

cards. And funny enough, I was like, well, what happens if you dial it up and you go to 10 cards? Like if you want to go down the rabbit hole like me, it doesn't really do that much more. It's like it takes you from 2.49 points per dollar to 2.82 points per dollar. So I think, you know, if someone were saying, what's the magic sweet spot, depending on your spend, of course, like two cards gets you a lot more than one. And then it just really diminishing returns after that. If you pay rent, the built card's a no-brainer because it's the only card that lets you earn points on rent.

If you're listening to this and you're like, I'm doing it all wrong. Which card? Which card is that? The built card. Our producer Duncan has talked about that. So what are there any fees or anything on that one or not? Who issues that? I'm not familiar with that one.

So it's issued by Wells Fargo on the back end, but the card is a new startup called built. They've built one of the most impressive transfer partner networks. Like they have American, United, Hyatt, really great ways to use your points. And you could pay rent. You could pay up to $10,000 a month in rent and earn one point per dollar. Now, the card's not going to get you a sign-up bonus.

So, you know, you open a VentureX. You get 75,000 points. Open this card. You get nothing. But if you're paying rent, if you have 100 grand of rent a year, you know, you're earning 100,000 points every year that otherwise would have cost you nothing. So that is, I think, for anyone who pays rent, it's a no-brainer. You should definitely consider this card.

If you're listening to this, you're like, ah, I'm not doing this. right. What am I missing here? Don't just go out and cancel all your cards. Here's the strategy for, I realize my card isn't optimal. So one, call the issuer. If it has an annual fee, you can often call the issuer, call AMS, call Chase, and say, hey, like, this card's pretty expensive. And sometimes they'll say, oh, we'll waive the annual fee for a year. Or they'll say, oh, we'll spend $5,000 and we'll give you 50,000 points. So that's option one. Option two, downgrade it. If you're like, oh, I don't know if I actually need the Chase Resort. Well, you can downgrade it to the Freedom Unlimited or you can downgrade it to the Freedom Flex.

You know, a lot of the, if you had United Card, you can downgrade it to the free United card. So you don't lose the history on your credit report, but you still, you know, you still get the card, but you don't have to pay the annual fee. Worst case, you can transfer, you can cancel the card. I always say, like, wait after a year to cancel a card. You don't want the issuers to think you're the person who's like, I'm opening up, get a bonus, cancel it right away.

So I always wait, cancel it in month 13, and they'll usually refund your annual fee. that second year's annual fee. And a lot of the issues are let you move your credit around. So if you have two cards with a $30,000 limit and you want to cancel one, you could move 29 of the $30,000

to the other card and cancel it if you need it, if you want to keep extra credit going. And then use all your rewards because some cards, they're gone if you cancel it. So obviously do that. Chris, where do we send people

to your podcast? How do they find you? Allthehacks.com. I mean, you're listening to a podcast. Search all the hacks, wherever you're listening right now. If you want to support the show, you can go to all the hacks.com slash cards and we have links to all the cards. And you made Michael's day by teaching him about Google flights today.

Yeah, I want to hear how this goes. I want to hear, I'm going to keep listening for an update on, oh, I booked my next trip, and I did this thing. My points went further. It was so much easier. Well, Chris, this is awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate the time. Yeah, thanks for having me.