BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 27: How to Get Even MORE from Your Travel Rewards Credit Card with Lee Huffman

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Open up a credit card, earn miles, get a free plane trip or hotel room. Sounds great, right? But what if you could exponentially increase your travel rewards? Fly free every time. Never pay for a hotel room again. Lee Huffman travels the world in... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 27. So you want to start and say, okay, where do I want to go? Do I want to go to Caribbean? Do I want to go to Asia? Do I want to go to Europe? Where is it that you want to go? Or just, you know what, I just want to go to Orlando. I just want to take my kids at Disney World and have a fun week.

So figuring out where you want to go first is going to help you figure out which program is going to be the one that you should focus in, which then based on that is going to say, okay, I should get X, Y, and Z cards to maximize the miles of points from that program. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation. You're in the right place.

This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's going everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm having another fantastic day. It's actually really hard to have a bad day here in Denver. Yeah, it's pretty nice. I actually, I have it a great day. I had a great week last week. I went on a vacation. We're recording this on June 11th. So the prior week I went on vacation and used travel rewards to book the flight for me and my girlfriend using companion pass to Baltimore. And then I went down to Carolina for a bachelor party. Really enjoyed my, my week there. Kind of benefiting from exactly what we're going to talk about today, which is travel rewards and how to maximize.

it. Yeah, today's show is for anyone who likes to travel and doesn't want to pay full price. We're talking to Lee Huffman for bald thoughts about his experiences and tips for getting the most out of his traveling dollars. But before we continue, I want to say who this show is not for. And this show is not for somebody who is heavily in debt and cannot afford to pay off their credit cards every month. These are advanced travel hacking techniques. And it doesn't make sense to get a a trip for free and then pay 25, 35% interest on that trip until you can pay it off. So if you are listening to this show and you really like to travel, but you have significant credit card debt or significant debt that you just can't pay off every month,

still listen. We'd love to have you, but really focus on paying off your debt before you start using these techniques to travel. Yeah, this is for someone who's already got a solid financial. position is able to pay off a credit card that exactly as you said. And it's for someone that's comfortable, you know, maybe you have a high credit score. And, you know, a lot of what we talk about is opening credit cards. Lee's got 40 credit cards, right? That's more than most people will probably want to open. But, you know, maybe over the course of 10 years, you might get there and find that that's worthwhile. But for most of us, you know, opening a credit card and having a hard inquiry can hurt your

credit score by a point or two. And so you'll have to be comfortable with a relatively minor drop in that score to open a credit card and get a credit card and get a hard. advantage of maybe thousands of dollars and travel rewards. Beyond opening up credit cards and getting those kind of signing bonuses and bonuses on cash back spending, we also go into advanced detail that's applicable for everyone on how to shop for things in ways that maximize your points and take advantage of certain resources online. And we'll link to everything in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 27. Yes. And before we bring in Lee, before we hear from the today's show sponsor, I got an email from Listener.

Chuck, who has a question that he'd like a few different perspectives about, what to do with a windfall. My wife inherited a sum, and we are lucky to have a few investment opportunities to put it to work. However, I'm interested in knowing how people manage extra cash to keep it accessible and still earn a reasonable rate of return. I've looked at money market accounts and CD laddering, both of which keep money somewhat accessible and produce a small rate of return. I wonder what other options are out there and or advice on how to make these ones work best. So this is actually a question that I get every once in the Bigger Pockets forums. I'm saving up for my next investment property or my first investment property.

Where do I put the money so that it grows the most while having the least amount of risk? So if you've got some advice on this, please email me at Mindy at Bigger Pockets. or Scott at Scott at biggerpockets.com. Or if you experience with this and can speak intelligently on this for an entire show, give us a, send us an email and, you know, we'll talk about getting you on the show and talking about the different ideas to, to invest your money while you're waiting to invest your money. Yeah, I'm fascinated by this issue.

And this is such an interesting psychological and financial problem because, you know, this is an amount of money that people come into for a lot of reasons. Inheritance is one just saving up over the course of a decade or two and not really have it and just kind of keeping that in your bank account and then discovering investing or financial independence. There's a lot of reasons why ordinary people can come into more wealth than they'd ordinarily be able to accumulate with a year or two or three of savings. And knowing what to do with that is kind of actually a fairly common problem that I'd love to, you know, Mindy and I would love to learn about and kind of pick the brains as someone who's an expert at handling those kinds of situations. Yes. So we look forward to hearing your responses and then I will put these all together and have that available for people on bigger pockets as well. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full

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At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leaner Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more,

all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Lee, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How are you doing today? It's great to be there. I'm doing awesome. So how are you doing? I'm doing fantastic. It's a beautiful day outside today. We've had quite the run of really hot weather. So I'm glad it's cooling off today.

So, Lee, you are here today to tell us about travel hacking. Is that the right term? Travel hacking or is it credit card hacking, credit card churning? What is the right term that we're going to talk about today? All those terms work. It's really about trying to win at the game of travel. Using the rules to your advantage, taking advantage of promotions, taking advantage of ways to earn miles and points, and then redeeming those miles and points so that way you can save money on the travel that you're going to be doing.

Yeah, this is an area of wealth building that I, you know, Scott here, did not really consider as a real path to kind of actually produce significant financial results to my great detriment, I think, over the last couple of years. I recently only discovered this maybe about six to eight months ago. And I've actually employed some of the tactics that we're going to talk about today. And I guess go over some of the concerns that a lot of people like me might have about kind of entering into this travel hacking game. Is that right? Yeah, that sounds right. Essentially, the way I look at it is it's like a virtuous cycle. Essentially, if you take care of your credit and your personal finances, then you can qualify for

the best credit cards. Then you can use those miles and points from those credit cards to reduce the cost of your travel, which then gives you more money to pay down your debt, to invest for your future, or even have more or better vacations. Awesome. Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about this because I have jumped down the rabbit hole and I'm halfway through and I've just started, got my companion pass. But before we get to travel hacking, can you quickly introduce your background and maybe kind of give us a brief overview of your wealth building journey? Sure, sure. So I've actually just recently quit my job. So that's obviously not the right path

towards you know wall building but yeah i've been i've been in banking for approximately 20 years on the sales side of banking in the last 13 years on the corporate side doing financial basically doing corporate finance budgeting forecasting strategic planning things like that prior to that i did financial planning and and then also bankruptcy consulting so all those things uh it hasn't been like a straight linear path like some people have in their career but it's allowed me to kind of think outside the box and learn alternative ways of looking at opportunities to find the best ways to increase your wealth. Awesome. And so were you able to, like, what was your kind of approach toward pursuing

financial independence while you were working this career? Is it, you know, index funds, real estate, or how are you saving towards that goal? So a little bit of both. So, you know, I've always been a big saver as far as contributing to the 401K, things like that. When I had my first, like, real corporate job, you know, basically I didn't really need a lot to live on. So what I did is I try to control my expenses by whenever I got a bonus, any sort of raise, things like that. I would always put that money into my 401k increase in the contributions. Funny thing is I was working out of the bank inside one of the branches, and we would get paid our bonuses for our sales every other pay period. And so what I would do is on the pay periods where I wasn't getting a bonus, I would put 6% in.

And on pay periods where I got my bonus check for my sales, I would max out my contribution. So HR probably hated me because I was changing my payroll contributions for my full K, like every pay period. But, you know, that's the way to kind of control your expenses and make sure that you don't inflate your lifestyle. And next thing you know, everything you've, everything you're making is going out towards everybody else instead of keeping it for yourself. No, I can relate exactly because for many years here at bigger pockets, my, I was a salesman

for our ads for advertising. And so every page, one paycheck would be a small one, and the other one would have all my commissions in it. And that's what I would put all of that towards the savings and try to live well below the even the base salary portion. But it's a really good tactic. And then some of it also I've just been lucky on timing, you know, as I was increasing my current, well, not current anymore,

my old job, I was starting to make a lot more money. My parents, they were getting older. And so what I did is actually bought their house. And then that way, I had the tax write-offs from the interest on the mortgage, and they got rid of a major bill for them. And then my dad's health started going down. So in April of 2006, I sold that house. And we sold it for about $750,000. And so I bought them a house in North Carolina.

And while we're out there looking for houses for them that live in, I found a house that was, I think it was about $112, $15,000. they'd already had a tenant built into it. I'm like, well, I have a little bit of extra money after buying their house. So maybe I'll buy that house also and start getting some of that rental income. That was really my first foray into real estate investing. Wow. So how many houses do you own now rental properties? I own three myself and I have five with a partner.

Okay. And where are these located? They're all in North Carolina. So it was the two that I bought in April of 16, not 16, sorry, 2006. It took a little while, you know, obviously the economy took a, took a dumper, and things were going crazy. And then I bought my third in, I want to say it was March of 2013, somewhere in that time frame. And then I started talking to realtors that were more savvy on real estate investing. And I started talking to some different mortgage brokers, trying to figure out some of the different rules and some of the different programs that are available.

And then from there, I basically brought on a partner. And then over the next couple of years, we ended up buying five more together. single-family homes or these multiple multifamilies? All single-family residences. Okay. And we use a program called delayed financing. So essentially what it does is you pay for everything up front in cash, including the repairs. And then at the end of it, we've done all the rehab. Now you have a tenant in place. And then you can refinance it. If you do all that within six months, you can basically use 70% of the ARVE or whatever you put onto the HUD one to be able to get your maximum mortgage value. Awesome. It sounds very similar to the Burr strategy that's talked about a lot of bigger pockets.

Yeah, it's like a different flavor of the Burr strategy. So you've mentioned a couple of times that you have recently quit your job. Let's talk about how recently this is. This is, what, yesterday? Like literally Friday, June 8th was my last day at work. We are recording this podcast on June 11th, the Monday after. So this is my first. Full day of freedom, if you want to consider it that way. So, wow, and you got up early to talk to us. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

No, I wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That is, I do not join you there. Well, I have a 3 and 7-year-old. It's the only way I can be productive. I got to wake up before they wake up. Get a little work in, do a little things, and then take them to school and come back

and then be productive the rest of the day until I got to pick them up from school at the end of the day. Does your wife work? She does. She's a HR manager for a manufacturing plan. Okay. And does she have any plans to quit at this time? Hopefully not. Okay.

You know, we do have a mortgage and we do have bills to pay. But hopefully I can start making a bunch of money doing everything I'm doing and then get her to retire earlier as well. Nice. But I joke with her that she's six years younger than me. And I started working a lot sooner in my life than she did. So she has a good 10, 15 years after I've retired before she can retire. Okay.

Well, my husband is retired and I continue to work, but that's because I love my job so much. There you go. Well, let's transition here to talk a little bit about the travel reward stuff. So what I think you're the expert in is you're really good at telling other people how to kind of maximize their use of travel rewards while they're working, right? So during those working years. So can you kind of give us an introvert? into that, into how you got started at that, and yeah, maybe talk about some of the recent, some of the benefits you've derived from it.

Sure, sure. So for the longest time, you know, I had the Southwest card and the MX SPG card. And I thought I was doing everything, everything right. And then all of a sudden, my wife wanted to go to Paris. I'm like, well, Southwest doesn't fly to Paris. So how about we go to Chicago instead? And she was fine for that for the next couple weeks. But after that, she's like, well, I still really want to go back to Paris.

I'm like, all right, let me figure it out. And so based on that, that's when I really started kind of, you know, if you think of like the matrix, the red pill or the blue pill. So I took the, I forget which color it is, but I took the pill, which basically brought me down the rabbit hole and really started learning more of the advanced strategies of airline miles and hotel points to reduce her travel costs. And so from there, what I thought we were going to be able to do is be able to get some economy tickets for my wife and me and our son, who was about two at the time. And I ended up earning so many miles and points that I actually brought my mother-in-law as well.

And we flew there in economy, did a stopover in New York. And then on the way back, we flew back in business class. So there's nothing like seeing a 26-month-year-old just sprawled out. You know, it's happy as can be at business class, all these other people. who have real jobs and everything are trudging their way back to the economy. So after that, I was really hooked. Just realizing the power and the potential of those airline miles and hotel points, all the different advanced strategies is for her to be able to earn all those miles and points

without spending tons of money. And, you know, it's been, it's been a wonderful journey since then. So how did you get those miles? You said you earned so many miles that you were able to bring your mother-in-law and your son to fly business class back. did you get those miles? Because traditionally, to get miles on airline rewards programs, you had to fly those miles. Yeah, well, Earn is a little bit of an oxymoron in this world. So, you know, there was a thing at the time called the two browser trick where at the time I applied

for two different Citibank American Airlines cards that at the exact same time, I had two different browsers open and literally you filled all the information on one, fill out all the information on the other, and then you click one to apply, and then you switch over to the other one like two seconds later and click apply. So both of them are applying at the same time and you get, then I end getting approved for both. So that was one of the things that allowed me to earn a lot more miles and points very quickly. And then also there was a opportunity with Fidelity at the time where he said, okay, if you deposit $100,000 into an account with Fidelity, then we'll give you, I'll remember how many miles it was. I think it was 50,000 miles, something like that. And I said, okay,

well, I don't have $100,000, I'm going to write a check. But what I can do is I can deposit $8,000 over and over and over again, 12 times over the next two or three months. So I would deposit $8,000, let it, let the funds clear, withdraw them, deposit it again, let the funds clear, withdraw them, did that over and over and over and over again until I got $100,000 deposited, and boom, I got the bonus. So a lot of these things were back more like in the heyday, you know, five years ago. They're not really available right now. But it's just every time the game is always evolving and you just have to keep learning,

following, you know, bloggers like me, following other bloggers, you know, going into some of the forums and just kind of trading secrets with people and learning and taking notes and implementing right away because some of these loopholes will close in an instant, and some of them are open for quite a while. So how are you finding out about these new ideas? You just said, like following bloggers and connecting with other people, but how do you find out about them? Do you get emails from the banks, or do you just... No, no. The banks certainly aren't going to tell us about that because we're not always the most profitable clients of theirs. And so they're taking steps to reduce the availability of these offers

for people that, like you said earlier, credit card churning, things like that. They want customers that are going to apply for a card and keep that card for years and years and years of paying the annual fee for multiple years. Because essentially, it's like a loss leader when they give you, say, 50,000 miles, 100,000 points, whatever, when you first sign up because they want to keep that long-term relationship with you. So how we find it, there's conferences you go that you attend to. Sometimes people that work for those companies will email you and share something

with you and some of it's just making connections and building friendships and and getting the information that way. Okay, so there's all these different programs and basically what you're saying is when you get to this advanced point, you have to kind of continuously keep up with what's going on, read a lot, keeps going to self-educate to make sure that you're finding the next best deal that will get you miles that are related to your travel goals, right? Exactly, exactly. But the thing is the people who are listening to the podcast, there are years away from having to worry about that type of stuff. It's really, like I kind of call myself like the, you know, the person that's more like a middle-class blogger where it's not trying to get these guys that are advanced that have, already have like all the different offers out there and, and they've had 50 different credit cards and used up all the different offers.

I'm more focused on saying, okay, you're a family of four. You want to go to Hawaii this year, but you really don't want to spend $5,000 on airfare and hotel for you and your family to fly to for that vacation. So that's really why I kind of focus on educating people on taking the spend that you're already doing and maximizing that from the maximum value. And that way you can get the biggest return on your dollar. Yeah, I think that's definitely like something I'm interested in learning about because I've only had a couple of these cards. And I want to know what still is kind of a newer person I can do to kind of get the most out of my travel plans with this kind of stuff. Quick question here.

How many cards have you had and how much time do you need to invest in this at the advanced level to kind of keep getting significant rewards. At the advanced level, it can be quite challenging. I currently have around 40 credit cards open right now. Oh, my gosh. I knew that's probably going to give you a little bit of a heart attack. But again, like, I'm more like PhD level. And what I kind of teach people is more credit cards 101, you know, some basic things

that are going to make a big impact in your life. Whereas for me, it's like that diminishing returns, right? So if you put in an hour or two, you're going to save a few thousand dollars pretty easily, right? Whereas me, because I've had most of the credit cards that are out there, most of the different offers, and a lot of banks are making it more and more difficult for people like me to get more rewards, then it's a lot harder. I have to put a lot more time in to get those rewards for everything I'm trying to do. Awesome.

So how should a family start? What's kind of like a good intro level approach to beginning to travel hack here? Again, like with me and my experience, you know, going to Paris, right? It's finding the card and finding the program that's going to help you get to where you want to go. So you want to start and say, okay, where do I want to go? Do I want to go to Caribbean? Do I want to go to Asia? Do I want to go to Europe?

Where is it that you want to go? Or just, you know what? I just want to go to Orlando. I just want to take my kids at Disney World and have a fun week. So figuring out where you want to go first is going to help you figure out which program is going to be the one that you should focus in. which then based on that is going to say, okay, I should get X, Y, and Z cards to maximize the miles and points from that program. Awesome.

Yeah, for me, you know, when I was thinking about this, my thing is, you know, I'm 27. A lot of my friends are getting married at different parts in the country, right? So I got to go to Columbus. I got to go to Memphis. I got to go to North Carolina. I was just in North Carolina last week for a bachelor party. And these flights kind of are all stacking up. So I was like, oh, I need a, I need Southwest points because I need it for practical.

travel around the United States right now. Exactly. And you say you have, I mean, I'm not sure if you have like a wife or girlfriend or whatever, but getting that companion pass basically just slash your prices of your flights in half. Yes. Yes, I have a companion pass and yes, I use it to take my girlfriend on these flights down. It's a huge saver. It's ridiculous for Southwest.

So I've had the companion pass for 13 years now. And back in the day, the first like two or three years when my wife and I would fly at the time we weren't married yet, but we would fly. and I didn't realize that the companion pass counted when you redeemed for miles for Southwest points. So I was only redeeming those passes on flights that I would actually pay for. And, you know, I just did like a big old face palm when I realized like, what? It actually works on those those redemptions as well. I'm like, oh, my God, I missed out on so many free flights.

But, you know, you live and learn. And you can't, like, beat yourself up on something that you missed, right? You got to focus on what's the next thing you're going to do and how to max. maximize that. So like in your case, yeah, you know, getting the Southwest companion pass for those people who don't know what it is. Essentially, you have to earn 110,000 points with Southwest in a calendar year. And then based on that, you get a companion pass where every flight that you take, your designated companion can fly for free other than just paying the little bit of taxes that the federal government mandates that you charge. So what Scott's doing is say if a flight costs 20,000 points from where you live at, Scott? Denver. Okay, so you're in Denver, you're flying to the North Carolina, it's 20,000 points. Essentially, instead of paying 40,000 points for you and your girlfriend, now you're only paying 20,000 points and $0.60 each way for you and your girlfriend to fly.

Yeah, it's buy one, get one free. Yeah, it's the ultimate, right? And then now Southwest is getting ready to open up flying to Hawaii, and they bought AirTuran a few years ago. So now they're doing a lot more international routes. They go to the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Mexico, Mexico. all these different destinations. So I call like International Light, their footprint, but they have a great network and they have a great program. So I'm looking forward to seeing how you maximize that. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Stop telling people that they're flying to Hawaii because I don't want the competition.

I actually have a friend who's a Southwest flight attendant and she doesn't even know or she won't tell me when they're going to start opening up that route. But I cannot wait until it's open up. I don't go to Southwest every morning to see if they've got flights to Hawaii yet, but I'm really excited for that lower cost flight to Hawaii. Oh, yeah. Well, there are other ways to go to Hawaii for, you know, relatively cheap. So I live in California and there's British Airways, Obios is a great way to go to Hawaii. Most people think, like, what, like, we live in America.

Why would you earn British Airways obvious miles points? Well, basically, from there, they have partnerships with American Airlines and other airlines, and you can fly from California to Hawaii for 12,500 points. Yeah, each way. And I've done that on American for slightly more, but American is the least expensive rewards trip to Hawaii. So a couple of years ago, British Airways was offering a really, really amazing sign-up bonus.

And both my husband and I signed up for cards and got 200,000 miles and took our kids to Hawaii. I think it was $95 for an annual fee that's charged up front. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about annual fees because some cards don't have an annual fee or they have an annual fee that's waived for the first year. Do you pay an annual fee or do you, like, can you get that waived? Is that kind of an always set in stone charge? Do you recommend having a card with an annual fee?

Like, you get better points? So answer all 27 questions I just do. Well, a lot of people are afraid of paying annual fees, right? Because you're like, well, why would I pay for something? I can get this other card for free. And you have to think about what you're actually getting. So a lot of these cards now that have the annual fees, like say on the hotel side, like Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, all the different cards, all the different programs,

they offer a card that has an annual fee. But generally, you're getting a free night in exchange for it on top of the bonus points from when you sign up. So you're paying a little bit less than $100 for, is most of them, anywhere from $50 to $100 is the annual fee. But you're getting a free night. So if you're going to redeem that free night for a hotel that's more than $100, you won, right? Because you automatically got a discount on something you're going to do anyways by staying at a hotel. And if you do it right, you can redeem that free night for something that would have been $2, $300,

So it's all about trying to figure out how to kind of gain the system, so to speak, by pre-paying something up front to getting a massive discount later on. Some of the more premium cards, now a lot of cards are coming out that have annual fees of $350, $450,000, even $550. And those are a little bit harder to justify, right? Because it is a big investment up front of that much money. But you know what? Guarantee you, the first year, you're going to save when.

more than that annual fee because you got the sign up bonus anywhere from 50 to 100,000 miles of points. A lot of times you get like a global entry reimbursement of $100. Some of these cards offer travel reimbursements of you know, two to $300. So you can see very quickly how paying that annual fee of, you know, 350 to 550 whittles down and next thing you know it's maybe $100 after you factor in all the different benefits. And for me, having a lot of, you know, having lounge access, having a lot of these premium benefits is worth $100. Awesome. So let's go ahead and transition here into what, let's walk through the specifics of how

someone getting started should approach this problem, right? And let's start with, let's start assuming that you want to get the Southwest companion pass because that seems to me to be the most practical for a large majority of people who are trying to do United States-based traveler, maybe go to the Caribbean, wherever Southwest flies. Sure, sure. So how would, you know, I'm starting, I'm getting started on this. I'm not sure.

I'm a little tentative about opening a new credit card. What do I need to do to go and get that companion pass? Okay. So the easiest path to get in the companion pass right now is getting the personal version of the credit card. It's going to be, I think, about $99 annual fee. You're going to get probably $50,000 southwest points after you spend $2,000 to $3,000 on the card in the first three months. And so now you have $50,000 plus whatever you spent on the card.

Most people, especially people listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast, have a little bit of a side business, whether it be a rental property, whether it be blogging, selling on Etsy, whatever it is that you're doing, you have a business. It may not necessarily feel like a business, but it is a business and it can qualify for a business credit card. And you don't have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to qualify for business card either. Sometimes you're just starting up a business and your CPA says from day one, you should have a business credit card to keep your business and your personal expenses separate. So when you apply for the card, don't lie, just say, I have zero revenue or I have $3,000 of revenue, whatever your number is. And now you can apply for a business credit card, whether you have an EIN or just using your social security number.

So I would definitely recommend getting an EIN though. They're free. You can go to the IRS website. apply for that, takes maybe 10 minutes. So the next step beyond that is getting the Chase Southwest business version of the card. And the offers kind of bounce around, but I think right now it's offering 60,000 Southwest points. Again, for the same $99 annual fee, you got to spend $2,000 to $3,000 in the first 90 days. And now you have 50,000 from the first card, 60,000 from the business card. You have 110,000 points. Voila. You just qualified for a comparison.

PASS. And it's good for this year and all the way through the end of next year. So you're really benefiting most if you can apply for that card and qualify early in the year as possible. That way you can get as close to two years with the companion pass as possible. Yes. That means if you get it in January, then it'll be good through January to December of 2018 and then through January of December through 2019. But if you get it in December, you'll only get 11 or 13 months on that car. right or that companion pass so you want to get this early in the year now a quick question i have because i've never actually figured this out can i get a hundred and nine thousand points by december 31st and then get my last thousand points in january first we'd have to collect all 110

000 points in one calendar year or in that year yeah all 110 000 in one calendar year okay so you want to start this january first basically yeah or some people that are a little bit more trying to game it will apply for the card in in december and they won't spend any money on it until January 1st. Gotcha. And they spend everything from January 1st through that current billing cycle. And then bam, they have the companion pass because those bonus points of post as soon as the statement closes. You have the companion pass generally by the end of January.

Yeah, and I didn't get it, game it that much. I got it somewhere in March, April, but that was still great for me. It was a big improvement of not having the companion pass prior to that. Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, most people don't travel that much where it's going to, mean that much of a difference whether they get in January or March or even June. So just the fact of them having the companion pass for 18 months, they'd say to get it in June is going to be a huge difference in their life versus, you know, March.

All right. Now, if I have a business card and a personal card, I don't have to, I can spend both business and personal expenses on the personal card and then switch all of my spending, both business and personal, onto the business card in order to quickly get to these. $3,000 limits. Is that correct? Technically correct. I mean, they really don't want you to mix personal and business on the different cards, but like the credit card police are going to come after you and say what's going on. I mean, at our levels, right? I mean, if you start putting a million dollars on business expenses on a personal card or put a million dollars of personal expenses on a business card, they're going to probably start looking at you a little bit closely,

right? But if you put a few thousand here and there, nobody's really going to bat an eyelash on it. But you're really, realistically, you know, say you have an LLC, a corporation, something like that, and you specifically set it up to protect yourself. You don't want these avenues where there's inroads where they call it piercing the corporate bail where say somebody trips and hurts themselves on one of your rental properties. And now because you've put personal expenses on the business card and business expenses on your personal car, you kind of call it commingling your funds. Now they can pierce the corporate veil and come. Matthew, you and sue you personally instead of just suing your LLC that owns a rental property. Yeah, if you have an LLC or a business set up that is a significant entity, that's where you've got to talk to your accountant and your lawyer first before trying to game in any

type of system like this. But if you're house hacking, for example, and you live at a property, maybe probably don't have it in an LLC at that point because you live in there. And that's still a business, right? My house hack is still a business. And I can then put that a business with real revenue coming in as my application for this card, Scott's house hacking business or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean,

one of the things that we always need to talk about is any of the miles and points that you earn are not worth paying any sort of interest on the cards. So only do this if you're able to pay off the balances in full every month. Because credit cards, especially with interest rates rising, credit cards charge anywhere from like 20 to 30 percent interest rates on their cards. So in a couple months, it's not going to take much. where the interest that you're paying overwhelms any sort of benefit that you got from the card. So only do this if you're able to pay out the card in full every month. Thank you for saying that because I have always paid off my credit card all the time.

So that's kind of second nature. And sometimes you do forget that, yeah, you said interest rates are 20 to 30 percent. That astounds me because then you're bumping up against usury laws, in my opinion. In real estate, you're bumping up against usury laws in like the 18 to 28 percent bracket. which seems ridiculous that credit cards can charge so much. Yeah, yeah. So you talked about the Southwest Companion Pass. What are some other really good programs, like for hotels or for other flight programs?

Well, I would say, like, say you don't have a destination in mind and you just, you're not quite sure where you're going to go. Some of the, they call them like the bank proprietary points, like Chase Ultimate Rewards, City Thank You Points, American Express Membership Rewards, those points, Those points are very flexible. And so you can redeem them for cash. You can redeem them for travel or you can transfer them to their transfer partners. Say like in Scott's case, right, say you have the personal version and the business version of the Southwest card.

Now going, oh, man, I really want more Southwest points because I really want to be able to travel and maximize this companion pass. Well, you start getting some of the Chase Ultimate Rewards credit cards like the Sapphire Reserve or preferred Chase, Chase Inc. business cards, start getting some of those cards. Now you're getting another 50 to 100,000 points on each one of those cards and they transfer one to Southwest. So say between a couple cards, you accumulate 100,000 points and ultimate rewards, transform over. Now you've got another 100,000 Southwest points, which, because you have this companion pass, is really worth 200,000 points for you and your girlfriend to travel. That's awesome. So these kind of chase ultimate rewards points, city thank you points, and American Express, what were they called points?

Membership rewards? Membership awards. These are kind of like the all-rounders, you know, like versus the Southwest points that I got go right to Southwest. I can't use them on, you know, United or whatever. I can actually transfer these points to other airlines and book my trip to Paris or whatever. Exactly. So what's kind of like, I've heard the rule, the 524 rule.

Is that one that you recommend as a good way to get kind of get started along this? Is that kind of give you a good balance? of this kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, again, for the average person, you're not really going to have to worry about these rules too much, right? Because the average person is not getting five credit cards in a two-year period of time. Every bank has kind of implemented these similar type of rules. Chase 524 means that they will not approve you for their most popular cards if you've had

five new cards in the last 24 months. American Express has a one bonus per lifetime rule where each different card, you can only get that bonus once. Say like the SPG card, you have it, you cancel it. Five years later, you apply for it again. You're not going to get the bonus on it. So each different card, you can only get the bonus once. Bank of America recently implemented a rule where you can only get two new cards within 60 days, three within like six months or a year, and then four within like two years, something like that. City Bank, you can only get the bonus once per family every 24 months when you open or close one of their cards.

So they offer multiple American Airlines cards, right, on the personal and the business side. So if you get one of the American Airlines cards today and then two years from now, you go and close it, well, you've got to wait another two years before you can get another American Airlines card. So realistically, what people do is you apply for the card today. You wait until almost two years from now. you apply for the second card of whatever flavor that they have, and then you cancel that first card.

So that way your two-year rule kind of is based on when you got that bonus versus when you closed. So there's all these different rules. And again, most people don't have to worry about it because they're only going to get one or two new cards a year. That's kind of what I recommend people do is get like an airline card, a hotel card, or like you said, like one of these kind of utility player type cards, they're flexible and they can do cash back, they can pay for travel, or they can transfer the points. Get one or two of those a year, see how it works for you. And then, you know, based on that, decide whether or not you want to go deeper into all the different world of travel cards,

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and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. You have a favorite hotel program? It sounds like the Southwest program is your favorite airline program. Well, unfortunately, there's been a lot of movement recently in all the different hotel programs.

You know, Marriott and SPG announced that August 1st, they're merging their two programs, even though Marriott acquired SPG a couple years ago, and they've been running simultaneously. They've allowed the transfer their points. So there's big changes there. Hyatt recently changed their program about a year ago, year and a half ago, where it went from their Hyatt to World of Hyatt, and they kind of messed things up. And then my favorite was Kempton. I still really enjoy all their hotels.

but now that they've integrated into IHG, like a holiday end, if you think of it that way, a lot of the benefits, a lot of the perks aren't as lucrative as they used to be. So it's harder to say which one is a favorite nowadays. You're kind of still waiting for a lot of the details to flush out and figure out where the kind of like the loopholes are that are really going to maximize value for you. So honestly, I have cards with all those different programs, mainly because every card gives an annual free night. I have a free night from IHG, I have a free night from Marriott, a free night from Hyatt. So all those cards makes sense for me to pay a little bit less than $100 a year for the card

to get that annual free night where I'm going to spend it on a room normally would be $150 to $300. So when you have all these cards, I've got a couple of these. I've got three cards that I've opened up in the past year. The Chase personal card for $50,000, the Chase business card for $60,000 Southwest points. That was to get my companion pass. And then I have the Chase Sapphire preferred card to get Chase Ultimate Rewards points. And I'm going to probably look into opening up another one.

But let's say that I, you know, I've got the bonus on the Southwest personal card, right? I don't use that one anymore because I put all my personal expenses on the Chase Sapphire preferred card for personal. And I put all my business expenses on the Chase Southwest business card. Hope everyone can follow this so far. What do I do with the personal card? Do I, can I cancel that now? Will I lose those points or, you know, I don't want to pay that next fee? but I don't want to lose the bonus points I've accumulated.

Okay, so two things. About one to two months before an annual fee is going to hit, call the card company up and say, you know, I really like this card, but I'm unsure if I'm getting the right value from the card to know whether or not I want to keep it. Is there anything you can do for me? So essentially, like you're in a roundabout way, you're threatening to close the card. And depending upon what type of volume you put on the card and your credit score and your value of relationship to the bank,

They'll oftentimes provide you an offer where they'll waive the annual fee. They'll say if you spend X number of dollars on the card, we'll give you some extra bonus points. There's all these different types of offers that what they'll do. They call that a retention bonus. And so based on that, you decide whether or not it's lucrative enough for you to keep the card. That's a really good tip. I've never heard of that before. So now I can get not only the signing bonus, but also when I'm about to cancel, I can say, okay, great.

you know I haven't spent any money I put I got the bonus and basically nothing more I have not going to spend any more for the rest of the year on this card and then I call them up and then then okay great I'll put another $3,000 on it to get another 10 15 hopefully 1,000 bonus points that's a great tip yeah so you know I mean ultimately you may decide to close it anyways I mean I know people that they'll do that retention bonus they'll do that two or three months before the annual fee hits they'll get whatever bonus that they offered them and then I'll close the card anyways. So to me, that's kind of like a jerk move. I mean, you want to act in good faith with the banks because ultimately you want a good relationship with them because they're

going to come out with new cards. You want to make sure you get approved. So I play the long game, not the short game as far as trying to maximize those rewards. So but again, you can do those types of things. And to me, looking at the annual fees, it's like any business, right, whether you're going to a local hardware shop, you're going to a restaurant, whatever, they have to earn your business and earn that share of your wallet every single year, right? We work hard for our money, and don't just blindly give them money because they ask for it. So every year, look at the card benefits because card benefits do change. And so look at it and go, is this worth me paying $49, $9, $350, whatever the annual fee is, look and see.

does this card still deserve a slot in my wallet and do they still deserve a chunk of my income? And again, if they don't, I don't lose my points that I've collected. They just go into some account somewhere that I can store. Yeah, sorry about that. So it depends on the type of card, right? So if it's Southwest, American Airlines, whatever, or hotel card, every month when that statement closes, those points transfer into that airline or hotel program and they're there. If you close that card, they're not going away.

You will have potential statute of limitations on those points where they expire after 12 months, 18 months, 24 months if there's no activity. But once those points are in there, they don't just evaporate if you close the card. But if you have city thank you points, Chase's Ultimate Rewards, American Express membership rewards, potentially those points could go away if you don't use them within generally 30, 60 days after you close the card. So if you're going to close the card, do a redemption. those points for cash back, redeem it for travel, or transfer them to one of their partners before you close the card, and then that way you're free to close it, and no worries. Awesome. It's a great tip. Yeah. So when I was closing one of my cards, I called them up and asked them that same

question, and they said, as long as there's activity in the account, and I said, what do you mean activity in the account, activity on the credit card account or activity in the rewards account? And they clarified it's activity in the rewards account. I only fly Southwest. This year I'm going to Greece and they don't go there so I have to fly like Romanian Airlines or something. Yeah. I can't remember where I'm flying. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But when I'm on Southwest, I always put my account number into my credit, into my.

Reservation, yeah. Thank you. Wow. I completely skip that. I always put that into my reservation and then there's activity on my account. Even if I'm paying with points, there's still activity on my account. Exactly. And my kids have their own rewards account as well because we don't always have enough points to fly.

Sometimes you have to give them money. So after the age of two, your kids can't fly on your lap. So absolutely get them a rewards account for whatever is your favorite airline so that they can be earning points to. Exactly. And then there's other ways to earn miles and points also that aren't related to buying an airfare or paying for a hotel room. So obviously everybody does online shopping, right? Like most of us don't go to the store too often anymore. So instead of going directly to staples.com, bedbath and beyond.com, you're going to a lot of weddings.

You're going to be going to bedbath and beyond pretty much every weekend buying a wedding gift. You know, don't go into the store. Don't go directly to their website. Go through a shopping portal that's associated with one of these airlines or hotels. And based on that, you're going to earn points that are going to be able to kind of keep activity going on into your account. Same thing if you're renting a car. go through their portal, attach your loyalty number to it, and then you're going to earn some miles and points for renting a car through, like, say, Hertz or Avis or one of those guys.

Where am I finding these shopping portals? Because I've never heard of this. And I thought I was some travel hacking genius. Apparently, I'm like not even at the 101 level. I'm at the 99 level. I've got to test into it. You sound like you're in the, you're a sophomore. So you're going down the path and you're learning and you've been able to implement a few things but yeah there's always more to learn so essentially one of the websites i would recommend going to is a site called cashbackmonitor dot com and yeah so they are kind of an aggregation tool and i know they i know the owner site is a really nice guy and so what he does is he aggregates all the different ways to earn cashback and miles and points through uh shopping portals so say you're going to go to coals and you go to

cashbackmonitor.com, look at Coles, and I say, okay, here's all these different places where you can earn cashback or you can earn miles of points. And you go, oh, I'm trying to earn Southwest points. Let me see how many points they offer. Or, oh, this one is offering, you know, 5x return and Southwest is only offering one or two X. Well, I'm trying to earn Southwest points, but I'd rather have, you know, 5% cashback than, you know, two extra points on Southwest. So you can make that decision every time you go online shopping. But yeah, and so basically from there, click. click on the link and automatically transport you to that shopping portal for Southwest, Hilton, Hyatt, whoever you're trying to earn miles and points with.

Does it cost more to shop through the portal? No, it doesn't cost anything. So essentially, it's like anything. I mean, you're a blogger, Mindy. And so it's like affiliate marketing. So these websites pay marketers like me, bloggers, like you, to refer business to them. What they do is essentially they're giving you a portion of, their affiliate commission. That's really what it boils down to. If you're going to do a lot of shopping,

pay attention and shop near holidays. Holidays and back to school are the best times to shop online because that's when they give extra bonuses. The bonus points don't count towards like the companion pass, but these points count towards being able to redeem for airline flights and hotel stays. So right now is Father's Day is coming up, right? And so a lot of these American Airlines, Southwest, I get all their emails and they talk about all these promotions where you spend $50, $200 that gave you an extra, like not only the points you're going to earn through that merchant, but they're going to give you bonus points of $500,000, $5,000 miles or points just for shopping through their portal. Oh my God. I've never heard of this ever. And I'm not a sophomore.

I'm a seventh grader. For people who are just listening to the podcast, I definitely recommend zooming through the video to this point. Just so you can see a look on Mindy's face. Yeah. That's amazing. I've never heard that before. Okay. So what are some other spending hacks that you know to help you with your minimum spend?

Because I never have a problem hitting that, you know, it's usually $1,000 a month. So like $1,000 in one month or $2,000 in two months. I've seen like $5,000 in three months, which is, so in order to get the bonus, you have to spend a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. So I am always working on my house or working on some sort of project. Yeah, yeah. But I've actually finished it now, which is lightning pace here. So what are other spending hacks that you know of? Number one, time your credit card applications for about a month ahead of any sort of major spending activity.

going to have, whether it's paying for your renewal and your life insurance or your auto insurance, home insurance. Those are big ticket items, generally $1,000, $2,000 a year, right? Paying tuition. My kids go to, you know, they have daycare and in private school, so I got to pay big tickets for their tuition. Even buying tires. I mean, four tires on a car, a thousand bucks right there. So time your applications to bigger ticket items. And then on top of that, you know, say like, you know, you want to buy some gift cards. You know, like I like going to TGI Fridays a lot of times or dominoes or whatever. And if you have the money, you can float it.

Buy a thousand bucks worth of those gift cards. You're going to eat there throughout the year anyways. So if you can float the money, spend it, buy the gift cards from the grocery store, from Staples, wherever. Definitely look like where you're getting your bonus points because every credit card is a little bit different. And they incent people to spend at certain types of stores. Sometimes they'll get two or three times miles or points at a grocery store.

some of the cards offer three to five times points like staples and both of them have tons of gift cards for just about any store that you're going to shop at whether it's coals home depot southwest whatever they have a lot of different gift card choices for you to choose from oh that's interesting so my personal my personal grocery store it's open just for me my grocery store that they go to all the time will frequently have four times fuel points on gift card purchases and typically around the holidays. So Mother's Day, Father's Day, you know, all these gift card giving holidays. So today I went and got gas and I saved a dollar a gallon on gas because I had all these fuel points that I had actually forgotten about until I went to the grocery store yesterday. So that's another thing you can do. That's another tip is to, you know, look at these stores reward points because sometimes Staples has really great rewards points or, you know, cash back or something. I don't shop at Staples very frequently. because I don't do anything on paper anymore. Well, yeah, but you can get a Staples car.

I mean, a card that's going to pay you for three to five times points at office supply stores. And now you're going into Staples just for the gift cards. And that way you can then spend those dollars elsewhere. So what you mentioned with the store rewards on top of the rewards you're earning from your credit card, that's called stacking. So what you want to do is you want to be able leverage the opportunities to get as many miles and points possible out of spend you're going to do. anyways. So I don't go out to restaurants too often, but what I do is I want to maximize those points when I'm out there dining. So here's like a strategy I use. I use a card that's going to pay me two to three times points whenever I'm out dining. And then I register that card

through my preferred dining rewards program. Most of the airlines and I think a couple hotels participate in it. So I leverage them through Southwest. So I'm getting points from my credit card. I'm getting points from dining rewards, which go into my Southwest account. And then on top of that, I sign up for this program called Dosh. And what they do is at participating restaurants, they give you anywhere from 7 to 10% cash back on most of their participating restaurants. Okay. So DOSH is DOSH?

Correct. Okay. So you can find links to all of these sites that we're talking about in the show notes of today's show, which is BiggerPockets.com slash Money Show. 27. A couple of weeks ago, we had Becky and Noah on. They were in the middle of their pre-FI mini retirement road trip. And they told us about another spending hack that I had never thought of before. And it's really just, you have to think outside the box. They said, prepay your utilities. Prepay a few months of utilities. If you have to spend that money in order to get these

big, huge travel rewards, you know, if you don't have anything coming up, that's another way to do it too. So these are great tips to meet the minimum spending requirements of a few thousand dollars per these cards. If you're getting a few a year, you know, this is how you can kind of easily hit that spend and make sure you get that signing bonus where you have to make that minimum spend. What if you have the opposite problem? What if you are about to buy a rental property, for example, or have some other type of

expense that's going to come up, that's going to be large. So let's say buy a rental property, you're going to put $20,000 a rehab into it and closing costs, so $20,000 between medium-sized rehab and all these like appraisals and PMI, all that kind of stuff. Sure, sure. How do I kind of go into that strategizing ahead of time so that I can make the most of, you know, credit card signings and bonuses? One, you want to make sure that whoever that you're working with takes credit cards, like say your contractor or work with your contractor just say, okay, you go take to Home Depot or whatever the local hardware store is, whatever you want to buy, give me the shopping list, and I'll pay for all the supplies.

So you can take a look at it that way because most likely the contract you're working with, they're going to take their labor, and then they're going to take whatever they're buying from the supply store, and they're going to bill you, right? But they don't want to pay two to three percent to the credit card company on all the stuff they just bought from Home Depot, right? offer to pay directly to the place to be able buy those supplies. Or, I mean, here's what I do. I have these.

What I do is I buy gift cards and then I basically turn them into money orders. There's a little bit of a cost to that. But take those cards and turn them into money orders and then pay your contractor with the money order. So it's a way to get, to meet those minimum spends and at a very cost-efficient manner. and it's not a problem. So I'm probably not going to really go into all the different ways of converting them into money orders. But if you search online, you'll find a lot of bloggers talk about that.

I generally don't talk about it too much. Yeah, I try to either buy all the materials myself or, and this is because I would have, if I trust the contractor, I'll buy a $1,000 gift card or several $500 gift cards to Home Depot. And then I ask for itemized receipts from that. And that's been just goes right onto my credit card and I'm able to kind of collect the bonuses and points from that and help me need some spend. Exactly. Like we talked about, don't go to Home Depot to buy that gift card.

Go to the grocery store, go to Staples, and get those multiple points on those gift cards. I'm a sophomore still too, so I'm still learning. That's a great tip. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, where have you traveled? Where are some of the famous favorite places that you've traveled to?

One of the last ones I went recently with my wife. I took her to Italy. We flew business class from, well, actually first class domestically to get to our launching point to go international. We went to Rome, say that the Waldorf Astoria in Rome for a couple days, took a train up to Milan, stayed at the park high at Milan, and took a train to the Italian coast, the Cinque Terre, you know, like all the picturesque houses on the side of the hill, overlooking the sea, and then came back to Rome for a couple more days, and then flew back in business class again. and that trip would have cost $12,000 if we paid cash for everything, whether the hotel rooms, the airfare, et cetera.

I used probably, I think there was about 200,000 American Airlines miles, some free nights from the hotel points, and I think about $1,200 in taxes and fees and annual fees, etc., to get those points. So I'm very good at earning the points. I'm not always good at redeeming them. So I actually paid somebody to book the flights for me. and it was, I don't know, I think their fee was about $350.50, but totally worth it. They got us far better routing and a better plane than I found on my own.

And if I would have looked for the fees, if I would look for the flights myself, I think our cost would have been about $1,000. And I paid them $350. And in total, it was $800, including their fees and the fees charged by the airline. So not only did they find me better flights and better routing, it's actually cheaper than one I've found myself. Okay. You said you paid someone to book the flights for you. Was this like a flight agent or is this a service that people provide? Yeah.

So normally people are used to travel agents, right, where you pay cash and somebody books a flight and a hotel or cruise or whatever for you. The world of miles and points, they have pseudo travel agents where it's what they do is they call award booking services. So you tell them how many miles of points you have from different programs and tell them where you want to go and they'll find the best routing based on the miles and points that you have and the type of class of flight that you want to take, whether it's economy, business, first class, etc. And then do you actually have to book them yourself based on links that they give you or do you give them access to your account and they book it for you? Generally, you give them access to your account. I mean, it kind of depends on what you're comfortable with. they can give you the routings and you can do it, but you're going to pay the same amount, whether you do it or they do it.

So I'm fine with just giving them my access to my account. I actually change my password right before I give them access to something that's totally random. And then once they're done, then I change it back to the normal password that I may use. Okay. Oh, that's a good tip. How do you keep track of your rewards? Well, there's a super simple app called Award Wallet. Oh.

And it's a free. well, they have a free version and a paid version. So essentially the free version will do most of what everybody here needs. You log in to each of your different accounts, whether it's Southwest. Actually, sorry, they don't track Southwest, but you track Hyatt, United Airlines, American Airlines, all the different programs. They even check TGI Friday rewards. So they have all these different programs that they track.

And then you have all of your miles of points in one simple interface, and you can look and see where you have all your miles and points. And every week they'll send you a really simple summary of, hey, here's the change and balances that you've had from, say, your statement closed and points posted. You went on a flight that points posted. Or you redeem for a flight or a hotel stay and points got deducted from your account. So it's super simple.

I've been using it for probably like seven years now and really enjoy it. What I do is I pay the, I think it's $10. every six months, something like that. So that way you get notifications when points are about to expire. And that $10 to save me a couple different times were programs that I hadn't paid much attention to, but I had some decent balances in. And so that way I redeemed those points before the expiration date. That's great.

That's fantastic. I thought that you were going to say spreadsheet. And I was going to say that. Can you share that? Awardwollet.com. Correct. Okay. And again, all of these links will be.

and the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 27. Okay, now it's time for our famous four questions. These are the same questions that we ask every one of our guests. Okay. There's actually five because we didn't know how to count when we first started this. That's okay. It's personal finance. Nobody counts.

Nobody counts. Nobody knows how to do that. Our first question is, what is your favorite finance book? Well, of course, how to sell your home by Minnie Jensen. I bought that one about a month or two ago. And why did you buy that book? Because I am selling my house. But beyond that, the book that I read a long time ago,

and I even actually kind of followed this mantra before even heard of the book, it's called Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. And I'm a huge fan of just setting things up once and letting them run. And that way I can go on about my life and focus on. everything else. Except for travel hacking. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that way I can focus on the things that require, you know, my attention, you know, so. That's awesome. I love that book as well. And it's just a great simple plan to become very wealthy over time. Exactly, exactly. All right. What was your biggest money mistake? I would say it's, it's more on the job and income front.

So back in 2001, I was, I just started doing financial planning. and I had an opportunity to go into mortgage. One of my dad's attorney friends was starting a mortgage company. And he said, hey, why don't you come running one of my mortgage offices for me? I said, well, no, I just started this job doing financial planning. And I promised all these people that I was going to be their financial planner. I was going to help them out, reach their goals. And then I just basically said, no, thank you.

I ultimately left that job later on that year. And who would have foresaw that the mortgage boom was going to happen over the next five or six years? and I realized that I would have made so much money. I mean, multiple millions of dollars, just based on the way I am and everything like that, I know I would have made, I would have made so much money. And I missed out on that. But, you know, life is what it is, right? You know, you can't focus on what you missed out on.

And I had a good career in banking. I left financial planning, went into banking sales. And then from there, went into the corporate finance job that I have now. Who knows if I would have met my wife? based on where I would have been in life and things like that. So everything, it's like a, I think that movie's called like sliding doors or something like that. Where, like, one day Gwenith Paltrow got on the subway car and the other day she didn't. I'm like, showed these parallel paths of how her life was, it was like so different because of one different thing.

And yeah, I would have made a lot of money. It was a big financial mistake as far as that goes. But my life has turned out pretty awesome. I have a beautiful wife, awesome kids. And who knows if that would have happened if I hadn't have gone down the path I went. So it's a mistake financially, but it turned out well. Yeah, I love that you bring that up that, you know, we rarely hear, oh, I forwent an opportunity that would have worked out really well.

It's mostly, oh, I bought this thing or, you know, didn't invest at this or whatever. But that's a great perspective. Thanks for sharing that. Definitely. Yeah. I would like to correct you. You said, and now I have the job that I have. You have the job that you had.

you are now tired. I know I'm still getting, I'm still getting used to. I'm still getting used to the fact that I don't have to go there anymore. Lee and I are friends on Facebook and I saw he posted his picture. Okay, I'm out of here. Bye. Like, peace.

See you. Okay, so now that you're at the end of your journey or the end of your employment journey, what is the best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I would say that the number one thing is to automate your finance. Yeah, like, automating your savings, whether it's setting aside money towards a goal that you have, automating it towards investing in your 401K and whatever retirement plans that you that are available, direct depositing your paycheck, you know, that way it doesn't get lost, you get the money in there, you're not running down to the bank, wasting your time, and then also automating your bills.

So that way you're not getting late fees, you're reducing interest charges, things like that. And then again, by automating things, you're able to focus on the things that are hiring, value in your life versus things that are just more repetitive tasks. That's great tip. All right. That's the final, well, the second blast. And hardest question of the famous four, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Well, my parties are probably a little bit different than yours, Scott.

You know, I'm 43 and almost 43, and I have a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. A lot of jokes, those parties. Yeah, my audience is probably a little bit different. And so the joke that my son loves is a knock-knock joke. So knock-knock. Who's there? Interrupting panda. Who?

Interrupting panda. Interrupting panda who? I'm so bad at knock-talk jokes. So the panda interrupts you before you get a chance to say interrupting panda, who. I know how to do that joke. Scott didn't do it right. Say it with me. Okay.

Knock-knuck. Who's there? Interrupting Panda. Interrupting Panda who? Come on, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went to the zoo last week with my girlfriend back in D.C. I visit my parents and then drove down in North Carolina to hang out with some friends for that bachelor party. Anyways, at the zoo, we see the panda den.

And at the next to the panda den, there's a bar. And a panda walks into the bar. And, you know, we're all sitting there like, what's going on? And he takes out a gun, shoots somebody, and then walks out of the bar. And we're all just completely stunned at the panda's behavior. And we're like, what are you doing? Like, how, why are you doing this? The panda turns around, looks at us, and points to the sign.

And the sign says, pandas, eats, shoots, and leaves. Sorry, I had to go with my panda joke. That's a good joke for, again, your audience. Probably not want to talk about panda shooting people with three-year-olds and seven-year-olds. Yeah, sorry. That's a joke. Okay, I'm going through all of the jokes. People will send us jokes.

Okay. Because not everybody had a joke when we first started asking these questions. So the man walked into a bar with a piece of asphalt under his arm and said, I'll have a beer and one for the road. I like that joke. I'm sure you do. That was from Stephen. Thank you, Stephen, for submitting that amazing joke.

There you go. I am never a fan of these jokes because they're terrible. Okay, so Lee, where can people find out more about you? I'm available at bald thoughts.com and bald thoughts on all the different social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Okay. We will again link to those in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 27. Lee, thank you so much for taking time out of your, I guess it's not that busy anymore now that you're all unemployed.

Thanks for taking, thanks for getting up early. today on your first day of not working to talk to us about this. I learned a ton. I think now I'm in fifth grade and we'll hopefully be entering middle school at some point. Middle school. There you go. Travel hacking. This was great.

Award wallet.com. I know I've got a ton of awards programs. I'll be typing them in. Your points expired yesterday. Yeah. Number one thing is we work very hard to earn all these miles and points. you don't like it's like heartbreaking when they expire right and don't do all this effort and then not use them like your your miles and points are not like a 401k they do not increase in value

over time use them as soon as you earn them you know or like shortly after you earn them they call it like in our world they call it earn and burn earn them and then use them or earn them with a with a redemption in mind so that way they don't expire and they don't become because every year airline miles on hotel programs they look at ways to reduce the value those points so use them use them use them that's probably the kind of the ending word as far as miles and points goes yeah that's an excellent tip all right well we are going to get out of here thanks again lee we'll talk to you soon all right thank you bye bye so much all right that was lee huffman from baldthoughts.com wow wow wow wow wow Wow, mind blown, like the whole time we were listening to him talk.

I had these questions, and I was assuming he would answer in a different way, you know, especially the, how do you keep track of your rewards? I thought he was going to say, oh, I've got this spreadsheet and whatever, and, you know, because I think it's important that you need to keep track of them. And I had no idea there was a thing that exists, award wallet.com, that actually keeps track of them for you. That's really awesome. Yeah, I mean, that was just incredible wealth of information from someone who's an expert.

And I had no idea about any of this stuff. I felt the same way I felt about, you know, when Travis Hornsby talked about student loan debt, you know, and then those kinds of programs back in episode, I think that was episode 22. And then in episode three, when Aaron Chase talked about cutting your grocery bill, I mean, I felt the same way. These are things that, like, I'd never considered. Huge hacks that can give you 10, 15%, maybe more return on spending you're going to do anyways. Just fantastic.

That's the important part. This is spending you're going to do anyways. When I get a new credit card, when I open up a card, I put. put it in my, my wallet. And then that is the only card that I use everywhere I shop. Groceries, gas, paying bills, I can put my utilities on it. You know, anytime I'm spending money, I'm putting it on that card. And when you have two kids and a household, spending adds up really quickly.

But Lee even shared some tips when you can't quite make the spend. You know, there's still ways around that so you're not losing out on these rewards. And this was just like from start to finish, fantastic show. And I'm so happy he came on the show. Yeah. And one of the things that I think impacts the financial independence community a little bit is we're averse to spending. You know, if you're listening to The Bigger Pockets Money Show, you're trying to build wealth. And spending unnecessarily hurts a little bit, right?

And, you know, what I found travel rewards has done for me to a certain extent is now I'm not spending money on my travel. This is mostly points. So I can enjoy myself traveling a little bit more. It doesn't bite quite as much when I have to spend, when I have to go to see my family or go to a wedding, a wedding used to cost me like $1,500 to $2,000 to attend. Now it still costs me a couple hundred bucks with the gifts, you know, getting a suit, you know, dry clean, all that kind of stuff. But the travel, the flight and the hotel are booked with points.

And I can enjoy myself. And I don't know, it's kind of a psychological trick for someone like me that's a little versed to spending to get really comfortable with these things and have a great time. It's just so much better to go for free than to go for $2,000. Yes. booked with points earned on money you would have spent no matter what. Exactly. You always have to eat.

But with Aaron's tips that now you spend less on that. Exactly. This was just fantastic. I'm so excited. This one went a little bit long because we just couldn't stop talking to this amazing, amazing guy. So we are going to let you go. Scott, do you have anything else to add before we sign off? Nope.

Just take one quick step as a result of this episode. and consider maybe going for the companion pass or going for one kind of generic chase credit card that has a low fee and that will give you a good amount of points and then spend them on something and reward yourself. I think it's just a great tip that will help you reduce your travel expenses on things you either want to do or have to do. Yes. And you reduce your travel expenses, so now you can do more traveling. Yeah, exactly. All right, from episode 27 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen over and Out.