Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - #96: Credit Card Hacking with J.J Todd

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

In this episode of Escaping the Drift, host John Gafford interviews credit card points expert J.J. Todd. J.J shares the wild story of how he got into credit card points hacking, from leveraging Southwest companion passes in law school to renting over 600 cars in 3 months from Hertz for their United miles promotion. Listeners learn about J.J.'s record of earning over 3.4 million United miles and using them to take over $120,000 worth of flights. J.J.'s gives tactical advice on the best credit cards to use for different purchases and how to maximize points by transferring between different loyalty programs. It's a fascinating inside look at how to turn average 1% returns on credit cards into 20x more value by leveraging points strategically.Highlights:"If you do this the right way, if you have sort of those aspirational overseas, lie flat business class goals, it's not uncommon to take that 1% return that a lot of these credit cards are giving you and making it very easy for you to get in turning that into 3, 5, 10, sometimes 20x return.""I've used all those miles that I earned off, all 3.4 million miles are now gone. Sure. Got over $120,000.03 flights in value out of leveraging those points." "Depending on how your expenses blend out, you should be getting two and a half to three, maybe, you know, I think that's kind of a fair, if you're optimizing it, then not everybody has the bandwidth or tolerance to carry around seven credit cards like you you have there."Timestamps:00:00: Introduction02:07: Credit Cards09:20: Renting Cars For Points 14:30: Free Travel 22:53: Perks 31:50: Flight Milage 40:45: Luxury Experiences

I'm six foot ten. I wear size 19 shoes. And all the questions I always get. Yes, I play basketball. Yes, my parents are tall. You know, the weather appears exactly the same. All of those. No, you won't move. I'm not going to move if you stand behind me at a concert. Don't come up and stand behind me and ask me to move. That's not. Can I tell you something, though? I can make you move. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again with another

episode of Escaping the Drift. And today, if you are somebody that reaches in your pocket as, you know what, if you don't do this, I don't know how you have a phone. Like if you reach in your pocket and you grab a credit card throughout the day, as almost every single human on the planet does, you're going to want to hear about this dude because this is a guy that I have used his service for years and it's not a sales pitch. This is a wild story that I never knew until last weekend when randomly as I'm at this speaking engagement, I'm not a speaking engagement. I'm in a mastermind group. And this guy was one of the speakers. Two funny things about this. I'll tell a funny story in a minute. But anyway, he went up and spoke and told the story of how he got into what he does. And it is wild. This is an unbelievable story. So if you are somebody that uses credit cards, you have no

clue, I promise you, how you're leveraging your credit card points. This guy is the master at leveraging credit card points. He has been around the world for free. He can show you how to do it too. He runs probably the best travel service ever. I personally use it. And we're going to talk about credit card hacking today with the one and only JJ Todd. JJ, what's up, buddy? How are you? Hey, John. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. It's so good to have you here. And again, so the first part, I'll get my elephant out of the room, which was I've been using JJ's service for a couple of years now, but I'd never met him. He was the voice on the other end of a phone.

So as I'm standing at my mastermind group, kind of off to the side, and he was talking to the wife of my friend, Kent Clothier, Sema, who is basically the backstage manager, if you will, at these events. And she sees me and I walk up and I go, hey, Seema, what's going on? And JJ's standing right next to her. And I said, hey, what are you doing? She goes, oh, just waiting to get JJ on stage. And at which point JJ had pointed to, in front of Seema, go, oh, there's John and Gidget, my wife, because he he knows us because that's his job. When I'd only talked to him on the phone and never seen him in person, at which point I just look at him and go, oh, great. Hey, what's up, man? Like I didn't know

him at all. And then as soon as he got on stage and started talking, me and my wife turned around, looked at each other and were like, oh, JJ. So anyway, I apologize to you then. I apologize once again for my boorish behavior, if you will. But anyway, but let's get into it, man. So credit card hacking is probably the best thing I can, I can say, right? That's what some people call it. Hacking, hacking to me implies that you're doing something that's kind of off to the side and beating and, and trying to circumnavigate the system. I look at it as using the system the way it was built and the way it was intended. And so leveraging the expenses you have to get the experiences that you can get out of these points.

So we're going to give them the hook real quick. And then we're going to give you the hook, and then we're going to back it in. This is like a sales letters belt, right? We're going to give the hook real quick. Most people are like, oh, I have like a, I have, I get one point for every mile, one mile or one point for every dollar I spend. By the time you get to spending your miles, how much have you leveraged the cards to? Well, it all really depends on your spending habits and your travel habits. But if you do this the right way, if you have sort of those aspirational overseas, uh, lie flat business class goals, it's not uncommon to take that 1% return that a lot of these credit cards are giving you and making very easy for you to get and turning that into a 3, 5, 10, sometimes 20X return. Yeah, there's a ton of opportunity out there. And these airlines and credit cards aren't going to lead you to how to do that.

You got to know the system and figure it out yourself so if you just heard that right that's 20 x on your credit card points and if you have heard this and you're like you're anybody you're probably thinking oh my god i'm doing it wrong but that's okay we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna walk you through how to get some of this stuff going right now but first of all how did you get into this man because i love this how'd you get into it um so well i guess we should get the the my elephant, your elephant, because that's kind of how this all started. Um, so I'm six foot 10. I wear size 19 shoes. Uh, and all the questions that I always get, yes, I play basketball. Yes.

My parents are tall. Um, you know, the weather appears exactly the same. All of those can know you won't move. I'm not going to move. If you stand behind me at a concert, Don't come up and stand behind me and ask me to move. That's not. Can I tell you something though? I can make you move. You want to know my move? My wife hates this. All right. You might have to watch the video if you're listening to the podcast to get my move down, right? But, but it is a very effective move. And here's what I do. You ready? So say you're standing there at a concert and then there's that guy, maybe it's probably not you. You're nice. You know, you're tall, but there's that guy that wedges into the three inches in front of you and stops with the two beers in his hand.

That guy, you know what I'm talking about? And you're like, really? You had to do this. And now it's blocking your wife. Here's what you do. You don't say anything. You don't have to. You just, as the music starts, you just very slowly, really lean in right behind him on his neck and go,

and then jump back, jump backwards and then look around and he'll, he'll turn around and look and he'll think, no, that didn't happen. I imagine that, right? I just imagine it. And then about three minutes later, a hot breath and you jump back real quick and you're just like watching the band and not paying attention to dancing around guaranteed to move. My wife hates it. And how many times have you had to use this move? Oh God. I've probably done this nine times. I'll throw a number at nine at it. But yeah, cause they can't prove it to you. And they just, there's, they don't know what happened. They think it happened, but they don't know, but it's not risking weird. It's not,

it's not worth the risk of being super weird about it. It's easier just to move. So there's the move kids. There's the move. If you get killed with that, you cannot sue the show. So wait, you're a large gentleman. You're giant. Yes. Yes. Um, and so how did I get into this? Well, I mean, flying economy is uncomfortable for everybody. It's extra hard on me. And so I'm always, even when I was younger, when I was in law school, I was trying to find ways to get up to the front of the plane. And that's really when all of this started. So the story of my first big, I don't like the word hack, but kind of beating the system here with travel goes back to when I was in law school. I'm living in Las Vegas in law school. My wife, my future wife at the time we started

dating, we're doing a long distance thing. She was up in salt Lake at the university of Utah, volleyball player up there. And so we were doing the back and forth long distance thing. And we realized very quickly that as a couple of young 20 somethings, we had way more fun on the weekends in Vegas than we did in salt Lake. Sure. Shocker. Shocker. Who knew? Who knew? So she was flying down to see me most of the time and it was Southwest airlines back and forth. And that was back in the days when it was cheap as 29 bucks to get back and forth between Salt Lake and Vegas. God bless. I miss those days. But, um, so we're doing this thing back and forth and I start to read about the Southwest airlines program and they had what has become very popular since then.

But back then it wasn't very well known. It was like companion pass, where if you hit a certain number of credits, back then you needed a hundred, you would get free flights for the rest of that year and the entire following year. And I realized we were pretty dang close to getting this thing.

So the next weekend she flies down and gets there on Friday. Hey, what are we doing this weekend? And I said, all right, sorry, but we've got some plans for tomorrow. So the next morning, take her to the airport and hand her a folder with some papers in it. Those are boarding passes. And she proceeds that day to fly Vegas to Burbank, to Vegas, to Burbank, to Vegas, to Ontario, to Vegas, to Burbank, back to Vegas.

Eight flights in one day. And no, I didn't go with her. Of course you didn't. We didn't have the companion pass. It wasn't free. It wasn't free at that point. I'm on a student budget. So you bust this out and those are probably $29 flights back. Yeah, it was cheap. It was cheap. But by doing that, we ended up getting this companion pass. And for the next 22 months we were flying around the country, buy one, get one free. Yeah. And so that was kind of the first thing that got me into this. And that kind of is how we started our relationship with the travel. And we really, you know, really.

So she can't say you're insane now because she knew then. She knew. She knew early. She jumped right in the deep end of the pool. I showed her my cards early on. This is what you're getting. Fair. Fair.

Fair. I chose to surprise my wife later in life. There you go. Keep going. It comes out eventually. It does. It does. But, you know, flying Southwest is great, but now we want to take it to the next level.

And so my next kind of crazy move in the points world was, so this is a few years later, my car transmission dies on me. And I take my car in and I say, all right, it's going to be in the shop for at least a week to get this thing fixed. So I got to rent a car instead of renting for a week or longer. Like most people do. I was like, you know what? I can earn some points off of these rentals. I drive, I drive right by the rental car facility on my way to work every day. So why don't I just rent a different car every day for the week? So that's what I did. Because you only get points for the rental. For rental. You would get, you know, I think it was 600 to 1200 points per rental car at that time. So instead of renting and getting those points once, hey, let's rent seven cars for the week and I'll just do this until my car is ready. So every day I would get a new car, go to work, go to the gym, go home next day, drop that car off, pick up a new one and do the same thing over and over again. I kind of enjoy doing this. I was driving every crappy car that existed. I mean,

every Ford Fiesta and Chevy spark and seeing me get out of a Ford Fiesta in itself. Magical. I can just picture like an organ grinder. Every time you climbed out, it's okay. It was probably like bright green or something too. I mean, it was just like the whole thing was, cool um i can just picture like an organ grinder every time you climb down that's okay it's probably like bright green or something too i mean it's just like the whole thing was was was a sight to behold but um yeah so that's i did this for a week and i kind of liked it i i was like you know what the points i'm getting are actually worth more than what these cars cost um so i was you know what if i'm gonna do this i'm gonna go all in So I got my car back, I don't know, a couple of weeks later and immediately took it to CarMax, sold it back and said, I'm going to do this full time. So that's what I did.

I rented a different car every day. I actually went to the credit card GMs. Every day. Every single day. I went to the GM and said, hey, you know, it's usually pretty cheap, but when it goes higher for different conferences that are in town, can I have this set rate? They agreed to that. So I did this for five years. I rented a different car every day. It was over 200 cars. It ended up being like 200 to 250 cars a year. And then there was kind of the side effects of that. Well, let's forget about the, you know, the straight up points are worth more than the car rentals. What are the other

auxiliaries you He didn't. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, you get the I'm earning value on these points every day. But now I don't have to register a car. There's no maintenance on a car. There's a lot of the time the gas tank would be full when I go return it still. So I didn't have to pay for gas half the time. You know, registration, insurance, all these different things that I didn't have to pay for anymore.

And when I would travel instead of paying to park at the airport, which is not cheap, I would return my car. I'm already at the airport. I'd take the shuttle in, fly, come back. You're done. And pick up a new car and I'm on my way. So it worked out really well that way. You know, for a long time, got a lot of value out of that. It's something that I could never do now and I would never recommend anybody else does. But for me at that point in my life, it was a 10 minute detour on my way to work. And didn't they have, how, how would the people that work there know your special rate? So when the rates would go up, uh, the manager actually put my picture in, in the little, uh, fast break booth there at the airport. Uh, and,

and it had my rate written on the back. So there was a new employee. I could just point like, there's my picture. That's me. Uh, my rates right there on the back and they'd give me my, my negotiated rates. Uh, and, and off I went and I'd earn enough points every year just to get that Southwest companion pass. I don't know what part of that story that I like the most. I don't know if I like the fact that you had your own fleet rate on cars or if the managers just assumed that his employees were so dumb he needed to put your picture on it. I'm not sure which angle I like the best. Yes, because I'm sure so many people are coming in asking for this service. Yes, exactly.

Exactly. That they have to differentiate with your picture on there. All right. So you kept going with this, sort of. That wasn't enough. No, we've got to level this up. Once you get into this world, you always got to find. You can't stop there.

Yeah. You got to find your next, your next adventure. So the next one comes, this, this was back in 2017 and I go open my email one day and right there, there's a, an offer that says, Hey, every time you rent a car from Hertz, we're going to give you 5,250 United miles. So I'm doing the math on this. Hey, the way I use my United miles, I'm getting at least 2 cents a piece on them. So that's about a hundred bucks. I know from my previous rental car exploits that I could get a car on a Sunday in Las Vegas for about 20 bucks all in. And so I was like, all right, let's give this a shot. So that next Sunday I went rented a car A couple of days later, get my 5,250 miles. Great. That seems fun. Yep.

Let's now test the system and see what we can do here. So the next week, I go rent two cars. Get in a car, drive around the building, drop it off. Immediately get in another car, drive it around the building, drop it off. A couple of days later, 5,250 points twice. But we didn't stop there. That's not nearly enough. We got to keep going here.

Keep going, JJ. Keep going. So next I was, you know, you don't want to be that guy that's like causing problems. So I went to the GM. It's like, you know what? I play by the rules. I read the rules to figure out how to beat the system. So I went to the GM and I said, hey, here's what I want to do.

I want to just give you money to rent as many cars as we possibly can. You don't have to give me a car. You don't have to do car washes. I don't want to inconvenience anybody. I just want to pay you for these rental cars. And he's kind of looking at me like you're out of your mind, but I'm not going to say no to this. I mean, it's top line money for the company and Sundays are slow. So, Hey, why wouldn't you do this? So he takes me over, introduces me to Peter. Peter and I became fast buddies here. The first day I walked up to Peter and said, all right, let's give this a shot. Let's rent 10 cars today. So in the system, Peter rents, returns, rents, returns. It's all just on paper at this point in the system. I'm sitting there

swiping my credit card 10 times. And sure enough, two days later, 5,250 miles, 10 times. Over the course of the next three months while this promo was running, Peter and I tested to see how many cars we could put into the system. We realized that after we would get to 50 cars, we would break it. We got to 71 day and the computer was not happy with that. So 50 cars, I would do that every Sunday for as long as this promo went. So by the end of the promo, I had over 620 cars rented. Uh, this is, this is just a summer promo. Like this thing was like three months, you know, they're like, nobody's going to use this more than two or three times. I ran over 600 cars, walked out with over 3.4 million miles. Uh, my total costs out of pocket on these cars ended up being right around $12,000.

Yeah. I've used all those miles that I earned off that. All 3.4 million miles are now gone. Sure. Got over $120,000 in free flights in value out of leveraging those points. But didn't, when you hit a certain level, something happened at the car rental place. What was that? Well, you would think that this guy that's just milking the system for everything it's worth would be sort of shunned, but Hertz embraced this. They

loved it. So, uh, the day I hit my millionth mile, I walk in, uh, and they threw a party for me. They're, they had, they had balloons. They had a cake that said, congratulations on your millionth mile. I mean, I had the whole place just on my side and that's the way you do it. You know, it's, it's treating the people there the right way. The first, you know, that second time I went into Peter, I, while we're sitting there doing 10 rental cars, I learned a lot about him. I learned what his favorite Starbucks drink was. I learned that he liked donuts. And so I would show up with that. And you know what, to sit there and do 50 cars, I was taking probably two hours out of his day and he didn't mind at all.

Yeah. You know, it's all about just treating people the right way and playing within the rules of the system. Uh, but do it to your advantage. I love that because, you know, you gotta be, I mean, you gotta, they've gotta have an affinity for you to let you do this. Like, even though, yes, the rules say you can, even though, yes, this is the promotion, even though, yes, the computer will do it, they still could have thrown you out any time. So you can't just walk in like, no, it's so sure I can do it. Like you're like, here's your Starbucks. Here's your, hey, how are the kids?

I mean, you got to become a fixture there to pull something like that off. Absolutely. As soon as you become belligerent and you're causing problems. Yeah. There's no reason for them to do that. We got to go. Yeah. So where did it go from here?

So now you've got your miles. You've look, you've learned obviously already how to, how to leverage them and fly. So, so what's next for JJ after this? So yeah, that was great. And those were all very, um, those were all great for me. I earned a lot of miles for myself and got to travel the world. We've had so many amazing adventures. We've been to over 75 countries. Um, and we do it all up in the front of the plane. Thanks to, to doing this the right way. But everybody wanted to know, how do you do this? Every time you see me on Facebook, I'm lying in a bed in an airplane, drinking champagne,

flying somewhere exotic. I mean, two weeks ago, I was face to face with gorillas in Rwanda. I mean, I've been doing this, these unbelievable things. And but people want to know, how do you do this? So I was a lawyer. Life was good as an attorney, had a good gig going, but decided, all right want to know how, how do you do this? So, uh, I was a lawyer. Life was good as, as an attorney had a, had a good gig going, uh, but decided, all right, you know what? Nights and weekends, I'll start helping what started as friends and family teach them how to do this. Um, not the rental cars, but, uh, through all of this, I was learning actually just leveraging

points on cards. Yeah. You don't have to do the crazy stuff like that. I mean, those are fun when those opportunities come along, but every single day. Do you still jump on those things if they come along? I don't have the time I used to, you know, life as a, as a young attorney, I apparently was much easier than it is now as a business owner. But so I don't get as many of those opportunities. They're also a lot harder. I mean, the internet, TikTok, all of these different blogs that are out there kind of put too many eyeballs on this sort of stuff. So I got to believe somebody up the chain saw what you did with the rental cars and

they had to change some sort of corporate policy. There has to be a JJ Todd clause somewhere in United's policies. There has to be. I don't know if it was my fault. I mean, maybe I'll take credit for it, but United and Hertz did end their partnership. I mean, that lasted for a decade, you know. And you ruined it in the summer. Good job, JJ. These two publicly traded companies, you know, some guy can go rent 600 cars and break the system. Well, let's start talking now that we got their attention. If we don't have your attention yet,

I don't know what's wrong with you. But now that we have their attention, man, let's talk to some, let's get to some tactical. Let's talk practicality. So let's talk about the front end, which is using credit cards to buy stuff. Now, obviously the biggest mistake you can make with a credit card is buying something you can't afford and carrying a balance over and paying the minimum balance. That's stupid. You're going to get eaten alive, period. So let's get that out of the way. Do not go leverage yourself thinking you're going to get miles to take a trip. That's dumb. But what are the best cards right now?

And again, that's a subjective question. But for most people, what are the cards they should be carrying and what are the mistakes that they're making with credit cards? So that's beyond how tall are you? That is the question I get the most. What is the best credit card? And the right answer is there's no right answer. There are a lot of different cards out there. And I look at credit cards like I look at tools in a tool belt.

They all have different strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes you need a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver. And it's the same things with these credit cards. I really like the cards that give you flexible currencies. So if you're earning, if you have an airline credit card that's putting those miles directly into the airline or a hotel card that's putting them into the hotel program. The problem is you've lost all flexibility with those. And that's, what's crazy about the system. Like at the end of the day, these points are a made up currency and it's incredible to see how

these airlines and, and, and, and credit card companies have created this currency out of nothing. And when you think of airline miles, you think, Oh, this is like value that I'm getting at the end of the day, that's a huge moneymaker for these airlines. I mean, if you go look at the books of pick your major us airline, they're making more money off of selling miles, giving out miles than they are actually flying airplanes in the sky. Well, I love how you say it's not, you know, anytime that a credit card company gives you the ability to change in your miles, it's automatically no. It's a, it's the worst thing, but let's do this. Let's make this easy. All right. We're going to play what's in John's wallet. All right. So I'm going to pull out some, I'm going to just pull, I'm grabbing

my credit cards right now. And you tell me what I should be using these for. And we won't even do it. So the first one I pull out is a debit card, which means nothing. I don't use it. I never use it. I know I'm carrying it. This one is a Chase Business Unlimited Inc card. That's a great card. That's a great card. That's that card is going to get you. Now they're going to advertise it as one and a half percent cash back, but they're going to give it to you in the form of points. Now with that card by itself, you're only gonna be able to take the cash back at that value. But once you mix and match it with other Chase cards,

generally the ones that have an annual fee, which that one doesn't, now you can take those points and transfer them into airlines. So instead of being worth a penny per point, which makes that your one and a half percent cash back card, I'm gonna take those points, transfer them to, I don't know, Singapore Airlines, Air France, Emirates. And now you're

going to get a $20,000 first-class Emirates flight for, you know, 120,000 points or something like that. So now you're getting significantly better value because 120,000 points, they give you 1200 bucks. I'm going to turn that into a $20,000 Emirates first class. Okay. So that's the chase business thing. The next one is the chase Sapphire reserve. Another great card. And that's actually a perfect one in tandem with that income limited, because it's going to allow you to take those one and a half percent and turn them back over. That card is also going to get you three times points on restaurants, three times points on restaurants, three times points on travel. So restaurant. So this should be my restaurant and travel card. Depends on what I

got. Depends on what else you show me. We're leading that we're leading with that. All right. I know you, you, you have mixed feelings about this one, right? This is the American express platinum card. I know you have mixed feelings about it. Is that the business version or the personal? This is business platinum. Okay. So they corporate platinum. I know you have mixed feelings about it. Is that the business version or the personal? This is business Platinum. Okay. So they, corporate Platinum. They, they have very different use cases. I love American Express points. There's a lot of value in them. They're flexible. They're, they're extremely flexible. They have, you know, around two dozen partners where you can take the points out of American Express and use them for some really cool travel redemptions. The problem is American Express has gamified this system so much that

they make it so easy by giving you these pitfalls where you're going to get way less value. So that card right there, you're going to get one point per dollar on pretty much everything. There's a couple different categories where you'll get an extra half a point that gets you one and a half. But as a day-to-day card, it's not going to be your best earner. I can tell you, I almost never pull that card out. I pull that card out for one reason, which is Centurion Lounge. We use this because we use the business to manage one of my businesses that's at scale with a lot of different locations. And we can manage all of those green cards in and out of it to our employees using this. Yeah. And that's

the best thing about that card. It's loaded with perks. I mean, you know, the personal version and the business version have different perks, but flight credits, Uber credits, TSA credits, TSA free clear, that kind of stuff. And of course, the lounge access, which is the most valuable part of that card. But as a day to day card to use, there's usually a better option out there. All right. Next, because I use a lot of these. I have I have a lot of these, which is going to be the Capital One Venture Card. I have a lot of these for business and personal, a lot of them. So the Capital One Venture Card.

Had you asked me this three years ago, I would have said, stop using them. That program is not great. Capital One, when you file bankruptcy or when you're young and you're trying to develop a credit score, Capital One is the first one there to give you a credit card. That's easy. But over the last couple of years, they've done such a good job with their rewards program. They've added new transfer partners. They've added a better transfer ratio. They used to not give you the same value when you would transfer from points into the different airlines.

They're opening their own lounges now that are actually nicer than the Centurion lounges. Really? So the first one. I saw one that was tiny. I think it was in Denver. It was tiny, I think. So I think the Denver one. Well, so the first one was in Dallas and it's fantastic.

Okay. So it's in the D gates. Maybe that was a chip. Maybe that was Chase lounge. Maybe in Denver. Keep going. Denver is on their list, but, but it started with Dallas. Then they opened Washington DC.

And then I believe Denver and Vegas are actually on the list. So we should be getting them on the West coast here soon, but they do a great job with their lounges. And so I love what cap one is doing with their program. That card is going to get you two points on everything across the board. Yep. And so the nice thing about that is, you know,

as a, when it's not restaurants or groceries where you're getting three times points on that sapphire reserve that's a great default card to get everything because that's literally pretty much everything goes on that card all right last one is the united quest mileage plus card which i never use as you shouldn't okay cool as i shouldn't good there we go right in the stack with that we're worried about it and the rest of this. So, so as you see the collection here, is there anything that I'm missing that I should have? So again, when you ask what is the best credit card, I invite JJ to come on the show. So I get free advice. That's how the sales works. This is why you have a podcast. This is why you do this. Go ahead. No. And it's really independent on what you're spending money on. I mean,

looking, if you spend a lot on restaurants, a card like the Amex gold is going to be fantastic. Okay. That card's going to get you four times points, uh, on restaurants, four times points at grocery stores. Okay. So what's, what's okay. Let's go through purchases. What's the best gas card, the best gas card, uh, with business, it's going to be the business gold. Okay. You get four times points on Amex business gold, Amex business gold. We'll get you four times points on gas. What's the best restaurant card? Best restaurant card. So the old City Prestige, which they have recently discontinued, was getting you five times points. If that is not coming back online, that Amex Gold, the personal and business, also gets four times points on restaurants. Right. So I should just get the Amex Gold just to do that. It's kind of funny. The

Platinum card is the expensive one and it's got the perks, but the gold lower annual fee, you're going to earn a lot more points. All right, cool. Um, what's the best travel to purchase flights and hotels? I really like that Sapphire reserve. You're getting the three times points on travel. So when it comes to hotels, cruises, Ubers, rental cars, I think that's a great card. Everything for them. It covers all of that kind of stuff. Now the personal platinum with American Express will get you five times points on flights, but that's it. So that's the only time.

You have to book through them, though, don't you? With the business, and this is where these, Amex is gamified. Here comes the rub. They don't make this easy. Here comes the rub. Yeah, with the business platinum, to get the 5X, you have to book through Amex Travel, which. Terrible. It's been powered by Expedia for a long time.

You're not going to get the level of service. Things just take a lot longer. I'd prefer to go directly to the airline. Um, but that's where that personal platinum comes in handy. Cause that one will get five times points direct with the airline. So just by using the right card to buy the right stuff, you should be able to take your points from the straight AMX one, one, one point per dollar to dollar to what yeah depending on how your expenses blend out you should probably be getting two and a half to three maybe you know i think that's kind of a fair if you're optimizing it no not everybody has the bandwidth or tolerance to carry around seven

credit cards like you you have there oh i i got lots of bandwidth i got lots of people and in which case that number continues to scale up okay sure um so that's good let's talk about cash and amen so when i go to cash season and this is where it gets interesting right this is where this is where this is where the players play where the pool gets a little deep which we gotta get a little crazy and and i love this. I wish we had a die. I wish I had the diagram from your presentation. Imagine a plate of spaghetti, if you will. No, that's not good. Well, yeah. Spaghetti's curved. Maybe more like pickup sticks. Remember that? Like when you dumped the sticks out. You know what? Dried spaghetti. There we go. That's better. It's just going to go in every direction. And at the end of all the spaghetti, you're going to put

like a little card with like an airline or a miles or something on it. And this is how his brain works. It's, it's crazy. Like, like you think that it was, if any of you were listening to this, you're thinking, man, that's really challenging that he just, he knew exactly like which card has miles on this. That ain't where the gold is. The gold is when the cash and inside it's knowing how to bounce these miles to that program that will get better value and then bounce them to this program and then bounce them to that program and keep bouncing them around until they land somewhere good. So tell us about that process. And that is the hardest part of the process for sure. I mean, even if you don't know what you're doing with

the credit cards when you're earning, if you just spend money on them, you're going to start accumulating points. What do you do with those? Yeah. And this is where the, this is where American Express is going to make it really easy for you to redeem your points in a really bad way. You know, if you are going to Amazon and trying to redeem your points there, you're going to be getting seven, eight tenths of a cent per point, which if you're using that platinum card, get earning one point per dollar, and now you're redeeming it eight tenths of a cent per point. You've turned that card into an eight tenths of a percent cash back card. That's effectively what

it is. And Amex has done a brilliant job of gamifying this, making you feel like you're getting something really good. Hey, I'm getting all this free stuff. They're taking you out at the knees at eight-tenths of a percent. Even worse, paying your bill with those Amex points. Yeah, don't ever do that. Don't ever do that. They're going to give you six-tenths of a cent per point, which lowers what you're getting there. The real value is understanding how all these different transfer partners work and taking the points out of American Express, converting them into all of these different airline programs where you can get a lot more value. Now, even there, there's a bunch

of pitfalls. If you want to fly Delta, Delta is going to charge you an insane number of miles for their flights. You know, 10 years ago, the Delta SkyMiles program was pretty good, but we, we lovingly called them SkyPesos now. They've just lost so much value over the years. And, and, and COVID really exacerbated this, you know, like I mentioned before, these are made up currencies. And so every time somebody's spending a dollar, Delta's creating more miles. And they have this whole big stockpile. And for a couple of years, very few people were traveling. So they can't take your miles away.

What do they do? They just make things cost more. And so now you go to Delta. Hey, I want to go to Europe. You're looking at 300, 350,000 miles for a one-way business class ticket to Europe. That's hard. If you understand the partnerships, you could take those same American Express points, send them to Virgin Atlantic, let's say,

because they have a partnership with Delta, they're Sky Team partners. You can book that same flight with Delta, same seat, same in business class, and you're going to be closer to 70,000 miles. So just by doing this, you can get 80% better value. It's insane how much, or I guess it would be, you know, it's 20% cheap of the cost to do it that way. I'm going to make, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to give a disclaimer real quick.

If you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, I'm just going to get on the Google machine and I'm going to figure this out and I'm not going to hire a service and I'm not going to ask JJ to, you know, have his company take care of this for me. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to ask JJ to have his company take care of this for me. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to use the Google machine. I recommend you start with a website called Avianca because it is a disaster. It's like a damn travel Rubik's cube and you can't figure it out and you're never going to get anywhere and it's going to get you so frustrated. That's what you should just write. Seriously, for your service, just recommend everybody start there. Just go to Avianca.

Columbia. Go to Avianca. Columbia never got the customer service memo. Figure it out. And, and, and. And then tell people it's easy. You know, one of my, one of my favorite things I ever did in my marriage was we watched the movie, um, Interstellar with, with, with, uh, what's his name?

Matthew, uh, what's his name? Most handsome guy alive. And if you haven't seen that movie, it's based on quantum physics and it's very complicated. And the entire time we were watching the movie, my wife's like, I don't know what, what is going on? And I would look at her and just be like, are you dumb? Like, how do you not understand this? This is like the most simple, like, no, this is it. And it's tight. And they're like, I'm acting like I didn't know what was going on. She was getting so mad. And at the end of it, I'm like, yeah, I have no idea what's going on either.

To this day, it's one of my favorite marriage stories. But yeah, the Avianca site is essentially like watching Interstellar. It's just good luck. Well, and if you get over that first hurdle and actually get your flight booked. Yeah. Try and change that flight. Because then it gets really fun. Calling the service line there in Columbia. And you know, they're,

they're going to tell you that you can make the change. And then they're going to tell you somebody else is going to have to call or is going to call you to take the payment because they can't do this. It's a, it's wild. Yeah, it is. I tried that. I tried that did not go well. Um, I did use BA British, British, uh, British Airways. I did use BA, British Airways. I did use theirs to book an American Airlines flight, and that worked out well. I did pull that off when I was trying to do this by myself. But again, very difficult. So when you start, how many times can you bounce these points around?

And on your average, when you go really deep on something and find a great deal, is it just that you found the great deal first or are you bouncing the points in a way that makes it a great deal? So first it's finding the flight that makes sense. And then it's knowing which partnership is going to give you the best deal on those points. So, um, once you transfer them out of American express, they're stuck. So once they're out of Amex or chase and they go into an airline, you can't move them anymore. So you have to be, you really can only move them once you move them once. Okay. Yeah. You move them once. And so you don't want to move them prematurely. And then you get them stuck somewhere where they're not going to give you value or, Oh, I want to put them in this program. And then there's no availability. So you have to find what you're looking for first. Uh, and then you can kind of reverse

engineer where you should transfer the points to, to get the best deal. And where in, in the end, there's like websites that show like the business class stuff, the lay flat stuff to do that. I've been on them before, but yeah, you're right. You got to kind of try and find, find what you want to do first. Again, do not recommend doing this by yourself. This is like open heart surgery on your, on your own stuff. But anyway, the self-help tools have gotten better too.

I mean, there are, there are some different websites that have come out and, and they're all imperfect, but for somebody who's trying to do this on their own, it's dreadful. It is. It's dreadful anyway. So you find the right flight and you move it over. And like, we're talking about like, like, for example, I'm going to give you guys an example. I flew on the, the, the big, the big flight to Dubai.ai yeah the a380 on emirates where they have a bar on the plane when i say a bar i don't mean like they'll make a drink somewhere and bring it to you i mean like you can walk up to a bar on the damn plane and if you're me and chris connell you can actually make drinks behind the bar because they just let us do whatever we want because we're pretty

convincing lay flat full on like your own little pod deal, whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I know you showed videos of you on that same plane taking a shower in the thing, which the fact that you at 610 could take a shower on the plane is that had to be a little, little tight. It wasn't the most comfortable shower, but it was definitely the most memorable. But you're there. But I did that. And I want to say, if I recall correctly, you got that done for me from here to Dubai, actually here to Cairo, we stopped at Dubai and then flew to Cairo. You got that done for me. I want to say it was like 35,000 points in like $239. I think it was a few more points than that, but it was still, yeah, it was low. I don't remember. We were probably at that point. I mean, this was a

couple of years ago at this point. So we were probably, it was i mean this was a couple years ago at this point so we were probably it's probably 80 000 points around points around there but uh because let me ask you a question because let me ask you a question like again back in the capital one card that i had that a lot of people care those cards with the purchase eraser thing where you can you can book your stuff anywhere and then erase it is that a good or a terrible move it's better than what you would do with those ammex examples I gave. So if you're doing that, you're earning two points per dollar on that card, you're getting a penny per point. So you're getting 2% back, which isn't terrible. And for somebody who doesn't have

those Emirates aspirations of, you know, going to Egypt and having this, this, those kinds of trips, that's not bad. You know, I think that's a nice, easy place to go. Can I upset you? Of course. I did this without you. We're going to New York tomorrow. Whole family. We're doing the mint class on JetBlue there, first class on United back. And the room that I got through my, I did get the hotel through my status at Hard Rock. I did get that.

So I got a good deal on the room. 980,000 points for four of us. Steep. That's steep. So punish me. Where do you think you could have got that? I mean, just rough estimate. You're coming in.

You're going to New York and you should have been taking the whole family to Dubai is what should have been happening. They didn't want to go to Dubai. Well, okay. Go anywhere. They wanted to go to New York. That's the point. Take them to the Maldives. All right, fair. I still have, look, I'm not tapping myself out here.

I'm just saying they want to go to New York for Christmas, that's what I want to do. That's what they wanted. And you know what, at the end of the day, the points are there to give you the travel experiences. And so whether you're leveraging them for the best redemptions ever, going flying in that A380 live flight to the

Maldives, or you're going to New York. It's a, it's a way to get an experience. And so, hey, you're going to take the family there. You're gonna have an awesome time with them. It's going to be memorable. And you have a bit more money in your pocket now to spend on the experiences that you want. So you're not doing it wrong. Could you get better value from those points? Absolutely. You know, you know, I didn't. Avianca's website. I just didn't want to go to, I did, I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't do it. And, uh, you know, I didn't. Avianca's website. I just didn't want to go to, I didn't, I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't do it. And, uh, and yeah, it's funny.

And I'd booked it right before I saw you at the, at the, at the mastermind there, which is just dumb, but that's all right. I'm paying for it. That's what we're doing. But JJ took all of this knowledge and all of this wonderful stuff. We've talked about, we've talked about his insight into this world and what he can do with it. And you've built a company around this. I mean, you stopped practicing law to do this full time. Absolutely. It's, it's way better. Instead of dealing with people's problems. Now I send

them on amazing vacations and it's funny, I'll get you out of a lawsuit, save you half a million dollars. And all you're going to tell me is that I build you too much. And now I send you on a vacation and you probably spend more money than you wanted to, even though we're still leveraging your points. And you come back thanking me. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's bizarre, you know. So what are the services exactly? Let's talk about the services that you provide from A to Z to the clients.

The first one, I mean, do you advise on credit which ones to get, what to do? Yeah. So the first thing we do when we bring in a client, we'll sit down with them and we take a very financial approach to this. We look at these points like currency. How do we earn more of it? How do you spend it the right way? So we're going to do a full financial analysis. We're going to look at what your personal expenses are, your business expenses, how you're paying bills that you might not be putting on credit cards. I mean, things like taxes, payroll, mortgages, car payments, all these things. Let's talk.

Okay. We didn't talk about that. I want to talk about those two things. How do you pay your taxes on credit cards? Right there on the IRS website. It's right there for you to do. And most people just skip right over it because there's a fee involved. So the IRS.

Which is the fee? So there's a few different partners there. There's a link on the IRS website that says pay with a credit card. I use pay 1040 is the website. It links directly with the IRS. As soon as I click submit timestamps with the IRS, they charge 1.87%. So which card do you have to use? As long, I mean, even if you just use your capital one card where you're getting 2% back, you're coming out ahead on this thing. I mean, as long as it's a no brainer, everybody should be paying their taxes with the credit card. I'm making money on that. You're coming out ahead on this thing. I mean, as long as it's a no brainer, everybody should be paying their taxes with the credit card. I'm making money on that. You're coming out ahead as long as you use the right credit card. Now, if you start to get more exotic with those points

and use them for that Emirates experience overseas, now you're getting a 5% or 10% or 15% return. And now it's, you know, you're killing it. Six or seven points. Even at 2%, everybody should be doing this. And so few people do. And you mentioned at one point that you can pay your mortgage on a credit card. Can you walk me through that? So same idea. I mean, no mortgage company lets you pay directly with a credit card. You can't pay secured debt with unsecured debt. That's kind of the way this works. But there are third-party vendors out there that will charge your credit card and cut a check for you. And so that's kind of credit card and cut a check for you.

And so that's kind of the way you do this with the mortgage. What's the fee for that? Same thing? Usually a little bit higher. So usually you're looking at around 2.9% on that. So you're losing a point on the acquisition, but you better be good at the disposition on those points to leverage them and know what you're doing. The way I look at that is it's a way to buy miles. It's a way to accumulate more miles. And so if you have substantial expenses through your business, through your personal life, you don't need to do that. But if you are traveling more than what you're earning, Hey, it's a great way to kind of pad your balances. As long as you're using those points in a way that is going to get you more

value back than what you're paying. I think that's so funny. I think that's a question that people just have to get used to asking when they deal with anywhere they spend money, which is kind of pay with a credit card. Absolutely. I think, I think you just have to ask that question no matter what it is. And I think when a lot of the time you'll see it now, Hey, we're going to charge you two or 3% to do this. Yeah. Um, which I hate that, especially restaurants. I hate that. Yeah. Just change the price. Don't, you know, mark it up a little bit. Don't, don't just feels like I'm getting nickel to dime. I hate that, especially restaurants. I hate that. Yeah. Just change the price. Don't, you know, mark it up a little bit. Don't, don't, it just feels like I'm getting nickel to dime. I hate that.

Yeah. And you're seeing it more across the board, people trying to cover that expense. And I get it. There's, there's, there's a fee, there's a cost for, for accepting credit cards. But it comes down to, to, to just simple math. You know, how much are they charging you to do it? What card are you using? And if you're not going to get enough value out of it, you shouldn't do it. And if you're going to get

enough value back, it's a no brainer. You do it. All right. So you consult people on that. You set them up. So yeah, the first side is we call it points and miles wealth management. You know, like I said, this is, this is a currency. And so we'd really do that deep financial dive, get your setup, telling you which credit cards you should get, which ones you should get rid of and build out that long-term plan. And then as things change, you know, all of these different credit cards have different strengths and weaknesses. So if your travel habits change, it might not make sense to be earning Amex or Capital One. Maybe Chase makes more sense. So we're there to kind of help adjust as you go forward to make sure you're getting the best value back. As you get forward. And this is,

and then obviously when it's time to want to go somewhere, they call you. And this is the cool thing about JJ, right? This is the cool thing is it's not just, you call JJ and say, I want to travel from here to there. He'll come up with some pretty cool stuff to, to, to say, Hey, this opportunity, you can go do this. Like you mentioned the gorillas at the very front of this, right? The gorillas in Rwanda, one of, you know, a friend of the show, Chris Connell, that, you know, sits in one of these chairs from time to time, you know, he and I, he invited me to go on the gorilla thing. The wife said no. But what we did do because of JJ, and I actually, you know, I've told this story and shown people

the videos and whatnot, is JJ sent me and Chris, just like you said, travel hacking might not be the right word. Tomb raiding might not be the right word, but I can't think of anything else to describe what we did. So JJ calls Chris, I guess, and says, you know, here's this opportunity. And this is what we did. He set it up to where we flew to Cairo. And again, words matter. They matter. Bribe might be the wrong word, but for some reason we were able to get a document in Cairo stamped by the government that said we were archaeologists and we were allowed to participate in a live dig at Saqqara. And we thought we were going to roll up and it was pretty funny. The first like 10, 15 minutes was like, you know,

not even that the first maybe hour and a half was like them digging around and like, they'd find a little clay pot and Ooh, look at this. And Chris was like, Oh dude, film me down here, like swinging this pickaxe. I look like I'm doing something for the gram and I'm like, okay, whatever. And then that progressed to, okay, we're going to go down this like little six foot hole and we're going to look at like in this thing and you can kind of see a mummy back there. I'm like, whoa, this is wild. And then that progressed to, Hey, if you guys will give us a hundred bucks cash, we'll do some real shit. And it was like, what are we going to do? At which point? I mean, it was like, it was a scene out of Indiana Jones.

That's all I can say. It was like the four dudes on the big wooden wheel with the rope that they made from like people's t-shirts with a woven basket on the end. You're standing into it. It's like, yalla, as they lower us down into this hole, 60 feet into the ground. And there's like 120 sarcophaguses down there that they just found. It was wild. And, and that experience, and again, flying there was a hundred percent because of JJ putting us on the lay flats. We stayed in great hotels, right on the Nile in Cairo. I mean, we did, we went full ham in Dubai for a night, did like the full on Anthony Bourdain,

like 24 hour layover. We're doing it all. And, and it was, it was the best trip of my entire life. And it's because of you. Thank you. And that's the fun part. I mean, at the end of the day, like the miles earning points are great. Nobody ever comes to me and says, thank you so much. My mileage balance went from 2 million to 4 million because of you. Like, it's nice, but that's not what you're going to remember. What you remember are those experiences and taking those points and turning them into this cool stuff. Um, knowing the right folks, building these relationships that I've had as I traveled the world. That's what's fun for me. That's what gets me out of bed. Well, I want to talk about like the, like the gorillas, right? Like talk about the gorilla trip. I didn't get to go cause the wife said no.

Thanks wife. Care if I'm alive or dead appreciate you anyway tell us tell them about that coolest thing we've ever done so uh it was in rwanda of course it was it was the cool we've done a lot of cool stuff but hey this was the top of the list of course so yeah you fly into kigali you drive out to the uh to volcanoes national park so it's about two hours outside of Kigali. Absolutely gorgeous. It's there's five volcanoes on the horizon and that's where the gorillas live. And so, uh, the Rwandan government limits how many, um, how many permits they'll issue per day. They don't want it to be flooded. They don't want to overwhelm the gorillas. So every family of gorillas that has been habituated. So you can't just go see any gorilla family, right? Cause they're walking through the wild roll up on you. These things are, they're, they're monsters. It's a

gorilla. It's a gorilla. Uh, but yeah, they, they, they, they habituate these families. They're used to humans. They, they know we're not a threat to them. And so you hike up the volcano. Uh, sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes it takes four or five to get to where they are. Just kind of depends on where they're hanging out that day. And you, first of all, there's no path to get up there. You know, you can't just walk up this volcano. So we have a guy with a machete who's in front of us, just hacking away to create a path for us to get through. Bushwhacking as they say. Exactly. Exactly. Words matter. Keep going. And you come around a corner and there you are, you're standing face to face with the first gorilla. And

then you realize it's a whole family. Yeah. So the family, we, we got to go visit, there were 22 gorillas, four silverbacks, um, eight babies and small children, uh, just unbelievable. And you're not in a car, like on a normal safari. Safari is an incredible experience, but to be standing there face to face with these things and they walk right by you, you know, you stay out of their way. They're territorial. So, you know, if you get in their way, they might not be happy with you, but they're not there to attack you. They know we're not there to do that. And why on though?

But you're 6'10", bro. They had to have been like, okay, we've had people come through here, but what's up? I'm the new silverback. You know, I'm going to take a family with me here and branch off. Uh, but, but just unbelievable. You get an hour with them and there's nothing like it. So how did you find that? So that's been at the top of my bucket list for a long time. I'm always looking for cool experiences, something I haven't done before. Um, I know somebody who went probably about a decade ago. Uh, and you know, that was in the early days of this Rwanda obviously has a pretty, um, dark recent history and to see how that company or to see how that country has, has rebounded and come back. Uh, it's absolutely fascinating. It's it's,

and tourism has become their biggest driver these days. Um, the resort where we stayed was absolutely gorgeous. Uh, it was, uh, Singita, Kuitanda, um, just overlooking the volcanoes and you have your own private plunge pool and, um, unbelievable. It's all next level. See what I love so much about this is I have a good friend, a friend of the show. It's been on the show before Steve Sims, uh, Forbes called him the real life wizard of Oz. And he's an experienced guy, right? Used to be, he's been since retired as concierge business. But how I met him was he would call me, I bought a car. And at the time buying this particular car gave me membership to his concierge business. He calls me up, right? And he calls me

and goes, here's what we do. We create these, my terrible English accent. He goes, here's what we do. We create these amazing relationships, these amazing experiences all around the world. What do you like to do? And I was like, well, you know, I like music. I like this. Okay, God, I got it. I'm going to call you some stuff. Okay, cool. So he would call me up. The first time he calls me, he goes, here's what we're doing. We're going kite surfing in Necker Island with Richard Branson for five days. We're going to hang out. We're going to talk business. We're going to kite surf.

We're doing all this. I said, oh, well, that sounds amazing. He goes, yeah, 75,000 ahead. Yeah. And I was like, oh, when are the dates again? Oh, yeah, no, I can't make that. I can't do it. The next time he calls me, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go to Italy. We're going to stay at Sting's private villa. His chef's

going to cook for us every night. On the last night, Sting is going to play an acoustic set for us while his sommelier serves us one. 85,000 to head, are you? And I was like, oh, what are the dates again? And so finally ended up telling him, I was like, bro, I'm never going to be able to afford to do any of this. Now, where I'm going with that is the polar difference between that. And this is just by doing something you do every day. You can, you can do amazing things just by being smart about how you use something that you use every day. It's crazy. Absolutely. It's, it's, it's in your wallet. You have the tools to do it, but nobody really thinks about it. It's kind of crazy. We all learn to spend money as little kids, but nobody ever learned why they do what they do. I can't tell you how many people have come to me

and I say, Oh, what credit cards do you have? Oh, I have a Southwest card. Oh, okay. So you fly Southwest a lot. No, I hate it. I never fly Southwest. Well, okay. How many points do you have? Ah, 2 million. What should I do with them? Stop earning them. That's the first thing you should do with them. They're dead there because you can't transfer Southwest points. They're dead. They're stuck there. And, and you, but you continue to do this year after year after year, because that's just the way it is. It's just what you've always done. Nobody takes the time to, you know, very few people take the time to look at this and figure out where they're going to get way better value. And it's right there for you to take. That's wild. Well, listen, if you are listening to this and you're thinking,

I want to talk to JJ. And if you're not, what are you doing? What are you doing? You need to talk to JJ. JJ, how do they find you, dude? And how can they get a consultation with you to see what you can do for them? Yeah. Easiest way to find us is our website, travelwealth.com, travelwealth.com or, or on Instagram, travelwealth.us. Uh, just reach out and yeah, we'll set up a time to chat. Yeah. Enter code. John is my hero for 95% off. No, I'm just kidding. That won't work. There's no codes. There's no codes. So yeah. Well, JJ, dude, I love the story. It's amazing. Thank you so much for coming in. God, that's awesome. Call JJ, check out Triathlon Wealth Advisor. Check them out. You need to use this. I use it. It's great. Check it out. JJ, thanks.

Thanks, bro. And guys, we will see you next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review. Give us a share.

Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.