Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Points Guy on the Best Credit Cards and Travel Hacks That Really Work

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Today Nicole calls up Brian Kelly, aka The Points Guy, to give you all the tips on how to book your dream trip without breaking the bank. In the first part of their conversation, Brian shares his credit card picks for the best loyalty perks and debunks which viral travel tips really work, and which are BS. Stay tuned for the second part of their conversation next week, where Brian shares his favorite destinations for an awesome— and affordable— vacation.

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your

reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Happy, happy shoulder season, money rehabbers! If you don't spend your free time playing the credit card points game, shoulder season is the time right after spring break but before

summer vacation, and it is actually a great time to save on travel. To give you all of the tips on how to book your dream trip without breaking the bank, I'm talking to Brian Kelly, aka The Points Guy. Today we play two games that pinpoint Brian's favorite travel hacks and credit cards. Then next week, you'll hear about his favorite places to travel this year where you can get the most bang for your buck. So don't miss the second part of our conversation on Monday. But first, let's play some games. I want to play a game with you. I'm calling it TikTok truth or trend. There's so many influencers out there posting travel hacks on TikTok. Some of them seem like BS to me, but you're going to tell me. So I'll give you the tip that we've seen on the internet. And then I'd love for you to tell me a real expert if it's the truth or a trend and why. Let's do it. Cool. Setting your home country

when searching for flights can get you a cheaper rate. No, because they're going to change the currency and do the conversion. Now, changing the country in which you depart can save you dramatically. For example, flying Cape Town to New York to Cape Town is half as much or less than flying the same flights, but reverse New York, Cape Town, New York. So what the airlines do is they will price flights based on that home country's purchasing power, the people who live and are buying tickets there. New Yorkers have more money than people who live in Cape Town. So what I know a lot of clever people in the travel world do is use your miles to fly to Cape Town. Or if you go to Cape Town every year, you always start your trip in Cape Town and you'll save dramatically. But

simply setting your computer's home country to Cape Town is not going to get you the Cape Town pricing if you're leaving New York. So that is a trend. And the VPNs and incognito. Oh, we're gonna get there. You just hold on. Sorry, sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's do that one. So always book flights using incognito mode because the price of a flight will go up if you check the price more than once. Ooh, the airline's gonna know you're searching. So they're gonna get you like that's the point of search. Of course, they know you're searching. That is a trend. I think people, what happens is they'll be booking

a flight. Someone else will book it and the fare will jump. And the correlation is I looked at it, the airline, I'm going to raise the price. No, someone else just booked the last cheap fare. And now a more expensive fare bucket is only for sale. So it's not because you were looking and incognito is going to change anything So it's not because you were looking and incognito is going to change anything. The airline still knows you're searching. They may just not know the cookies you have on your computer, but they're not pricing based on cookies. They're pricing based on demand and availability, like how many seats on that plane. And what you don't know is other people are probably buying flights, canceling them, et cetera. That's what's impacting

the fares, not your internet search history. So it doesn't matter. Correct. There's a lot of false correlations that people draw. But the fact of the matter is airfare changes every second, sometimes in your favor, sometimes it goes down. And on that, when you book airfare, most airlines and travel sites will give you 24 hours to cancel free of charge. I just booked a flight for a friend, LA, New York. It was crazy. And I looked the next day and it dropped 500 bucks. It's wild. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. So even after you book flights, a lot of airlines like Delta and Southwest, if the price drops, you can actually get a voucher for the difference.

So always set Google Alerts when you buy a flight to see if it drops and then try to get a voucher from your airline for the difference if it does. The cheapest day of the week to book a flight is Sunday. Truth or trend? That is absolute trend. That's not true. That was back in the day. The airlines used to have certain days when people with manila folders would feed into a fax machine, the mainframe computer of the fares. That's all false. So, trend. The cheapest day to travel is Tuesday. That can be true. Generally, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you know, the weekends, and then Monday, Tuesday is big for travel. So really, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday are the cheapest days. But once again, it depends on the route.

Okay. Costco always gives the best travel deals. There's nothing that's always right. So Costco does have some good deals. You can buy airline gift cards at 5, 10% discounts. I know people who swear by Costco cruises for booking cruises. So yeah, it's semi-truth. Costco can have very good deals on travel, but not always. Okay. You'll get ripped off if you go to the currency exchange at the airport, truth or

truth? Yes. Truth, truth, truth. Not just going to the currency exchange. So say you're going to Europe, you want to get euros. Just use your ATM card when you land at a legit ATM and your bank will do the conversion for you. Now, big caveat, a lot of times, and especially when you're buying things abroad, they're gonna trick you at that point of sale on the little machine. It'll say, do you wanna convert this into US dollars? Trust us, we'll give you a really good rate. Never, never, never, never.

Everyone repeat after me, never choose the conversion. Always pay in the local currency. Your bank will do the conversion pretty much at the spot rate, maybe a tiny, tiny point of a percent difference. If you let that machine, that retailer, that ATM machine do the conversion, they are literally stealing 5%. They will take 5% of that transaction and steal it from you. And they are hoodwinking consumers.

And I'm really passionate about this because so many people I know are like, oh, my God, I've been doing it wrong my whole life. It's crazy to think how this is allowed. It's fraud from my perspective because they'll often put it in a green arrow is take the conversion and red is bad to do local. And then sometimes they'll even ask you again, flipped to trick you. It is so conniving. So yes, always pay in the local currency and don't do exchanges at those currency exchanges. They're going to take a huge percentage of the value of that money. But use your card wherever possible because then you also get points. And purchase protection. That's what people don't realize. Everyone should look up your credit card.

Most offer purchase protections. You buy a pair of sunglasses, you lose them, you can literally get them reimbursed. Credit card company, just call them. A lot of them have iPhone protections. So when things go wrong, always try to go to your credit card company. And that goes for flights as well. A lot of travel credit cards will have flight delay and cancellation coverage. So if you're delayed 12 hours and you want to get a hotel room, your credit card will reimburse you for that. The Ubers, the dinners, $500 a person or more, depending on the credit card. So yes, put in a claim with the airline. The airlines, they're cheap. They're not going to compensate you. Your credit card will.

It's so important. It's one of the biggest advantages of having the credit card. This actually worked in my favor last summer. I went to Cannes and then I went to Monaco, whatever. I mean, this sounds very fancy, but I was so fancy. I got screwed by one of these hotels in Monaco and hotels.com didn't do anything about it. And then ultimately Amex fixed it. I wrote a letter, I put pictures and all the things and then they took it off my card. All right. Travel insurance for airfare is a scam. Truth or trend? In general, I'd say truth because most airlines now will let you change flights for free

so you can get a voucher for pretty much the fare. Travel insurance can make sense in general on bigger priced. If you're going on a once in a lifetime cruise to Alaska and you're bringing your grandparents and you know they're kind of sick and old, there's probably a higher chance if anything happens, you're going to need to cancel. And instead of losing it, I recommend people buy travel insurance. If you're going somewhere that's been hit with hurricane season, you should not expect local independent hotels to refund you whenever there's an act of nature. It's your job to ensure your trips. That's why I want to get through to people. People get incensed like the wildfires in Maui. I can't believe the hotels didn't refund us. Well, it's not a part of the contract that they'll refund

you for everything. That's literally what travel insurance is for. So if you choose not to protect your trip, especially I feel strongly about local small businesses, small hotels. That's a huge hit for them to insure all of those rooms because they're probably also dealing with supporting their employees and et cetera, and supporting the island. So I would say protect your trips with travel insurance, but generally airfare, especially cheap airfare, it's just a waste of money. When you buy through the airline website, it's not even travel insurance. It's called travel protection. It's a joke.

It's basically what your credit card gives you. If you really want travel insurance, go to insuremytrip.com and then compare and contrast. Make sure what you would want covered, like pre-existing condition, is actually included in the policy. Because if you have a pre-existing condition that might flare up, it's pointless to get a policy. You might be able to pay the same amount for one that covers it. So the devil's in the details.

And generally, don't book it through the airline or cruise. Book independent or third party. I know those make you feel bad, though, when you're clicking at the very end. No, I don't want to protect my $500 ticket. I realize I could ruin my trip and I'm going to be the blame. So aggressive. You need a passport for your baby if you're traveling internationally. Absolutely. The first thing you want to do once I got home from the hospital with Dean, usually you'll have your birth certificate. Sometimes it comes in the mail, but you want to just apply for that passport.

And you also, what people don't realize, so your baby can travel with you in the elite line, the TSA, but global entry, your baby actually needs their own global entry. So if you want to go through that global entry line, if you're going to travel internationally, it's a big no-no. You can actually lose your global entry if you take your baby with you, because they're not authorized. Every single human who goes through the global entry line, no matter the age, one day or older, has to have global entry. Obviously, Dean has global entry. Obviously. And there's a trick. There's a $30 service called Appointmentscanner.com.

So if you can't get your global entry appointment at your local airport, because they're really hard to get, you sign up for the service and they'll text message you whenever last minute appointments open up, which they do every single day because people cancel. So you snatch that. You can put in a range of dates where you're like, I could go to the airport those days. Oh, that's awesome. We'll link that in the show notes because it was such a pain in the ass. I specifically flew to LAX at 7am or whatever to get this one appointment. Super great tip. You can get a free upgrade on a flight if you just ask the flight attendant. Truth or trend? I mean, that's trend. No flight attendants in general have the ability to upgrade you legally. Now, if they're friends on a flight, I know flight attendants who will kind of say, hey, follow me. That's very rare. Although some airlines now have flight attendants that can take credit cards for buying upgrades on board, including Emirates.

So if you're on board, you see there's open seats and business class. You can ask the flight attendant. El Al, I believe, also does this. And once again, it never hurts to ask. But in general, you should try to secure your upgrade before you go to the airport in advance using your miles. When you check in, a lot of airlines will ask you to bid for upgrades. That's the best way to secure it because usually all those upgrades are given to elite members or to people buying them. It's very rare to see open seats, especially on long haul flights and business these days. But if there is for some reason on Emirates,

is that going to be a billion dollars or is that going to be the cheapest one? No, they'll let you use your miles. I recently upgraded from business to first and it was 39,000 miles, which is the equivalent of $500. Okay. That did happen to me on LL, actually.

I did get a flight attendant to put me up. I didn't know her either. I don't know. I don't know why. It was my lucky day. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt.

I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes

at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Booths are available to I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you.

Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it.

But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. If you need to change something with a flight, it's better to call the airline than to use the travel chat bot feature. That's trend. I love the chat bots. They save me time. Those agents can do the same thing as a phone. Some airlines will even charge you for a phone. So I always recommend try to do self-service. Even if your flight's delayed, a lot of times just go online and book it. It's quicker, faster, and time is of the essence. Whenever there's something going on, don't wait

in that line in the airport or wait on a two-hour line to get through to a rep. Time is money. You got to snag those seats. So go online, go on the chatbot. And also, if the phone line is long, call the international number. So call the airlines Mexico or Singapore customer service line because you'll get through usually right away. You should call a hotel to make a reservation. If you do it online, you'll get hit with greater taxes. What I can say is if you see a really cheap rate online on a travel deals website and the hotel's website itself has it higher, you can call the hotel to match. And in general, hotels take better care of their direct reservations.

You can also get loyalty points. When you book through online travel sites, you don't get points usually. So yes, I would recommend if you're not finding the cheapest rate on the hotel's website, call and see if they'll match one that you find. If your flight is delayed, an airline has to give you a meal voucher. Truth or trend? That is a trend. Some airlines have it that they will for certain delays, but it's not a law by any stance. It's up to the airlines. And there is a Department of Transportation dashboard customer service,

and it'll show you what airlines promise. Sometimes it is helpful to show that to the gate agent saying, hey, your airline's policy is $7 to Sbarro. Hook it up. Yeah, because there are tons of TikToks and stuff about all the things that you can say to all the airlines if you're delayed. So much of it is BS. If a flight loses your luggage, they have to pay to replace your lost items, truth or friend?

That is truth. The Montreal Convention is this agreement of most of the world's airlines setting every year changes. I think now it's around $1,700 is what the maximum reimbursable amount is. And then there's other amounts for damage bags, etc. But yeah, airlines are obligated to reimburse you for those items. What is that the NATO for travel? Basically, yeah, many years ago, they all agreed, we're gonna do this international airfare thing, let's have some standard practices so that there's not just chaos all the time. All right, because we're Pisces and love games and we're just fun people.

One more for the best credit cards. Best credit card for travel right now. I love the Capital One Venture X. So Capital One is kind of a sleeper pick here because we all know that Sapphire Reserve usually gets that. I'm loving Capital One because the points transfer, you can also use them to wipe out general travel charges and they have new lounges that are gorgeous. So Capital One, they're opening more and more of them, but we're just going to give Capital One VentureX some love. Okay. Like the Capital One cafes, but it's a Capital One lounge like a Centurion house. Yeah. They're arguably nicer than Centurion lounges. There's one in Dallas, Dulles, and Denver, and some more open.

And they've got Pelotons, amazing food. And because there's less capital on cardholders, there's generally no lines or weights like we see at some of the other lounges. Best for small business owners. I love Amex Business Gold because you earn four points per dollar on the top categories you spend in. And Amex points are super valuable. And one of those categories is internet spend. So if you're an entrepreneur, a small business owner, and you're doing Facebook, Google ads, Bing, Microsoft,

you can get four X points up to 150,000 a year. That's 600,000 Amex points for your internet spend. So that's super lucrative if you do online internet spending. We have an Amex business gold. Wait, maybe it's a Delta. Same thing? Amex gold allows you to earn Amex membership rewards points, which can be transferred to Delta or 20 plus other partners. If you have a Delta business card, you only earn the Delta miles, but you earn other perks with Delta. So that's the trade-off. Less valuable miles, but perks with Delta versus way more valuable Amex points, but no perks with Delta. So that's the trade-off. Less valuable miles, but perks with Delta versus way more valuable Amex points, but no perks with Delta. Best for cash back. Citi double cash. It's basically a 2% back when you pay your bill on time. And I think there's

a $200 signup bonus right now. So that's a no-brainer for cash back, in my opinion. Best for groceries. Amex gold card. A lot of my friends with platinum are like, Oh, it's the most expensive besides Centurion. So I must be earning the most. And it's metal. Yeah, but the gold card is metal and you earn four points per dollar on groceries and dining or or is so rich for that category. There's 25 or $50,000 cap. But Amex Gold is my favorite Amex for points. Honestly, right, I went out to drinks with very fancy people in New York who own a sports team and all sorts of things, and they threw down an Amex Gold. I was a little surprised. They're smart people. Next time

you see that, be like, you're a points person, aren't you? Brian would be proud. Best for restaurants. So Amex Gold is 4X, but I like to diversify. So Chase Sapphire Reserve is triple points on dining and travel. But for no annual fee, I'm going to go out here, the built credit card, which is the only credit card you earn points on rent. Full disclosure, I'm an investor and advisor in that business. That also allows you to earn three points per dollar on dining and those built points are super valuable you can transfer to united alaska hyatt etc so for no annual fee built is my favorite credit card best on low annual fees so i will say well the built card

is my choice there or the city double cash for Cash for the cash back. The one also for restaurants, I just saw that I got an extra Resi thing with my Amex. A little Resi credit. That was cool. Yeah, Amex bought Resi a couple years ago. So now it's all integrated. And if you have Platinum, you get global dining access. So better reservation slots at top restaurants. Best for lounge access.

Amex Platinum, I would say, because the Centurion lounges are great and you get Delta and Priority Pass. And here's the thing with Priority Pass. Certain credit cards will give you Priority Pass dining. We're at restaurants and airports, so I won't go into all of them. You just Google the Point Sky, Priority Pass dining, ins and outs, and it'll teach you about it. But it's great. You get $29 to restaurants. You can even include tip on that. So Priority Pass lounges are sometimes meh, but there's all these other quirks. There's also minute suites where you can get booths at the airport for free with your Priority Pass. To take a nap or something?

Yeah, literally. It's like my favorite. Instead of a crowded lounge to be solo in a small room, it's my heaven. Best for protection perks. Like you mentioned, if you broke your iPhone or something like that, your glasses. Yeah. I mean, Chase Sapphire Reserve and actually American Express, whether you have platinum, gold, green, blue, American Express is really great because they do a lot of their protections in-house. A lot of the other companies have an outsourced insurance company. So Amex is really good for purchase protection. And best overall? You know, I think I'll give this to the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Oh, Chase also has new Sapphire

lounges, which you get in for free with the Sapphire Reserve. I went to the one at JFK and the one at LaGuardia is stunning, apparently. So Chase Sapphire lounges are amazing. Chase points are really valuable. And 3x on travel and dining. And remember that travel, not just airfare and hotels, but it's Uber, parking tolls, and a whole bunch of other things. So the point of all of this is get a couple credit cards that give you the biggest bonuses where you spend. Why are they all getting into this lounge game? Because premium consumers want an elevated experience. And it works so well for Amex that the others, a lot of times something's working, they're going to copy it.

And what's the best calculation now to figure out the value of your points? So you can just Google the points guy, points valuations. We update them monthly. We use data now. So I think the points guide. And by the way, your valuation will be what you get value out of. But I think our team does a really good job of explaining why certain currencies are worth more than others. We did an episode where I negotiated a retention credit with Amex for the show and we recorded it and they offered me either points or a statement credit.

And we went to your site and looked up the conversion. And you're doing a lot of math. Yeah.. Yeah. I believe our values are very reasonable. We try to not have wild. If you're a super expert who flies first class on Emirates, you're going to get this. We try to be pretty level-headed with it. But definitely do those calculations because it stumped me when I was like, oh, this sounds like a lot of points versus money, but maybe not. Brian, we end our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip listeners can take straight to the bank. You are a wealth of tips and you've given so many, but one bonus travel tip that listeners can use today.

Oh, that's a really good question. In general, transfer your bank points to partners. When you redeem for flights through Amex, you're getting one cent per point. But if you transfer to partners like Aeroplan or Air France, you can go to the US to Europe Air France business class for as low as 50,000 points one way. economy or fly business class. So the transfer partners, it's a little bit of a complicated game, but most of those transfers go through instantly. So when you learn how to search for award tickets, and there's a new partnership with Amex with point.me, which is the Google flights for award search. So it makes it really easy to see which transfer partner has award availability for the days you want to travel. So transfer in general, don't book flights through the credit card portal. And use your points. Use your points. It's the nice champagne or the nice China or whatever. Use it. Today is as good a day as any. Every day is a celebration.

Well, every month they raise the amount of points needed. So get the value off the table today and certainly don't let them expire. Save that money, go to a nice meal on your trip. Don't feel as guilty about it. Or even invest that money. You know, use your points, take all that money you would have spent and put it in the markets.

You know more than anyone what that compounded interest is gonna be. So bottom line, my final note, treat your points and miles like a currency because they're not just a coupon or some weird thing. It's truly huge amounts of value that can help your personal bottom line. You earned it. Amen.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.

And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.