The Iced Coffee Hour - How To Build Your Credit Score ASAP And Travel For Free | The Credit Shifu

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Get 20% off your order plus FREE Shipping  At https://www.ettitude.com/icedcoffee . Use Code "ICEDCOFFEE" at checkout! Lock in your best rate today and get your family covered with Ladder at https://ladderlife.com/icedcoffee This week we are joined by Ben Hedges AKA The Credit Shifu on Youtube. We go over some of the best credit card deals. How you can make FREE MONEY with credit cards, and much more. SUBSCRIBE TO The Credit Shifu: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCreditShifu Clips Exclusive: https://youtu.be/8Le1Ms2uets Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w DOWNLOAD MY NEW FINANCIAL APP: https://hungrybull.page.link/graham GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, credit warriors, welcome back to the 67th ever episode of the iced coffee hour. I'm the credit Shifu, aka Ben, and so far, this podcast has made $80,179. Wow, that was the best one yet. I don't know, man. It wasn't that good. Are you serious? Yeah. I'm going to be completely honest.

Jack wouldn't say that. Yeah. Wait a second. So we have to address the elephant in the room here. What happened to Jack? What did you just come with? Wow. Well, then.

Well, then, okay. Jack, unfortunately, is not feeling well. He wasn't able to make it. But temporarily, Alex is going to be filling in for this episode. Jack is going to be back for all the remaining episodes. But we figured today we're going to have Alex on. This is a bonus episode. Yeah, this is a bonus.

We got a bonus episode out today. And this is really exciting because you don't know. Alex is a huge fan of you. Oh, really? Whoa, whoa, whoa. I wouldn't say huge. Moderate. Astronomical.

Yes. I do. I do enjoy your videos, yes. And this is actually a really special episode for me, too, because you're the first person that we've had on that's into the whole credit card game, into credit card churning, getting free stuff, free rewards, just basically getting everything at no cost at the expense of the credit cards. And your channel, I've been watching for probably three years.

I remember. because a long time ago there was this bonus on the ink preferred and I did a video about it and you got it. And you made a comment that you got it. And I was pleased because you were the only person I'd heard of who'd got it because you had to have like a relationship manager or something. And so yeah, that was really cool. Yes, that's right. So the story behind that was I watch your videos, almost all of them. And back then you had posted this promotion. I think it was 100,000 points for the Chase Inc. And you had to go in person to the Chase Bank. And there was one like 50 feet. away from my office. So I saw your video, immediately went down, got the offer, and that was equivalent. Well, at the minimum, that's worth like $1,000, basically, right? Yeah, or $1,250 if we're deemed for travel through the Chase Travel Portal. Exactly, exactly. So for me, I made $1,250 just from an eight-minute video that you happen to put out that I happen to watch and take advantage of.

So welcome to the iced coffee hour. This is really cool to have you here. And I want to know, how did you get in the whole credit card game of being able to make money from credit card companies? Well, I guess the first time I ever did something like this when I lived in the UK, right, I was a student. And at that time, there was a student bank account where they would give you an interest-free overdraft of up to like 1,500 British pounds, right? And that was 2007. And so savings accounts were still paying like 6%. So what I did was I overdrew the student account and I put all the bank's money in the saving account and I made 6% of it for like a year, right?

And so I was paying zero interest on the overdraft and getting six percent. So that was my first little getting my feet wet into the whole what is possible with, you know, running rings around the banks and playing them at their own game kind of thing. But then it was after I moved to the US, I discovered that if you don't have a credit score,

life is pretty hard if you try to rent an apartment or get a cell phone plan or anything like that. So I started reading the, points guy. That was kind of my first intro to it. And then I was like, you know, developing my credit score. And I was like, whoa, we can earn points with this and like fly business class and stuff like that. I've always wanted to do that. So then I started getting into that aspect of it. And then no one was really doing it on YouTube. So I was just like, you know what? I could I could do this on YouTube. So I did. And that's basically how it all started. Yeah. That's incredible. So where did you start? What was the first

credit card that you got that you started getting into turning? For me, I think it was the, It was the American Express gold card for me. And I think at the time... Did you get the new one? The rose gold? Like the metal one? This was back in 2011 or 12... Yeah, 2012.

Is when I got my first MX card. And I think back then, it wasn't the 50,000 points. I think it was 35,000 points that I got from Amex. It was the Amex gold. After that, I got the Chase Sapphire preferred and reserve at the same time. got both of those bonuses. Back in the day, you could have two, couldn't you? When they first came out, that was the easiest money ever.

And I think I used those points. A buddy of mine got married in Hawaii, and I used those points to book a plane ticket in Hawaii. That's cool. So my first card was the Chase Freedom, but it only came with a little bonus, like $150. Then I had my second cards, like the Capital One Platinum. There's no bonus on it.

I just got it because they were sending me junk mail for it. And I was like, I can build my credit score with this, so I got it. But then I got the Chase Sapphire Reserve with the 100,000 bonus in 2016 when it just came out. And yeah, I think I used that for like the W Hotel in Taiwan and, yeah, a load of other awesome stuff. Like, yeah. So that was my first huge bonus. Tell us about the craziest stuff that you've done with it. Crazy stuff?

Give everybody a sense of just like how nuts you could go with this. Because I think we're underselling just how amazing this whole concept is. Okay. And believe it or not, I think that's a great idea because a lot of people, even in the finance community, don't take advantage of credit cards. We hung out with Jeremy last night, financial education, Jeremy, huge into stock investing. He told me you only has two credit cards. Oh, really? Yeah.

So I think it's definitely good to get people a perspective of what crazy stuff you're doing. The issue, though, with Jeremy, Jeremy makes so much money. If he blinks, he's losing money when you consider how valuable his time is worth. So I got to say, there is a sense of diminishing returns that if you're making millions of dollars a year. I think it's a middle class game. Going, yeah, going out of your way for an extra, you know, a few hundred dollars, you know, you start questioning whether or not it's worth it. But I would say anyone making under maybe $400,000, $400,000 a year, this is one of the easiest

side hustles to make at least a few hundred extra dollars a month. At least, at most, you'll probably make an extra, what, $1,000, $2,000 a month? Like, depending on how. you redeem these points. I mean, I don't, I don't go as crazy as some people with it. And also, I always travel with my family, which makes it a bit harder to do the sort of really high class redemptions, like first class, um, Cathay Pacific or something like that. Emmerits. But, um, I worked out just on the sort of major trips that I've done over the last few years, it's $23,000 worth of free travel. Just over the one, just on the ones that I can remember. And there have been

numerous other like weekend trips that I didn't count. But, uh, yeah, $23,000 in the last like two years or so. Wow. So what would you recommend for people watching? We'll get right into the how-to tutorials on this. Where to start? So, well, you've got to start by building your credit score because without a credit score, you're just not going to be approved for any credit card. So normally I say get a starter card like the Discover It card is a great one to start with. I love that one. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Really quick, side tangent here. Every time I meet somebody that come up to me like, grab, guess what, guess what? And everyone whips out their wallet. they pull out the Discover It's my first credit card my first credit look at look what I got I'm so

proud of them I'm like oh that's awesome but the Discover It not one person has had a single complaint with them yeah because it's great you can get approved with it with basically you know what they call a thin file like you know not you know you can have some of the bad credit score that they've damaged their credit score through miss payments but someone who just has no credit score because they don't have any information normally they approve you easy for the Discover it and it's a great opportunity to have your first credit card that actually earns rewards and they do first year catchback match. So you earn double cashback in the first year.

So, yeah, it's an awesome card. Definitely recommended. And then get another card. Like, don't stop at that. You want to get, like, maybe three, four cards in your first six months because the more on-time payments reported each month, the faster your credit score will grow. And you can literally be at 700 within, like, three to six months,

if you do it right. But then at the start, your first five, you want to make sure some of those are chase cards because of the old 524 rule, which I'm sure you know about it. But like if you have opened more than five credit cards in the last 24 months, you can't open any Chase cards. Chase won't approve you for a card.

So at least maybe one or two of your first five should be Chase cards. If you're starting now, you could get the Sapphire preferred, which has a hundred thousand point bonus. You might as well. It's free money, right? You might want to get that for maybe your third card because you want to build your credit score a little bit first. Another good tip is when your credit score is approaching

around 700, Amex cards. That's actually give quite high limits. Yeah, that's something I always recommend, because if you can get a card, I remember I had cards with like $2,000 limit, that kind of thing, Chase Freedom. And then I was approaching 700, and I applied for a Hilton card from Amex,

and it was like, boom, $10,000 limit. I was like, whoa, this is cool. And then after that happened, I was never denied another card after that. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. Basically, you know, they see that you've got other credit cards that are $10,000.

normally they'll easily approve you for whatever you apply for. Got it. What about for the people that say that they don't spend $4,000 in three months? So they're afraid that they're not going to be able to meet the minimum spend because that's the one caveat to some of these cards is they say, in order to be eligible for the 100,000 points, you have to spend $3,000 or $5,000 in the first three months. Otherwise, you don't get it.

What I would say is, well, one way of doing it is that you could go for slightly lower tier cards that, you know, maybe the bonus isn't as much, but you only have to spend, say, 500 or 1,000, like, particularly people who are like students or, you know, who don't really have a full-time job would struggle. But you can also look for other ways of paying certain charges with the card that you wouldn't normally, you know, like, for example, you might be able to pay your student tuition with a credit card. Normally they'll charge a fee. So only pay just the amount that is needed to get over the bonus because you don't want that fee to be too, too much. But if you say have to pay a $300 fee, but you're getting 100,000 points,

which is worth $1,250 through the Chase Travel Portal, you minus 300, you're still $950 in profit. So paying things like that, or you could get a credit card just before you're about to book a big vacation that's going to cost you a few thousand. You can kind of think of it like that. Yeah. That's what I used to do is when I was renovating properties, I'd purposely delay getting a credit card until I knew I had to make all of these big payments. And usually what I'd do, because I would pay a contractor, I would just tell them, go and use my credit card when you're going and paying for materials. That's it. And I would tell them, just go and charge the $4,000 on this. Anything else, you know, I'll pay you directly, but just charge this. And during one renovation, this was

2016, when the Chase Sapphire Reserve came out. The Chase Sapphire Preferred. I think at the same time I got the Amex Platinum. And all of those, I was... was just like minimum spend it in day, minimum spend it a day, minimums, because I was going to spend the money anyway. So my thinking was, I may as well just get all of these cards. I didn't want it to go to waste. And I think within those three cards, I was able to get, I think I got 80,000 for the platinum, 80,000 points,

100,000 for the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I don't remember what the preferred was. It was either 50,000 or 75,000 points back then. And I just loaded up. And that, to me, I still have this point. I have not. I've become a point hoarder. But first, I want to thank our sponsor, attitude. The truth about the betting aisle at your local store is that most pillowcases, duvets, and sheets

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Because it's like right now really where is there to travel? Yeah, just starting to. Right. Yeah, exactly. So I think in the next year or so, then I could start using those points. But I also want to get to a million points in my account. So I could physically see one million points. That's cool.

And then I can spend it. Yeah. Then I can spend it. Yeah. I think right now total, I'm at like 850, 9,000 thousand. Yeah. That's cool. So I just need another credit card.

On Amex or on? No, no. This is Chase. Oh, Chase. Chase. No, I think actually, if we combine them on over a million points. Okay. Because Amex, I think, is like 500,000 points.

Chase is 8, 900. hundred thousand. Yeah, yeah. Nice, man. That's cool. You got to tell me where I could go with that. Oh, yeah.

I mean, there's loads of, you know, Emirates first class, maybe. Really? Wait, with Chase, let me just think about the transfer. Let's see what Chase.

Let's say I have 800,000 points with Chase. Oh, you could do. I mean, you can go to Europe, uh, business. This is what I, normally I go to Europe every Christmas, right? I go business class.

The new British Airways Club suite has a closing door and, uh, that's 50,000 points or at Christmas, maybe 60,000 points. So you go to Europe, business class. or first class probably like 80,000 something one way. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, one way.

80,000 points one way per person. Yeah, but don't fly directly to the UK. If you fly to Spain, the taxes and fees are way cheaper. UK hits you with this crazy air tax. Wait, explain this. Yeah, this is great because there's a lot of little things like this in a credit card game that catch people out. Basically, different countries have different rules around like the taxes on the ticket and stuff.

So if I book a business class ticket to the UK, which I often do because I just travel with my family, it's most convenient. So I actually absorb the extra cost. But you might pay $800 in fees. So you're basically paying for an economy class ticket. And then you're like upgrading with the points to get business class. Why is that? Do they tax you on the retail value of the ticket? Is that how it is? It's, yeah, it's just the way. I think they have higher taxes on fuel, like fuel duty. And it's just the way it's done. I don't know. It's a little bit of a mystery. but if you put the same ticket going to like Portugal or Spain, something like that, you will probably pay like $80 in fees and $50,000 points in business class. Wow. And then when you're in, let's say Portugal, then what do you, then you, didn't you book your ticket?

Then, yeah, if you wanted to go to UK, you would just have to transfer there and you would get higher taxes on that really short flight, because it's only a short flight, the taxes will be like $40 or something like that. Wow. It's a little hack, you know. Yeah. Sometimes you've got to really think out the box because the airlines don't want. want you to redeem for maximum value. They want lower value, right? So you've got to kind of play

the game. That's really interesting. I had no idea. So you're saying 80,000 points business class. What about like I want that? No, business class one way would be 50 to 60,000 to Europe. First class, maybe is talking like 80 to 100,000, depending on the airline, one way to go to Europe. So yeah, so for me and Macy together, it would be 400,000 points. Yeah, to return. First class round trip for two people. So you could do it. Wow. Oh, yeah. Random question. Have you ever been to an airport lounge?

Yes. Oh, all the time. I thought you did my lounge? Yeah. All the time. No, yeah, all the time. Oh.

Because he told me he's never flown, like, business or anything. Never flown business. You haven't flown business? Never business or first class. But I would go to Canada to see family. Okay. And every time I go up there, I would purposely go to the airport a little bit early so I could hang out in the lounge, eat the food.

And even, by the way, if I'm in a rush, I would go into the lounge, get the food to go and then just eat it and that's my meal. The one time we're all flying to Utah to visit the Stradman and we get to the lounge there and they're closed because of because of COVID, but they're basically just handing out meals. Okay. So we go there and I just get enough for all of us. It was really nice. Yeah. Yeah, but I've been to all the lounges. Centurion is amazing. My favorite was, I think it was Dallas. The Centurion Lounge in Dallas, if you, you could book a massage there. A free complimentary 15 minute massage with the credit card free. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. You know, I, I had the opportunity to do that in the British Airways

lounge one time, but my wife was very slow in packing the case. And we ended up getting to the airport like just in time for the flight. So we both missed the free massage. Yeah, it was kind of annoying. But there were some really awesome lounges. I think the best one I've been to is the club in Taipei because I used to go to Taiwan a lot and this was uh I had the status with the airline not through credit cards just because I built I'd flown so many times that uh I'd built up like um star alliance silver and stuff like that and yeah you could go to this lounge that was not in any priority pass or anything yeah and uh yeah it's a really classy lounge who goes to this line like do you ever walk and you're like oh my god that's Rod Stewart like crazy stuff like I've never seen

anyone famous actually. Really? No. Other people have. I've seen videos with like someone bumped in like Wesley Snipes or something. Yeah. Oh my God. Like walking in me like Tom Hanks is just chilling in the corner, you know, eating his meal.

Yeah. No, every time I walk in because now the, at least with priority pass, it's everyone has it. So priority pass is really like crowded. When I first started going, it was 2016. I felt like I was ball and like I would walk in. There wasn't that many people. I remember getting a snack for the first time ever being blown away. But now you walk in, there's a line to get in, all the seats are taken, the food is half eaten.

They've really done the bare minimum just to maintain priority pass. And now, what is it? They started charging if you bring beyond, like, one guest. Yeah, the Sepah Reserve used to give you unlimited guests. I took like six people in. Yeah, yeah, same. I worked out it would have cost like $250, right? But then they limited it to two.

Yeah. And I think the MX Platinum is going to start charging for guests in Centurion Loungeers starting next year or 2023. I can't remember. I believe it. They should allow you one guest, though. One guest for free. I think that what they want you to do is get the authorized user card for your guests. Do you worry right now that credit cards are catching on to this?

Because I feel like just with the explosion of popularity of personal finance, the credit cards are knowing like, hey, too many people are taking. advantage of us right now. We got to downgrade these offers and make it more expensive. No, I think, I mean, it comes in cycles. And actually, some people who are in the industry have also mentioned this to me as well. It's like it always, there's always going to be devaluations, but then there's always going to be new amazing offers coming out. So like back in 2016, we saw the Sapphire Reserve 100,000. And then for a long time, we didn't see any 100,000 point offer from Chase. And then we had COVID where everything just shut down. The credit cards were like, not really wanting to apply, you know,

bringing new people, even cutting limits and stuff. And now we're kind of in a new golden age of huge sign-up bonuses, both Amex and Chase. Yeah, not Citi. I don't know why Citi doesn't give any huge bonuses, but Amex and Chase are like, you know, even on their earnings call, they're Amex talking about, yeah,

we're really going hard on custom acquisition in 2021. So, yeah. Why is that? Do you think it's because they want to compete with Chase and Chase wants to compete with Amex? I think, yeah, there's kind of a battle going on between Amex and Chase right now because they are the two biggest, well actually, not the biggest. I think city

actually issues more cards, but that's because they have like Costco and American Airlines and stuff. But yeah, Amex and Chase are definitely battling, you know, for domination of the whole space. Got it. What do you think the best offers are right now? Best offers, undoubtedly is going to be the 100,000 on the Sapphire preferred. My hack for that, though, is that if you want the Sapphire Reserve, so you get the lounge access and everything, you apply for the preferred first. You apply for the preferred first, get the 100,000 points, and then after a year, upgrade to the reserve. Now, when you upgrade, are you still eligible for the sign-up bonus on the reserve? Yeah, yeah. So you can, you can, oh, sorry, no, so what you can do, you can get the bonus on the

preferred, so you have that 100,000 in your account. Once you've upgraded to the reserve, if you've kept those points for a whole year, once you have the reserve, the points are going to be worth more. They're going to be worth 1.5 cents a point instead of 1.25. So you get $1,500 in value instead of $1,250 in value. Yeah. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Ladder. Really quick, I want to talk about the things that fundamentally change the way that we live.

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Thank you so much, Latter for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Got it. You'd have to keep them for a whole year. But yeah, the real reason is so that like The reserve is just a better card Right The Sapphire Preferreder only gives you two points per dollar On travel and dining

It's actually not even It's not that great to be honest But you wouldn't get the sign-up bonus on the reserve With an upgrade so you're missing out on the sign-up bonus But the sign-up bonus on the reserve is only 60,000 And you're only allowed one Sapphire at a time So you couldn't get the preferred first And then apply for the reserve

You'd have to wait four years And close your preferred Yeah, because there's like the one Sapphire our rule and stuff. So my kind of hack is if you want the reserve, get the preferred first, get the huge bonus. They allow you to upgrade after one year.

And then you don't get a bonus when you upgrade, but the points take on better value. Got it. Yeah. See, back when I was doing this, it was just unlimited. You want the cards? Go and take the cards,

get the bonuses, yeah. Yeah, that was, but, you know, each period has its own, like, hacks and real things that, yeah. Yeah. It's amazing that you've turned this to do, business. What were you doing before this? So I came to New York in 2011 and I was actually, I was working at NTD TV, which is at that time, I don't know if sure is anymore, but at that

time it was a non-profit TV station, specialized in broadcasting uncensored news to China. So it's a very random story. So I was born in Hong Kong. So and my major in college is Chinese language. So after I graduated, I got this job at this nonprofit. And, And yeah, so that was why I came to New York. And through that, I have a show. La Wai, I Can Chon Guo, it's a Chinese language show. And it's a very popular, it's got like 700,000 subscribers on YouTube. And in 2014, I think, by search volume, I was the number three internet celebrity in Taiwan.

No way. It's like super random. If you search my name, Ben Hedges on YouTube, you can find the channel. But yeah, it's super random. But I was really there because I wanted to do something. And I met my wife there. She was working there. So her family had been persecuted in China by the communist regime there.

Her parents, they practice Falun Gong, which is a Buddhist meditation practice. And they were actually put in forced labor camps in China for their belief. And this practice, it's like a peaceful practice like meditation. Like it shouldn't be persecuted in any normal country, you know. But when she turned 18 and they had been released then. But when she turned 18, they basically gave her all the evidence of what happened to them and sent her to the U.S. And the U.S. was like, yeah, sure, you can stay. They gave her asylum, right?

And her family's all right. They're relatively safe now. Like, it's like not a super bad situation for them anymore. But, yeah, so I met my wife there. And then I forgot the question. What was the question? How did you turn this into a business? Okay, yeah, yeah.

So we're getting to that. So, like, yeah. So after I had, you know, I'd worked at this nonprofit for, like five years or so and you know I'd kind of done some good stuff but I hadn't really earned any money you know because well I was earning money but it's not like you know it's a non-profit so you can imagine it's not like a huge like six-figure job or anything like that so I was like okay what shall I do and this is when we're having our first baby so I was like what shall I do well why don't I try to do some YouTube stuff because I'd already done one channel for them and got 700,000

subscribers so me and another guy we were like okay let's do it on our own and our first channel was Generation Tech, which is now one of the biggest Star Wars channels on YouTube. It's got, I think it's at 650,000 subs right now. Really? Yeah. And people sometimes comment, they'll find one of my Star Wars videos. And they'll be like, oh, hey, Credit Shufu. It's super random.

Wow. Yeah, yeah. So if you want to, I do Star Trek stuff as well. I was a super like Star Trek nerd when I was in my early teens. So I've kind of milked that knowledge. So if you search like, Enterprise, USS Enterprise, you know, 10 floors or, USS Enterprise, 10 features, like all those videos will come up. So, yeah, if you want to brush up.

Wow, I had no idea. Okay. So, yeah, and then at the same time, I started Credit Shifu. And Credit Shifu was originally kind of the side channel, because I was doing like Star Wars and Star Trek content full time, but I was a little bit tired of it. So that was when I started concentrating more on Credit Shifu to try and get it bigger. And then we started working as an, you know,

affiliate with credit card companies to, you know, in addition to AdSense, we can now have, sign people out for credit cards and get commission and we can have weble they can probably get two free stocks below with weble right or public or public it's worth all the way to 70 dollars 70 70 dollars and if you sign up using the code gram oh you know what that offer might expire because it expires july 12th you know what we want to try to keep it going uh if the offer's down below you have to do it before it expires the current offer expires july 12 so if this if you're watching this after then, the offer is expired, but there might be another one.

The trick is you have to do it before the offer expires. To see what people's numbers are. Are you able to share any numbers with us, you know, in regards to the revenue that these channels are? We can, yeah. My business partner, he's a little bit more private than me. He doesn't like going super in depth. But what I can, let me think about it. So we could do, you know what, how about this?

If you could show what you're making on the credit Shifu channel. That's not very much. And then, but then we could give, then you could give us the ballpark of all the other. So that way we don't exactly know what, which channel is which. What I can say is some of our channels make as much as the average household income of the US in one month. Annual, yeah, the average annual household income. How, how does, how is that channel able to generate so much? Where does that come from?

That's just from YouTube ads. That's just from sheer volume. Yeah. How many views does this channel get to be able to do? That's a lot. I mean, it's not, yeah, so it's not a, there's my phone, it's not a finance channel. Yeah. So it has a lower CPM, you know, like we get like $10. I think I mean up to like $13 now on my CPM.

But this channel, it's like, can I, can I see to see it? Yeah, yeah, let's have to work. All right, it's a real time. What is that? Great, consist, consistent. And that's not even, you know, normally at the end of the year, December is the best month. And I can show you credit, you'll be, I mean, I want to see the credit chiff, yeah, how much it earns. Okay, so yeah, this is the credit shift.

But our view is a way low, but because, you know, it's so niche. All right, that's the last 28 days. Still, I mean, listen, $6,100 in 28 days. It's not that good. Still. But a lot of the income comes from affiliates. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road,

that's the Volkswagen TIG one. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine

gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vW.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. Oh, I see here.

So we can easily get up to light. That's not much, is it? It's the views. Yeah, the views are low, but the Cvant's like. You know what? No, no, no, no. My credit card videos pay the most

of anything. You know why? Because your videos are too short. And you're not putting, hold on. Let me look at this video here. We'll analyze this. And by the way, we have a full-on YouTube Creator Academy down below in the description that I'll do $200 off. Wow.

$200 off that teaches you all of the ins and out. But let's see if we can get your income up, okay? And this is all stuff we cover on the program too. But so you got this video, the city trifecta explained 2021 update. Okay, fine. Well, just looking to this. I'm going to go to monetization. Where's monetization?

on is it eight minutes look at that this is why you're not making enough money no mid rolls only two mid rules on an 11 minute video you could do three would you uh you yeah so uh basically i'll do three up to 10 to 11 minutes if it's over 13 minutes i will do a fourth if it's over 17 i'll do a fifth basically one every three minutes or so is about the sweet spot. Okay. Because, sorry, because the ads won't show for everybody.

Oh, that's true. So sometimes they err on the side of caution. So you could put four ads in there, but people might only see two. That's true. So the more ads you put, the more chances. The more chances you have that the ad is going to display. So that is one thing. So if you put a third ad in every video over eight minutes long, your income will

increase about 15 to 20 percent. Okay. That's a good tip. Overnight. So you're making an extra. through the back catalog. Yes. So what I would do is sort through the videos that are the most viewed over 60 minutes, 48 hours,

and just put ads in this. I wouldn't bother with all the other ones. But my big thing about this channel in particular, because on our other channel, like our Star Wars channel, we can bring in millions. Like we'll regularly be doing maybe 300,000 views over 48 hours or 500,000 years. But this one is very low.

And I think it's because it's so niche. It is. So I've had a plan to kind of expand into more. entertainment-based finance content. And I'm probably going to do it on a second channel. What is your suggestion or recommendation for that? Well, first one, like I said, put mid-rolls in these videos. So you'll make an extra 20%.

The other thing, before we go to that, is that some of these videos are only five minutes long. If you could find a way to stretch that to eight, that way you'll get mid-rolls in those videos. So that would probably double or triple. your income on those videos by taking it from five to eight minutes find a way just the last three minutes to give something else add on some extra content some bonus content uh some of these videos like three minutes don't bother but if it's five you can get it to eight if it's four

probably just keep it four yeah so uh as far as starting another channel if if it's different enough sure but if you're going to be talking about credit cards personal finance you might be able to just do it on this channel. Probably stop recording. The problem I had with this channel is, oh yeah, stop recording. I did this video a while back,

which metal credit cards are bulletproof, right? And I spent so much time, like, locating this private, like 80 acres of land to go and shoot on and calling up friends who had different types of weapons, you know, to do it. And it only got 10,000 views.

And my feeling is that it's because a lot of people they come to this channel for information rather than entertainment. No, I just think it was, I just think it's a niche topic to begin with. I think you could post that on a Putech channel and just people wouldn't, they wouldn't watch it. Unless you're like a Mr. Beast where it's like, how many credit cards can you stack to stop a bullet? Yeah, yeah. Then I would watch that.

I did a video on the main channel. This is my video. You did, right? Yeah. With the flame throw. Yep. Did it get views? Nope.

It was the worst performing video on my channel in like years. So as some context here, I unboxed the JP Moore. and reserve credit card. And this was my most viewed video ever at the time on my channel by like tenfold. And I figured, okay, just unbox this video, they're going to be retargeting the same audience. What else could I do with the credit card? Well, I could burn it with a flamethrower. And so I wanted to test, how easy can you destroy this credit card with like an axe, with a flamethrower, with all these other things? I destroyed all my credit cards. And at the end, I even called the customer service line up, like, hey, my credit card is damaged. Can I get a

new one. They sent me a new one. But yeah, the video bombed. People hated the video. They're like, what is this? I didn't subscribe to this. This is stupid. Some people didn't get the joke. Some people were upset at me because they thought I was being serious when I'm talking about, like, I don't like debt. We're going to burn all my credit cards. They're like, Graham, I just got a credit card. I just got one. And now you're saying it's bad. Why would you do this? Why would you do this to me? It's like, it's a joke. But, yeah, I just don't think. You have to go to such extremes that if you're stacking 100 credit cards, you're stopping a bullet, maybe that would have a chance. Or the title I would say too. Like if I read a title and it says which credit card is

bulletproof, I don't really care. But if you oppose it as this is the bulletproof credit card or this credit card is bulletproof, I may be more likely to click. Yeah, yeah. But that's just me. Stopping, you got to do stopping a bullet with credit card. There you go. Like, yeah. How many credit cards stop a bullet? Yeah. How many credit cards to stop a bullet? Yeah. How many credit cards to stop a bullet something like that and you just got to keep stacking credit cards with the slow-mo cam, you know, shooting and I don't know, like a thousand frames a second or something like that. And you see the bullet just like ricocheting. Yeah.

You got to do something like that. Cool. But yeah, I don't think it was a, it wasn't the channel. So speaking of you want to pivot into finance. You say, or not pivot, you want to add finance related content. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I'm assuming you don't really talk about this much on your channel, but.

what does your investments look like? So right now, yeah, you'll be interested in this actually. So right now, basically, I have used the stock market to get down payments for properties. So first I bought my own house. I grew my portfolio. Is that the one in New York? In New York State. Yeah.

I'm saying New York. So I bought my own house. And then my stock market portfolio went down to like five grand, right? And then I invested a load of money during the pandemic. the March 23rd bottom, right? Pretty much the two weeks, either side of that. I was just plowing thousands and thousands into the market. And I made like a lot of money, right?

So then I pulled out like, I don't know, like 35 or something. And I went and bought this piece of land in upstate New York. And I'm going to do, I'm currently working with a builder. And we're going to build a luxury Airbnb cabin as an investment property for rich people from New York City to come and, you know, have a vacation in. And so yeah, that's, and then I've still got a stock portfolio, which is growing, you know, and that kind of thing. So, yeah, but also the cabin, it's going to be, it's kind of a cool thing for YouTube videos as well, because you can do like, you know, you can do it. People love those videos. Anything involving real estate, it's buying the real estate, renovating the real estate,

then doing a house tour. Yeah, that video did really well, actually. I did a land tour, right? Wow. How did that do? And yeah, I mean, I put it on my second chat. channel, which only had like 10,000 subs, and it got over 10,000 views. Wow. Which is, you know, it's a modest figure, but for a channel that's small, it's actually really good, you know? But yeah, you can use tricks like putting, you know, the amount of money. I put like, I just spent $28,000 on land.

It's not even that much, but people just like seeing, you know, big figures like that and stuff like that. So, yeah, that was cool. So we're like almost about to start building on that piece of land. Cool. And it's going to be luxury. It's going to have a hot tub. It's going to have a sauna.

It's going to have, yeah, all sorts of cool stuff. That's exciting. Yeah, the threshold now, unfortunately, on YouTube is so high. So it used to be like you spend $10,000 on a stock. Then it became $100,000. But now everybody is investing $100,000 in a stock. So now it's got to be $500,000. Seriously, Jeremy's latest video was $500,000.

in a single stock. Wow. Wow. And that's now the new, the new tier. And pretty soon it's going to be a million. I did $100,000 of the stock picking monkey. No one cared. Oh, I saw that.

No one cared. No one watched it. How was that? It's up. It's up. The video was good? No, no, no. The video bombs.

Because everyone's like 100K. This is what it's like on YouTube. You work really hard on something. You think is going to be really good. And it's totally bombs. It's the same thing with real estate now, too. You have Ennis out there now, $20 million house tour, you know, so, you know, Graham. Oh, yeah.

Now there's that house tour that producer Michael did, right? You're competing with that. It's like 500, no, a billion or 500 million? 500 million. That was the listing price. But, yeah, it's getting insane out there. So, yeah, so I have my monkey portfolio pulled up here and I'm screen recording for you. Nice.

So so far, the monkey portfolio has made 18.97% since I made that video that was back in December. So I made almost 20% in six months. The number one performing stock in this account was Ford, up almost 70%. I bought Ford when it was like $7. It's that new Bronco. It's bringing Ford up. And the electric Mustang. And the electric Mustang.

Yeah. Surprisingly. I'm not a fan of the electric Mustang, but people are buying it. I got the Bronco on order. Yeah. All right. So anyway,

we got invitation homes of 35%. Ooh. That's a good one. Nice. IHS market limited, 30% BlackRock. This is a big one. 26%.

Align technology. They do Envisaline. 16%. Republic services, this is one I liked a lot. Republic services, they take out our trash here. They're a big,

they're waste management. And I believe they also pay a dividend. And you got to think, trash collection's not going away. That's a recession-proof business. And you look at their chart. I mean, it's just consistently. Unfortunately, we're throwing away more stuff.

So I think at some point, there's got to be, I think people are going to be more eco-friendly and conscious of stuff like that. But they're going to pivot to. And they'll pivot to. But anyway, CERner Corporation up 3%.

The one I thought was going to do the best. This one led the way up until February was Tesla. Now only up 2%. And then the losers, Netflix is down and Annel Americas, which is energy, I believe, in South America. That's down 7%. But overall, I got a 20% return with a monkey. You know? I mean, it really goes to show you right now.

I think so many people are in the stock market today, and they think they are geniuses. And we call them, I mean, I'm not going to point in it. And they all started in March last year, right? I'm up 100%. So two things. Speaking of that, we have the same people back from 2008

that have only been investing since like 2009, let's just say. And people before COVID were like, oh, you've only invested in 2009 and above. We've only just seen a bull market. And then now we're seeing the same people, you've only been investing since March.

So it's always that next thing. But we call them, I'm not going to paint names. I'm not going to mention any names here, but we call them cheerleaders. Yeah. Because really, there's zero due diligence. There's zero analysis that's going on stock.

It's just, guys, we got to stay strong. We got to keep buying. And meanwhile, it's just like tanking, tank. Guys, we've got to buy more. This is our chance. We're going to make a lot of money. It's not even just me. It's everything.

And it's insane. And it's just the lower the price goes, the more hypey they get. And again, there's no analysis. Yeah. Nothing. It's just, it's going to go to the moon. We got to keep buying it. We got to keep holding it.

They all have a name for like their followers. And it's just we're going to buy this stock. We're going to keep buying. We'll see what happens on that. But it's a scary time where like that's the new breed of investor. And I'm sure Warren Buffett would say the same thing about like Wall Street bets. Like it's a scary time for this new investor who's investing on Robin Hood. Commission free trade.

So, you know, maybe you know we're the old people. Yeah, I think with Wall Street bets, it's like it's cool to read it. And I've invested, you know, I made good money on AMC, you know, but I only do it with small amounts of money. Like, I put in like a thousand back in January and I took out like three or four thousand. Paper hands. You paper hands. Little boy. I mean, you should cut that because I was going to hate me.

But, yeah. I can't believe it. Yeah. Are you still holding? No, no, I don't own any AMC. But, and that's the thing that is shocking to me, that, especially when someone gets in and they get out with a profit and they've made a, 500, a thousand percent returning your money. You know it's a problem when people like,

you paper handed a little. Yeah, what's the point of investing? Yeah. It's like you, it's like shameful that you made a thousand percent returning your money. Like that's like you did everyone dirty. It's insane. It's like the purpose of investing is to make money.

You should be commending these people who have sold some of these things. And it's like, no, it's like it's backwards. It doesn't make any sense to me. So we'll see if this sticks around long term. I don't think it will. but yeah I don't think it can I think like game stop was probably the the sort of biggest example of it I suspect that could be this biggest example of it we're ever going to see because I don't think

AMC well I don't know it probably will now but I don't think it's going to go that much higher because I feel like the the Wall Street people are kind of doing some stuff behind the scenes I'm going to tell you I personally again we can look back at this and maybe I could be wrong I personally don't think it's going to go much above where it is maybe maybe it's by like 10 box or something like that I would be shocked to see it in a hundred and that's been the threshold. My thinking is that, and I think this is just human psychology,

people only have a certain amount of patience to hold this stock. And I think if it's going to hold out like this for much longer, people are going to say, it's not doing anything. Let me go and move it in to build a bear. Like, you know, something else instead. I mean that too, actually.

And it's, just a little. I think it's slowly going to just let some of the air out of the balloon. Yeah. That's what I think is going to happen. I think, If under perfect conditions, maybe this thing. But I just think there's not enough people out there who are going to buy it and hold it.

And now I bet there's going to be people like, oh, Graham's a shill. It's a Wall Street shill. People call me a shill for talking about this stuff because I'm like, being honest, I just, I don't see it. And I know we make jokes about Jack being paper handed, but he made, what, 1,300% or whatever? Jack turned $100 in.

to $13,000. And he sold. And I, so I've been... On Dogecoin. Oh, that's great. I've been telling him to sell. That thing hit 30 cents. It's like, sell.

Sell, sell. 50 cents to sell. I've just been sell the whole, the whole time. And Jack happened to sell at the perfect time. Right before S&L. Oh, before us. Right before S&L. I wish I could have sold.

Like, I was holding it that day and I was like, shall I sell before? Shall I sell after? And I knew it could go either way, you know? and then I was watching it, and Elon wasn't really doing anything, you know? And I was like, all right, I'll try and sell. And then Robin Hood, which I was holding, I don't normally use Robin Hood,

but for Dogecoin, I was using it. And it was like not allowing you to sell. And I ended up selling at like 50. Yeah, so the problem with that, my theory with that is that, you know, Robin Hood is really just, everything is really done within that platform. So when they have so many sell orders

coming in at the same time, but they don't have enough, the equivalent of buy orders, they can't fill those orders. So either what happens is that you have people who are like buyers, let's say at 20 cents, then you have all these orders filling in at 20 cents from people who are willing to sell at any price. The buyers are willing to pay like 10 or 20 cents, it would crash the price just on Robinud, whereas meanwhile, all the other platforms would be a neutral price.

So they had to maintain the price in line with everybody else, but it's just a wild thing. But yeah, Jack got in really well on that one. And I'm proud of him for it. And I didn't think he was going to do it. He was like, I'm diamond-hanging, diamond-hansing. But you know what? I mean, when there's $13,000 on the line, all-profit, I think he made the smart move. That's, yeah, that's similar to, well, nowhere near as good.

But my best result has been with, was with Tesla. I got a thousand percent return on that. Same. Yeah, you did, right? Yeah, I think a lot of us did. Meet Kevin. I went to his seminar in New York two years ago, and he was talking about buying it at like 180, pre-split price.

You know, I think I bought it. I still have two shares of it because I just sold, I sold most of it. Most of that was my $28,000 land purchase was from Tesla. But yeah, I've got like two shares now. And my cost basis is $40. And the stock price is $600. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. That's about the same as me.

I bought Tesla back when it was 240, 250, free split. So it would that be like 50 bucks? Around there, around $50. Unfortunately, I sold half when it hit $900. And for a brief moment, I was a genius. Because it hit $900, I sold. And the next day, it started dropping, and it dropped all the way down to like $400. And I was like, I made out like a bandit.

But then it kept going up, and I just, I missed that opportunity to buy. But I did put in a big chunk right before they announced the split. Oh. And you made a nice little gain. Yeah. And I still hold all of it. So my theory is now I'm not going to sell something unless I need the money. Because every time I've sold something when I didn't need the money because I think the price is going up too high, even if it drops in the short term, that the psychology, the fact that I sold just makes me less likely to buy. Yeah. So I just hold.

It's the whole intelligent investor thing anyway, isn't it? It goes back to all that. It's like just buy and hold can sometimes be far better. and also if you sell under a year of holding, you have to pay higher taxes. You know, it would be really fun to do right now. You should review Alex's wallet. Oh, yeah? And let us know what you think about it.

And you know what? Even more exciting. We're going to make this a Clips Channel exclusive. Whoa. Yeah, so we have a link to the Clips channel down below in the description. It's brand new. Go ahead and subscribe to that. This is only going to be available in there.

So again, it's in the description, and let's get into it. So I heard of an Amex Platinum hack. I'm not sure if I heard this from you. I don't think so. I think it was another random channel that popped up. So last year, I think it was around like August, September, I realized my Amex platinum that like I am just not using it at all. I don't use it to charge anything because the Amex gold is better for points.

I'm not traveling. There's no point in me spending $550 a year. So this guy, I saw, I saw his video, says you could get 50,000 points for free. the MX Platinum, just by saying you're going to cancel the card. So I went through his YouTube video. Yeah, I did. So I went through his YouTube video perfectly. So what you have to do, he wanted me to go online and talk to one of their little chat people.

And I said, hey, I'd like to cancel the card. They then respond back with, but let me tell you all the amazing things about this card that maybe you didn't know about to make it worth it. They run through all of that. Yeah, and I still want to cancel the card. Oh, what about all this other? stuff. No, I still want to cancel the card. Oh, so if I'm understanding you correctly, you want to cancel the card? I'm like, yeah, I'll cancel the card. It's just not worth it to me.

And then you have to say, is there anything that you could do to retain my business? Because I think if you just say, like, you just cancel a little bit, I'll cancel. But you have to say, is there anything that you could do for me? Let me, let me get back to you. And then they come back to you like five minutes later. We're able to offer you, at least, it seems like this is the go-to. We're able to offer you 50,000 points if you don't cancel and just keep the card an extra year. So I figured, you know, 50,000 points, I could probably get that $700, you know, $800 with the value, transferring it to an airline. So I would pay $5.50 for $800. Fair. So that's what I did. I'm keeping the card. Yep. And, uh, and, uh, I'm probably

just going to cancel the card. Uh, it's September. After you. I think this year, September, it'll be a year. Retention office are a great way. But the wait a minute. How are you getting into the Centurion Lounge? I barely travel. Oh yeah, you can get that. I mean. But yeah, retention offers are great. I did a retention offer on the old SPG card,

which then turned into the Marriott-Born boy. Yeah, I got that card too. You got the card too, right? In this video, I got 25, no, 30,000 points. I forget where I used, I think it was, gosh, I used it many years ago, but, yeah. SPG used to be like the best, you know, hotel system, and it's a little bit devalued now.

It's part of Marriott. But yeah, I got a retention offer for 7,000 SPG points, which is worth 21,000 Marriott points. Just by calling up and saying, hey, I'm thinking of canceling and just directly saying, are there any retention offers available? Because literally, depending on how good a customer you are,

they will have certain set offers that they can offer you. So they'll go off and do something on the computer and then come back. So I don't know, maybe if you let them do the whole spiel first, it might do something. I don't know. The way I've always done it is just phoning up and just very direct. I say, you know, are there any retention offers you could offer me? And that's it.

Yeah, I know I gave him the whole runaround on that. That's cool. But yeah. So I might do that with my Charles Schwab platinum because the points are going to devalue. Wait a second. That's what I should get. The Charles Schwabatim. Good.

But the points are devaluing. They're going down from 1.25% at 1.25 cents per point to 1.9% certain. It's happening on September 1st. But isn't that still better than me paying $550 a year for the normal? platinum? Yeah, you could actually cancel your platinum and then apply for the Charles Schwab platinum because it's considered a separate product so you can still get the bonus. And I could still go to the lounge. And you could still go to the lounge. Now, for the Charles Schwab platinum it's free, right? Or what's the, what's the dollar amount that you have to? If you have,

well, the fee is 550. Yes. But if you have over 250,000 with Schwab, you get $100 off. And if you have over $1 million with Schwab, you get $200 off. Is there anything above a million or is just $2?000 off. the highest is 200. I thought it was free. I thought it was like for every, I don't, a million you have with them, it's like,

you know, 100 off or something like that. That would be great. So you could be paying $350. Do you know if there's a way that you can call them up and be like, hey,

good customer swap. Can they just give me this card? Do you, do you know if there's a way? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. Dave Hansen was asking about this too.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Gosh. Are there any, do you know of any offers for like, like, you know, big, big spenders, big ballers out there who have like, you know, cash in the bank.

Yeah, like Graham and Jack. Yeah, like, they spend so much money. What can, you know, I could actually research this and come back to you. A really good offer in the past used to be the Alliant Credit Union card. Yeah. My friend, he got this and basically it gives unlimited 2.5% cash back on everything. And then for the first year, it was 3%. And it was, it was specifically for high spenders.

So a friend of mine, he got it and he went and bought it. a red cinema camera that's like 50 grand or something and he got 3% cash back on it so but actually they've been or you can just use the carrot credit card yeah if you've got the carrot credit card it's probably right it's pretty good for yeah um you should be getting the centurion soon right maybe getting an invite i wouldn't do it i wouldn't do it i wouldn't do it i wouldn't do it because so it's a so for those that aren't aware actually i i watched your video on this did you made a video on yeah the the new one what is it's a ten thousand dollar initiative Right? And then every year it was five grand a year after that. So like up front, you're spending $15,000 up front to get the Amex black card. Now, I was thinking, okay, if it's five grand, I can make a video on it. And like, worst case, I'll make the money back. It'll be break even for the first year. I can't justify 50. Like, I know 15. The best case scenario, the video makes like seven grand. Best case. And that's if the video gets like 500.

thousand views does well. I'm not going to spend 7,000 on a card that I'm not going to use that that isn't that good. It's not. Yeah. I mean, it's the flex. I don't know.

It's just not a good card. The one thing that I was thinking, they offer you a free Equinox or what is it? $200 and something dollars off your Equinox membership. Yeah, it only adds up to like a thousand or two a year or something. Right. It's like, yeah, it's like $2,400 a year. Not worth it.

I don't go to Equinoxhammed. You get access to the private suite at LAX? You know about that? Yeah, I do. How often do you run with LAX? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's really just something you pull out to be like,

I wasted a whole bunch of money on this card. Yeah. It's really bad. They may have a new one coming out. We don't know, but above platinum. They should. They should. People think it's going to be called the Optio card

because that was the rank below Centurion, the Roman army. I really don't think it's going to be called that, but that's what people are kind of calling it. And it would have a fee of $1,500 in theory. So if that comes out, I'm going to get it. Yeah, you know what? I think they should make more high-end credit cards.

Because right now, the Chase Sapphire and the MX Platinum, I think are pretty much like the same level. They're basically equal. But there's nothing else between that and like the JP Morgan Reserve or the MX Intern. It's either you have $20 million or you spend $550. I mean, that's it. There's nothing between you.

I would like to see more luxury high-tiered credit cards. Yeah, because people who are earning maybe 50 grand a year could still have the platinum and get value out of it. Whereas the Centurion, you need to be earning like at least a few million ready to get value. And you need to have a lifestyle that's suited to it. It's almost like the carrot card. Like, I feel like I know it's geared towards influencers, but I feel like the people who it really targets are who you're talking about. Yeah, no, but carrots more like social media. talking about like people probably making 500,000 to 3 million a year.

Okay. Or probably like a little bit more on point with their money. They're less about the flex, but they still want to, you know, something that stands out from the crowd. The annual fee that's about $1,500 would make it prohibitively expensive for people who are like under $100 a year. I think $2,500 a year. I think that that's the sweet spot. If it was that, I would question whether it would be worth it. It would have to have for me.

Yeah. It would have to have really good benefits. Yeah. Because I have to get that back. I bet they would be able to do it with like a $500 a year door dash credit, a $1,000 travel credit. They would find ways. But yeah, if they came out with credit card $2,500 a year or less, $1,000 to $25 sweet spot, I just make it nice, you know? Yeah.

You got, you got to, like, you know what, like making a silver credit card? Like, have it, yeah, have it made out of like a metal, something like that. It's got to be something cool. It's got to be effective. and it's still got to be a flex. It's got to be a flex, yeah. You know what? How to it be a bottle opener?

Self-defense. Bulletproof. Yeah. Bulletproof, yeah. I can show you what I've got in my wallet. All right, let's see what you got now. Yeah, this is, so this is my travel wallet. So there's a little bit more.

Alex, that's the size you need. This is the traveler wallet. It's too bad you didn't pull out a ridge wallet. This would be the perfect segue for a Ridge. Sponsor. Yeah, if we could do a Ridge Sponsor. I can get one of these, man, $28.7.com, forward slash shop. Oh, wow.

Clever. Wow. All right, I'll show you what I got. So I got, actually, with me, I've got the Amex Rose Gold, which kind of looks pink. Is it? Yep. And I've got the Charles Schwab Amex Platinum. Okay.

Which that's just for getting into the Centurion Lounge, which I stopped at Phoenix for like four hours, so I spent three hours in the Centurion Lounge on the way. I've got the Chase Safar Reserve. this is kind of like a workhorse card that I use for like a lot of stuff because I don't know I just put stuff on this because I'm used to monitoring it and paying it off like it's in my chase I can right so it's like open up my chase it's right there um this is the chase freedom flex I've got this basically for gas because right now it's 5% on gas this quarter next quarter it changes but that's what I'm using uh I've got Hilton um because we stayed in the Oceana Center Monica

which is a Hilton property. So this was for all the meals and the ridiculously overpriced restaurant at that property. You get extra, you're like 12 points or something per dollar. I don't know. Forget what it is. We got the old ink.

Good. Preferred? Cool. I got 80,000 on this. Nice. Yeah. Actually, it's kind of funny. When I got denied for this,

because I typed in my own social security number wrong, the first attempt. Oh, wow. Okay. They sorted it out for me. And yeah. But, yeah, that's just for business expenses, but actually I haven't used it at all because yeah whatever and then we have a see where is it

when I cut this fast forward or something. I have we got out all that. We have the Charles Schwab debit card which is really useful for waving ATM fees. So if you go to like some sketchy AC ATM that's like $3 fee, I think I went to the one in the casino yesterday charged $999. Wow. I hope it waives the fee. It should waive any fee.

So what's the deal with that one? I'm not familiar with that. The money just comes out of your Charles Schwab, either your Charles Schwab checking or your Charles Schwab brokerage account. So whenever I want cash recently, I've just been spending my AMC money. So, yeah, I've just been using that to waive fees. I mean, I hardly ever use cash.

So I'll just take it out of my Schwab. And then maybe I'll transfer some more money over there if I want. But yeah, it's really great. And it's kind of unlimited. It's a benefit. I don't know, they might limit it in the future. But right now it's like any ATM fees, they'll just refund. So what if you set up your own ATM company and charge like a $20 fee?

Oh, wow. And then pull money out of your own ATM. And then I think there might be a team that looks for abuse like that. What if we set up an ATM? We'll split the profit with you. You just keep withdrawing $20 at a time with a $20 fee and double our money. Yeah, I don't know. I think it would be how long?

long that could be maintained for rather than how much you could make. You see the same, the same thing. Every day. Every 20 minutes. Yeah, nothing suspicious about that. Yeah. So that's my, yeah, that's my travel wallet. It was funny.

Speaking of the Hilton card, so this is what I wanted to tell you. The other day, we went to Resorts World, Las Vegas, and I'm going up there, and I wanted to deposit $100 on their app just for the vlog. The purpose was, we had a buddy who wanted to load his account with $10,000, virtually. and they were charging them a 2.9% fee. So it was $290 as a fee just to load his account to be able to gamble. So I said, you know, I'll do $100 and just review it.

And then I'm talking to the guy and he's saying, well, if you deposit $100, there's a $10 bonus, a free play that you could get. And I said, well, is there something if I deposit more? Because, yeah, you could deposit $1,000 and we'll give you $150. And I'm looking at it and be like, yeah, I'm going to be like, yeah, I'm going to, to do the thousand. I had no intention to gambling more than like, you know, honestly, $100, $200, $200.00. Max. So I load $1,000 in the account. And I said, is there anything stopping me from just going and immediately cashing out after this? He's like, well, I guess not.

It's like, like, what? Why would you do that? But yeah. So I deposit a thousand dollars in the app. So you have to do this in person, by the way. You can't just make an account anywhere and like deposit money. You have to do it. You have to do. in person because they verify your ID. It's a, it's a lengthy process. You got to put in your, like, your driver's license. There's someone there to verify it, your social security number. Link your bank account with Plaid, like, there's a big thing. But I did all of that. And sure enough, within 15 minutes, $150 shows up in my account. They also, on the first transaction, they waived the 2.9% fee. So I got $1,000 in there. They waived to the fee, and they gave me

$150. That's just totally free. I could cash out. And then what if you want the thousand back? So here's the thing. Okay. So I'm getting, yeah, great question. So what I did to start is I put all $150 on one hand of Bacra. Because my thought was this is a free hand. I'm either doubling it and walking away or I'm walking away even, not losing any money. Put the 150 of Bogra.

The whole experience, by the way, was super glitchy. They were promoting themselves as this casino that's like cashless. Like you could just go up with your phone. They do this. Half the stuff doesn't work. It's straight. I was trying to get it and they were like

totally clueless on what to do. They had no idea. It's like they had never seen this thing before. Nobody's using it. And it took like three or four minutes just to load my account. And I had tried multiple times like trying to scan it.

It's just terrible experience. But anyway, so we did put $150 on one hand a box ride at banker. And I won. Wow. So 300 bucks. Yeah. Yeah.

That's nice. So I got 300 bucks. And then I went to try to cash out. Now they said originally, there was the option to take the money from your account and do an ACH transfer back to your normal bank account. They said it was going to take anywhere from three to seven days, but they charged you a fee of $2 to do it.

The problem is that there's no option on the app to withdraw your money. There's no option. They said there was an option to take your money out. I did not find a single thing. I even went up to the cashier at the register, and I said, how can I move my money from here back to my bank account so I don't walk out with like $1,000 in cash. And then the manager, no idea.

But you can still get cash. Yes. So you have to tell them I want to cash out entirely from the app. They go and they type in your information. They go and give you cash. But there is no way to cash out of this thing. And I think they imagine that people are going to load their account with the money and then be like, well, I have to either go back to cash out or now that I'm here,

I may as well just gamble it. I think it's like the equivalent of gift cards. So yeah, you have to do this in person. I have a feeling, so many people are going to start exploiting that. They got to stop that soon. Or it might be like the carrot thing. There's only one person like you.

No. Everyone else will do it. Believe it or not. So I posted this on Instagram yesterday. It's other people do it. We got stops like four times walking out of the casino yesterday. One of those people said he saw my Instagram story and was going to the casino to do that.

And he happened to run into me as I was walking out of the casino. I saw it last night. And I was thinking, shall I go over there? And I was like, you know what? 150 bucks is not quite enough for me to be bothered to go. Listen, you got to go to the casino once just to experience it. I'll be honest, the casino was crap. It was bad.

I'm not a huge fan of the big crowds. And there's a lot of people there. So that automatically, that's not a fault of the casino. But the actual experience of the casino, I wasn't a fan. The app was extremely glitchy. I prefer the win. If you're going to go anywhere, the win and encore just superb.

So I wouldn't go back. It's, you go there once, you experience it, you never go back again. So that was my experience with that. But a lot of people today are messaging me on Instagram saying,

I did this. And they're tagging me in it, look at me, Graham. They're showing me their account with the money in it. So a lot of people are doing this. Maybe they won't let you back.

We've got to think, what would Jack ask right now? Yeah. Jack would ask you to review his Tinder profile. Yeah. Are you good with the ladies? Well, I'm married.

Oh, how long? When did we get married? 2014, I think. How old are you? I'm 35. So imagine I'm a 22-year-old, good-looking guy. I see you, Bill, you've been trying to spike ball. What is that?

I didn't even know what that. I don't know. He has all net in the back of the car. I have no idea of how to play it. You know, what, what's the best dating advice that you could give me hypothetically? Or what's the best pickup line? Yeah, yeah. What's the, I, you know, personally, I don't really do pick up lines because I like, I think

you just got to, you just got to meet someone and strike up a rapport with them. And then it becomes natural, you know? I like Dan Blazarian's advice, actually, that he gave on London Real when he was interviewed by them. He said, you just got to have the confidence and go and talk to loads of ladies. and just assume that you're going to get rejected. It doesn't matter because it's a numbers game. If you talk to enough of them, eventually, you know,

and as you get good at it, they're going to feel this guy is so confident that he's really not, you know, what's the word? He's not intimidated and then they actually respect that. You know, they're like the women respect confidence and a guy who can just talk naturally to someone. There's no tricks, you know what I mean? It's not like. Darn. Yeah.

We want it. We wanted the magic. We want to like, all you got to do is say this. Hey. Is heaven missing an angel? You know? It's cheesy, man. Excuse me.

What is it? Are you hurt? Because you just fell from heaven. You know what? I would love to see Jack do it and have it actually work. I bet. I bet if you actually go and do that, I bet if you say it the right way, it'll work. I feel like you get slapped, but.

No, why would you get slanted? That's a compliment. I guess. It depends on the situation. It could come across as sleazy. Some of these pickup lines are kind of crazy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, didn't you try to set him up on a blind date though? Yeah.

And didn't go too well or? No, no, no. Watch that. I saw the video, but I didn't watch it. No, Abby was fantastic. We really liked Abby a lot, but I think it just, you never know. Logistically. Just never, yeah, logistically it wasn't there.

And, you know, yeah, it's just not. Yeah, my experience, like dating apps as well. well, it's like, yeah, you might meet someone on there, but I feel like you're more likely to meet someone in real life, the old-fashioned way. I believe in kind of destiny in a way as well, just like you might be introduced through a mutual friend. What's your take on Dave Ramsey? Oh, Dave Ramsey. I did a video recently. I saw you did a video recently about it. Yeah. It's funny. You know, I think he's for a certain type of person. I have some friends who really follow him and they're like, oh, yeah, we don't want any credit cards. We don't even really want

a credit score. I'm like, well, what about if you get a mortgage and we're like, oh, we'll have someone like manually. Yeah, the manual underwrite. That doesn't exist. I mean, I'm sure it does, but gosh, why? If you have a choice between just getting a credit card or going through manual underwriting, I mean, oh, geez. My feeling is like, I want to play the banks at their own game. I don't want to, like some people, if they follow Dave Ramsey, they're like, okay, we'll just resist the banks altogether. My feeling is like, yeah, play their game, but outplay them at their own game. Sure. That's, that's kind of my take, kind of. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, I think you guys would agree. I mean, I think the advice that he gives when you're first getting into personal

finance, especially if you have like a little bit of debt, best advice he could give you. Yeah. But there comes a time where you outgrow him and, you know. I think if you're paying, yeah, if you're paying off debt, go to Dave's right, Dave Ramsey. But once you're done, yeah, I don't know. I feel like Dave, Dave is good for 50% of the population. Yes. I would say what we talk about is good for 10 to 20. And then there's that middle ground where they could probably, they, those are The middle ground is probably a transition. They start with Dave. They end somewhere else.

But yeah. I would say Dave on a broad scale, probably best for the majority of people. Yeah. Yeah. So, Ben, thank you so much for coming all the way out here. I really appreciate it.

It's awesome, man. Thanks for having me. And with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. We're going to link to everything you have down below in the description. You have wallets for sale. We do.

We do. So, you know what? I'll link to that. Credit Shiffu wallets. Get them at credit shiffer. com, for it slash shop. Yeah. And also,

down below in the description, you can get your free stock worth all the way up to $70.70. $70. And they also don't route your order flow, unlike other brokerages out there, which is unfortunate. We won't say the name, huh? We can't say who it is. But they do it. Public does not. And also, I'm posting all of my own stock trades on there.

So if you want to see what I'm buying, just follow me on public. Public.com slash Graham. Use code Graham, get your free stock. I may have to do that. I get my free stock worth up to $70. It's basically like going to the casino getting your free $150. except you could do it right now from the comfort of your own home.

It's worth all the way to $70. So thanks so much, guys. Really appreciate it. And until next time. Ready? Go.