Upgrade Your Travel with The Points Guy, Brian Kelly
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Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you here on my journey to find all the hacks. Today's conversation is going to be really fantastic because I'm sitting down, virtually at least, with Brian Kelly. And if that name isn't familiar, it's probably because you know him better as The Points Guy.

which is the name of the site he founded in 2010 during his time as a Wall Street road warrior, where he developed his unique ability to maximize his travel experiences while minimizing his spending. Since then, he's grown the company into a powerhouse travel and lifestyle media platform through a team of dozens of editors and freelancers that span the globe. I know I'm an avid reader of the TPG site and appreciate all the work his team puts in to create such great content.

In our conversation, we'll talk about travel in this post-pandemic world, the current state of points and miles, and we'll get Brian's take on his favorite destinations, credit cards, travel hacks, and more. I know you'll enjoy this conversation with Brian Kelly, so let's jump in.

Brian, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I am excited. This has been a long time coming. You've been a top requested guest. People really passionate about points here. I know the last 18 months has been a pretty atypical month for travel and things are coming back. So I'll just kick it off. Have you had a chance to take some trips recently?

Oh, Chris, I've had some of my best trips over the pandemic. You know, when it first hit in March, I took 100 days off, which was, I think, the longest I'd ever not traveled since maybe I was in high school. And then I started small, like Palm Springs. Then I went to the island of Antigua. When that first opened, that was kind of my first international trip. And yeah,

From that point, I just started to go. I think one of my favorite trips of all time, I did French Polynesia, so Bora Bora. And I cannot recommend enough. Go in September, October. You can swim with the humpback whales off the island of Morea. Have you ever been to Morea? We went to the Conrad in Bora Bora and...

you know, everyone says, oh, well, it doesn't face the Caldera in the middle. And I was like, yeah, but it's a pretty nice hotel. Yeah, I stayed at the Conrad as well. I've stayed at the St. Regis and I love the Conrad. It was kind of newer, fresher, in my opinion. Although, you know, if you're going to go all out, you can't go wrong with St. Regis. But Morea is so cool. There's only a Sofitel and a Hilton, so it's not as high end, but you can kind of go all around the island. And I did two days of private boat in snorkels and I came face to face with a

humpback and her little calf. Wow. 20 feet from my eyes, she was vertical looking at me. And it was one of those moments of, oh my God, like, is this real right now? So yeah. And then I did Kenya and trekked with the gorillas in Rwanda, Dubai. Wow.

Wow.

Thailand, James Bond Beach right now, my friend is there and it's completely empty for the first time in history since the movie came out. So I think there's still a lot of opportunities for travelers. Yeah, are there places that haven't opened up that you're most excited about?

I mean, I'm craving Asia. Thailand just opened up Singapore. I am hoping Japan I've heard through the grapevine, maybe Jan one, but for, I think I'll be going for cherry blossoms if it's open. I just, you know, it's been a couple of years of no Asia travel. So yeah, I think that'll be, I'm hoping by, you know, mid 2022, the world is essentially reopened.

I found in the couple trips we've taken that it doesn't feel as unsafe as it might seem. I don't know if you found something similar. Oh, no. I feel 100% safer in any other country besides the United States for a host of reasons. But even just looking at... You know, when I'm vaccinated, I had an asymptomatic case of COVID. I got tested recently. My antibodies are through the roof, so I feel personally comfortable even if I get a breakthrough infection or whatever. But, you know, around the world, people take this very seriously, whereas I think...

40% of the country doesn't at all in the US. So that makes, you know, no matter where you are, you know, very widely varying protocols, uncertainty, whereas when you go to most countries, you kind of understand what you're going to get. And there are pretty strict protocols. So, so yeah, I

It was funny when people were like, travel's dangerous, stay home, stay in the U S I'm like, that was at a time when like my friend broke his leg and couldn't even get an ER room in Florida, in Miami beach, you know, on vacation, he didn't even have COVID. He couldn't even, you know, he was in a waiting room for 20 hours. So, you know, I think the U S has gotten much better, but you know,

I hate when people just think, oh, traveling is dangerous abroad is where you get this scary virus when it's like literally the exact opposite when it's rampant in the US. Yeah. Yeah. We had a chance to go to Greece. It felt great. It was just good to be out. Good to be around other people from other countries and eat other food. And it was amazing. So I know the pandemic's changed the landscape of some of the rules and stuff. How have points and everything really evolved since you started? And what are you doing differently? Yeah.

Yeah. So points, I think, have gotten more valuable because while most airlines now, well, U.S. airlines will let you change a flight and get a voucher, a crappy voucher that you may not be able to use for the full amount that might expire. You probably can't use for someone else. It's a pretty restricted currency. I think they've marketed it as, oh, book and do whatever you want. But oh, and by the way, not with basic economy or other tickets. So

On the flip side, with points, it's gotten much more flexible. Almost every loyalty program now will let you change, even if you're not an elite member, change, cancel free of charge, get all your points back. So I think points have gotten more flexible. And if there's one thing travelers need these days, it's flexibility.

Now, it's interesting dynamics because airfares have come down as well. So the relative value of points, you would think that, well, you're not getting as much bang for your buck because these flights are cheap. Let me just book them. So, you know,

It just depends. I mean, it certainly depends on routes. I mean, I've flown Emirates first class numerous times, tons of availability like I've never seen before. And not all flights are cheap these days, you know, especially since travels bounce back. You know, airfares in the U.S. are up 30 percent in 2021 and, you know, rising going to be above the 2019 level. So bottom line, I think points are valuable because they're more flexible than ever. It's basically like buying a refundable ticket and getting all of your

your currency back, you know, credit cards. There's still a war out there with huge signup bonuses.

across the board. So it's an amazing time for consumers to get cards. I even helped launch the built credit card, which is the first ever credit card, no annual fee. It's a master card and you earn points on rent with no fees to any landlord, which was huge. There's a wait list for it. It'll be fully launching to the public in early 2022. But now, I mean, when you look at your spend, whether it's groceries or online advertising,

There's so many category bonuses on credit cards and new credit cards. And there's some new cards coming that I know about and can't give details on, but there's some exciting stuff in the pipeline. So for points people, you know, some people are just naysayers and saying the points game's over. It's not what it used to be.

It's just false. There's more opportunities than ever to earn. And yeah, on the burn side, you might be spending more miles than you did 10 years ago, but your earn rate should be 3x what it was. So as long as you're earning a lot more than the rate at which you're burning, I think you're coming out pretty good.

Yeah. So when it comes to earning, a common thing I hear is people say, well, you have to be rich and spend tons of money, or you have to have a job where you have all these expenses. And if I'm not one of those people, this game doesn't work for me. I'm curious what you would say to that person. Yeah. I mean, I would just firmly push back. If you have a good credit score, if you're not going to be tempted to spend out of your means and mire yourself in debt,

you can absolutely play this game and win. You know, there's probably 10 major banks that offer credit cards, and there's probably five solid cards with each of those banks. There's probably 50 decent cards out there that offer hundreds, if not thousands, in values per signup. And, you know, I've got 26 credit cards right now. I've got 800 FICO. And as long as you manage them, you can get new cards every year, new issuers. You know, even my Chase Sapphire Reserve, which I got in 2016, 100,000 points.

you know sapphire preferred had a hundred thousand point offer as well this year so i downgraded my sapphire reserve to a freedom flex card and then a couple weeks later applied as a new member for chase sapphire preferred banking a hundred thousand points because you just can't have had a sapphire bonus within the last four years so i was over that so there's ways to keep trading down you know advanced people in this game know

The signup bonuses are huge. You maximize category bonuses. And even if you're an average person spending, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month, if you're maximizing, if you're getting your rent points, if you're making sure you use as little cash as possible, shopping through shopping portals, there are many ways to travel and get free trips every year without being a road warrior or, you know, small business owner with millions in credit card spend.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, if you have those things, it's even better. But exactly. Yeah. I'm curious. So 26 cards. I play the same game and have a lot. How do you keep track of everything? And beyond just the cards, I imagine you have at least 20 different mileage accounts. And, you know, that's a lot. Well, you know, I had always used a ward wallet, which had its limitations that not every program was tracked.

One of my goals at the points guy was always created an app that really attract all loyalty points, every major airline hotel, which we just launched this September. It's out in the Apple store. Just search for the points guy. Andrew's coming shortly, but you basically, you get your net,

worth in points at our current TPG valuations. We also track your credit card spend. We'll tell you missed opportunities. You know, I'm the points guy, but I still will use the wrong card for certain purchases. You know, there's just so many, no one person can compute instantly all the different variables and opportunities. So that's why I wanted to create an app that

that tracked it all. But you know, I've got a similar to you, I've got a eight figure points balance, because we run millions a month in online ads through my personal credit cards at the points guy. And then we use those points for our company travel. And you know, we don't take previews from airlines in general, we use points for everything. So I will say I have so many Amex and chase points that I have lately been going and using like Capital One,

which allows you to basically wipe off any sort of travel charge, including helicopters or Ubers or even taxes on award tickets. Because, you know, I think a lot of people have hoarded so many points. You can only use so many Amex points, right? Like there's only so much time in a year and

and travel you can do in first class to actually, you know, and I know this sounds like such a privileged, you know, thing to say, but it really is like, just like finance, like diversifying your points balances so they don't just sit there and grow. Yeah, I think I'm guilty of sometimes hoarding points. And, you know, I'm like, I haven't used those points. And all of a sudden it's like, well, this airline's getting devalued. And you're like, I should be using these points. But yeah, it's a problem I think a lot of us face. When you think about having points in lots of different places, right?

I know that when you started the points guy, you started doing an award booking service for people, helping people book flights. Do you, do you book all of your award flights yourself now? Or how does that work? Yeah, I don't use a service. So yeah, the points guy before it was even a blog. So it was like April, 2010, I started it and it was just a form. And I wanted to create a business because I was working at Morgan Stanley. That was, I could make a couple extra a hundred bucks a week being in my twenties and broke as hell living in New York. Um,

And I loved reward booking because it's like solving a puzzle. And it was like using the knowledge I had in my head, expert flyer, I could do for most people like what they couldn't do themselves. Once we got in the credit card affiliate game, it just changed the entire dynamics. And I realized writing content to millions of people is much, much better than doing one on one consultations. Things would change. It was so time consuming.

There are good booking services out there. I know Juicy Miles, Points Pros. I do recommend it if you don't have the time to do it yourself. I also have an assistant who is a points wizard that I'm very fortunate will do the things like call and change. My travel changes by the minute. I mean, I'll change...

If I see buttons of first class availability open up last minute, I'll switch to that. I almost always extend or come home early. So that's why I always book one-way awards. And then I'm always just looking for what is the absolute most comfortable way I can fly. Elite status. I do have United 1K, but in general, elite status, when you have so many points, I don't even bother with hoping for an upgrade.

because that to me is too stressful. So yeah, it's all about just like maximizing points. But I still do it myself. I love, you know, sitting down with a cup of coffee and looking at like, okay, I've got my friend's 50th birthday in Barcelona next month. What should I do? Should I stop and see friends in London on the way? Should I try the new JetBlue Mint? Is the studio open? You know, like, it's still enjoyable for me to piece it all together. And

And do you have that all in your head? I know one time my process was, okay, well, I had a Google spreadsheet that had all the Trans-Pacific flights. And then I would like group them by alliance and I would start, you know, searching, searching. I remember there was a time where I started using KVS tool. I don't know if you've ever had to use that. It's like this Windows program. So I'd have to run Windows. It's still around.

And if you have a Mac, you have to run Windows on your Mac so you can use this tool. I remember that. Do you just know it all now at this point? Or how do you kind of keep track of everything? Yeah, I have a running list in my head. I like to fly different carriers. Generally, a lot of the time, I'll read our points guy reviews of the airline. I think we've got most major ones carried. But especially now, post-pandemic, it's a whole new ballgame. So...

Yeah. And a lot of times I'll just let the availability dictate, which, which, you know, if I want to fly ANA and JAL, but you know, JAL has got the availability, that's the route I'll go. I generally avoid us carriers when flying internationally, I fly them enough domestically and the experience is essentially the same on, you know, so yeah, it's usually just in my head.

Yeah. Yeah. But you have a bunch of great if anyone's listening to this and is thinking, gosh, how do I use my Amex points? I can tell you there's probably a dozen articles that'll that'll walk you through the best redemptions on Amex, the best ways to transfer. You know, I think everyone listening here hopefully already knows that transferring your points is going to be a much bigger win than the portal. Is there any time that you actually use your points in a portal or for anything other than transferring?

Yeah, I gave up my apartment in New York during the pandemic and I would come in and stay at hotels. And I have so many points and I don't want to stay in a book in a war, you know, normal room, you know, especially I have dogs. So for example, the only real hotel that you can take to rescues is Soho Grand. They're so dog friendly, amazing. They're not a part of any points program. And you know, their penthouse is like 1000 bucks a night. So I was using 70,000

chase points a night to pay for the thousand bucks so I could stay for free in a penthouse. You know, so it's like you do generally get value by transferring to United and flying left times at first class for 110,000 points one way, but

I didn't need to go lifetime to first class anywhere. And I still have zillions of other points to do that. You know, so, um, yeah, I do like fancy non points hotels. So using cap one points to wipe off state. So house, you can't even book that through most portals, but you can just wipe that charge off as a purchase eraser. And speaking of hotels. So, um,

I tend to think that if you want to use points for hotels, it's chase transfer to Hyatt, stay at high end Hyatt's 30,000 points a night, or even sometimes 25 things like we recently, fortunately, right before the pandemic, we went to Japan and we got to do the new park Hyatt Kyoto. It was fantastic. I, is there another angle for transferring points to hotels that you've ever found? Makes sense. Yeah. You know, I recently MX had big bonuses to Hilton and Marriott, uh,

I did the math. So I go to Miami quite a bit and I was staying at the W, which was like 80,000 Marriott points a night. And there was a 50% bonus from Amex. So basically, and it was a $2,000 a night hotel during peak weeks. So I was doing the math and like 50,000 Amex points was getting me...

a $2,000 a night hotel during these super crazy weeks. And I would get upgraded in elite status. So I did transfer Amex to Marriott. I have also for the Waldorf Astoria Maldives, when you can find it for 90,000 Hilton, when there's an Amex to Hilton, it's already one and a half, one to one and a half. But when it's one to two, 45,000 Amex points for a $1,500 room is a pretty good value. You know, you're getting over three cents per point.

So yeah, there are in general though, Amex is best to airlines and Hyatt points are extremely valuable. And now Chase and also now built the credit card that you earn points on rent, you can transfer actually to Hyatt one-to-one or American as well. Oh, that's amazing.

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You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking. It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place and makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every purchase. You can also load it on your partner's phone so they always know the best cards to use.

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The app is free to download and many of the features are free as well. But if you want to try out the pro version, there's a free trial. And if you decide you want to sign up after the trial, which you probably will, you can go to allthehacks.com slash card pointers to get 20% off. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash card pointers. Yeah, I feel like we always talk in the points world about Chase and Amex are like the core tenants here.

And I know, I don't remember how many years ago it was, but, you know, Cap One, Citi, they weren't really transfer points and now they are. How do you think Citi, Capital One, and I guess Built fit in this ecosystem with most of the conversation focusing on Chase and Amex?

Yeah, I mean, Capital One is really stepping up their game. I went to their first new lounge after opening up at Dallas-Fort Worth. Gorgeous. Peloton bikes, relaxation rooms, really high-end food and beverage. In venture, yes, you can use your points for purchase a race, or you can transfer one-to-one to Aeroplan. Even Turkish now, there's a bunch of one-to-one partners. When Capital One launched, they were funky. It wasn't one-to-one. It was very complicated math. Yeah.

And now they've listened to our feedback and they have a lot of one-to-one partners. So I think Capital One is somewhat of the underdog. They've always been huge with that mid-market and not subprime, but the lower market cards. And they've really made huge strides in the upmarket space. Citi, I love my Citi points. I use my Prestige for 5X on dining most of the time. The transfer partners aren't as prestigious. For a while, you could transfer to American, which was kind of cool.

Their partners are second tier. And even Citi is kind of backing away from the premium. You can't even get the prestige card anymore. I don't think Citi knows exactly what it wants to be totally in the marketplace. They've launched more cash back cards lately. But, you know, and they've kind of the Citi prestige and the Fortnite free used to be so amazing. They've rolled that back. So I think Capital One is rising in the upmarket reward space and Citi's kind of in a holding pattern.

Yeah, I mean, I recommend the Citi Double Cash when people don't want to play the points game. But I haven't had a Citi card since... I remember there was a 75,000-point American sign-up bonus on all three cards. And I remember getting all three in one day. And those are the last Citi cards I have. Well, and it's interesting. With the American Airlines new... Did you see their new Elite program where they're revamping how you earn Elite status? So instead... They're getting away with EQDs and Ms and whatever. Yeah.

They now just have AA loyalty points. So you need 200,000 points in a year to get ExecPlat. But you could spend 200 grand on a co-branded card and without stepping on a plane, earn ExecPlat.

So all these programs are really becoming frequent spender programs. We've seen that slowly over time as they're adding in these revenue requirements. And there's winners and losers with every change. If you are buying expensive tickets and spending a lot on credit cards, there's never been a better time to be in this space. If you're on a shoestring budget trying to buy mistake fares and get top tier status, it's a lot harder to do that nowadays.

Yeah, I got to be careful with America. And I have some bad relationships there from, I don't know if you remember, maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago, it seemed there was a promo with this card called Founders Card. And Founders Card gave everyone that signed up for it free AA gold. And so the card was 100 bucks a year. And you can't buy AA gold at the time. The lower tier statuses have kind of gotten worse over the years. But back then, AA gold for 100 bucks was a no brainer.

And so I went on Flyer Talk, I posted my referral link, and probably 400 or 500 people signed up. And it turns out the American team that did this deal with Founders Card was just like a guy that kind of did it on the side. And it was fine. But...

AA HQ sent a cease and desist to Founders Card. They asked me to get removed from the program. All the referral points I'd gotten got removed. Everyone thought I was scamming everyone. And so I remember Founders Card's interesting. Over the years, it's like we have benefits, but they can't really say what they are, you know? Yeah. Though this is a reason because they're not allowed to market the benefits because they want people to sign up for other reasons. Right.

Yeah. So 26 cards. When do you think about canceling cards? Do you have a, you have a rule of thumb that you use when you get a new one for a bonus?

Absolutely. I generally don't cancel cards. I'll usually downgrade them to like a no fee version that even the no fee cards usually have some perks that are valuable. You know, I look at every card in my wallet. I mean, I'm a little bit different. I'm in the cards business. So it's like having cards, getting the marketing materials. It's like, it's good for business. And also I get reimbursed on the annual fees as part of being a TPG employee. We have a cool program, but in general, like if I'm not using the card, it's,

I don't want the account to just be dormant because they'll close it automatically with no activity. So if I can't downgrade it, I will cancel a card if there's just absolutely no real benefit to it. But most cards these days have perks that easily add the annual fees on them. But, you know, I recommend to people do an audit twice a year, three times a year and get rid of the ones that aren't holding their weight.

Yeah, a reader wrote in and asked, you know, should I keep my Marriott Bonvoy card? And, you know, the annual benefit, it's like, I think it's 95 bucks and you get a hotel in a category four hotel.

And my answer is, if you're going to use the Category 4, it's a no-brainer. If you're not going to use the Category 4, depends how much you spend at Marriott, right? The multipliers on a Marriott card, if you're spending money at a Marriott, are great. Pretty good, yeah. But if you're not, you know. So I still have my Southwest card, which is a bummer because I think Southwest has a huge bonus right now. $100,000, yeah, get that companion pass.

Yeah. So if you're listening, but don't do it. Do you think it'll still be around Jan one? Well, you can apply. Just don't hit your minimum spend until the new year. So the points drop, you know, the statement after you hit your spend. So you can get it. Yeah. I made that mistake once and I had to transfer some Marriott points to try to close the gap because you need it. You used to need two Southwest cards to hit the companion pass. Yeah.

Yeah, the Companion Pass on Southwest is one of the best perks out there. You can read more about it. Just Google Southwest Companion Pass ins and outs. But essentially, if you qualify for it in January of any given year, for two years through the end of December the next year, a passenger flies free with you, whether you're paying with points or cash on Southwest.

So think about if you travel with someone else, you can change a companion over time, but it's an insanely valuable kind of one of those insider things that people, if you fly Southwest, you should know about the companion pass and you can qualify. You don't have to fly a hundred flights. You can qualify via credit card, signup bonus and spend. And when the signup bonuses are like a hundred thousand, you only need to spend like 10,000 or less to get this amazing benefit.

Just make sure if you're going to go for this next year, which means buy one, get one free 2022 and 2023. And by the way, that works with points. So when you use those 100,000 points to book flights, you still get a free companion. You just pay the $5 TSA fee. It's amazing. So if you're doing that, don't hit that minimum spend any earlier than Jan 1 or you'll lose a whole year of it. Any other big signup bonuses or cool deals right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there are a ton. I mean, there's just so many perks over the pandemic. You know, credit card companies have added tons of perks to cards. Trying to think if there's any one in particular. Or any new perks you're excited about?

Well, I mean, definitely these Capital One lounges. They haven't announced who will get access to them. But just seeing the lounge, there's going to be one in Denver and D.C. in 2022. The Dallas one opens November 2021. That I'm excited about. What about some of these crazy aspirational cards? Everyone in this game always is like, ah, that Amex Black, that Amex Black.

And then I had a friend who got it and he's like, you know what? Like the way I spend, I don't know if it's worth it. What do you think of the high-end cards? Yeah. So I've had the Centurion card for five years now, but the key is get the business Centurion. The personal Centurion is horrible. It's literally worse than a platinum card, unless you really value Equinox membership.

The reason the business in Torian is so valuable, they don't advertise it. Well, they don't advertise the cards at all, is that you get a 50% rebate on pay with points, which means your Amex points are worth two cents each towards buying flights through the Amex portal.

And Amex Travel also has discounted business class fares that are fully more flexible. So with an Amex Platinum, your points are worth one cent. Business Platinum, they're worth 1.35 cents per point. And with Biz Centurion, you're getting two cents per point in value. So really, if you have tons of Amex points and you like the flexibility to buy whatever flight you want, you earn elite miles on those flights.

That's the no-brainer. Centurion, it's $5,000 a year now. You get top-tier access to Equinox. Well, if you don't live in a city where there's an Equinox, that's a $0 benefit. So there's a bunch of other perks. I mean, in general, my Amex concierge, Ray,

The way I value it is that he's our booker for all TPG kind of high-end travel. And during the pandemic, when shit hit the fan and you couldn't even get through to a airline for credits and things like that, I just email Ray and say, cancel these four tickets. We get full refunds, you know,

You have the backing of Amex at you, and there's a value to that. The purchase protection is insane. Anything I break, even if it's my fault, they'll pretty much just wipe off my charge. So there's, yes, points are one side of the equation. But when you look at these super premium cards, you really have to look at the perks and your personal, you know, Centurion lounges are super crowded and, you know, you'll get turned away a lot of times due to overcrowding, but never if you're Centurion, they'll even clear a table for you and give you VOOV.

So that's kind of cool. So Business Centurion, I think, is a winner. And if you do want to, you can call Amex and kind of raise your hand and say you're interested in the card. There's no official way to apply for it, though. You know, Amex Platinum just raised their annual fee. They added a bunch of other perks. If you can get value out of the SoulCycle benefit or, you know,

People do say, oh, it's a little bit like a coupon book. And it's not exactly that. I think it's a little bit more valuable. But you should go through and say, well, I actually get that value from this card. We've seen huge interest. Even after Amex raised the annual fee on the Platinum, there's still huge interest in the card. They just reported in their quarterly results, huge uptick in interest. So there is a market. People want to pay for premium experiences. So

I bet Amex will continue to double down on the premium space, whereas Chase and Citi and Cap One are a little bit of a step down in terms of the annual fees and the perks that they're offering.

Have you ever gone too far with all the points in Miles' game? Is there a particular reward or experience where you're like, you know what, you can go too deep down the rabbit hole at some points? Well, I think in general, pre-pandemic, I was just traveling nonstop. You know, and too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Like, I was constantly jet lagged.

you know, I had a lot of work travel, plus we do a lot, I do a lot of charity work and then plus personal travel and it was all blending together. And I think, so I think in general, I like overdosed on travel. And so the pandemic for me was a really nice way. And once in a lifetime opportunity to hit that reset and,

and rebuild my travel into a place where it actually serves me. Just because I can doesn't mean I should. I say that to myself all the time now. I'm learning how to say no to things, even though it's, oh, Paris is reopening and Air France has business class availability. I have to go to Paris this weekend, even though I have four other plans next week and I know I'll be exhausted. So I think in general, I've never been a crazy miles and points person in terms of the gray areas, even mileage running. I've only really ever done

one or two mileage runs in my life. I'm not the type to fly to Australia and turn around and fly back. To me, that just, it really is crazy. And luckily, I fly enough where I don't have to do that. I understand why people do and I'm not judging it. But I try to keep the points and miles addiction to a minimum and realize my personal physical health is far more valuable than any point or mile. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think I'm similar to you in that

over the time, as you learn the points game and you maximize points, elite status just matters less. And so I think I have my silver United through Marriott, which is basically I get a free checked bag, which we have a kid now. So I never thought check bags mattered. And then you had a child and I'm like, can I check six bags? How do I set the, you know, I got a crib and a car seat and all this stuff. Do you ever check bags? Yeah.

I do. You know, it annoys me. I was in Europe for like two weeks this summer. I just couldn't

They were like different climates, beach. And so I will check it back. It is so annoying, though. I hate myself when I do it because, you know, I was flying from Ibiza to Milan on easy jet. And I'm like, whatever, I'll just pay to check the bag. Well, of course, there's like a strike in Italy, an air traffic strike. Flights delayed nine hours. I'm like, no way in hell am I going to sit at this crowded, horrible airport for nine hours. So great. I'm just going to rebook myself.

oh crap my bag is on the plane i go and easyjet has no employees anywhere so i'm like okay well i'll just go back to the check-in counter and someone there will have to figure it out well easyjet has like two flights a day out of ibiza and the same employee that works at was working the 100 person long line that i've refused to wait in but now i'm like past security so it's

I ended up getting it. I had to get like a cop in the airport to help get an airport manager that they pulled the bag off the plane. But, you know, especially nowadays travel goes wrong so often, you know, delays, cancellations. You really limit yourself when you check a bag because you can't just pop off a plane. Oh, there's another flight to Chicago across the hall. I'm going to hop on that, which is the joy of miles and points, especially you can be sitting on a plane and rebook yourself. But long story short, like if I'm going on a long trip, you know,

I like to have different looks every day on vacation. And, you know, when you're in the social media, I, people will call you out for wearing the same thing over and over. So maybe I should probably stop caring about that.

Yeah, I mean, we just went on a flight this past weekend to Austin and everything was delayed. We get to the airport and they're like, hey, you're going to miss your connection. And we're like, oh, but there's a nonstop. Can we just get on the nonstop? They're like, well, you know, it's oversold, but 28 people haven't checked in. And I was feeling good. And they're like, there's two people ahead of you. And they called them up first and they were like, did you check bags? They're like, yes. And they're like, sorry. And then they called us.

So, you know, that was the one where I was feeling pretty good. We didn't check bags because we managed to get out. I just I was just spending time with the senior airline exec and and we're talking about this topic. And he's like, honestly, when I interview people, I ask them, do you check a bag? And if they say yes, they don't get the job. Oh, wow. It's cold. Of course. You mentioned earlier using the MX concierge.

When you travel, how do you collect information? I know TPG has a ton of great content on airlines, hotels, but what about when you're figuring out what to do somewhere, where to eat? Are there sources or concierges or anything you use? It's awesome. I mean, Instagram for me is so amazing. Last week, I went to Dallas for the first time in a couple years. And I know Dallas has a pretty good food scene. So as I was boarding at Newark, I said, all right, off to Dallas, like, what do you got? And like,

hundreds and hundreds of messages come in and I just kind of source like you see the patterns and my readers have really good taste. So like I've never,

gotten bad recommendations. Now, what we want to do at TPG... So we just bought Lonely Planet during the... About a year or so ago. So we envisioned the points guy being getting you there. Lonely Planet really diving deep into cool experiences. So Lonely Planet is about to relaunch really cool new branding and lots of investment into what to do when you're there.

But I think we can do more at TPG as well. I'd love to have user-generated forums. So just like our readers can share. It's almost like TripAdvisor, but for smart travelers. I think there's a big need for that. Because when you go to TripAdvisor, it's a shit show. Two reviews, one one-star, one five-star. You're like, clearly this person has never traveled before and their expectations are out of control.

So on our product roadmap is how do we leverage this amazing community of really smart travelers and get their recommendations surface so people can share. Usually just through friends. I love Condé Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure. But going through Instagram or asking my friends who I know have been places, that's like the best way to get the real intel.

Yeah, TripAdvisor reviews. The only thing I find myself using them for is I search them if I have a question. Like, now we have a kid. Does this hotel have cribs? I'll go search the review for cribs. But man, when you read these reviews, you're like, I don't know if I could trust anything here. And

Well, you know, so many of them are fake. You know, there's so many lawsuits lately of rival hoteliers trashing each other because it really does to get the number one hotel or number top 10. It's valuable. So yeah, it's valuable, but you really just need to learn how to

to leverage it. Yeah. When you're traveling outside of points and miles, do you have favorite travel hacks, travel tips that you use at any point along the way? Well, my two famous ones are that number one, when you're wearing a mask now on a plane, putting your mask around your headphones so that it does not go around your sensitive ear, you know, especially on long flights, you can get like rashes, uh,

So people like that, I will just say I've broken several masks by stretching it too far, especially with these big Apple headphones that I have. But it is nice. And people like that one. My old school is the TPG stab. It's taking a fork whenever you're eating a salad or opening up a compressed, you stab it, depressurize it so that when you open it, it doesn't splurt all over you. Those are those are my two hacks for travel.

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I mean, I love to just walk around. I mean, I always will eat, you know, find a good, like, I'm not a good person when hangry, but yeah, usually just get a good meal, walk around, you know, on Instagram, see what, what people are recommending. And the cool thing is people who follow me run restaurants or, you know, when I went to Dallas, the coolest restaurant is Monarch room. It's on the 50th floor, uh,

booked up but like the owners of the restaurant were like hey come tonight i'm like okay so i'm a little bit of a lazy traveler and i'll be like let me see what opportunity lands in the lap and just meeting up with interesting people i mean some people think i'm crazy for meeting people off of instagram but i've there's i've got a cool follower so i've never to this day haven't had a bad meetup yet and you know meeting a local it changes the experience completely

Yeah. And you don't have to be a celebrity, right? My wife and I went to, we backpacked for seven months and we were using couch surfing and every night, you know, before we had points, before we were doing anything. And it was amazing to just hang out with locals. And you can do that by couch surfing. You could do that with sites like, I think it's with locals is one. There's a bunch of sites where you can book a local tour guide all the way up until, you know, where you are, where you could just say who who's around and, you know, filter the list.

Any advice as someone who's gone from writing about points to notoriety in the space for me, as this podcast has been taking off like crazy, what do I need to think about as I kind of move up in the world of points and miles towards the direction you're at? Maybe never, I'll never be the points guy, but. Well, I mean, I would just say, I still read comments, emails. I know it can get, you know, especially when you have a lot on your plate.

I just never lose touch of like the pulse of what your original audience wants. Also know that you have to evolve and people will probably not be happy when you evolve from what you started originally. I had to learn a long time ago, people, oh, you're a sellout. You're just doing this to make money. And I'm like,

That's not the only reason I'm doing it, but what's wrong with making money? What's wrong with having a vision to have bigger impact? We actually turned the comments off on the points guide throughout the pandemic because there was just so much hate and vitriol. Come up with your own policy and stance for that. Look, I think in general, the community, the points and miles and travelers are good people, but there's just...

freaks out there that are, you know, the trolls that just want to be nasty. And I, you know, I have a policy on my personal Instagram. Like if you say anything nasty, if you just are being a negative person and a lot of times I'll go through like DMS and I'll just see that person just constantly says negative things. Like this is a bad person. You have no right to be in my sphere. You know, I don't owe anyone anything. I give a lot. I'll share and help people, but I block instantly with zero regrets if someone's being a jerk. So,

I don't know. I mean, it's been... It's fun to grow a business. You've done it before. You've sold a business. But just have fun with it. Never lose sight of why you started it in the first place. Yeah, I think that's great advice. The one thing I'm jealous about is when you run a website...

Obviously, if you turn comments off during the pandemic, it's different. But when you have a newsletter, when you have a website, it's easy to have a two-way channel. And podcasts are very difficult. Every episode, I give our listeners an email address and lots of people write in. And I love it. I read every message. I try to make sure if I haven't answered a question you've sent, it's probably because I'm saving it for a Q&A episode. And so I'm trying to build that two-way channel so we can have a dialogue and I could really get to understand the audience and

I'm sure we're going to turn ads on because it turns out this is a lot of work and finding guests, prepping for interviews. And if I'm one day going to do that full time, I have to live too. And I think your real fans, though, will respect that. And truly, the minute I started making more money on The Points Guy, I...

expanded the business. I hired people and it benefited everyone versus just having the Brian blog. Right. I think we all overthink as creators. We overthink those decisions like turning on monetization and I'm going to cannibalize what I built and break. It's like so much of that is in our heads. You know, like people, if you're creating good content, you should get paid for that and you should not feel bad about it. Period.

Yep. So expect it might even be this episode might even be the first one with an ad. Who knows? A few kind of rapid fire questions towards the end. Travel insurance. What do you think?

I personally don't do travel insurance unless, you know, nowadays like Bahamas will make you pay for it. I'll gladly pay. But in general, I book all my travel with Amex. I highly recommend use a card with travel protections. You know, years ago I was in Bali when the volcano was about to explode and I was like, okay, I got to get out of here. I actually booked a private jet in city because I had, it had accident, you know, crazy insurance on it. I got reimbursed the 20 grand for the private jet that got me to,

Jakarta, which was pretty awesome. So I don't know. I, and I have so many miles and points. I redirect myself. I think if you're going on a cruise with 20 family members and spending a hundred grand and you want that extra protection, but in general, the type of coverage that cancel for any reason is super expensive. You know, you're not going to get that. You get back at most 75% of the cost of the trip. So look at what do you think the odds are of this trip going haywire?

So I think there are good policies, but short answer is I don't really purchase it. Yeah. For someone who's learning the points game, ready to start using some points, let's assume the world's fully open. What are your top kind of two to three award redemption slash destinations?

So one of the things I'll say if you're new to the game is learn how to search for availability. You know, we have Expert Flyer, which we own, which will help set alerts if certain availability opens up. But also last minute, airlines open up tons of space. So if you have flexibility, keep checking last minute and then go on a trip when space opens up.

I mean, I'm a scuba diver and who doesn't love an amazing beach? And I think in the points and miles world, it's like Tahiti and Maldives are like the two kind of, I think Maldives are number one in terms of like the dream redemption. There's so many good points hotels. I love Waldorf Astoria, St. Regis, Ritz Carlton, Maldives, Park Hyatt's a little bit older, but charming, but not, not up to the caliber of the others, all pretty good uses of points and, and,

Yes, it takes forever to get there, but fly Emirates Qatar using miles and the journey becomes fun. If you've never flown in a middle Eastern carrier like Emirates or Qatar, they're amazing. And don't think of it as like, it's going to take me 24 hours to get there. Like enjoy the actual flight. You know, Q suites are amazing. Emirates first class on the eight three 80 is iconic. Take your shower in the sky, drink Dom. I actually once brought the Dom bottle in the shower with me. So,

But Tahiti is also amazing. It's eight hours from the West Coast and lots of good points hotels and just so freaking beautiful. But, you know, Europe's been on sale this year. You know, Air France, 57,500 miles using Flying Blue. They transfer from most programs to fly Air France business class. And there's been availability at that saver level pretty much any day. That may change in November now that Europeans will be coming to the U.S. and filling those planes more.

And South Africa. I mean, if you want to take a trip of a lifetime, United flies there nonstop. Pretty good award availability or through the Middle East. But South Africa is my favorite just to beauty, natural beauty, Cape Town stunning, the wine country is outstanding. And then safari is like my favorite. So those are my favorite destinations to use points.

Yeah, South Africa is amazing. And, you know, if you haven't traveled a lot, it's surprisingly easy to travel, right? You know, you've heard that travel around Africa can be tough, but South Africa is kind of a different beast and it's amazing. And have you got a chance to go up to Namibia when you're there? You know, I've traveled to a

To a lot of African countries, I love... I have not done Namibia yet, but I've done Botswana. Rwanda is absolutely breathtaking. I've done the gorillas twice now in Rwanda. Cannot recommend enough. Masai Mara in Kenya. I've done a safari on the Great Migration in Tanzania. I also love West Africa. Ghana, I've been probably 15 times. We do a lot of peace work with Nobel Peace Prize winners there in Liberia.

really fascinating, culturally rich, very safe places to go, even though, you know, the media will say it's so safe, you know, but you stay in the right places. You listen to locals. You don't go to areas you're not familiar with just like, you know, in cities like New York or Chicago.

Yeah, I think what helped me, it's kind of an interesting thing to do. Before we went on this trip around the world, I went and I bought the Lonely Planet for New York because I lived in New York at the time. In the Lonely Planet, they're like, hey, when you're in New York, make sure to put your money in one of those belt wallet things that you hide in your pants. And I was like, wait a second. They're saying New York is dangerous. I walk into New York every single day. And so it kind of gave me this realization that

Basically, there's a blogger or a book that will tell you that everywhere is unsafe. And so reading the travel guides for your own city will help you understand a little bit about what anyone can say. Yeah. And so, yeah. So I think all those places, fantastic. Have you been to Cape Verde? For some reason, I want to go and I've never been.

I haven't, but I want to go to São Tom and Príncipe and like all those little funky. I really want to go do Azores. And actually, United is now going to be flying nonstop to the Azores. I actually, throughout the pandemic, I did the Portugal Golden Visa. And now I'm an EU resident. I got it after about a year. I invested like $350,000 in a Renaissance Marriott hotel in Porto. And it qualified me for their investment visa.

I have a whole blog post about it. And a ton of TPG readers have since done it as well. But after five years, I have to spend one week a year in Portugal. And after five years, I can apply, take a proficiency test in the language, which I actually took Portuguese in college. And you become a full citizen and passport holder. So I think it's kind of cool. Who knows where the world's going? Portugal is the third safest country in the world and pretty affordable to live. So who knows? Maybe in retirement, I'll end up in Portugal. And great weather.

Awesome weather, amazing food, centrally located to get around places. So that's been a fun, fun little journey for me. That's great. Awesome. Well, this has been so helpful. Before we go, anything coming down the road for TPG or anywhere you want people to check out?

Yeah, I mean, just if you have an Apple phone, check out the PointSky app. You know, today it was a beast to get this app out. We tracked most major airline hotel programs, credit cards. We're going to be rolling out a bunch of new features to make it run smoother, also allowing multiple tracking of accounts. So if you manage your spouse's or kid's accounts, you'll be able to have that. But I think long-term, we're going to be adding more and more tools. I want the TPG app to be able to reverse engineer a trip

So if you say, I want to take my wife and two kids this week of March somewhere warm in the Caribbean, and I've got Hyatt and Amex points, how do I go there from Austin? And we can reverse engineer and say, hey, these are the flights. What about this place in Mexico you might not have thought about or Turks and Caicos? Because the points and miles world is tough and it's constantly changing. So we want to build tools that actually help you maximize your

And travel more. At the end of the day, we want people traveling more, experiencing the world. And I'm excited for that.

Hey, everybody. I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with Point.me, my favorite award search tool, to give you a special offer of only $1 for your first month of their standard plan if you go to allthehacks.com slash pointme and use the promo code HACKS. Again, allthehacks.com slash p-o-i-n-t-m-e or find the link in the show notes. So definitely take advantage of that if you're planning a trip with Points.

I know that all of these award wallet and other companies have had struggled to be able to collect this information because they have bad relationships with airlines. Have you guys actually built all those relationships directly so that you're not going to get shut down trying to find award availability or sync balances? Yeah, we created our own platform. You know, I think the difference between us and award wallet and smaller startups is that they

you know, don't have as many resources. You know, the points here, we're part of Red Ventures, which is a private, but a multi-billion dollar, you know, we've got top tier security. We've got a huge tech team. So we work with all the airlines and hotels in different capacities. And I just firmly believe the consumer, just like you do with your banking information, you should be able to look at your loyalty information in one place and use tools that help you get the most value.

So that's our fundamental belief at The Points Guy. We want to work with every airline. We'd love to add even more functionality into it. And we've had really good conversations. So, you know, stay tuned. But I think a lot of good things are coming in that space. That's fantastic. I have it up. I've got my points net worth, which is a pretty cool number to track.

And I can't wait to be able to add everything for my wife's accounts all in one place. Last thing, where can people find you online other than thepointsguy.com? Yeah, so I'm at Brian Kelly on Instagram. That's where I share almost all of my travels, even the trips I've talked about today, whether it's Rwanda or Antigua, I pin them all on my Instagram stories. You can actually see I'll always tag the tour guides that I use, restaurants that I go to. I know it's a little bit of a wonky format. One day we'll have that.

into a premium version of the site where you can even do TPG itineraries and restaurant recs, et cetera. But yeah, follow me on Insta. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Chris. Safe travels.

I love a good points and miles conversation. And this one was fantastic. So I hope you all enjoyed it too. I'll make sure to put links to everything we discussed in the show notes and to everyone who's been writing in the past few weeks and really since the beginning. Thank you so much. I'm reading every email and I promise if I haven't gotten back to you, I will as soon as I can get caught up.

In the meantime, keep those emails coming. We'll have another Q&A episode soon. And until then, I'm Chris at allthehacks.com. And if you want to help out the show, please leave us a five-star rating and review. Thank you so much for all your support. See you guys next week.