Optimizing Credit Card Points and Miles with Alex Miller
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I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and today I want to talk about one of my favorite hacks of all time, credit card points. Thanks to this hack, I've been taking at least one free vacation every year for the last 10, 15, maybe even 20 years. These aren't small trips. We're talking two-week trips around the world, luxury hotels, flying first class, loving every minute of it, all for free. If I added up the cost of all these trips, I probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In fact, I'm such a credit card optimizer that I thought about doing this whole episode just by myself.

And then I met Alex. Not only is Alex just as obsessed with credit cards and travel as I am and helping make sure everyone he knows takes amazing trips and earns as much as they can, but he turned that passion into a site called Upgraded Points that he runs where you can learn about the best cards, the best tricks to earn the most points, travel hacks, reviews of hotels, and more. So I thought it'd be even more fun and valuable to everyone listening if we do this show together.

And not to mention his accent makes everything we do sound better. So let's get into it. But first, a message from a guy I hired online to read this disclosure. Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront. All opinions expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Alex, thanks for being here.

Thanks so much, Chris, for inviting me. I'm super excited to chat with you. Yeah, so credit card points are near and dear to my heart. I'm really excited for this episode. And I thought it'd be good to go back to early stuff. So for me, it turns out this started before I even remember it. The picture I have...

childhood. Everyone has that photo that their parents are like, this is my child. Mine was a picture of me sipping a bottle of apple juice with a pair of headphones on in a British Airways first class seat on the way to London when I was 11 months old.

And that's been my ethos before I even knew it was my ethos. And it turns out my parents schlepped me around the world on various trips they took with points. And so this started early for me before I even got into it. Ultimately, in college, I was like, I can get credit cards and earn points. I took my first trip and it all spiraled from there. But I'd love to know, how did you get into this game?

Yeah, so I have a very clear memory of this. 10 years ago or so, end of 2011, I moved completely over to America from the UK. And so obviously I had to get on a flight to do that. And I was traveling from London into Chicago. And like my life was like three big suitcases and that was it.

And I booked this economy ticket. I knew nothing about points like the UK, like there's three frequent flyer miles that are being split between the entire country. There's no bonus points. There's very little incentive for people to get excited about it. So I knew nothing, got onto, got to the airport. I was booked for economy and

And basically I turned up looking scruffy. I used to always wear like a Superman t-shirt. I like it. It wasn't great looking back, but I rocked up to check in my bags and the lady who was serving me took my details. And then she, she looked at me, she wasn't very impressed. And once she had put all my details into the machine, like she basically looked at me and said, okay, it seems that you've been upgraded to business class. Okay.

And she said it with a snarl. She wasn't happy about it. And I was thinking, oh, my God, this is amazing. How did that happen? So no one ever told me in the end. Luckily, what I had done, and this is the only logical explanation for it. I had, you know, signed up to the British Airways executive account membership and attached my number to the ticket. That was the only thing I did. I had no status. I had nothing.

And they upgraded me and she was so annoyed about it. And then she was like, oh, but wait, I see you've got some big bags there. It's going to cost you £40 to check. I was like, just take my wallet like immediately. This is not an issue. And inside I was like rejoicing, got onto that flight and I got...

a taste of business class. And so that was a double upgrade, by the way, like skip premium economy. They were like, boom, like you're in business. And the flight was super busy. So I think what happened was that because I happened to have a loyalty count, even though there's no status, they decided to upgrade me. So there's probably a lot of people on that flight who just didn't have a loyalty program attached to their booking. So there's a lesson there.

which we can talk about later. But anyway, that's how I sort of got a taste of business cards. I was like, oh my God, I don't want to do like economy again. So really when I got into America, starting up businesses and like points was just promoted on billboards, like everywhere. Everyone's talking about them. Credit cards are absolutely everywhere with these bonus promotions and things like that. And I was so intrigued. So I was spending money in my business, obviously spending money to live and everything.

And I was like, I'm an optimizer. So I was like, I've got to dive into this world. So I followed a couple of blogs, realized that this is actually something I could be doing. And then I was completely addicted. So basically, for the last 10 years, I've been researching it pretty much every day. And then obviously, now I run this site that I've had for like five years that launched in 2016. I'm fully immersed in it.

And a couple of years after coming to America, I took the first amazing sort of like redemption, like first class and business class and all this sort of stuff. And yeah, that's what like fed the addiction was that like free upgrade combined with the fact that like in America, like people just talk about this stuff like all the time. It's so I don't know if you spend a lot of time in the UK and everything, but people just don't talk about that stuff. Like it's not promoted. It sounds like there aren't a lot of options to earn points there like there are here.

Exactly. The competition is nowhere near as fast as over here. So yeah, it's... Yeah. Here, when you accept a credit card, you're paying like 3% almost fees to the processor. And that money makes its way back to the credit card company in some format. And then they say, we want to get more people spending money. So we'll give people points. And it's this cycle. And I always tell people, if you're not paying with your credit card, you're leaving money on the table. And I think of it as a way to just get more money from banks and

airlines. These are hated industries. No, totally. And it pains me as well. I see someone using a debit card. I'm just like, okay, give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they feel like they wouldn't be able to pay off their credit card if they had one and the temptation is too much. But I think I'm too kind. I think there's too many people there who just have not delved into that world a little bit and realized that debit cards, they offer such little value. And the credit cards really, I mean, the rewards and the bonuses and the perks,

that you can leverage for them are absolutely incredible. And the only thing you have to do is make sure that you pay off your statement every single month. If you do that, then all of those benefits are so worth it. Yeah. All the benefits of everything we'll discuss today never come close to being better than paying off your debt. So if you have credit card debt, focus on getting that down to the point that you can pay off your bill each month before you get into the credit card game. Yeah.

Okay, so using a debit card is an obvious red flag that you're not optimizing your cards and points. What else? Actually, another red flag is when someone is like using, I don't know, like an American Airlines card.

at a supermarket or when they're going out and having something to eat or buying some drinks or something because those a lot of the airline cards reward you really poorly for those transactions whereas the flexible points like you can get three, four, five points per dollar spent at supermarkets or at filling up a

gas or dining out and stuff. So you've got to look at where you're spending your money. The majority of it. I take things to extremes. I've got like 19 credit cards. I've got a bit mental with it. More than me. I actually consolidated. I was like, okay,

Once you go over 20, that is legitimately mental. So I got rid of four recently, but I staggered it over to not hurt my credit too much. But yeah, you want to look at where you're spending your money. So if you like going out and you like dining and spend money at bars or whatever, then you should really get a card that gives you what we call a multiplier bonus for those transactions. So how would someone even figure out where they're spending money to figure out what kind of credit cards might make sense? Is there something you do to...

evaluate your spending? You can use like a simple sort of like budget tracker, like mint.com where you can connect all your cards to that account. And then it automatically figures out where you're spending your money. So you can just have a quick glance at that at the end of month and be like, huh,

Wow, I actually spend like 35% of my money at restaurants. So I should probably make sure that I'm getting a card that gives me the general rule of thumb is I'm pretty annoyed. I'm very annoyed if I'm only getting one point per dollar spent. For me, it's got to be like a minimum of one and a half or two. And so yeah, Mint basically is like a good option for that. What do you use?

So I used to use Mint and there's a bunch of cool budgeting apps out there that are like Mint. I just was playing around last night in advance of this conversation and I saw that both Chase and Amex have a spending report.

And they used to do these as like a PDF at the end of the year, only for the last year. And now both of them have a look at the last few months, look at last year, and they'll just break it down by category. So it's a little more work. And that if you have two credit cards, or one of them is at a bank that doesn't offer this, you might have to look across all of them in multiple places. And in that case, it might be way easier to just sync everything to Mint and

and then go look through all those transactions and see where they are. But I will say, Mint sometimes gets the category wrong. And I think the credit card companies get the category right a lot more. So if your credit card company today offers one of these spending reports, I feel like it's the most accurate data. But...

if you have credit cards at lots of places or they don't, Mint, I think, is still a great place to link an account and look at all the different budgeting things. But don't look at Mint's credit card recommendations because not only are they incentivized by whoever's paying them the most...

But I swear, every time I've logged into Mint, they say, you need an Amex Platinum. And I'm like, I have my and my wife's Amex Platinum linked to Mint. Like, I don't need a third Amex. I can't even get a third Amex Platinum. So ignore the recommendation. Me and my wife both have a Platinum, like two Platinums each. Like, I don't think we need any more. Yeah. Yeah. You did mention credit earlier. Let's talk a little bit about credit.

Yeah, so when I came here from the UK, I had no credit at all. The bank that I still have in the UK, they were like, sorry, we can't transfer your credit to the US. So you're basically like a 17 year old in a hoodie with some shades on walking around like looking shifty. Well, it sounds like you actually were dressed like that, even though you might not have been 17. Yeah, just slight modification. I had a Superman t-shirt on and that was it. Yeah, I was actually very lucky, but this could be an option for many people. My wife is American.

And her parents very generously, I needed a car when I got to America. I was like, oh my God. And I need a truck as well. Like something that I don't, that's way too big, but it's really cool. And so I was like, okay, need a truck. Haven't got any credit. What do I do? And her parents co-signed for me, which is amazing because it was their credit basically that I piggybacked off.

And so what I did was I purposely paid it off over like 12 to 15 months to show the banks that I could pay on time and that I could do this regularly. It wasn't just for one month, but it was 15 months. And my credit rating like literally just skyrocketed into the 700s. It was so fast. Something that people always ask me like, oh, isn't opening a bunch of credit cards going to hurt your credit? It turns out that...

almost 65, 70% of your credit is your payment history. So one, make your payments on time. And if you didn't make a payment on time in the past, you can even go back and dispute it and maybe get that overturned. And then it's actually your kind of debt to credit ratio. So when you have a new card, you're,

Banks don't like lending money to people that are using all of their credit. So if you have three cards, you actually have a whole lot more credit. As long as you don't increase your spending 3x, it can actually help your credit. Now, I know part of the credit score is inquiries against credit. So when you open a card, you will lose five or so points each time. Yeah.

But having more credit, paying on time, having a long history really adds to it. So it can hurt your credit a little bit. But the long-term benefit, and especially if you don't have a lot of cards, opening a new card can actually bring it up.

Yeah. And like you said, you might get dinged five points or something when you open a new card, but that is super short term. Like in a couple of months, it will restore back. As I said earlier, I got 19 or 20 credit cards and credit score is not crazily high because I don't have a mortgage yet, but it's 770, 765 because my credit utilization is something like 200,000

Well, like my available credit that I could use. But clearly, I'm not spending anywhere near that per month. If you're the type of person listening here where having $200,000 of credit means you'll spend it, this is not a good episode for you. Yeah, I agree with that one. It's a shame when you came over to the US at the beginning. There's a company now, a guy I know actually started this company called Nova Credit.

And they partnered with Amex and a few other credit card issuers. And they actually will use data from overseas agencies, convert it to a format that the banks here understand. And so if you go to Nova, you can say, I'm from the UK. Here's all my UK information.

And Nova will bridge the gap so that you can open up a card in the US, even though you have no credit history. I know that didn't exist when you came over. But if anyone here is new to the US right now listening, Nova Credit is a great company that lets you leverage your overseas credit to open cards up here. That's really cool. And it makes your life a lot easier. The other option, just real quick, is that secured credit cards are really good. So I was helping out a business friend the other day who was like, English guy, my credit sucks.

And I was like, well, you could just get a secured credit card, which basically means that you put down this deposit that you give to the bank.

So if things go bad, they know that they can take your $200 and pay off whatever you charge to the card. But if you basically just use that, even that small credit limit, $200, it's not super useful. But if you put $50 on, like pay it off, you put $100 on, pay it off. If you do that for under a year, like that will really increase your credit score as well. Yeah, it's effectively a debit card in that you can only spend the money you've put on deposit with the bank, but it builds your credit in a way that a debit card doesn't. Yeah, because debit cards never help with credit.

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So before we jump into points cards, which I think offer tremendous value, I meet a lot of people who they think they're playing the rewards game because they have a card that earns them one or two percent cash back or one and a half percent cash back. I know points can, you know, flexible points, transferable points. They can earn a lot more than that. But is there a type of person where earning one and a half, two percent cash back is actually the right path forward for them?

Yeah, I think it's good for people who just want things to be ridiculously simple. Like...

that there's no way of turning cashback into something complex. You get the cashback, you can use it for either travel or non-travel. And especially, I think cashback is useful for those who, and maybe not too many of those who will listen to this podcast, who don't actually want to earn points for travel or don't want to travel that much. But yeah, it's really just simplicity. Like, you know, the Citi double cash card, like 2% on any purchase, no limitations. It's super duper simple.

It's just not the way you're going to earn the most points. No, you can't get outsized value with cashback. It's not a great tool for me and for many optimizers in this kind of space. It's not going to get you too far.

I think points have had a reputation in the past of the only way you can use a point is if you fly on this one day in this one way. But even most of the points cards these days offer some way to use your points towards reimbursing yourself or booking through a travel portal. So you end up getting some of the benefit of cash back in that you could just buy a ticket and reimburse yourself or you can buy it without waiting for award space to open up.

But you also get the huge bonuses when you're spending on these points cards, which there's no cashback card I'm aware of that's giving you 5x back on your dollars. Exactly. So I was going to say, if you had to add to your point, like if you had the Amex Gold, for example, and you could earn four times points supermarket purchases, then if you wanted to use those points in the portal and you get one cent per point, you're basically earning 4% cashback.

So even the points cards can be better cashback cards than the cashback cards. As long as you're spending money in one of these categories, which the biggest bonuses are in travel and dining and groceries and shop gas are big ones. But yeah, I always tell people my favorite cashback card is my points card. Now, I just don't happen to use it like that.

But one thing, are all miles and points the same? I tend to think they're not. And I'm curious if you have an attitude towards certain miles being more valuable to accumulate or points to accumulate than others. Yeah. So for me, flexible points and transferable points are by far the most valuable because you're able to not only use those for buying flights or hotel stays through portals, through travel portals, but also...

This is the biggest takeaway. Like you can transfer those to their airline partners or hotel partners. So Chase have 10 plus airline and hotel partners. Amex have considerably more. Citi have their own bunch. And so do Capital One. So if you guys...

Any points that are sitting with Chase, Amex, Citi or Capital One now, you can literally transfer them to a bunch of different airlines and hotels and get incredible value that way. Most people are spending them in a portal or redeeming them terribly for gift cards. So gift cards aren't a good use of points?

Terrible. It's literally the worst thing you could do because you're getting less than one cent per point in redemption value. So my general rule of thumb is that you want to be getting about two cents in value per point. But the gift cards, like, I think you get 0.7 of a cent.

So a friend told me last year, actually, he was like, oh, you'll be proud of me, Alex. I just redeemed 100,000 points for like Amazon gift cards. I'm like, definitely not proud of you. That was a terrible decision. So yeah, the most amount of value is definitely with like flexible points. If you've got...

The less valuable ones are definitely with the airlines because you can't transfer. So many people think you can just transfer American Airlines to some other airline. I'm like, no, you can't. If I have United miles, I can book on their partners. But if I have chase points, not only can I transfer them to United and book on their partners, but I can also transfer them to...

six or seven other airlines or hotel chains. And yeah, I'm with you. I always think I'd much rather have a Chase Point than a United Point because a Chase Point can be transferred to be a United Point. You get all the benefits of a United Point with a Chase Point plus more. And the cool thing is, so this is a common one. Most people who fly Southwest love Southwest. It's just like this lovable brand. And most people who fly them commonly will have a Southwest credit card and be like, okay, yeah, got the bonus using the card. Like life is great.

And I'm like, do you want more Southwest points because you like to fly with them? And they're like, yeah, obviously I do. Why don't you sign up to like a Chase credit card? You could use a Chase Alpha Reserve card, for example, for getting 3X on dining expenses or travel expenses. The Southwest, even if you book with Southwest, they only give you two points per dollar spent. So you can immediately add 50% more points there.

by booking with the Chase Alpha Reserve. If you got a Platinum, then you could get 5X by using that card to book your Southwest flight. So you're just like accumulating tons and tons of points through little adjustments like that. If you love an airline, don't think that having that airline credit card is all that you can do.

It's very common that you can collect transferable points and then transfer those directly into your airline account and top up your balances that way. So, I mean, that's a real big one and something I've done for years.

I often tell people, look, if you're really loyal to an airline or a hotel and the card gives you tangible benefits for that, whether it gives you access to the airline lounge or it gets you free upgrades or free check bags, those are things that you often won't get with the Chase Ultimate Rewards card or the Amex card. But if you want to earn the most points booking flights, it's almost always with a card that isn't the airline's card.

There's very few occasions where you want to use your airline card to pay for a flight. Like you just said, you may get additional perks like lounge access or priority boarding and stuff. And that's cool. That makes sense for people who regularly fly with an airline. But that

card is not your strategy for accumulating like the most valuable points it's going to be in almost all scenarios it's going to be collecting these or earning these uh these transferable points instead that's how you can accumulate so many of these points yeah

Definitely. And hotel cards, I think, are depending on the chain. Like, I know with my Marriott card, I actually earn more points when I'm staying at a Marriott than I would if I used any other card and transferred back. So I think that's one of a, you know, look into it. But for airline cards, it's pretty bad. Like hotel cards, you get that, like, free annual stay, like one night. So if you got one of the Marriott cards, they'll

they'll allow you to redeem for one night at any hotel in whatever category it might be, category one to four or something. And that can have quite a lot of value. You know, that's often valued at double of whatever the annual fee is for most of the cards. You brought up a really good point there, which is a lot of people look at cards with annual fees and they think, gosh, this card's really expensive. And one thing in the example you just gave, you might have a Marriott card that has a $95 annual fee.

And you might say, oh, I'm not staying at enough Marriott's that the spending makes sense. But every year they might give you a free night that's worth $200 or $300. And I often say, don't look at the annual fee. Look at the annual fee minus whatever benefits you get.

And so cards like the chase reserve card, it's an expensive annual fee, but they'll knock off the first $300 of travel spend. So you can't really look at it as the whole fee. You kind of have to look at it net of all of these things that come with it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what puts people off getting those like more quote unquote, like luxury cards. Uh, people think, well, you know, like only rich people have an Amex platinum, like that card isn't for me. And with a $550, uh,

annual fee, like, I mean, that is a lot, but it shouldn't be seen as this, like, sunk cost that you can never get back. First off, like, the sign-up bonuses for most of them would pay for that annual fee for several years, the value from that. And then, like, the platinum, for example, comes loaded with benefits, and the

These cards make a lot of sense to a lot of people. I mean, at the moment, because of obviously like pandemic and everything, they're giving you credits, things like Uber Eats and you get elite status of Hilton and Marriott, like gold elite. That's pretty cool. If you stay at any of those hotels like Wrigley, then just instantly get gold elite, like by signing up, like that has a lot of value. And then, yeah, like some of those cards can give you credit.

like I said, like the platinum, like can get five X on booking flights. If you book flights regularly, you're going to get a whole ton of points from that. And that's extra value. So try not to like, yes, the annual fee is a real thing. You have to pay it. But yeah,

That card makes a lot of sense for people who can utilize those benefits. And we easily get four times the amount of value back per year by using the planning card effortlessly. So yeah, annual fees quite rightly put people off, but you've got to look at the benefits and the perks and see if that makes sense for you because often you can just get so much more value back from them.

And I'll just say one quick thing. If you said the annual fee, you have to pay it. But if you've had a card for a few years and you found that right now you're not getting a lot of value out of it and you're thinking of canceling it before you do, it's always worth calling the credit card company and just saying, hey, look...

I didn't get a lot of value out of this. I'm thinking of canceling unless there's something you could do. And I've had annual fees refunded. I've said, oh, go spend $1,000 in the next month and we'll give you 20,000 points. And I'm not a fan of calling every year to threaten. But if I'm actually thinking of canceling something and there's an offer that's worth keeping it, I'm definitely all ears. Yeah, totally. My strategy is very similar. Basically, within about...

one or two weeks of the annual fee kicking in, give them a call. It helps you actually use the card. If it's $5,000 you've got to spend to get the signup bonus, don't spend $5,001 and then call them up and expect them to give you free statement credits and everything. You want to use your card fairly regularly.

But I'll phone up and I'll say, "I'm not a hard baller either. I'm terrible at that." So I'll be like, "You know what? I love this card. Once I had to phone up Amex because I needed some help. The customer service agent was like amazing and it was great. And yeah, I do use it, but you know what? I spend money in this certain category and this card doesn't really give me too much value back. What can you do to sort of help me renew this?"

And if you just have a nice conversation and I find if you're not hardballing them. Yeah, I got like the first time I phoned up after getting the Platinum

I phoned up and used the strategy. I got 50,000 points for staying on. And I was like, yes. That was better than me. I just got my $550 annual fee refunded. Well, that's super cool as well. I would have taken 50,000 points, which actually is a perfect segue. So before we jump into just the best credit cards...

I'm curious if we could give people some examples of how valuable points can actually be. When we talked about cashback, sure, you can get 1%, 2% cashback. If you're accumulating points, I think it's possible. You mentioned that Platinum Card can give you 5 points on travel. The Reserve can give you 3 on dining. But the real magic, I think, comes from spending those points on

by transferring them to airlines or hotels and taking really epic adventures. And I think it's cool to really make it clear how valuable that can be. So I'll give one example. And I want to hear what yours are. And maybe we'll just share a few to give people an idea of how cool this can be. Mine is my honeymoon.

We wanted to go to the Seychelles, which we'd never even heard of. But we were like, let's take the most exotic, crazy trip we can. And it's an island off the eastern coast of Africa. And we booked it on Air France in business class.

The flights were about $11,000 or $12,000 round trip if we wanted to pay for them. And they were 120,000 points for us just buying them with dollars, which that's gone up a little bit since then. But that's almost 10 cents per point. So if you look at a card that's earning four points per dollar, if you can earn 10 cents for each of those points, you're effectively getting 40% cash back.

And we took it one step further. We knew that this was such a good deal and we wanted a wedding videographer and our wedding videographer, we couldn't afford. And so she had told me in passing that she also wanted to go to the Seychelles and we didn't go on a trip with her. But we said, what if you do the wedding videography for free and we'll send you and your husband to the Seychelles as well on a future trip?

And so we ended up spending at that time, it was like 480,000 Amex points, but we got about $48,000 of value, which for me was like the best redemption of all time. Whatever.

What about you? Yeah. And you said 10 cents per point of value. Remember, the portal gives you a whopping one. Yeah. And gift cards is even worse. So don't buy gift cards. Don't buy gift cards. Gift cards is even worse. So yeah, I've been very fortunate. I've done a ton of business and first class travel. Certainly a memorable one is a round the world trip that I did with my wife. My oldest brother actually lives in Vietnam. So...

We went to go see him and then went to go see some friends in Sydney, Australia, and then also combine that with going to the Middle East. And basically we four...

310,000 miles per person. We paid just over a grand in taxes and fees. We got to fly Singapore Suites First Class. By the way, for anyone listening, Singapore Suites First Class is not a bigger seat, right? This is a bed. Yeah, a double bed. And a chair. Yeah.

Yeah, a double bed. You could put these together and you have a double bed on an airplane. So for anyone who hasn't had the chance to see these kind of really ridiculous international first class, this is nothing like the first four seats you walk by when you get on a domestic flight. This is...

a whole nother level. So yeah, Singapore Suites was absolutely incredible. We also got to fly Etihad's apartment, which like words can't even describe how ridiculous that cabin is. And they got showers and everything. Is that the one with the door? And then you have a little living area. Yeah.

And then you have your own bathroom and your own bedroom. Yeah, so, like, well, that's the residence where you've got the bedroom as well. Oh, okay, okay. It's everything you just said, like, minus the bedroom. Like, it's so ridiculous. And actually, for that specific flight, it ended up being 100,000 points and $500 in cash. Like, who would not pay $500 to, like, fly 14 hours? We were just, like...

this can't be happening. This is so ridiculous. And not only by the way, on these flights, are you getting these amazing, like you have a chair, you have a bed. They're usually pouring you like Dom Perignon, like you're getting like more value than just that. And in some of these airlines, like,

They will pick you up at home in a town car or a limo and bring you to the airport. You'll get the lounges at the airport. Some of the lounges I've been in have massages. So like some of these real premium international first class trips are way more than the mind can sometimes imagine.

And for all those miles, so it was 300,000 each, but so not quite done yet. So we did the Singapore Suites. We did the Etihad apartment. And then on my birthday from Dubai back over to, we flew back into LAX. It was my 33rd birthday. We flew Emirates first. And that is the most blingy over the top experience. The cabin crew are just crazy.

incredible you can go up to the bar and start ordering champagne cocktails which is completely unnecessary if you can do it why not and by bar like this is a bar on the plane a bar on the plane yeah it's like at the back and business class and first class can go there but

if you're first class, they're like, oh, make sure he gets the Dom Perignon. It's just so over the top. And they have showers too with like heated floors and it's just way too much space. The size of the bathroom is probably the equivalent of like nine economy seats. So it's very, very luxurious and very amazing. So the cost of all of that for two people, it would have cost us $55,000. It's

If we had paid in cash, it ended up being $2,000 between us for all the taxes and fees. And by the way, all of those flights, and there was a few I didn't mention like Singapore business, the economy price of them was over $4,000. So we actually paid half of what it would have cost to have flown all of those in economy. So it just blows my mind.

And actually, a lot of those people might look at that and be like, well, that's just that's pretty aggressive. What can I do with that bit of information? So you could take one of those flights. OK, my goal is to fly Emirates first. I want to go from, say, Houston or Boston over to Dubai. Let's do it.

You can totally, that's so achievable. That actually, since we're talking about it, like that Emirates flight might cost about, at the moment, it's about 130,000 points each way. So it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's $56 in taxes and fees. They've just reduced those massively. And you can transfer your points from Chase, for example, like over to Emirates or from American Express as well. And these are like $10,000 flights. Yeah.

Oh, these are not cheap flights with dollars. Yeah. Yeah. It's even if you could afford that, like me and my wife, I play this city game when we're waiting to get on a flight. We're like, it's called points or cash. It's a very simple game. We literally look around and we're like, Oh, that person looks like, you know, wearing a suit and stuff. It is smart. Clearly going in business class. Cause he's lining up for business. What do you reckon? Points or cash? To me, it's so obvious when someone is using cash. Cause yeah,

I don't know. I feel like that person is just not like an optimizer. And anyway, has there ever been a contentious episode of Points or Cash where both of you were so sure you were right, but you thought the opposite, that you had to ask the person? Yeah, we've definitely had a little bit of an argument about it, but I didn't have the guts to actually go and ask the person. I was like, hey, yeah, I hope you enjoy your first class. Leaning over, trying to look at his ticket, see if you could glance a view. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But yeah, like just you could book like that Emirates first. If you find a watch space where you could book it for 130,000, if you've got a big signup bonus or you've been using a card that rewards you for the areas that you spend the most money in, like these are super attainable. It's almost like they're so over the top, these products that you look at people in them in images or videos and you think categorically could not do that. Like, you know, I run my site, Upgrading Points, and we get...

from people saying, you're just rich. That doesn't work. I'm like, oh, could you just check out this article where we do literally like a step-by-step, this is how you book Etihad or Emirates or Singapore or something. And then they come back and they're like, oh, okay, amazing. Like I didn't actually realize that this was attainable or the conversation goes very quiet. Yeah, I always say, once you get a taste of business class, it's like, business,

business or first is the only way I want to cross an ocean. But if you don't play the points game, that can be pretty expensive. If anyone's listening doesn't have a good sense that you can go on amazing vacations for free, then I'm sorry. So is there any trip you really want to take with your points? Yeah. Funny you asked that, actually, because I'm in the middle of trying to find some award space to get onto ANA's first class products and then fly back in business because I want to

experience both. They have a new product for business and first and there is an amazing, this is probably like the best redemption option out there at the moment. So even though this doesn't make any sense and it's feasible because of the partnerships that airlines have with each other,

you can transfer from Chase 120,000 points to your Virgin Atlantic account and book ANA first class round trip. So 60,000 points each way to Japan from the US. And literally like if you go and Google like an ANA first class cash price, I don't think you'll ever find one that's under 10 grand by each way. Like it's obscenely expensive. And for,

for 120 000 points again i don't fly in a a and a so i haven't earned those points by flying them or using their credit card i've transferred them from chase uh these transferable amazing points and that's what i'm looking at i've also got a singapore first trip booked for like later this year i don't know whether i'll take it or not because of obviously the current environment but i put that a while ago so i'm super excited if if that materializes yeah so i'm

It's clear that there's incredible value from credit card points and using them to take amazing vacations. I feel like now's the time to ask, what are the best cards now? I've been...

So out of the loop for the last 18 months with a new child, a new job, the pandemic, you run a site about this. What are the best points cards right now? Yes, I really like the Amex Gold card. I think they've done an amazing job with it over the years. So the Amex Gold will get you four times points when you're spending money at supermarkets, but also restaurants.

And then you'll get three points per dollar spent flights and travel if you book through their portal. You also get Uber Eats free pass and then $10 a month credit. And the signup bonus is pretty generous at the moment as well. So the Amex Gold is like a great kind of everyday because I feel like most people shop at grocery stores like somewhat regularly and go to restaurants and so forth and obviously book travel.

So the Amex Gold I really like. And again, remember, like Amex have a ton of airline and hotel transfer partners. So you're earning points fast and then you've got so many different ways that you can use those. I also like like on the Chase side, I do the Chase Apple Reserve.

You get three points per dollar spent on like dining and travel. When people start like using Lyft and things like that a lot more, you get 10 times points per dollar spent on Lyft travel, which is really cool. And then as you mentioned earlier, as part of the annual fee, you get $300 that you can use towards travel. But actually at the moment, they've sweetened that deal. You can use that towards grocery and like gas expenses. So it's really easy to use up that $300, which is eroding.

that annual fee. So those are some really good cards if you want to step it up. Oh by the way, the Sapphire Reserve is great for lounge access. You get into those, you've probably heard of like priority pass lounges. There's 1200, 1300 of them around the world. So that's great if you want to be relaxing in lounge when you're at the airport. And then to be honest, like one of my favorites for sure, and I can't not mention it, is the Amex Platinum because it is the best card for lounge access.

Because not only do you get access to all the priority parts, you get into the amazing Centurion lounges, which I absolutely love. They're just super crisp, run very well, really delicious food and unlimited drinks. And even some of them have like spas and showers and so forth. And they've got a bunch now. I don't remember specifically how many, but it's at least a dozen and they keep popping up everywhere. I'm waiting for one to come to Austin, but fingers crossed on that. I have the platinum. And the only caveat I'll say is,

I view it with the exception of getting five points on flights, which is huge if you book a lot of flights, right? Other cards, you might earn three. Five is definitely the most that I'm aware of. But other than that, I think the Platinum card, I view it more as a perks card. There's a lot of credits for things that you can buy. Right now, every month, you get $30 off PayPal. You get...

$50 or off at Saks Fifth Avenue. So there's just credits and perks and lounge access. But I don't actually, other than flights, put any money on my Platinum card. Yeah, yeah. It's not the card that you want to use to start accruing and earning loads of points. Like you said, it's the benefits and the perks card. Because remember, too, with those benefits that you had mentioned, you get the hotel elite status, you get gold elite at Hilton and Marriott.

Pretty cool because those statuses give you upgrades and all the rest of it and earning more points when you stay there. That's where the gold comes in because you're rewarded. I use the gold to accrue loads of points and then I'm cashing in my benefits, as it were, using the platinum. So yeah, those are a couple of the cards that are really hot right now. Yeah. So you mentioned the Amex Gold.

You mentioned the Chase Reserve, our two great earning cards. The categories are a little overlap, right? So you've got restaurants on both. You've got travel on the Reserve. You've got groceries on the Gold.

Is there a card you think is a good complimentary card for all that other spending that doesn't fall into a category, whether it's a drugstore, whether it's Home Depot, whether it's shopping online? Do you use those cards for those purchases or what do you do? Yeah, so...

I'll have, so for example, I've got the Chase Freedom Unlimited, which is like my cashback card. I'll use that card to get me at least one and a half cent cashback. But what's really cool is that if you had the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the Chase Sapphire Preferred or a number of Chase's business cards that carry an annual fee, if you've accrued cashback with the Freedom Unlimited, you can convert that cashback into points. So

For me, like I'm only using a cashback card if I can then later, if I need to convert that cashback into points. And it's a little hack there because they never market this. The unlimited is marketed as a cashback card. And by having another chase card that has an annual fee, you can convert it over. And then like we've chatted about, you can use those points for incredible travel.

So I do like Freedom Unlimited. Some people like if they truly want cash back, like they might use something like the Amex Blue Cash Preferred, which gives you like 6% cash back on supermarkets. That's pretty cool. If you're listening to this, I am pretty sure you love upgrading your life, money and travel. And that's why you're going to love the All The Hacks newsletter. Every week I send out the best deals, top hacks and my favorite recommendations straight to your inbox to help you spend less, save more and get the most out of life.

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The everyday spending card is the Freedom Unlimited. Does Amex have a good kind of everyday points earning card for all those other categories?

No, not really. Like, they do on the business side. So, like, for anyone who runs a business and is listening, like, the Blue Business Plus will just give you 2x on everything up to 50,000 in spend. So that is one of my 19 cards. And I just hit that 50, and then I put it in the sock drawer. Like, it's done. That's another 100,000 Amex points, like, easily accrued. Just so people know...

You do need to have a business to do this, but that business doesn't have to employ people. If you freelance on the side, if you sell things on eBay, anything that counts as a business can make you eligible for a business card. I had a startup and I was able to get a business card, but before that, I didn't. But every now and then, I did some consulting work for a few hours here, and that counted. And then at one point in time, I drove for Lyft to make some extra cash during...

the New Year's season and that kind of stuff. And I counted that as business. So there are various ways. It doesn't mean you have to own a company that, you know, employs people to necessarily be eligible for a business card. Yeah, 100%. We got an article that talks just about this, actually, because it was a lot of people were asking about it. And so, yeah, you don't need any sort of like complex or big business at all. And then you unlock like the business cards, to be fair, like

are super exciting because they have huge bonuses. And then if you're a business owner too, like in your, you're paying for Facebook ads or things like that, like they reward you three times points per dollar spent. One of the Amex business goal will give you four. So if you're regularly spending in these categories, like business owners is like a whole kind of separate topic, but there's a ton of great cards.

One thing that you've taught me in prior conversations that I want to make sure is clear, when you're using the Amex Gold, it works at groceries and you get four points per dollar at grocery stores, but it gets you nothing if you're going to Home Depot. It gets you nothing if you're going to any other drugstore.

But you can buy gift cards at the grocery store. So the hack you taught me was go to the grocery store with your 4X points on groceries, buy your Home Depot gift cards, and then go to Home Depot and pay for everything with gift cards. And you can get the 4X without having to do it. And that was like such a good hack.

Yeah, this is one of the coolest hacks. And by the way, it's not like something that's worked for six weeks and probably won't work again. Like, I've been doing this for at least eight years. Like, I...

Whenever I make any purchase on Amazon, it's off the back of me buying a gift card at, say, a supermarket store or an office one. I'll talk through the office one in a minute. But with the gold, yeah, you get Forex at supermarkets. They have tons of different gift cards there. You can grab an Amazon one and then load up your Amazon account. I mean, it's super easy. It takes you like one minute. Or iTunes. Or the airlines as well. So again, coming back to like, why would you use the Southwest credit card

to purchase a flight with them when you could just buy like a south post gift card or multiple of them and you get forex on them so it's a really sweet hack and there's so many retailers as well so it's not just like you're reduced to only a couple of options amazon's a biggie because everyone spends money on amazon you should not be just using like a normal credit card to get one point per dollar spent load them up with these gift cards that you've earned like forex off

For business owners, you can get the ink cash, which gives you five times points at office stores. So I go there all the time and I load up on some of the same similar retailers. So that's a way for me to top up my chase points by going to the office store to buy those gift cards. And then on the Amex side, I can go to the supermarkets and get 4X off.

and be getting the gift cards that way. And this is not like cutting out a coupon or spending hours doing something like that. If you go to the supermarket to buy food, just throw some gift cards in, like job done. Like they don't give you hassle about it. Any other hacks to earn extra points beyond spending? Yeah, this one's kind of cool. So if you hold something like one of the Platinums or if you hold actually the gold card, when you log into your Amex account,

They may have said, "Hey, do you want to sign up to our pay over time feature?" Which basically means that if you've made a purchase of $100 or more, you can pay it over time, which we don't want to do because that would mean that you're paying interest and all that horrible stuff.

But by simply just saying, yes, I would like the ability to be able to do this, they can give you 20,000 bonus points. So I've done this on multiple cards. So I've racked up like at least 40,000 points by doing this. And again, you don't even like, I've never used pay over time because I pay off my statement every single month.

But by just saying, yes, I would like the option to, that you can get up to 20,000 points. So go into your account, check to see if you've had it. There's also a way to, they have a link that you can click on. You can just go to our site or you can Google it and find out what link that you'd have to click to see if you're targeted for that offer. Because it is a targeted offer. But in my experience, almost everyone gets offered that at some point. I also love the offers section. So when you're logged into Amex or Chase. Yeah.

They give you all these offers. And I feel like a year or two ago, it was these crappy offers. Spend $300 on flowers and get $10 back. But this year, at least with Amex, I've gotten $100 off a Best Buy purchase of $100. I've gotten $100 at Dell off $100. $100 at Home Depot off $100. So I've probably gotten $300 or $400 back.

from my platinum card on purchases I already had to make. This microphone I'm talking on, I bought at Dell and got the entire purchase refunded. And there's no cost to adding these things. So every month I log in, I'm like, are there offers to add? I'm tempted to just add all of them just in case I go buy something online. So I know you can only add 100 to one card. Okay. So of course, Alex knows the answer. He's tried.

Yeah, a member of our Facebook group said, oh, what's going on? I can't add any more Amex offers to my cart. I was like, how many do you have? Screenshot, 100. I was like, yeah, you've got enough of that. Yeah, there's some really good ones. I added Hyatt. I've got one at the moment. So spend 300 and get 60 back. So 20% off, basically, which is super cool. There's loads of ones around like Booze and Wine.com and everything like that. But, oh, yeah, this was a cool one. So with my Amex Gold...

you get $10 per month that you can spend on Uber Eats just by having the card. But they've also got an Amex offer, which I've added to my card that enables you, I think you get, I don't know, like $5 back for every 15 that you spend. And you can do this five times. Not only are you getting the monthly credit with just by having the card, I'm stacking that with this Amex offer that then gives me like $5 back for every 15. Yeah, there are some great offers and you're right. They've

they're so aggressive with them now. There's just so many of them and they're easier to find. Like they used to be buried. Chase are behind. Like Chase offers suck. They're really not very good. The other stacking thing, a lot of these have, a lot of these,

Yeah. Yeah.

But if you're someone who's new to points and you're just trying to see how quickly can I get to my goal for this trip, whether it's 100, 200,000 points or

You can go to Chase and click on a link at Chase's website to some retailer online like Macy's to go buy a gift for someone around the holidays. And I might earn three, four, five points per dollar spent. And then I can pay for it with my Chase card and earn another one or two points per dollar. The shopping portals can be a great way to accelerate your points earning. Yeah. And with the portals as well, like this...

You might not earn thousands and thousands of dollars by doing this once, but since we all online shop, just have a quick check to see if there's a multiplier bonus happening at one of the shopping portals. This is literally how you start racking up thousands of points over the year.

Because now when you're buying something online, you're maybe going through a portal. If you're going to Amazon, well, wait a minute, I've got my gift cards at the supermarket. And when I'm booking a flight, like I'm getting 5x points, like all of these different strategies together. This is how, as I say, you rack up tons and tons of points. So the shopping pools is good. They also have the dining programs as well. Oh, yeah. Not quite as exciting, but you just basically add your card to specific airlines like,

or hotels dining program. And then if you were to go to one of the restaurants in their network, they will give you bonus points for every dollar that you spent on top of whatever that card gives you. So for example, with the gold, if you went and dined at a restaurant that was part of American Airlines' dining portal program, you would earn four on the card. And then for all that restaurant could be giving you five on top of it. So you come out with nine times points per dollar spent

And over the course of the months and the years, you really do earn loads and loads of points. So I like to use those as well. So you have 19 cards. I assume you have points across many different programs. Is there any easy way that you can organize all of that and keep track of where your points are, how many you have? Is there anything that makes that simple? Yeah, so I like to use Award Wallet. They have a pretty good feature there where you can just load up all of your accounts.

And then they'll automatically check those accounts periodically to give the most recent balances that you have. And so you can see like in one screen, oh, here are all my different accounts. Here's the total that I have. That's cool because, yeah, if you take it to the extreme like me, it can quickly get out of hand and you need to be a little bit organized. Or you can do things like spreadsheets and just like once a month you do like a quick balance check. But I do, yeah, I do a feature that they have at Award Wallet.

I know when you transfer points from Amex or Chase to different airlines, you're still relying on the availability of award travel, which sometimes might not be open the days you want to fly. If you want to just fly whenever you can and you don't want all those restrictions, then

Is there a way to use your points, either the shopping portal or the travel portal or something that still makes it better than a cashback card? Or if I want to be able to fly on any flight at any time, am I actually better off just getting cashback? Well, remember the points cards in the first place are going to earn you more points for every dollar that you spend. So you're already ahead by choosing a points card. So if you decide then to use that in the most simplistic way in a travel portal, you're

you're going to end up like getting the most amount of value. And the great thing about the portals is that there are essentially like no blackout dates, like no restrictions. And you can book pretty much any flight that you want. I mean, Chase is literally port with Expedia. So it's like you're using Expedia.

And what kind of value do you get? If you have the Chase Apple Reserve, you'll get 1.5 cents per point in value, which is awesome considering that you may have earned three times points on travel purchases and dining purchases. So each of those points is then being redeemed at one and a half. I'm not a very good mathematician, but I think that works out to getting a 4.5% cashback

essentially. Yeah. Even if you can go on the most optimal trip, if you're as flexible as possible and you want to say, I'll go anywhere in the world in first class on any day, you're going to get the most points if you transfer to an airline. And we should do a whole episode on how to do those transfers, how to find that availability. And that'll come soon. And stay tuned because we won't get into that at all today.

Even if you just book through the portal, you're getting four and a half, maybe five. If it was a platinum card, maybe more. Like, you can still get a value that's greater than just getting one and a half or two cents back. So Chase Reserve, Amex Gold, great cards for earning points. Platinum, great card for perks. Mm-hmm.

The other big way to accrue points is not just spending on your credit card, but the huge signup bonuses you get signing up for cards. I remember one time in the same day, I signed up for three city American airline cards and earned something like 75,000 each for 225,000 points in one go. And the requirement was to spend two or $3,000 over a period of time, which I was able to do. Mm-hmm.

I know that's a huge way people gain points. Are there any big sign-up bonuses now? So right now, there are some incredible bonuses that are happening. Chase Sapphire preferred the 80,000 points. It's always like 60,000, so you get another 20,000, which is really cool. And then the Amex Platinum, they bumped that up from their usual 60,000 to 75,000. And...

On our website, we actually have an article on how you can get up to 125,000 points from the Amex Platinum. There's a super cool way of getting a targeted offer. Put that and everything we've discussed will all be in the show notes. Check it out. Yeah, definitely. Because if you're going to sign up for the Platinum, one thing I haven't mentioned is that you can only get a signup bonus from a card once in your lifetime. So better make sure that with something like the Amex Platinum that you reach for that 100,000 points.

Or minimum 75,000. Don't settle for that 60,000 points. The Amex Gold has also bumped theirs up. I think it's usually 35,000 and they've got that at 60,000. Like literally like every card, nearly every card has increased their bonuses right now. And it's the banks catching up to all the stuff that happened in the pandemic. So if you're thinking about jumping on a card, I would massively recommend that you look into it ASAP.

because the bonuses are just so strong. The Chase Apple Reserve has bumped up to like 60,000 and it's usually at 50. Business cards are big as well. The ink business preferred 100,000 points for a $95 annual fee card. Like the 100,000 points, even if you use them in the worst possible way, is worth over $1,000. Even if that was for like, I think gift cards would be maybe a little bit less, but don't be doing that. If you used it in the portal, it'd be $1,250. So yeah,

Big, big bonuses. Honestly, there aren't that many cards that haven't increased their offer right now. And one thing, I think this, correct me if this isn't true anymore, but I know Chase has a pretty hard rule when you're opening new cards that if you've opened more than five cards in the last two years, you're not going to get another one. Is that still the way they operate? Yeah, they call it the 524 rule. It's not an official rule, but it's basically like what the optimizers have found out.

What makes this relevant to you is that if you're thinking of getting a few chase cards, get those first before you then jump on, say, an Amex card or a City card or whatever. Because if you take out more than five cards in a 24-month period, you're not going to be able to take out that chase card that you're looking at. So that's why, if you love the, you know, the Chase App or a preferred 80,000 bonus points, but you also like the Amex Gold and maybe you've taken out a few cards in the last...

year or two, grab that Sapphire Preferred first and then get the Amex afterwards. I just saw an ad yesterday for the Capital One Venture card. 100,000 points. Does that have a place? We haven't talked about that card at all.

Yeah, so CapOne have really stepped up because now you can transfer miles that you accrue with them to airline and hotel partners, just like Chase, just like Citi, just like Amex. Previously, they didn't do that. So the points, the miles that you accrued, you would have to use for statement credits and things like that or...

something in their travel portal, which wasn't very valuable. But now you can transfer them to partners. So yes, like 100,000 points on a venture is a monster sign up bonus. And if you're looking at Capital One cards, that could be a really good one. Again, I think they have 15 or 16 different transfer partners. And a couple of years ago, they had none. So they've realized that everyone is being lured in by Chase cards and Amex cards. So that's great for the consumer because now the bonuses are going up.

Capital One, they want your business and then Chase are annoyed. So they increase the signup bonuses and make everything so much more lucrative for the consumer. It's so good for us. If you look back five years ago, it was pretty nuts to have a hundred thousand bonus. And it was nuts to have four times points per dollar spent on things like supermarkets and dining and everything. That almost didn't exist. The competition has gone pretty crazy this last five years. So

genuinely like now is a really good time to be looking at cars because those bonuses are massive and they've adjusted the benefits to the pandemic they're like not loads of people want to travel so I'm going to give you a ton of statement credits at grocery stores I'm going to give you a bunch of stuff back

on dining or delivery. That's why all these Uber Eats passes are being marketed everywhere. And that's why they're baked into a lot of these cards. So to be fair, they've done a good job, the issuers, of adjusting to the current environment. And it makes those cards, to me, even more useful. Yeah.

I remember once I applied for a Chase card, I didn't get it. I called up the reconsideration phone number, which you can find just Googling around. And I ended up getting them to reconsider and I got the card. Is that something that still happens? Can you still do that? So if you ever apply for a card and you're not instantly approved, you definitely want to phone up the reconsideration line because often they just need a little bit more information.

And by giving that information, it gives them enough confidence to then give you the approval for the card. It doesn't always work. Sometimes there's a legitimate reason why you haven't been accepted for a card. But I always will phone up the reconsideration. It's worked for a bunch of friends too. Definitely worth the time. And actually, you get through pretty quickly on reconsideration lines. So when you open these cards up for signup bonuses...

If they're not cards that you necessarily spend regularly on, how long do you keep them open? Do you close them at the end of the year? Do you close them as soon as the bonus posts?

Yeah, so it used to be a lot more lax. So you used to be able to just sign up for the bonus, spend $1 more than the minimum spend and then close it. And the banks would be a bit annoyed or the airlines would be annoyed. But it was fine. You could do that. Now, it's much riskier. So let's say, for example, you get that 100,000 bonus for platinum and you want to close it.

it is not unheard of for them to take that bonus back from you. So my recommendation is that you want to spend quite a bit more than the minimum spend on a card so that if you then later want to close it, you wouldn't run into any trouble. Now to answer your question about what I do, if it's a no annual fee card, it is a sock drawer card. I keep it open because that helps with my credit. I

Because the longer that you've had a card open for, the higher that your credit score will go up in the portion that looks at that section. If it's no annual fee and it's not causing you any bother, just keep it open. Obviously, if it has an annual fee, you're going to have to like make an assessment. Wait a minute, I'm paying, say, 200 a year, 300 a year. Am I using any of these benefits? Am I using any of these perks?

If it was purely a sign up bonus play, like I mentioned, just make sure that you're spending more than what the minimum requirement is before you cancel it. And yeah, cancel it towards the very end because they may offer you like the story that you shared with me. They may offer you a statement credit on the entire annual fee when you phone up. And you just never know. Like I got that 50,000 points from Amex Platinum. And there's been a few other scenarios as well.

But there's no reason to close it. And it's actually a bit risky to close it, say, in month five or month six. Wait until the annual fee is going to kick in. Give them a call. And yeah, just see what they offer you. Like they could offer you something really awesome. You're like, no, actually, I did want to close this. But now they've offered me 40,000 points. Yeah, I don't want to close it anymore.

Yeah. When the Chase Reserve came out and it was 3x on dining and travel, I had the preferred, which was 2x on dining and travel. And I thought, I'm never going to use this card again. But one thing that you can also do is you can downgrade cards. Now,

Now, I don't think every credit card company lets you do this. I know Chase does. But I called up and said, oh, is there any free card you have that I can downgrade this to? Because I didn't want to lose the history on that card. Yeah. And I did the same thing. I had a United card for... That was the first card I got in college. And it was really helping my credit in terms of how long of a history I had. Yeah.

And it turns out, even though they don't really market it that heavily on the website, there is a no annual fee United card that I downgraded to. So if you can't get them to waive the annual fee or give you a bonus, you might be able to downgrade it to a free card and put it in a drawer. But...

I would say if you've had it for a long time and it's really helping your credit, it's worth at least once a year. Go make a purchase. Just make sure you spend something because unfortunately, that United card got shut down and my average length of credit history dropped because that was the only card I'd had for more than 10 years. Yeah, I downgraded actually thinking about it. I downgraded the stuff I preferred to a Freedom card or something.

So yeah, like it keeps all that great history and doesn't hurt anything. And it's a no annual fee card. And you can set up a reminder or something to make a purchase. Or you can sometimes people have a tiny recurring annual fee for a specific service. Just stick it on that card, you know, so there's at least one transaction a year. I like that strategy. Yeah. Alex, this was amazing. I feel like...

I thought I knew a lot about credit cards and points, and I feel like I know even more now. Hopefully, everyone has a new strategy to take an amazing vacation. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you, Upgraded Points, and anything else you're excited about online?

Yeah, thanks, Chris. I really enjoyed the chat. And Upgraded Points is my website. And we got over 2000 articles there. We go super detailed, lots of in-depth content, and we update it regularly. So go check out upgradedpoints.com for more information about what we chatted about today and plenty of other topics as well.

Wow, that was great. There will be lots of links in the show notes for sure. So you can find those at allthehacks.com. And thank you so much for listening. I can't believe it's already been three shows. I'm already working on lining up the next few episodes. But in the meantime, I would love to know if there are any other topics you want to hear about on the show or questions you have for me or even hacks that you know about that you want me to share. You can email any of those to chris at allthehacks.com.

I really want to make this show great for all of you. So please reach out by email, on Twitter, if you have any feedback or other ideas. And to everyone who's already left a review or a rating, thank you so much. If you haven't, it's never too late and it would really help the show out. It's one of the main ways that Apple decides what to feature. Or if you want to share the show with a friend, that'd be amazing too. So thank you so much. And I'm really excited to keep this going. Have a great day.