Current State of Credit Cards Points and Predictions for 2024 with Sebastian Fung

It's Fashion thank you for being here in person thank you for having me yeah so for people who don't know you I gave a little bit of an intro but tell me about how you got into this game yeah I kind of started my career in finance moved into Tech did a bunch of startup stuff and then got very obsessed with points mostly because my player two Mandy wanted to travel a ton and I was like how do I do all this stuff about paying an arm and a leg I think one big trip that really pushed it was a last minute Japan trip and we paid something like 12 or 1300 for economy and I'm like wait why am I paying so much money for economy and then I fell into this whole points Rabbit Hole I knew about credit cards before but I was always on team cash back back in the day where I was like oh just optimize your categories and that makes the most sense but then I realized you can get so much more value from points and that actually moves the needle the most compared to cashback like I like cashback I think a lot of people can benefit from it especially if you have a family and you're not traveling as much or you just don't care about that but I think especially when you're on points drive so much value and just open so many doors is there a type of travel you think is necessary for points to be worth it I think it does lean more towards aspirational business and like first class type of trips or just like more expensive trips for economy stuff I still pay out of pocket generally because the value is not there or I get okay value like maybe 1.5 to 2 cents per point but it's not like the astronomical 10 cents per point so for me a lot of it is like how do I as a p get the VIP experience and unlock this whole thing that I didn't think I could do like growing up like pretty lower middle class I never thought I'd be able to fly business let alone first so the fact that I can actually like even even if it's just for a few hours like see what it's like to be on the other side and experience that and see these other people who are like dropping 20K on these flights it's I don't know it's nice it feels really good to sit next to someone be like how much did you pay I haven't actually asked that I don't know if you ever asked but I've always wanted to ask how how much did you pay for that seat I've done that in Bora Bora where we were just hanging out into talking to other people and then some people were like oh I paid 30 and then someone else was like oh you guys are losers we did it through Costco and we paid 25 000 and I was like oh I didn't pay that much money at all but I didn't I didn't want to like burst their bubble but you kind of did you kind of just to open them but next time here's the tricks yeah I think a lot of people like the idea points but then like it's one of those things that you keep in mind but you never really act on it like a lot of people will be like oh you can get a lot of value that's nice whatever yeah so it is tough I think to like make that switch and like that first step is always harder so I want to come back to these aspirational trips at the end but first I feel like there are very few people that are as in tune with everything that's going on with the points miles status world so I wanted to just bring up the topic of where we're at right now we're recording this in September 2023 Delta has just kind of told everyone that loves flying Delta that it's going to be a lot harder to get status unless you spend a ridiculous amount of money by this point we probably already will have covered the major news there but at the high level status is changing and it has on other airlines over the past few years where do you feel like things are in the world of points and Miles what's happening now so I feel like most of the airlines have told people that either intentionally or unintentionally that they actually don't care if you fly them a lot they care more so how much money you spend with them so even if you look at United's change from like the old system to the current one it's very much contingent on you spending either a crap ton of money on your credit cards or flying a lot of them but then it's not even economy flight they want like premium last minute Business Class Type fly where you might be going to the airport and paying a thousand dollars or on like SFO to LAX so Delta's kind of in that same realm they have simplified the whole process a lot more but it's still very much targeted towards businesses like even back in the day you could get two Delta Reserve cards spending your way there was about 240k but it was a complicated you were like learning about MP UT waivers MQM boosts and stuff like that and now it's like just spend 400k spend 400k and you get status or 350k yeah a lot a lot of money for most businesses and do you care about status is it something that at least let's start with Airlines is that something you're even trying to get anymore so I think a lot of people don't rightfully don't like status for a lot of good reasons because they don't get upgrades so back in the day we were chasing United status and then I think the most we ever got up to was platinum and then we realized that out of SFO because like 43 or 50 of people flying through SFO like planes or United so you're never going to get upgraded because there's too many people that have 1K and Global Services that you can chase it but you're not it's not going to help you as much as you think it is so you pretty much want to get status with the second or third most like busiest Airline from that airport and for us SFO it was Delta and then if you're in Atlanta obviously you wouldn't want Delta because there's too many Delta Elite members and people who like just have unlimited corporate account money so for us we call Delta status we liked it a lot because we were getting upgraded for our cross-country flights we also fly during weird times so that kind of helps but like being able to get a like decent business class seat for five or six hours is nice uh with the new change I think we're kind of on the fence about how to play it so next year we're still going to be Delta Diamond the year after that I think unless we have some like weird astronomical business bands it just doesn't make sense and then even then it's like well there's an opportunity cost of like should I spend all this money on this card when I can just use a city double cash or like a lot of other cards where you get more value right um I think we might Chase American status mostly because the spend amount seems pretty reasonable for what we for the leveled what we want and then um for that level pretty much the one below exp so I think that's Platinum Platinum Pro yeah um that one gets you uh one world Emerald status which gets you into first class lounges when you're flying abroad so we go to Hong Kong like three to four times a year and if I can scroll up into like the cafe pacific first class Lounge while flying economy or premium economy that's not bad at all no it's funny my Advent teachers with status started with let's try to chase the highest status on United because we lived in uh San Francisco and then it was well we're really only taking short haul trips where I just don't care or really long haul trips we're using our points forget it no status so for the last four or five years no status and the one place where it started to bite us back was now we have two kids and we have an au pair and sometimes we're traveling with four people or four five people four seats and the reality we just did a trip with no check bags but the reality is when you're traveling with four you got to check bags and it was just like an added fee so it's like do I want to get a credit card to cover the cost or there was a challenge for United which was like just in reach it was like spend 1200 in in three or four months on United and we had a couple trips planned so I went for it and now I'm worried that I'm like kind of getting caught up in this silver if for anyone listening who knows United status silver basically is like free check backs like economy plus it check-in if it happens to be available um so it's not special but I'm finally back on that train and now I find myself doing what I wanted to not do which was I just want to take the easiest most convenient flight now I find myself like oh can I take the United flight because I'm gonna get free check bags I will just get a credit card then I feel like that makes so much more sense you get like all the perks of silver or like even cold status without having to worry about that yeah I don't know why I think it's because I had a United card for so long and then I just forgot to put a transaction on it and they closed it and I was like ah do I have to really go back and get another new United card but yeah that's another intro bonus okay so we'll come to that um but yeah so it seemed like it fit in so I did it we're gonna get some free checked bags out of it um but at the end of the day I feel like it's just the credit card can give you the low tier of status which is like checked bags you're probably not gonna get preferred seats with any cards um not with the United cards Delta does get you upgrades even if you don't have status but you're not gonna like you're not gonna get business there first and even first is domestic verse which is not exciting but like you'll probably get like the premium Comfort plus equivalent so I'll probably play the car play the cards through that um what about hotels we don't talk a lot about hotel status it feels like in the points in Miles world it's Hyatt globalist or forget it I think a big part of it too is because Airline status is so hard to get with credit cards while they're kind of giving out willy-nilly with credit cards a hotel status is given up willy-nilly so you have like all these cards that give you either like mid-level or even like higher level status Hilton Diamond being one of the Prime examples right like you're getting a top level status by getting a credit card that runs you 450 and then I would argue that the card actually is a net positive because of all the credits and the free night so you have all these people that have status because the math makes sense and like I think people that watch YouTube are like oh yeah if you run the numbers it's logical um so I think the reason people like Hyatt is because that's the one you actually had to chase and had to do meaning that there's less people that have it meaning that it's more beneficial because upgrades actually come to you if you have like 10 000 people that have status compared to 1 000 that adds up especially in the US internationally though it doesn't really matter because everyone else doesn't have status so like we'll go to like these like other like southeast Asia like Danang or something and they'll be like oh thank you for being like diamond and and for your two stays this year and I was like yeah thank you thank you for having me because they don't see that many business Travelers and their credit cards don't come with status like ours do yeah I think we've had that experience in Southeast Asia also with Marriott or the former Starwood any status was great uh and I think Marriott you can also get platinum with one card uh Mary you can get it with the bonboy brilliant now uh before you had to spend 50k uh before you had to spend 75k to get it but yeah now you get it which I think is good because a lot of hotels can be free breakfast as well and then upgrades up to like standard Suites is there a Hotel chain that if you were building loyalty is it is it Hyatt I found recently on Hilton when I dug into the terms it was like even if there's a nice room they don't have to give it to you yeah I think a lot of Hiltons are kind of annoying in that way because they'll lean into the terms and then it depends on who owns the hotel and the upgrade policies but it's they lean very literally on the can give you an upgrade versus we'll give you an upgrade but theoretically it just depends on the person and then sometimes if you're nicer to them I find that they are more likely to give you upgrades in the US they just don't like I'll point out sometimes I'll open up the app and be like hey there is like a junior suite available there's like three of them tonight it's like can I get upgraded to this it's like oh it's not available in my system like okay like I I get that they maybe have sales quotas but still it's annoying on that end are there are there any chains where you feel like you haven't had that problem because I imagine you probably have Hotel status on all of them yeah I feel like Hyatt is one of the best ones for that that's why I like Hyatt but their footprint's so much smaller IHG is probably the worst with it where even if you have like Ambassador or like the top level status they'll try to upsell you like we stayed at like an Intercontinental and it was like empty it was like during Christmas um in Houston and they were just trying to upsell watch rooms we're like oh can we get a tour of it now just follow me in the room so I'm like still got a free review of the room out of it but then it's like yeah that'll be an extra 200 it's like isn't this nice I'm like I think your hotel is not that busy it's like it's Christmas Eve like why are you trying to upsell me and and so if we look ahead because I feel like you have a pretty good sense of this where do you think we'll start with status then we'll move into credit cards but where do you think 2024 what are we gonna see are we going to see lots of big changes to programs do you think they've kind of all made their changes recently it's focusing Airlines on spend and hotels I guess haven't really made too many changes is anything changing I think American can be really smart here and like they could actually even do campaigns where they like bring Delta people over and convert them really well so I think they should do that but they're not doing it I think United's in a good spot where they're like we don't really care uh Delta I wonder if Delta backstep the decision but I kind of feel like they won't so some people pointed to the fact that like they did make some changes because people complained and petitioned and that it took like two years or something but I'm like is it really worth your effort doing it number one and number two is it like even if they do make a change it's probably still going to be like a midstep where it's just not going to be good for you anyways so I think there are a lot of people pushing for Change and like telling people to call the board of directors but it feels like a fiduciary move like they make they made a decision that makes sense for the company I've heard the argument that Delta has the best product like the best hard product on the plane seats service amenities everything and so they can kind of afford to do this because if you live in Atlanta are you really going to change what you do like or not and then American doesn't have the best product and so they're like we're gonna make our program work for anyone uh and Delta's kind of like look we're really good we don't need as easy of a program and it might work and I think it will actually attract the people they want because even if in the diamond rings there are a lot of people that have status so by moving the bar higher up that means there's less diamonds but probably more people that are higher off like with businesses that spend more money that want to buy these tickets are like who spend a lot on their credit cards so it kind of just works out for them where like they have a better experience within the diamond ring so not everyone here is focused on status on hotels or Airlines but I think a lot of people here focus on credit cards what do you think is changing the only big changes recently and I say big like if I look back over 2023 I don't feel like there was a lot that changed in the credit card game but what do you think I feel like it's mostly the Venture X coming into the ecosystem and then like disrupting everything and now that event tracks business kind of disrupting it on the business side I would argue that even die card is actually the best business card out there if you like can use the credits and points and stuff I think we probably at some point will see a bit more devaluation over there because it's kind of the Chase Sapphire Reserve strategy where you come in you like break down doors but then like you have to take a few steps back afterwards and like either increase the annual fee or like decrease in benefits after you did the market share um I think city is the big question mark that a lot of people have because they got rid of the prestige card and they haven't really been in this travel ecosystem so like for a long time they were in that for a long time they were actually in first place and the Platinum kind of like pushed past it uh but I think back in like 2017 all the Consultants had the city Prestige because it was like an amazing card where they had this fourth night free perk and if you were traveling for four nades every week you would actually just get a ton of like statement credits and like kind of free money through your credit card uh so the question is whether they're going to try to like come back into the top three or whether they'll try to go for the top again and how they play that what seems like city has there's rumors that a new card is coming yeah the strata Elite and strata yeah but we don't know what it is we have no clue what it looks like or what it's gonna do or whether it's gonna be competitive right like for the most for all we know like they could come into the ecosystem and then if it's just like the luxury black card that is expensive but isn't good then it's gonna lose I also think I've heard someone make very very edge cases for City points but if you already have some Amex points or chase and Capital One adding City doesn't get you much new uh no many new options other than I think EVA Air yeah and then EVA Air is not even that good of that option no I'm I'm not making a case for for like go get a city card so you get some points I just think I I think that was the only one that stood out as the unique option and I know I'm at flony bear it's great it's great uh and your economy is great like they're just very friendly yeah and and I think they make some of their space available just to their program so maybe that's a Chase point or a city Point benefit I think for most people the reason they go for city is because you've depleted all your Chase options and then Amex is once in a lifetime and then it's easy to deplete those options as well because there's only so many Mr earning cards so you run and then you do Capital One generally early on so city is the next logical step and the fact that they do have some pretty good cards of like catch-all options as multipliers double cash being the good like 2x equivalent and then the city premieres also surprisingly good like as a Workhorse because it earns 3x on so many categories gas is a a big one that a lot of other or like Banks just don't focus on or they know that it's going to be like a money loser so they just don't really focus on it at all and the fact that City Premier earns a 3X on it and it's uncapped is pretty good and on City cards I'll just you know for any cards we talk about if you go to all the hacks.com cards you can find the links uh for all the cards we're talking about except City we don't have any Partners there but you do so if anyone here wants to get any of the cards that we're talking about obviously support me but also if it's a city card I'll send them your way yeah asksabby.com again Ask savvy.com a-s-k-s-e-b-y.com we'll put the link to that in the show notes and what do you think is coming so the the only big change so Venture X was a big thing I think we have two of them in our house ventrex business I'm torn on it's uh a massive signup bonus I think it's 150 000 but you have to spend 30 000 yeah three months um but I already have the spark cache plus which is effective pretty much equivalent but I would argue that the annual fee there is a bit higher because you don't have that many credits offsetting it I think there's one where if you spend like 100k or 150k you get like 100 back or something a 150 pack I don't know if I put that much on it uh but basically there's nothing to help you offset it while the Venture X business has the same 300 and 10 000 points so for me that's already like okay that covers annual fee more or less or you get five dollars in value so that's cheaper on a net basis and then you also have a party pass card that works for restaurants so if you don't want to run a Chase Sapphire preserve or JPMorgan Reserve then that's an option okay and do the adventure X The Venture X1 works for only lounges for the businesses the business as a filming works for restaurants as well oh interesting I didn't know that and then I think one of the other big changes was Amex pulling back on Delta lounges and I guess maybe I think it was was it this year where they also cut back on guest policies uh so I think for them they're just trying to figure out how to make the lounge experience better because if you have to wait 30 minutes to one hour to go into the lounge then it's like a lose-lose for them because people start canceling cards people post on social media that the line sucks and that this is terrible so how do you make it accessible to people but also like make it a good experience so I think for them they've toyed around with increasing the annual fee and I think that is something that we're probably bound to see in 2025 uh but then the Platinum has done so well in the last two years because people have started doing the map and realize that it makes sense that there's just so many like the Platinum numbers have doubled in the last like four or five years which is a lot of people and then the lounges have not kept up to it to that yeah and then also a lot more people are traveling now and I think uh there's also like younger people who might be getting it because of the perks or deflects on people and stuff so it's just a lot of people have the cards and the lounge side has not kept up aside from Lounge changes what do you think happens with cards next year like what do you think the you know in a year from now when we're catching up what what is going to be the Venture X thing we talked about I think a lot of people don't like high Annual fees for exchange of credits but I think that's the most logical move for like issuers and like everyone like it feels like the most win-win-win so what I mean by that is let's say you have a card that has an 850 annual fee but you have like 1200 in credits so some people hate that because they're like well I can't use all these credits because I think we're conditioned to want to maximize everything but the goal is necessarily to use every single credit it's to get enough value that you maybe break even for the credit card that way like it's 8 15 credits so all the other perks and the multipliers of the card end up just being valued on top so like positive expected value from it so I think we're going to see more of that probably city is going to push that but I think that's the most logical move because issuers make money they probably have a bit more room to give you better multipliers too and then for the people that would benefit from those credits it's also a win because you might come out ahead like for the platinum card if you live in certain cities if you don't use certain products you might actually be losing money or you might be paying that two or three hundred dollars in order to get the card for lounge access and other perks but there are people that live in New York in the Bay Area who already pay for equinox where like they come out ahead they're like wait I use all of these Services I use Uber I use Equinox I like yeah I shop at sax enough that I can use the credit so it's I think we're gonna see more of that which might end up pissing some people off but it's probably a net positive roof yeah I think um I probably come out I wish I used Equinox so that I could get the value but like I'm pretty confident that just starting to use Equinox is gonna not be a net a net savings so one tactic you can actually do is if you have a friend that uses Equinox you could just let them swap your card in for a month and that will use up the credit and then they can just treat you to dinner or something that's what kind of I'm doing right now I have like a lot of platinum cards and then I'm just like hey I'm free you pay for equinox uh already anyways I have these like eight Platinum cards do you want to swap them in every single month to use up the credit and then you can pay for sushi I'm just gonna stand outside of the Equinox in uh in the Bay Area so it's a portal every month so it's easier and I feel like there's bound to be a lot of tech people you know that have it but it's just a weird conversation yeah probably not worth the brain cells yeah if I only have one so if I had eight maybe it would be worth finding that person what do you think happens on the earning side I know there was a big uh scare I guess when we thought this legislation was going to pass and cause all these challenges it looks like it's not do you think credit card companies or in the next year do you think that comes back do you think we try we see kind of legislation to try to limit The Interchange that card companies can make I think people are still going to try to push for it whether it goes through or not it's the big question if it does go through I think it actually kind of destroys the credit card space in a lot of ways I think in the short term we will see issuers just keep doing the same thing and maybe increasing the multipliers it's really hard to do the opposite of like like if you if someone told you we're going from 4X to 3x that's going to piss off so many people and you get so much churn from it that you're probably better off keeping the numbers and then trying to make money back somewhere else whether that's like decreasing perks or uh increasing Annual fees because I think people are used to like that cycle of upgrades and then you can always argue inflation like hey technically 250 two years ago is now like 350 or 300. yeah I think one of the hardest parts for cards is all the transfer ratios for the most part are all one-to-one and it seems so simple to keep it one-to-one that they can't really pull that lever easily um so they can pull perks do you think we'll ever see cards where it's like here or four perks you get to pick two of them I kind of wish City would do that or like any other issue where I think that's like an interesting play and like gamifies it a lot more but I'm not sure if the normal card user that's not a super user would like that because it might sound too confused thing I think right now you probably have at least eight priority pass memberships and you don't need them no not at all yeah if I could use even take like a 50 credit or something per year that would be nice and I think or or maybe a 50 credit for something else for like Barry's Boot Camp or something so I think that would be cool um yeah but I think it just brings up a different conversation now because for the Platinum the whole draw is I oh I can get 1400 in value I might not but I can so there's that potential of getting outsized value that I think people like latch onto and they love to Market that yes and like even for my like calculations and stuff I'm like you need to knock it down for your own case like we have calculators on asksabi.com for this um but for a I think the moment you're like okay cool that's a 900 annual fee but you have 800 credits but you have to pick the ones it ends up like not being the best for them for the company or for people that are signing up it's only good for us and I'm pretty sure they're not optimizing for us do you think the car like do the credit card companies like power users because they tell all their friends and their friends aren't or do they like secretly wish that they could put a red flag on all of our accounts and close us all down I think we represent such a small number that they probably don't care I think it's kind of like reminiscent of the casinos where there's people that can't count count cards right like you actually want people to think that they can go in and count cards in like movies like that to like propagate but like the average person just even if they mentally can't do it they're not going to spend the time to learn how to do it or they'll think about how to do the process so by having this whole thing like oh you can get money but maybe they don't do enough research then they end up losing but people that watch videos and like read blogs are probably already a lot ahead of everyone else so you you we talked about how you have eight Platinum cards which is a little crazy and I think one of the things that people often miss about the game is we get so caught up in okay well which card is gonna give me the most number of points for how I spend my money and don't get me wrong like I am you know I've created a tool where people can actually go in and put their spend in and figure out the right optimal use of cards because at the end of the day no one wants to leave points on the table however when I think about it and I just start doing the math even with the best card if you could have a 5x points on everything card and your return was 5x welcome bonuses seem to be better than that almost always is there an argument that all you should be ever chasing is welcome bonuses and you should not be focused on any multipliers and bonuses so I think it's kind of interesting where a lot of people who spend less money focus more on multipliers when they should be focusing on intro bonuses because that drives more money if you're spending only 500 a month getting 200 back for that 500 just makes a lot more sense and you can actually repeat that so many times because there's so many cards but like that five percent on 500 is not Material at all so ironically the people that should be focused on multipliers are the high Spenders the ones that are spending five or ten thousand dollars a month eating out and like I think some people look at that and be like that's absurd who does that but it's like there are people that spend a ton of money like for those people the multipliers start to matter a lot more because that's already 25 000 points in one month potentially depending on the card so for most people especially when you're starting out focus on intro bonuses that drives the needle that's like 20 return on spend to 40 depending on the card but I think once you ramp up once you have a business at some point like you just run out of bonuses like if you're if you have an ad business that if you have a business that runs a lot of Facebook ads and you're spending 200k a month it's like there's not enough intro bonuses for you to go for so you do start to focus on multipliers or maybe getting Hotel status or Airline status with that spend yeah but if you're someone who has dabbled right you've opened two or three cards and maybe you're spending I don't know five seven Grand a month so you're kind of on that high end but you haven't opened up a ton of cards even if you're a high Spender if you've only opened up a few cards in your time it probably makes sense to focus on intro bonuses I think so I think you can argue that one a lot more because like you're in that weird mid spot but for me intro bonuses especially travel ones just drive so much value and it's like would you rather spend maybe three or four months of spending to get the same bonus or maybe one month and especially if you are trying to time towards like a honeymoon or any other like big Endeavor where you need a lot of points it just makes more sense so to me I think intro bonuses are the focus especially when you're young and you like have time to manage stuff anyways like you have kids then obviously maybe that's not work for time I I don't know I would I would push back and say even if if you're gonna spend the time to figure out what card earns the most points you'd probably be better off just getting another card unless you've played the game so heavily that you're out of cards yeah so again which you probably are so my view is you should probably like work your way to like 10 20 or like 50 cards but obviously like that's not everyone and I want to be cognizant that like some people do have like lives like I like researching stuff like on a Friday night I think we'll like watch Netflix hang out have dinner but then like at night I'm like just randomly researching stuff and going down rabbit holes sometimes it's not credit card related sometimes it's like travel sometimes it's something completely different like mechanical keyboards but like I like researching stuff I enjoy learning but like I know some people who are like no I'd rather be spending more time with my kids or like partying or clubbing or whatever else so I think it just depends on you and so you just said potentially 50. Let's Pretend someone listening he's like whoa whoa I was doing this game wrong what is I want to address a few things so one I've noticed from people that have published here's me opening up a high velocity of cards over a short period of time the impact on your credit is surprisingly positive so I think that's a misconception a lot of people have is oh if I opened up five six seven eight cards in a year it would destroy my credit I'm pretty sure my experience from people that have reported it and from the few times where I did that is the exact opposite is true is that what you've seen for the most part yes I think short term you might see a dip and then especially if you're a student you'll see a bigger dip and I think that's when they get like spooked by it but I think especially if you're like in a 25 to 30 and like especially later on Range where you already have these older cards anyways to like be your anchor and your foundation the impact's so minimal and unless you're like shopping for a mortgage or like something like that it doesn't really matter like oh no my credit score drops from 800 to 750. like that plays no role and that and a 50 point drop like that would not be one card that would be over a series that would probably be over series unless you had a very thin file like if you only had like one card and then this is your second card then yeah you might see a 50 point drop okay and so how would you think about that sequence if you were someone that's like okay let's get a car to quarter this year I think earlier you referenced like you know Capital One might be early is there a high level version of how you would think about where to start yeah I generally think of it as stages so Chase being kind of the first off set of stuff because of Chase 524 and how they like limit cards and then also their business cards are pretty lucrative and you can like get a lot of them while you're under 524 and and we've talked about this at length but I'll just just for anyone who's who's new to 524 when Chase looks to approve you for a card they look and if you've opened and it's not a published rule but it's kind of everyone has seen it work if you open more than five cards in the last 24 months across all issuers on your personal personal report they're gonna stop you um so if you've opened five and you try to open a business card they're gonna say no but if you open a business card it doesn't show up on your personal report on Chase and so you can you could open up five business cards and then open up a personal card and be okay because the business card is not going to show up from Chase it will from Capital One yes and uh yeah some other issuers but most issuers don't and then that's why a lot of people end up just kind of going once you're at 424 you kind of go down the Inc list and then especially if you have an EIN and like different options there you can technically get a lot of ink bonuses from each of your businesses and we we have you have a whole business Channel on YouTube that I bet people can go deep down a rabbit hole ask subby business yeah and so I think a lot of people will be surprised that they probably do something in their life that would qualify them for a business card even if they're not running a business with employees so that's definitely something to look at and okay so Chase is kind of where you start because of their kind of application rules is there so application rules and also number of intro bonuses and then the value of entrepreneurses and then the fact that a lot of their cards have downgrade paths and no annual fee options and also a lot of the ones that don't are just keeper cards so ones where you get value every year by keeping it Hotel cards being one of the best examples of this after that I would do Capital One mostly because they can be pretty hard to get approved for if you have very high velocity and you have a lot of cards so like there are people out there who have an 800 credit score who make like two 300K but who will not get approved for the Venture X because Capital One knows that you're not profitable so you generally want to like get your foot in that door early on Savor saver one Venture Venture X are all pretty good cards for that and they also just make sense like they're good cards by themselves if you hadn't opened a lot of Chase cards and you're sitting at 0 24 or 124 would you make a case to maybe start with a big bonus on adventure X up front I think that's one of the few issuers I would consider like burning a 524 slot for but yeah I would probably I'd probably still go through Chase personally but depends on you okay and and is it as simple as you know Chase 524 if I'm at 124 can I just go open up four cards in the next 90 days or you generally want to get a new card I would say every one to three months and then for business cards every two to three months so you kind of want to just like path it out based off what you're trying to do um ixtg Premiere world of Hyatt are all pretty good cards boundless is interesting especially if you want to like in the future upgrade to the Ritz card which is another Rabbit Hole uh United cards are good for the bonuses and downgrade paths and perks if you want free tractor bags uh airplanes just a really good bonus uh but doesn't have a downgrade path but yeah there's like a lot of cards you can get that just provide a lot of value yeah I think Chase is probably if you made a list of the the issuer with the most six-figure bonuses it's like always chase yeah and then if you look at bonuses across the board it's like who really has a lot of bonuses it's American Express and Chase and that's why it's like you want to focus on Chase early on because you want to get those bonuses and then a lot of the bonuses are also on like a 24 month clock where if you don't currently have the card and you haven't got the bonus in 24 months you would actually be eligible for that bonus again so a lot of people start off Chase kind of go through everything else and then you can Circle back to chase yeah one thing that I think you'll find if you get to your fourth or fifth Chase card is you might get denied right away and you can often at least in my experience call up and the denial isn't that they don't want to give you the card it's they just don't want to give you any more credit and you could say oh well can you move some credit over from this other card I have that has a 25 000 limit you just put 10 there and bring 15 over yep so Chase generally wants to give you about 50 of your income as your total credit limit for them that's kind of like what they're willing to risk so if you make 100 then among all your Chase cards total limit should be around 50k so you can also carve room which is what I call it where you like intentionally decrease credit limits to just make it easier to to get approved so like let's say if you have a 200k salary you know that your cap is 100k if you already have 100K and you're not using all your credit limit anyways like why not just decrease one of these cards by 5K can you do that can you just ask them for a credit decrease yes you can and then that makes it easier to get approved and like obviously some people will be like I'd rather call in I don't oh getting credit limit decreases are as dumb why would anyone do that but I guess someone who doesn't like calling in and waiting on the phone and stuff like I'd rather just send a message saying decrease my credit by 5K that's immaterial to me and like if it makes the approval process easier then that's a win do you think there's an argument of like that actually working more often like is there a situation where I think that's easier and I think my rationale is at its lower risk because I think any time you have more eyes on your account it's a negative thing so I don't want to have to call in and then ask them to move limits around and then have someone be like why does this guy have 12 Chase cards right like maybe that's another risk flag versus like by me decreasing the limit then it's the algorithm approving me and like to me that's just lower risk okay okay so you go chase to Amex I'm guessing no so you do change to Capital One Capital One and then I would say Citibank of America Barclays are all kind of in the same Zone U.S Bank you'd probably want to kind of do after Capital One but I feel like the value problem with their cards are not as good unless they're on team cash back like the US Bank altitude Reserve plus uh I mean yeah yeah so I I think after Capital One you can make the argument for U.S bank and then the only card there's not that many cards on the surrounding cashback basically yeah and and all the ones you mentioned Bank of America Barclays U.S Bank are they all cash back Bank of America would be for Alaska points okay because that like is super valuable and they have a lot of first business class options with their Partners yeah I we flew Alaska a lot for a few years we had some status and I collected all these Alaska points and I never want to spend them because I feel like they're the one currency that's in like there's just no way to get more Alaska points that I know maybe bonvoy transfer it's not really a good transfer though rightly it's pretty bad value to transfer yeah you could um there is a case for Bank of America if you're on team cashback if you want to have 100k with their brokerage with Camaro or something uh but yeah that's let's come back to cash back okay um and then and then Amex after basically yeah and any Nuance with Amex that that I think would be helpful you generally want to start with the platinum card to like how they use the Platinum offers to entice people to come in so generally speaking if you're not a customer of them you can get the most value generally like 125 the 150k is an intro bonus and like they dangle that carrot because when you're not a customer they want to bring you in but then the moment you become a customer it becomes a lot harder to get that offer you can still pull it up by using something like card match and like we have a whole blog post and asks I'd be walking through hard match but I think a lot of people just don't realize that they get like they see the gold card and they're like that card makes a lot of sense for me and then you get that card and then you potentially lose out on 75k so like 25k in Mr Platinum bonus from the Platinum that you otherwise could have gone I just got an email today that 150k on Platinum through card match is kind of a very open option like sometimes it's you're lucky if you get it right now it seems pretty pervasive for new customers so I'll find a link to the card match for the 150k and I'll put in the show notes yeah so 150k tends to be if you're not a customer with them that's generally the easiest way to get the 150k if you are a customer you still can't get the 150k but it's just a lot less common yeah and sometimes you have to literally wait for the Flyers to come in the mail like physical paper uh and after how do you think about the strategy of going through Amex membership rewards cards or Mr as you've been saying or all their Airline Hotel cards I would do the other cards first just because they have so many other rules around it so there's something called the 456 rule so for their credit cards you can only have four or five or six of them they're charged car they're you can't say charge card anymore um they're Mr cards um don't have that rule so you can actually kind of get as many of them as you want at any time so you generally want to start at the credit cards first because that just makes more sense like to start those clocks because that's going to be like your bottleneck okay and that's all the Mary Delta Marriott Hilton yeah and I mean there's other cards I think there's like a cold not a Kohl's there's like a Lowe's card but like I haven't gotten that one because like that doesn't matter to me but there's cards would it be there on your quest to 50 is there an intro bonus um there is an intro bonus but I don't think it matters for me because I don't shop there but yeah yeah um I got my Toto toilet and uh low so you know there's always a value there and then what what's after that that's it right is there you Circle back to Chase or you get into the business game but I feel like that's it we we didn't talk about built at all because as great as I think built points are there's no welcome bonus there's like a secret welcome bonus that exists if you like technically if you sign up and then oftentimes in the first five days they'll like let you earn up to 50K points yeah you get five x points and it's now it's first they announce that it's official and then they announced that it's random and it's not official so I don't want to promise it but I think if you want a card to earn 3x points on on travel and or 3x points on dining great but if you pay rent it makes sense I would still put it in a back burner after American Express though or maybe like at the same time as American Express the rationale being that the intro bonus like the multiplier sounds nice on the surface but if you're someone that's a low spender you're better off using that brand to help hit intrapitnesses so like if you're someone who doesn't spend that much on everything else but you're paying New York or Bay Area or anywhere rent that 500 or 1000 or 2 000 and spend like you can earn 1X that sounds great but like you're better off just literally hitting a full-on intro on this and paying like maybe two percent fees okay so you're arguing that because the intro bonus is so big let's use a practical example you get a card spend let's say you live in New York your rent is 4K um you could easily use that 4K to hit the CSP in trip on so 60k points if you put on the adults you're getting four thousand points so you're looking at 60 000 points versus four thousand points and the fact that most intro bonuses are repeatable you're kind of better uh like you're better off going down the intrap on this list that makes sense and going for an intro bonus each month even if you have to pay 80 in fees on one card you're paying four thousand you're getting a sixty thousand Point bonus and spending eighty dollars in fees and on the other you're spending four thousand you're getting four thousand points but no fees yeah because the net amount is positive so like even if you use enough credits to offset the fees you're paying it just makes Financial sense like the math works out yeah it's almost what do you what would you say have you done the math what is a average kind of percent back in points or intro bonuses I would say for cashback equivalent probably about 20 to 30 percent for travel stuff 30 to like 80 like Southwest ones like we've seen some pretty crazy offers there uh because they also have just like lower minimum spends oftentimes business tends to be around about 11.1 percent give or take yeah okay so when you say 2025 you mean it's kind of like if your Amex Gold Card earns four points per dollar on groceries for the amount of money you spend on the intro bonus you're earning effectively 25 points per dollar you you could say that yeah yeah I mean it's different per card and if you spend money past the intro bonus it's not the same uh but the argument for so for dining I feel like that's it still makes sense that intrepidnesses are better but that's still 4X what built you're only looking at One X so like that that is a pretty big difference to me okay I think that makes sense okay that was a lot uh I think people have probably been convinced at least to look into the intro bonus game a little bit more if they haven't and what's the cap how many cards are you at um north of 50 but yeah and no problems like do you feel like when you were in that home stretch doing the last from 40 to 50 you were still getting approvals that's why American Express was towards Dan so like I think if you actually map out things properly you can easily do that it's not a problem in terms of managing I think some people will be like oh that's a lot of work you can automate a lot of it using either code or just like building your own stuff or even if you don't want if you want to keep it very manual you can set a lot of the dates around the same time so for example like all my Chase cards close on the first of each month or like like almost as close it is as I could make it to like the end of the month because like everything just closes there and then all my AmEx cards like close mid-month that way why does that matter mostly just to make your life simpler like if you are trying to like hey like if someone's like 50 cards like how do I deal with paying these off and but whatever I'm using all 50 regularly yeah I'm not using all 50 but I'm saying I think just even like if mentally if like it's weird for you to be like I don't want to look at my cards every single day of a month potentially for some weird fraud charge or something it's just easier to like maybe set like one or two dates in a month as like dates that you like like even look at stuff but yeah I know you don't need to use most of the cards I just link all my cards to I use copilot but you can use any other tool link all your cards you'll see all the transactions come up so you know I don't I don't think I've reviewed my transactions uh on the card issuer sites for a while yeah so I think that also works if you have like an aggregator but yeah for the most part you don't really I I think it's a lot less stressful than you think it is I think if you're coming from zero cards or like three cards to 50 that sounds very intense but if you're someone who's already at like eight to ten it's you're used to it like at this point it's like going to the gym like you're like oh cool yeah and so 50 cards that's easily I've got to assume at least 75 000 points per bonus give or take yeah and I think to be fair a lot of the bonuses were easier to get back in the day as well like Bank of America was substantially more lacks with their intro bonuses and like how many cards you could get yeah okay any any other things to keep in mind especially on Amex when it comes to how many times you can get a bonus so it's technically once in a lifetime I think there are some like form inkling saying that maybe it's like once every 10 years but like I just don't want to rely on an exception uh yeah for most people I would lean towards American Express towards the end unless you know that you don't want to get that many cards because not everyone does or you're just a very high spender like if you're someone if you're a food reviewer in New York and you spend like 10K a month then yeah the gold card probably works out for you yeah and and so we said we'd talk about cash back briefly if someone's thinking this is great I want to earn a lot of value I want to open cards but when it comes to using my points I just find that I don't get the value I want and if you're ending up using your points to just book in the travel portal on Amex or city is it even worth playing the points game or is it worth considering cash back cards I think you still can go for intro bonuses because that's still it's the same math it drives the needle the most um setup wise you might be looking at different cards so I think Chase still kind of works pretty well for cashback uh Bank of America is another consideration now because they have like these really good cards that you like earn up to 5.25 on a lot of transactions and like 2.26 I think on like six two five yeah 2.625 on everything else yeah so I think there is a play for that um especially if you just want something super simple Amex I think a lot of people get pissed off because they're like wait I only get 0.6 cents in value for my points and that's not very good uh you can get the swab card in order to get like 1.1 cents so that's a bit better but the swap Platinum yeah but then at the same time you're like well if you don't TR if you're someone that's focused on cashback you tend not to travel in which case the Platinum Card becomes a lot harder to like recommend and use so it's that weird dilemma where you're like technically Platinum Card might make Financial sense because I spent so much and that increases my earned rate but I don't travel so this card is not useful other than for that earn rate bonus yeah I think if you want to earn points and you want to use them without having to go to the hassle of transferring Chase is probably going to be best cap one city one I think is really tough because you only get 0.5 cents per Point unless you use like the saver but Adventure X kind of becomes like out of the equation okay even if you're booking in their portal if you booked through their portal then you oh yeah if you're doing but if you're like purely purely cashback then I would say Capital One other than the saver a saver one would not be on my list uh cities also not bad portals still only one cent but uh you could also cash out at one cent per point which is pretty nice okay and then for people we talked about rent right one way that you could hit These intro bonuses because some of them you know spend a few thousand dollars if you don't have that spend or if you want to do it do a lot of them even run some in tandem um you know you could just pay fees are there other ways you've seen people get successful are there other good ways to kind of increase your spend to hit these bonuses without necessarily adding to your expenses for the year yeah I think you can speak to this pretty well um if you're the group trip planner that works out very well especially if you have like more wealthy friends for like a bachelor party or something if everyone's paying you a ton of money and then you're putting up hotels uh meals are obviously another one I think a lot of people also end up starting businesses as a means of earning more points and then eventually ironically that ends up becoming like a profit Center and say oh I can make a lot of money here so I've seen people like flip things or like more do more like Drop Shipping style stuff where you can get a lot of points and also get money like I've run into people who are like yeah I run 100K in ads I like make a crap ton of money but it's like I started this because I was trying to figure out how to get more points yeah I met someone recently who I think he said makes spends four million dollars a month for his business on I I can't remember which Amex it was I I would be so sad if it was like a platinum card because you could just be earning twice as much but at that point I'm like if you're earning four million four Millions yeah I was gonna say I was gonna guess the business gold for ads but then it was all four Mills a lot that's a lot yeah I guess AMX might be the only card that would give you a limit to do that uh Capital One Venture X business is also like a charge card where it's uncapped okay yeah and two weeks back and everything I know that's what that's what this person should have that's why that's why I think it's like the best new card right now or like the best business card arguably same with the spark hash Plus yeah spark Cash Plus had the best intro bonus when I got it it was 250 000. but it's just the fact that it's uncapped because like MX unless you're doing like 5K plus purchases then you get 1.5 X on the Platinum business but like everything else is like capped off like the blue business plus that's only 50k like yeah you're gonna burn through that yeah if you're a high spender Amex doesn't have a great everything card okay so we talked a lot about earning points we talked a lot about what's coming let's talk a little bit about how do we how we use them we I think the two of us have gotten a chance to do a lot of exciting International maybe some domestic kind of these aspirational trips if people are sitting on points and thinking what are some amazing ways to use them what are some of your favorites and your highlights whether it's Airline cabins destinations or specific properties I think if you have a player two you should probably ask them where they want to go that's a good starting point because for a lot of people that's how they actually convert their partner to get into credit cards because they're like why are you focused on these points this sounds dumb but when you take them to the place they want to go they're like oh this is really nice wow why were we flying economy before when we comply business I think in terms of I lean more towards Hotel still in terms of value because I think you get so much more time there and also you can have two people flights are fun but they feel so much more finite I think Bora Bora Maldives are obviously the go-to ones and I think some people argue it's a bit overrated as someone that likes to snorkel and like enjoy the water I really like it and then the fact that I can check it off the bucket list is fun as well yeah no Seychelles yet that's on the list for 24 24. okay yeah yeah there's the new the new Waldorf oh we did two Hiltons there I don't know if they're both still there um yeah I think we were looking to that initially and then when we heard that the Waldorf was opening 2024 I was like oh okay let's just do that instead yeah some of those aspirational stays have been great but even domestically I feel like you've been done Ventana which is one of the best values of Hyatt points out there despite being a lot of higher points yeah I think that one's an interesting one it's not for everyone like I've heard you either love it or you hate it so I like it because it's a means for me to like reconnect with environment and kind of like get away from everything as someone who's like constantly connected to like technology so as someone like I grew up like camping and doing a lot of that stuff so it was the closest I could get to that while still keeping Mandy happy because Mandy just does not like Outdoors stuff for whatever reason she's also sitting there right now uh so yeah I think that was like the closest she got to glamping which is kind of funny and also sad yeah I I've been there for a wedding and we were too cheap to book a room at the wedding rate and there was nothing with points so we booked a like a room at a hotel down the street and I have not been back yet yeah I think it's nice it's probably worth at least like one weekend it's just a nice little Escape that's nearby yeah so we hit the most obvious spots are there a few properties that aren't quite as wild as you know these honeymoon destinations that you think are are interesting spots to check out around the world or even domestically so not really a points one but you can use points to like get their booking through portals Pharaoh Islands is like still our favorite vacation that like we pretty much paid out of pocket for so it's like this little islands that is owned by Denmark I believe that's like between like London um Iceland and like uh yeah like basically up there it's like a tiny Islands they have these puffins there it's beautiful that's kind of what you imagine Iceland to be but like even nicer in a lot of ways just super picturesque awesome okay then last what have been your top Airline cabin experiences if someone's like I'm saving some points up and I just want to have a wild experience in the sky uh where do you think your points can take you right now because I know a lot of the past like getting Emirates first used to be a little bit more accessible fees can get pretty high what do you think's the best bang best bang for buck would probably be a a given just the ways you can book it and like the value of the cabin and also the fact it's like one of the best first and also business class if anything it's the best business class cabin right now so I think that's like where the value is I think in terms of like crazy experience I mean Etsy had first Apartments is still nice I don't like to solve products they they were kind of mean but it's fine but their hard product is nice it's like very big and where can you get what's the way to get etiod Etihad you could book through American Americans probably the best way okay um or you can book through I think their points but it might not be that advantageous uh they used to have a lot of more routes but then since the shutdowns and stuff the routes only recently opened back up so I think London to Abu Dhabi or is it France Abu Dhabi is uh the main one right now that has the new cabin okay and so American points pretty hard to get um is it just is your stash of American points just American cards or how did you build up an American balance enough to do it's mostly American cards and like we don't have that many anymore so sometimes we actually even like buy it if the math makes sense so they'll have like promotions where they'll uh be like we'll give you an extra 40 points so for us I'm like Okay cool so that means I can book first class for about like twenty two hundred dollars I'm like that still makes sense so like I think there is a stage where if you're comfortable especially if you're like reviewing stuff there is a case of buying points because like at a certain point you do run out of points yeah I actually I watched someone do the math on Wyndham points and so Windham points using the book of a casa you can get some good deals but at times and I think recently there was one of those times where you could book Wyndham points for less than a penny a point and so to transfer your points to Wyndham was actually a worse deal than to redeem them for statement credits and just buy the Wyndham points yeah same thing with IHG where like their points are terrible value-wise and like there's almost no use case where you're getting at least one semper point so we're better off either just booking through the portal or just like cashing it out um but that's also why I'm kind of like wanting to switch from Delta because I have a lot of business spent anyways and I'm going to work status I'm like do I like for my end result so I want to have let's say 200 000 Delta miles or do I want 200 000 American and American has so much more value while I'm sitting on like 1.2 or I'm sitting on an astronomical amount of Delta Miles because I haven't had a good use case like I've been waiting for Delta flash sales to come back and they just did but like other than that like I don't want to spend 400k for a business class one-way flight so if someone's listening and they have half a million Delta points how do you use Delta points to get good value it's either Delta flash sales are kind of treating them like cash and like Southwest miles where you like get fixed value and if you're fine with that that's great like for cash back focused or like economy travel it's not bad but like if you're looking for outsized Value it's tough is there ever a way that you'd find I remember we took our honeymoon to the Seychelles and it was 120 000 Delta points on Air France partner Awards on Delta are there deals ever to be had so there used to be a lot more and it was a lot easier back in the day of partner rewards and it's not really the case anymore so uh Delta flash sales is like the main thing uh that they discontinued for like three years during the shutdowns and it just brought back in August that's uh generally when they have either Delta or partner flights that just have a lot of availability that like people aren't flying so they end up having a sale for it and it's a better value yeah I've been getting a lot of value from Delta points on just short domestic flights but it's it's like fixed value like for that you're getting like 1.3 to 1.5 like you're not getting crazy a few close to two cent values on Delta um to Mexico um booking on Delta through Aeromexico and it was actually like a two two and a half cent value even in business so there is also another trick that I think I haven't talked a lot about because I wasn't sure if it was a good idea but if you actually don't fly from the U.S if you leave from Mexico you can still get good value from business class on Delta on Delta through Partners okay so like if you flew to like Mexico City to fly some other airline to like Korea or something then it's not going to cost you 400 000 points it might only cost you like a hundred thousand points okay so if you live in Texas it might be a good deal get to Mexico City and go if you live on the west coast and have kids it might sound like them yeah I don't think I would do that if you had kids yeah yeah it's not on the table awesome any any other cool deals hacks like that you know in the miles world that you want to share before we take off um nothing I can think of too much right now yeah I think for the most part that's it this was so awesome if you want any links to any of the cards we talked about you can go to all the hacks.com cards except a few Sebastian let people know where to find those and everything else you're working on for City cards or for other cards where you want to run the numbers and like play off the calculator we have that on asksabi.com you can find me on YouTube at ask sebi and then ask sebby business yep we'll link to everything in the show notes Sebastian thank you so much for being here thank you for having me

Channel: All the Hacks

Views: 50,878

Keywords: All The Hacks, Chris Hutchins, Travel Hacks

Id: p9NoQFCrrOo

Length: 60min 19sec (3619 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2023