How To Get Luxury Hotels & Flights For Free Using These Hacks

 I get a call from her as soon as I land and she's like freaking out. I'm like, what's going on? And so she's like, did you see what happened? And I was like, no, what happened? And she's like, we got upgraded to the presidential suite. No way. Worth 30 grand a night. Yeah, so I got a $30,000 night room for 400 bucks. I asked you, I was like, bring the value and you brought the value. Eli, we're in Austin, Texas. My man, I have a gold AMX card after seeing you speak at Carlton Dennis's event. And we've had multiple conversations. You're one of my favorite people to talk to because your life giving you care deeply about the people in your life. And you're also talking about a subject that I find lots of people lean in when I even talk about it. I know about 10% or less of what you know when it comes to the possibilities of living an amazing life with using credit card points. And you actually have a business where you help people day in and day out, maximize their spending, utilize credit cards and then do amazing stuff on the back end. Tribs, my hope is to make this a master class on, you know, why we should listen to you. But I would love every single person that's watching this or listening to this to maybe have one takeaway that makes their life better because of the hacks that you're going to give us on how to live more intentionally using credit cards. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, thanks for having me here and excited to share it. And I think it's a really powerful thing because so many people overlook it. And when you think about once you start to do the numbers on the value that this can provide for an individual, specifically business owners or investors, people I have a little bit of higher, you know, lifestyle spend or business spend, you think about how much time and effort it takes to get a credit card and the potential return. It's like the opportunity for how little effort it takes is one of the highest leverage things that people can do. So and it's fun, it's tactical. And a lot of amazing experiences. So I'm really excited to share more. I'm going to set the stage and see if you approve. So I'm at Costco and they have I fly Southwest quite a bit and they have you can buy $500 Southwest cards for $450. But that that day they had an additional rebate of $20 in addition. So I did the math and I was like, I'm already I'm going to fly Southwest. And so I bought $2,500 the max amount I could buy during that time. Sure. And I got and I essentially got 16% savings on guaranteed spending. So after doing the math, I'm getting 16% on my actual spending. And I also get to use my ink ink card. So I get some type of benefits there. And so but is that an example of like credit card hacking is like do something that you're already going to do. I don't think you're endorsing like spending money that you don't have. Correct. If you're already going to spend money and you can spend it on this piece of plastic versus this piece of plastic and actually get better results. It's an example of getting a return on spending. It totally is. Yeah. And you you actually just nailed like if there was one key kind of metric that you want to look at. Yeah. Well, there's really two but return on spend is like the core thing. And that's because like if you look at okay, a cashback card generally gets you 2% back. If you have a points card and then you can use those points more effectively. Like we're seeing our clients get average like 7 to 9% back when we when we optimize. Yeah. Yeah. And that's because you can use the points more effectively than you can for cash back cash back is a fixed cap right 2% is 2% but if you get a card that earns 2 points per dollar and then you use those points at 4 cents per point, you just got 8% back. We're going to we're going to talk about all this. Yeah. Because I literally like every time I talk to people like yeah, I love points and then they're like using the portal or using their like you were getting those points for gift cards and they're using a point for a percent and we're going to go in all right. Exactly. Before we go into the minister class, why you what's your what's your story and why are you doing this as a living? Yeah. So I mean, it's about this like for a living you help people. It's it's crazy. It's the coolest thing ever. Yeah. Like when you grew up, you weren't thinking like yeah, I'm going to help people. It was baller trips of their life like have insane experiences and do it for free. It's like, what can I create that? Yeah. So I mean the back story man is at a really early age actually when I was when I was a K-Gram which kind of gave you some of the background. I had this this thing that I meant basically I had this like physical thing where I thought I was going to die for a lot as a kid and I was too afraid to talk about it to people and so there's a lot of shame and embarrassment. But what that gave me was this like really intense appreciation for like holy shit were live once and like I can go at any time. And so the first time I ever took my first ever like big trip, I was like the will do it by like oh my god the world so big there's so many experiences like I want to I want to fucking live like I want to see these cultures these experiences want to meet people. So I always had this thirst for adventure that I think came out of this kind of very early experience with what ended up not being a death experience at all but like what I thought was going to be. And so the whole point of that is I got into building another travel company in my 20s. Yeah. And we sent hundreds of people all of actually thousands of people all over the world when we were doing sports tours. So we would take you the sports teams and their families on international trips. Yeah. And so I got to lead trips all over the world. I saw people families coming together and sharing these beautiful experiences and really coming alive and like yeah having these incredible trips. Yeah. So I always fell in love with that. But the way I got into the points thing was because when I was in my early 20s I had no money. Yeah. And I just just like all my big problems. Big problem. Yeah. And I went to a school where everyone was a finance degree and they go to Wall Street. So my friends are making a lot of money. I didn't really have any. My tour company at the time was spending a lot. So it all led to this thing where I was like oh if I figure out points. Yeah. I can travel with my friends and not have to take a corporate job. I can also help the company save money. So I just started learning. And then the first moment that I got obsessed with this. I'm 23 years old. Yeah. And I'm walking onto the plane going down to Jetbridge at Delos Airport in Virginia. And I'm looking down at the ticket. And I'm like I make $24,000 a year right now. This ticket would have cost me six grand. I paid $5.60. So I was like this is 25% of my income in my hand. And I hardly paid for it. And I'm flying first class over to Europe. So I was like I have to learn everything about this. So I knurled out and then started a side hustle. Thought it would be just like a fun little side gig. And then turned into a brand and then it kind of just exploded. And obviously there was more intention outing that. But like that was that was generally the story. Well and every time you talk to people about this because I know this because I'm not even an expert. But I'm like talking to people about this and they're like they want to know so much. It's like I think deep down inside we like get it really quickly. And we're like if you can show me how to do this it resonates. Yeah. A return on spend. I love that. Okay. So in my my basic way of viewing at this there's really two steps. There's the cars that you're getting to maximize the points. And then there's the maximizing the points on the back end. And so mistakes that I think people are making is they're not getting the best cards to maximize points. But then when they have the points they're not maximizing them as well. I'm using the word maximize week. We could maybe find a better word. But let me know if is there more steps to this or like you yeah you walk. Yeah we have three step former that way that I kind of created. I have two steps you have three steps three steps. There's seven steps. Yeah. I like I like the third step because it's going to touch on one of the piece because you're right. Yes. Those first two. So you can say maximize your points. Which are you earning the most points and the most effective points where every dollar you spend. That's good. That's really good. You have to have the right points. And all points are creating. No it's like currencies and be like yeah. Hey Caleb. I'm going to be 500,000 pesos. You'd be like no I want USD. Yeah. You would be USD right. That's really good. So you need the right type of points. So and that's different for everyone based on what they spend on where they fly the airport they're close to their goals. Like different currencies kind of matter differently for different people. The second step is to multiply the value of the points. So in example if you wanted to take a $10,000 trip you go to Amex travel you're getting one cent per point. Yes. And if you multiply the value let's say you get four cents per point that trip is essentially 75% off. Yes. I love that. Yeah. So that's huge. So if you get those two steps right you're crushing it. The third step is going to be to optimize and upgrade your travel. So that's going to be like are you maximizing the perks the benefits the lounges the sweet upgrades you're getting into hotels. Are you getting you know free bags when you try it's just like the little things throughout are you skipping the lines of the airport. So that's like a side benefit that you get from having the right cards. Yeah. But it's definitely a key thing because if you can be getting a $1,000 night sweet upgrades for free. Yeah. Whenever you travel for a conference like this that elevates your experience it makes things way more enjoyable. Okay. And that come from the right cards because you unlock status you unlock benefits you unlock things that most people don't realize that they could get. Yes. And and that just makes the experience much more comfortable luxurious. Easful. Better. Okay. So should we start with step one step one. Yes. Yeah. How do we maximize the right points. Yeah. So when we do something like like I call it setting up a point multiplier machine because that's what we want to do. We want to multiply amount of points you're getting. But there's three steps that you want to basically review the current cards that you have and look at are they earning the right points and are they earning the most possible based on my spend. Okay. Then what you want to do is you need to get the right cards that do earn better points in the right points. So I'm going to high level and then we'll dive in. And then the third piece that to that element is you want to just make sure you have the right expenses on the right cards because what happens for a lot of people. Yep. Is they actually have some of the right cards where they have the wrong expenses on those cards. So an example would be they have an AMX gold and an AMX platinum and they're like well the platinum is the best card because the most expensive is the shiniest. And so they go to dinner and they throw it on the AMX platinum thinking that that was the smart move. When reality the gold even though it's a lower cost card it earns four times as many points for groceries and dining. So when you're shopping for those things if you're using a platinum you're getting 25% of what you should. Yep. Easy change. Two seconds. So that's a really basic one. Same thing with the ads and stuff like that are software and a business. People just throw everything on a business platinum card. In the business gold earns four points per dollar on software advertising, dining, things like that. And so if you have that card on those expenses you're juicing your points. So that's kind of the philosophy but there's the key is the right points too. So there's different types of points here. And the way to kind of chunk these out is there's what we call transferable points. And then there's non transferable points. So what that means is there's points that you can earn with these banks that have partnerships with airline and hotel loyalty programs. And you have to earn these because this unlocks the potential to get better value from the points. Yeah, that's the example of USD versus pesos. Exactly. Yeah, so that's yeah, because like so Chase partners with Hyatt, they also partner with Southwest and also partners with you know, Avianca and United, right? Yeah. So if you have Chase points you have options to transfer points when you need to, but if you only earn Southwest miles, you're only flying Southwest. That's it. Yeah. And so having that flexibility allows you to actually extract maximum value from the points. So the two I typically recommend there are Chase and Amex. There's a few others too. City, Capital One and built is a new one that's on the scene, which is actually really cool for paying your rent. Yes, it's a new new thing. So if you start with those right points and then you look at which of those cards that earn those points, give me the most based on my spending. Yes, then you're starting to optimize. Okay, so I know you do this for a living like most people or like just you do an audit. If they weren't going to work with you directly, like how do you even begin? Like is there tools online that someone could be like, how do I audit my spending and figure out what cards that I should get? Yeah, sure. I mean, there's a couple of ways to do it. You can do it quickly manually and just eyeball it and be like, okay, no, everyone spends on groceries and dining. Yeah, you're going to eat food. Amex Gold. Amex Gold. Okay. Great card for anybody. Yeah. There's like different playbooks too. Yeah. Some people may want the Chase version of that, and there are some great like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. She's Sapphire Preferred are great cards too. There's Chase Freedom. But like basic level, I love the Amex setup because it's really simple and easy and everyone's familiar with Amex typically. So you could look at those. There are some apps. There's an app called card pointers. That's more for helping you store the cards and organize them. And so what that does is like all the cards you get when they have benefits and credits and not stuff, you can start to just like track what you're utilizing there. And it will tell you, hey, it even has like geo location. It'll be like, you're walking into Chipotle and it'll be like, hey, you're Chipotle, you're your Amex Gold. So that is helpful for organization. But otherwise, yeah, you kind of just need to do some research really and just figure out. But the biggest thing is if you don't know what you spend on, yeah, then then you're kind of in the tough spot. So you're a fan of budgeting? I'm not so tracking. I'm more yeah, more just tracking things are paying attention. I'm not like a big budget guy, but you got to know the categories. You have to know the categories. Yeah, and just because like also be careful like what it codes at. So there's a tool called the it's called a there's a website called a ward wallet, which actually sinks all of your points in one place. Wow. But they built a tool called the reverse merchant look up. So yeah, some people have way too much time on their hands. Well, this does you can type in the merchant you're about to spend at. And then it will tell you what that merchant codes as on your credit card. Because some people will go, let's say you pay a marketing agency. Yeah. And you're like, well, that's I'm paying them for on ads. It's like, no, you're paying the agency. The agency is paying Facebook. So Facebook codes as ads, but your agency's not. So they're a contractor. Yeah. So you want to make sure you know the right categorization of like what the merchant actually be. That's like really near level stuff for most people to be on what they need. Yeah. Yeah. But that would be that'd be the recommendation. And I always recommend start simple. So like two to three personal cards and two three business cards. Your set. Most people do not want to have a complex setup. And we really advise against that because complexity is the enemy of actually yeah results. So yeah, I have business gold personal gold, a business platinum, personal sapphire, business ink. Personal, say that one more time. So on the business side, I have platinum gold ink, platinum gold ink, chase ink. And then on the personal side, gold, sapphire, that's it. Okay. Yeah. That's all set up. I mean, that's great. So it's just but I guarantee you I'm not I got the gold because you yelled at me in a nice way. Dude, why are you not have a gold? So I just start spending money on gold. But I don't I don't have a game plan on like I still I'm the person that has to better understand my categories. Yeah. Yeah. So you're getting like you're you're definitely getting like some really solid high leverage points earnings now. Yeah. Because you switched to the right program chase name. So amazing. And you have some of the highest earning card. So generally speaking, that's good. The next thing we want to look at is are there other categories that were spending on that you're not optimized on? Yeah. And then for those, do you have are you using those cards like on the wrong expenses? Probably. Yeah. So there could be a couple other cards that we want to throw in there depending on you spend. You can also put payroll on a card. You can also put your mortgage on there's ways to put little talk to me about those two things because our mutual friend does that. And I'm like, I just I want to I want to sell me on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I guess here's the point. It does cause you three three percent. Yeah. But you're saying if it costs me three percent and I can get a six cent benefit, I'm arbitraging 100% is that is that that's no you know that yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think this way. Let's say you're going to spend on something with your mortgage. Yeah. 100 grand on payroll. Yeah. You're going to pay three percent fee. That's three thousand dollars. Okay. If you have a card that earns two points per dollar. So this would be like the capital on venture X or venture X for businesses. Two points per dollar on two points per dollar on everything. So if you earn if you have that card, you're earning two thousand you'd be earning on a hundred thousand dollars. You'd earn two hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. Two. Okay. If you use this effectively could be like a million dollar value. No. Two hundred thousand points will be worth probably on average for like for me, that's worth an average of like eight to ten grand. So I'm saving a five. Yeah. Five to seven. And when I said million dollar value when I meant million dollar points, but so you just you would get say yeah, you're saying so you would get the value of like six hundred to eight hundred thousand points. Exactly. You know you have two hundred. Yeah. Like the normal way you could compare like that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. If you just want to think cash value, again, if I get eight percent back and I spend a hundred K, I'm getting a grand and I'm spending three thousand to get that. The other piece in this is not tax advice or anything like that, but that three percent fee. If it's a part of it's a part of your business expenses, you that's here. I don't know if that's don't do it. That's kosher or not, but uh, but that would be, you know, but that would be a fee that goes to the company. Yeah. And the points can be used for personal travel with no tax implications. Yeah. So this is another epiphany that I had maybe two years ago. I was like points are probably the greatest tax loophole in the tax code and hear me out here because you can spend money on business, but then personally use the points. And I'm that's not even like a under the table like that's yeah, like they know you're doing that. They know. Yeah. And so technically, that's why technically you get a lot of millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars of points and pretty much live tax-free. Yeah. Can't be done. That's why I try to start two companies that spent a lot of money in the last four years. You know, he's done for your e-commerce companies. There was two times where I was like, dude, I know you run this done for you thing and like you're going to get me proud. I'm like, I don't care. Just spend a hundred grand amount on my card, please. Yeah. And make sure I break even don't lose money. That's great until they stiff you. Have that ever happened? No, the company's both failed anyway. That's it. It was a terrible idea. That's called the tail wag in the dog, which I also advise against. That's an example of someone doing a tax strategy. Um, but they actually spend a lot more money in the process. And so it's like they're actually not living wealthier. Yeah. They're just trying to like not pay the government. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I end up losing more money. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So I'm interested in psychological patterns and that. But uh, but yeah, so you're totally right. I tell you right. I mean, um, is one of the it's one of the craziest things because you do those numbers and especially for big trips like that's where I love to specialize in our team does is like big trip like like the life change in like $50,000 mall deep strip. And if you think about that, you're taking a distribution for your company and using after tax money for that trip, you're paying taxes on that. Right. And if you don't have to use that, you don't have to go on that. Yeah. I mean, in a way, in a way, it could be, I mean, that could be like a 65, $70,000 trip after tax. Exactly. But then if you could do that all in points, I mean, dude, that's wild. Yeah. If you start looking at the compound effect of this, okay. So anything else that we need to talk about on step one, so we covered the only thing is you want a lot of people think they need to get the airline card based on like where they fly a lot, right? In their local airport. So here's the here's the thing on that getting the right cards needs to be custom built to the individual. For I'm just going to give you the quick rule of thumb on status. And if you should have the airline cards because you should not be earning, you shouldn't just have the airline card for miles. If you're going to have an airline card, it's mostly going to be for the benefits you get like free bags and stuff like that. And that can be a good reason to do it. Or because you're going to get status because a lot of these airlines actually change their programs to where you're going to get top level status through spending your way there. So like gelton American, you can get the highest level status without flying a single mile. You could just spend. And so if our high spend individual, that can make sense. Now, the basically there's not kind of some conditional thinking on this, but like if you're going to travel a lot, you fly one airline consistently and you can hit the top level status then in your card plan, it may actually make sense to have an airline card or two because the benefits are going to be worth it. But most people what they end up doing is like, well, I fly United because of November, I fly once a month and they get they do all their spending on a United card. And then they don't really get top status. They're not even getting upgrades. Because if you live in a big hub like United, like in your competing amongst opponents against a bunch of people have top level status, you're not going to get the upgrades. So now you just had a huge opportunity cost of your spend on the wrong card and those points aren't as valuable. So that's the thing with with status. You want to be aware hotel status is kind of different, which is where I think everyone should have some hotel status because it's so easy. Yeah, which and that's where you recommend a platinum because it makes it easy to different cards. We can get that in the third step. But but I would just say rule of thumb on hotels. If you're staying in a hotel 20 to 30 nights a year, getting status will be meaningful because like some of these suite upgrades are 500,000, 2000, 4000 dollars a night. Yeah. And you get a few of those. It's like tens of thousands of dollars potentially in free travel benefits that you get from having status. But you still only really want to get it if you go to the top level. And that's why the Amix platinum isn't optimal for that because it only gives you gold status, which is like, you might get a nice corner room, but you're not getting the big like I'm the kid. I'm the guy in the corner room. Yeah, I got an upgrade. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And look, that's cool too. But like, but like you could be getting big suites. You could be getting, you know, one bedroom of suites. I've gotten upgraded to this was the most insane one. I can tell a quick story in this. Yeah. Okay. So I'm I'm in Denver, Colorado flying back to New York to meet my girlfriend for Christmas two years ago. We're going to New York City. We're early into our relationships. I want to impress her. So I booked the park high at New York City five star property epic epic place. Base rooms are like 1200 bucks a night. And I used 45,000 points. It was already pretty good deal. So over half off like what you would get through the Amix portal or chase portal. So I'm already excited. But I have global status because I have the right cards and I stay in high. It's a lot. So I get a call from her as soon as I land and she's like freaking out. I'm like, what's going on? Because she arrived early. I brought her in early because I was flying from Denver. And so she's like, did you see what happened? And I was like, no, what happened? And she's like, I can't tell you right now you have to get here. And I was like, is this good? Is it bad? Yeah. Yeah. Please. Like freaking out. We got upgraded to the presidential suite. No way worth 30 grand a night. You like, did you feel like a total ball? Yeah. Almost like new new girlfriend like girl, I'm going to end up marrying like she got it to their like, oh, we've upgraded. She walks in. It's a 2300 square foot apartment. It comes with a butler. It has been like, it was insane, dude. Yeah. It was on 45,000 points. Yes. You got that experience. Yeah. So I got a $30,000 night room for 400 bucks. Basically. That's why I'm yeah. So and I'm not, yeah, I'm not trying to promote that. I will have for you. But stuff like that happens. I've gotten. I mean, that's one off. It's increasing your luck surface. It will, we guarantee you it won't happen if you're not making the right. Yeah. And getting it's never happened for me. Getting sweets that are a thousand bucks, 2000, 3000 night. Yeah. That is very common. Okay. Yeah. So one other thing I want to say, then I'd love this conversation. So I also a lot of the credit card, like it gold platinum and sapphire, I believe. And then even ink, all of them had some type of sign on bonus. So great. The problem is what I already got the sign on bonus. I know that there's some people that like have a freaking tons of cars. Rolled out of cards. Yeah. Like they're like cycling them out. Does that hurt your credit? Like what is the strategy? Like I'm like, guy, that has the same sapphire for the last five years. Yeah. In my dumb, like, do you do that kind of stuff or do you cycle them out? Like help me understand. Yeah. How do I continue to maximize in that in that area? I'll tell you how you should probably think about it. And I'll tell you what I do because there's probably two separate things. I mean, I'm a nerd. I'm a new engineer. So I have like 40 credit cards. Okay. But I'm not saying, I don't I don't recommend that to any of our cars. Yes. Yeah. It's overwhelming. It's a lot. Yeah. And I've been doing this for 10 years and I get a nerd. So for you, I always again, three to five core cards is the key. Getting them more periodically is fine. But here's the key is your credit impact, especially for people that are probably listening to this. Maybe they're in real estate investors. Yeah. It's pretty important. Right. So for us, actually, for our clients, their credit score tends to go up because we're also looking for ways to optimize the credit profile that they're typically missing on, which I can talk about if you want. But the key here is first off, business credit doesn't report business cards don't report to your personal credit score. Okay. The inquiry for the card will, but some of these banks, you're going to get a soft inquiry like AMX after you have your first card, the second card, third card, fourth card, fifth card are generally soft pulls. And if it's a business card to soft pull, then on your credit report, there's like no evidence of it even happening. So totally good on that side. Other business cards, usually, well, you'll have an inquiry in some banks will allow you to get two cards in the same day for one inquiry. So you want to like strategically do that kind of thing if you can. And then if you get like a personal card one or two a year, as long as you have a few other older personal cards on your credit profile that balance out the average age of history on your report, then your score is not going to be dropping significantly. Yeah. If you have really new credit and low credit, then there's some strategies that can share around boosting your overall score so that that can help. But generally speaking, one to two new cards a year isn't going to hurt you. But a lot of people just want to have the set playbook go, what do you do? Like what I wouldn't just cancel my sapphire and get into one. Yeah, it's a great question. What do I do with my personal sapphire? I get new businesses like and technically every business that I start, I could credit card hack. But like what if what on the personal side, I have a personal gold personal sapphire? How do I how should I look at that? Great question. So for those, what you want to do is you decide that you evaluate, is this going to still fit into my spend category? Am I getting the value? And then you look at the annual fee and be like, is it worth it? Because some cards don't have fee. Right. And so if that's the case, then what you want to do is you definitely want to keep it open. And you want to put like one recurring payment on it, even if you don't use it. I've got cards from 12 years ago, like Wells Fargo cards. I don't use them ever because they're not good for not great points cards or anything. But I just put on a recurring subscription every month because it keeps the card open, which means my average age and credit history stay. And number two is if it's a five dollar payment or a five thousand dollar payment, as long as it's on time, you're building up your payment history, which is your number one factor of credit. So what you want to do for your cards, if you decide you look at them, hey, not getting the value on this one, this one I am cool, you'll keep the one that you are. And then you would downgrade your other card to a no fee version of that card. Yeah. So for your chase sapphire, you can actually downgrade to like a chase freedom. Yeah. And there's no fee on that. And then you set up the subscription, you put it in the sock drawer and you make sure auto pay is on. And then it's like, okay, cool. Now the the purpose of this card is to keep my credit history building. Yeah. So ideally for first personal cards, you don't really want to cancel them as much as you can. If it's a new card, would you then sign up again for the chase sapphire for bonus? So there's rules on how frequently depending on the bank of how frequently you can sign up. So like, Amax has what's called once in a lifetime language. Okay. Where you can only get the bonus once per lifetime per card holder. And then occasionally there are opportunities to kind of skirt around that. With with chase, for example, they have something called the 524 rule in general, which means if you have five or more personal cards in the last 24 months, you won't get any of their cards. And then with certain other cards, you can only get the bonus once every 12 months or once every 24 months or once every 48 months, depending on the card. So it's very like there's a lot of like, there's a lot of loophole. It's like the taxes, right? It's like, yeah, you can do that. If you do this, any do that. And based on your situation here, any so that's why it's like when we do the plan. Yeah. When we do this for people we're thinking about all this stuff, most people just don't know they don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone I talk to is like, I don't know. Don't understand it, but it's cool. Yeah, exactly. So any quick thing you want to say on helping someone build their credit, like you said we could touch on that briefly. Yeah. So the on time payment thing is big. That's one of the biggest mistakes people make. Number two is going to be if they're credits low to get an authorized user. So what that is like a parent, a family member, someone who just has to have one card with a high limit that has long average history and 100% on time payments. You just want the history from that card onto your report. You don't necessarily need like them to have great credit across everything. It's just the one card. What they'll do is they'll add you that card will now show up on your credit report. And when that happens, you know, you're not getting the cards. So you can't spend on it. It's not like, it's not like they're giving you the card and it's like, oh, now like if your credit goes to shit, like, yeah, they're screwed. It doesn't work like that. It's a one way street. So the credit history from that card will go to you. So one of the things people do is like their utilization is maybe high or they have a late payment. Yeah. If someone adds you where they have a 20 year old card with a $30,000 limit. Yeah. And they add you to their card. Yeah. Then all of a sudden, that's now on your credit report. And your score is going to use 20, 30, 40, 50 points. I love it. And should we be on an annual basis asking for credit increases? You can, but some banks will give you an inquiry for that. Okay. So you've got to be careful with banks. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. But I do recommend having either, I mean, I have my VA do this. Okay. But she'll negotiate annual fees. So it's no way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You reach out to the bank and be like, Hey, you have to say the word cancel. I was thinking of canceling. What can you do about this fee? And they'll either wave it partially wave it or all the most of the time what they're going to do is give you, um, they're going to say, you know, okay, we got your business. We can't wave it. But if you spend $2,000 in the next 60 days on it, we'll give you 40,000 points, which can be worth $1,000 for you. You lie. You're amazing. Yeah. I love this. Yeah. So I have a system where my VA goes through and she'll just message. I was thinking of canceling. And sometimes they say, no, if you haven't used the cart a lot, and they don't value you, you have nothing to lose though. You're thinking about canceling. Yeah. I thought about it. I'm not going to cancel. Yeah. What else can you do? Sweet and the deal. It's like this is expensive. There's a lot of perks out of nursing. Yeah. Okay. Step number two, um, if we have not already given the enough value, this has been amazing, man. Step number two is making sure your points get maximized. So what's the, what's the process there that I will say I talked, I talked to somebody who had over six million dollars or no, six million amics points, spending it all on platinum. You're going right through. I make travel, right? Doesn't have TSA pre-check and have it's never been in a, in a lounge and gets the airport three hours ahead of time. So I, you know, you know who you are. We love you. And I was just like, I have somebody that's going to frequently blow your mind. Yeah. Blow your mind. Yeah. Um, so that's an example of, and then when we were talking, they're like, yeah, what we do is we transfer that into little gift cards. I'm like, there's a better way. Yeah. I'm not able to tell you all the better way, but I will, I will make a podcast and send it to you. Totally. Totally. So tell me. Yeah. How, how you maximize your points. Yeah. Well, first of I just want to say like if they're had that many points, they've probably been very successful in other areas. They're very successful. You're focused on that is probably why you haven't gotten this right yet. So I don't blame you like kudos, you know, and I, I don't necessarily think spending 30, 40 hours research on your own is effective for most people. So, and your business. Exactly. Yeah. For the right versus. But yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so first off, we want to change the cards because six million. And I talked to a lot of people like that. They're like, no, no, I'm good. I already have a lot of points. Just I want to use them better. I'm like, yeah, I know you have a lot of points, but like wouldn't 12 million be better than six million? Yes. Let me think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Why would you over look back? You know, it's like, okay. So anyways, so using them. So, yeah. So there's different levels to using them. The worst ways are using them for gift cards, using them for cash back or using them for Amazon. Yes. And Amazon makes it so dang easy. Yeah. Yeah. It's tempting. They're like, come on. Yeah. So I have an example. I want to present to people where I'll show a visual. And it's like, this is what 225,000 points get to on Amazon. It's like a fancy vacuum. This is what it gets you through AMX travel. And it would be like basically people scrunch up an economy flying to Europe. And this is what you could make it use in. It's a couple we sent flying Singapore sweets, which is literally like, it's a seat that's bigger than this little studio room room. And there's two of them. And then in the middle, the wall comes down turns into a double bed. Wow. And so like, you can really crank up the value on these. But it's going to be through transferring them. This is like basically points arbitrage, if you will, where the bank charges one way, they base, they charge you based off the price of the ticket. Yeah. So if the cost doubles, the number of points required would double. Yeah. Airlines have something called award charts. And hotels have like hotel pricing charts, where they're not based always on the price. Yeah. They're based off of the zone you're flying to or from or the regions or whatever. Yeah. So they've very, very intentionally gamified this. This isn't like an accident to give you opportunities to leverage these points for more value. But they make it complicated enough for most people won't figure it out. Yes. So they see people like me that are winning and then like that makes you want to get a car. And they win it on your fees. Yes. Right. So they know what they're doing. Yeah. But I've talked to loyalty like the people that are in like loyalty program development at like American Airlines. Like we've talked to those people and like, it's very interesting. But basically when you do this effectively, yeah, I mean, there's two ways to think about it. You can think about getting better value, multiplying the value, or you can think about, I got this trip for 70% or 80% off what everyone else is paying for it in terms of points. So either way, but it's through converting the points to the right airlines. And those airlines are also in alliances. This is kind of where it gets a little confusing. But like I'll give you an example, I flew tons of first class back from Germany to the US. Yeah. A couple years back. This is an epic experience. They drive you. You have your own the lounges in its own private terminal. So you've got own security. There's a private jacuzzi tub, a cigar room, unbelievable food. They pick you up from that lounge in a private Porsche and drive you onto the tarmac to get on the plane. You then flying first class home. So to book that, you can't convert amics points or any points into Louftonza. They don't have a partnership. But amics is in the star lines and air Canada and Avionka both partner with Louftonza. And they both also partner with amics. So you can convert your amics points if you find the deal into one of those airlines and then book Louftonza. Now the last layer to that is like just because their partners does mean it's the best deal. Like air Canada wanted like 120,000 points to that flight. Avionka only charged like 83,000. Wow. So even finding the right partner within that helps me get the best possible deal. Okay. So just just for the person that's totally lost at home. Yeah, that was a lot. You can you can use on Amazon and you're a sucker. Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. You can use on the they make it super easy with the portal. Amics. You can go in and buy going trips. Works better than Amazon, but still don't do that. What you then can do is take your points and transfer them to other portals. And then on those portals, you get a better bang for your buck. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so how do you even begin? Because it now are getting into a little overwhelm. How is there like how do you go about looking at the values? Because I know April, my wife, she's into this stuff and she like keeps everything in AMACs until she wants to make a decision. Then she transfers and make that decision. She's not like transferring and storing what correct, you know, and I don't know if that's 100% right? Yeah. So you do not want to speculatively transfer because number one, once you transfer, you can't transfer them back. Yeah. So now you've lost the like the flexibility of those points. Yes. And number two, like the airline mile points over time will devalue. Yes. So I'd rather have my points stored in inflation. Yeah, exactly. Pointing in place is real. Yeah. And you'll see it happens overnight sometimes where it's like, I'll talk to people. They're like, I had 800,000 IHG points and overnight, they lost 40% of their value. And I'm like, yeah, it can happen. So always use them first. Don't don't don't hoard them. Burn them. And so what you want to do there, basically step one is know your your travel debts and goals. And the more flexible you are, the better. Okay. Meaning flexibility on dates, inflexible routes, specifically for international trips. Yeah. You're flying, you know, you're flying down to Austin, like, and it's a domestic flight to our flight. You want to get here for an event. You don't want to have five days of flexibility. But like I'm flying to Europe in two weeks. Yeah. I just actually booked the flight this morning. But like I had to search out of different airport hubs and different dates to find the deal. Yeah. Okay. It's out in New York. I'm going to be in DC with my family, but I'm just going to hop up to New York and take a business class flight from there. Yeah. Okay. Because that's the best experience. So now you've got that. So once you know that then you're going to start finding which airlines have the best deals and there's different tools out there that can help with the searching. Some of them are good. Some of them suck. Yeah. So it's hit or miss there. If you search manually on the site, you'll always find the deal like generally. So then you're going to search the airlines that either operate that route or are in the partner alliance of that the airlines that operate that. So the example is like if you're flying with tons of you would search on air canister and so on and so forth. Then you'd say, okay, I have the deal on air Canada, which of the points that I have can transfer to air Canada. Okay. So like I got a MX points. They can work to air Canada. Great. I know I have the deal. I'm now going to convert my points into air Canada. You basically just go into the MX travel portal. There's a section that says transfer points. You punch your loyalty number in for air Canada. You click send and then you log into air Canada and then show up. It's like a money. I love that. You're transferring. You know, you're wiring, you're wiring your point. Exactly. You're basically wiring points across and then boom, you're able to. And then you can book the ticket. Yeah. And some banks have different transfer times. This is some will be immediate. So we'll be two hours. Some can be up to like 48 hours. Okay. Which can be annoying if you're trying to get a quick deal on a point. Yeah. Anything else. I mean, I know like again, this is what you do. There's like some people that are going to nerd out about it and other people just should either work with you or like find an app that can help them be like 80%. Is there any other hacks in step number two that are like this is like a good hack to help you. Yeah. There's a lot. I mean, there's still a lot there. The hotel game works differently than the airline game. So that's just it's a different different game. But like the key there is knowing the value of each point. Yeah. This will have them with point inflation. You might see a card that says, Hey, you're gonna get 150,000 help points and people like, wow, that's way better than my 60,000 point AMX on it. But it's like, no, it's not because Hilton points are worth half of one cent. And AMX points are worth. Yeah. Like not all points are creative. Exactly. So you want to have the key take away. So you want to make sure like if you're earning these, you know where you're earning them. So that would be that would be the biggest thing. I mean, there's more to go into there for sure. Like it's kind of like an impact. Point's more valuable to you if they have more optionality. If they have more options, tied to the point is that point obviously more valuable because the the supplying demand is like. Yeah. You're just giving yourself higher odds to use them more effectively. Yeah. I love that. Oh, there is one more thing on point stuff. So this is the flight we're doing back from Europe. So and we have a philosophy called book now think later. Oh, I don't know if I like this. But I'll let's make a trip. Okay. So one of the big things is points. When you let's say you were in a book of business class ticket to Europe and you found a great deal. If you book it and it's a normal fair, a non-refundable fair, then you're going to have a credit with that airline to cancel. With points, you just cancel. Get the points back. So really, they're not going to go back to AMX, but they'll go back to the airline you hold with. Yeah. So it gives you ultimate flexibility. So here's the deal. So like I was searching for some flights just seeing what the deal was. And I saw this deal from Virgin. And I was like, holy shit, we're going to fly Virgin retreats weeks, which is basically like they're it's like a first class D in their business class cabin. So it's like a really big pod sliding door. The whole thing. And this cost 10 grand per person. I found a deal where it was only 29,000 points per person. No way, dude. Yeah. No way. Yeah. No way. So get this. And then it's a thousand bucks and taxes and fees because they're high fees for that one. Usually they're like a hundred to 200. Okay. So that's how Virgin works. But on top of that. Okay. There was a 40% transfer bonus from AMX to Virgin or from Chase to Virgin at that point. Wow. AMX has the same bonus. So I ended up paying 21,000 points. So 210 dollars plus a thousand dollars and fees got me a $10,000 seat. Wow. So those transfer bonuses. And I was talking to someone yesterday, we're helping your plan on honeymoon trips to the to Borabora. Yeah. And she doesn't have a lot of spend because a lot of people they go, I don't spend that much. This one won't work. Yeah. She spends like 5k month. So we're game planning. Yeah. Because she was like, I'm about to call my travel agent. I was about to put 25 grand down for this Borabora trip. And I'm like, thank God he talked to us first. Because I was like, we're going to get this card, this card, and this card. And then what we're going to do is we're going to use, there's a Weston Borabora with overwater billas. They have a thing called the fifth night free. So we're going to book you four nights on points. You get the fifth night for free. And what we're going to do is when you get these bonuses, we'll use these cards, we're going to use some free nights certificates combo in there. And then we're going to look for a transfer bonus because there's a lot of transfer bonuses between chasing amics to marry out very frequently. And so you get 40% extra points. So that just brings the cost down from even like 500,000 points for the week to 400,000 plus she's getting the fifth night free plus those were off of signup bonuses. So even some of that spends $5,000 a month is going to get like a $20,000 honeymoon trip from playing the game. That's amazing. There, I've heard other people will say like they buy points off of a portal. Is there any strategies there? Or is it just like, is it the whole idea? Can you buy points for a cent or a cent in a half and then use it? Like what's the strategy? Buy points can be game changers. So this is really great for people in three situations. They're spend as low and they don't have a lot of points. Okay. They're not US citizens. They can't get US cards. And therefore, they can't maximize their points. Or number three would be their credits low so they can't get US cards. Okay. So those are the three main people that are going to want this or there's just a crazy deal and it makes sense. So what you look for there is you typically are going to need to find these points when they have a buying miles bonus. So what you'll see is like sometimes they have a 50% bonus or 100% bonus. And you're going to get these points for maybe one cent per point or 1.5 cents per point and then you use them for like five or six. So an example would be you fly a $6,000 business class trip back from Japan. And you did it by purchasing miles that cost you two grand. So even if you don't have the miles already, there's sometimes where you'll find those bonuses and you spend 2K to purchase the miles that will unlock a $6,000 retail trip. So that's like a great play if you don't have, again, don't have enough miles or maybe you don't have the right type, something like that. Okay. Yeah. So the optimize and upgrade thing. So there's, this is where you get primarily there's there's three elements to it. There's going to be the airport experience, the flights and hotels. Yeah. Airport experience is really just maximizing those card benefits. TSA precheck and clear combo. You should have just have that optimized airport. You want to have as many lounge access opportunities as you have. So like the MX Platinum is great for that because you get Delta lounges when you fly Delta, which is they're great. You have the MX intering lounges and you get priority pass. Yeah. So that covers lounges in like almost any airport situation you're going to have is is covered on those. So that's great. Unless you're in Nashville. Unless you're in yeah. I mean, they have Delta, but if you're not flying Delta. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any way to get into a Delta lounge without flying Delta? No. Well, there is. But you can't say it legally. No, I can say it. Okay. I can say it. Perhaps maybe you weren't sure if you needed to fly to Detroit instead that day. And you booked a ticket on miles just in case a business event came up and you checked in and then it turns out as you're waiting in lounge, you don't need to go to Detroit anymore. And you cancel it and you get your points back. And now you're in the lounge. That's how you would do that. Okay. Just that again. Yeah. I just hypothetically speaking, perhaps you had a business deal that went through and I've never done that ever. You know, I know somebody that does that with Southwest. They do Southwest. They get it for Amex even or like they get through like they get in the airport get in the Amex lounge. You can't sell their Southwest. Eat for free in the Amex lounge to do that. They get that get out of the air. There's I know I know a guy who did that almost every day for a year in New York. He was just and it was always really like to lounge some lounges are boozy dude. Dude, there's ones. There's lounges in I've been one in Doha where it's $400 bottles of champagne. You have your own private bedroom. You sleep in like the meals are insane. So there were people that I know that were doing that and they just kept changing the ticket each day. Yeah. And they would just go in that was like their office and they would sit and think about who else is in a first class lounge in Doha. Yeah. Like he's just sitting there networking. Yeah. That's incredible. Unreal. It's totally yeah. Wow. You got caught actually. They were not very happy. But don't do it every day endorsing that. But yeah. So that would be one option to do that. Yeah. Another another quick hack like that kind of like one that people really know that's not very that's pretty gray area. I've actually never done this one. But I know people have where the book if they're an economy the book window and aisle and they'll book a third seat for the middle. And then that person just doesn't show up and they cancel it. And then like the odds of that seat being open. Very high. So you get your own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't recommend that. It's a little bit like to me. But people have done it. You're not recommended that you've definitely thought about it. But yeah. That's gonna be nice. Yeah. You sit next to a linebacker on an economy flight and you're like, I'll do anything to not have this again. So. So we're on optimize and upgrade your travel. Yeah. So status. So getting to the highest levels of status is the key. Yes. There's specifically hotels. Merriott, Hyatt and Hilton are going to be the three main months. There's IHG2 but they just don't have a lot of great properties. So here's the tradeoff of each of those. Hyatt has the best point value and am I opinion the best loyalty program? Yeah. But the least amount of hotels compared to the three. Yeah. Merriott has the most hotels. But they also have like the most the most people that have that status. So you're heating for more. And like I'd say it's the middle option there. Yeah. It's great for if you have a high frequency of travel. And then but their status is probably the hardest to get out of the three. And then Hilton has the easiest status to get but the worst point deals by a mile. Yeah. So the fast way if you just were like, I want the fastest status, the Hilton's Spyro card will get you diamond status which unlocks all the sweet upgrades to get a free night's or to forget a free breakfast every day for high speed Wi-Fi, late checkout, things like that. So that's just from holding that card with Hilton. Okay. So but that kind of ties you into Hilton which I'm not a huge fan of. Some people love it. Yeah. How much you have to spend to $0. You just get the card. You just get the card. That's why it's crazy. It's like it's the only card. So anyone get the card. Is there any downside? There's an annual fee. Okay. Of how much? I think that one's is it 500 or 600. Okay. So you you definitely need to go at least a couple times. Yeah. But it's a no-brainer card for most people like just because the annual the the sign of bonuses big. Yeah. You get a free night certificate too. Yeah. And then you have the diamonds that has on top of it. So like you're getting thousands of dollars for five and a half and the benefits of the card are good too. You have hotel, you have $200 hotel credit. You'll get lounge access. So but if that overlaps with like your AMX Platinum, then you're not really fully utilizing it. So that's where also you want to look at what are the benefits from this card and this card and how much of them are overlapping now. I just paying two fees for nothing. Yeah. So that's going to be part of it though. Hotel status is going to be after we've got that airline piece down. Hotel status is going to be the biggest lever and that's going to be between one of those three brands with a higher you can spend your way there, which is really cool. And then with Marriott, you have to hit a certain number of nights. But if you combo the right cards and then if you stay like 20, 30 nights a year, you're going to hit that. Nice. And so for high you want to get to global status, which is the highest level. Yeah. For Marriott, ideally to titanium. Yeah. Because and then for helping you want to get to diamond and those are the levels you want to be at because when you actually like you actually want real like meaningful upgrades. Yeah. You're going to get them a lot more frequently if you get there. And if you just stay at like silver status or gold status with these brands, a lot of people have that and like I got gold set with my with my Platinum card and it's like yeah and you're just not getting yeah gold is not gold. Sun is valuable is it once was no no no so okay so okay you I were you going to say another thing. Yeah. So this is a tip for yeah actually getting the upgrades. Okay. So you're going to get sweet nice certificates with these when you hit certain status milestones which basically they don't guarantee the upgrade but it basically puts you in the front of the line. And so like with Marriott, it gets sweet nice certificates after you hit like 50 nights a year something like that. You can apply those to your stay and then the chance to get the upgrade is much higher. But if you don't then your status should get you at least some upgrade. Now with that one of the things that's a great move is you want to think of the psychology of the person that is approving or disapproving that request. If you make their day and you make it easy for them to do their job then you've now set yourself up for the best odds. So you message them or you call them the day up check in the day before and you check for the dates that you're staying at that hotel and you find a room available that's in a category higher than you want. Yes. And so you would say hey you're like the deluxe corner king right now right but you really want the one bedroom sweet with the ocean view. Yep. You call them and you say hey total long shot here you some Chris Voss you know never go for no kind of thing probably a crazy request right but I saw the ocean sweet is available it's a really special trip for us. I checked all three dates. I do have platinum status I've been upgraded before that's why I love Marriott I'm so loyal to you guys if you could do that that would make my trip. So when you're walking into a hotel you know what rooms they have available not every single one but like I want yeah that are available. Okay yeah that's my biggest problem is like I don't even know a task for. Yeah yeah just go in their sight and look and you just want to see like so you booked a room whether it's on points or not. Yeah and you would just look and see what are the higher category rooms that are available. I mean you like shoot it's better to shoot for one that's reasonable. Yeah because if you're like hey can you give me the president. Yeah exactly you're like you're gold status. Yeah but there's chill out gold. Yeah though but you're in the corner room okay but if you if you ask for one that's like you know it's like if you're asking for a pay increase at work like if you make a hundred K and you want like I want a million they're like shut up but we're like hey 120 and they're like all right now we're talking so that can help but that's that's a big difference too because otherwise the person is behind the desk and they're just probably mind-numbingly bored and they're like oh well upgrade K-Lip to the corner room. Yeah but they're not like and I hear upgrade and I'm like thank you. Yeah you're pumped already yeah yeah exactly so I'm a big fan of that and I'm a big fan also of being polite and kind because it's like and I felt it before myself which I had to check myself where I was like it's easy to start to get entitled with the stuff. I'm like we're lucky that this game even exists exactly so that's a big thing too yeah Eli so many good things okay so Hilton's easy for me just get the card yeah okay help me understand Mary-I I think Mary-I's the one I really want to get to titanium what would be what's my path to get to titanium there so you need to stack so the 75 qualifying nights is how you get there okay and in a one year and one year but when you get the cards they come with qualifying nights okay so you can stack two cards together and one with them comes with 25 nights and one comes with 15 so you're already at 40 okay so then you only need 35 actual nights and then what you stay there every year after or do you drop down then you have to re-qualified each year so you have to do 75 nights each year yeah okay continue continue yeah but for me I have like two I hit it beyond the every year every year and there is an ambassador status to which is a hundred nights per year and you also have to spend over 23 grand at Mariah properties wow but like we're at an event right now oh yeah and I do events yes I do events oh yeah yeah yeah so like when um yeah so there's there's some a high profile people I would have done work for that do events too yeah that's a play because if you put that on the Mariah business card yeah and then you stay a hundred nights like you hit the 40 and then you stay an extra 60 actually organically then you're gonna ambassador which is even higher with that you get 247 check in you have a custom concierge person you're in even more points it's it's pretty epic but titanium is definitely the edge with that just the yeah titanium is better than gold okay yeah titanium is the 80-20 but it really wanted to flex on it yeah and so with titanium uh yeah so they'll also often do these double night bonuses okay where like usually it's around the beginning of the year where they're gonna say hey like down there in their down periods maybe like January through March and stuff hey stay um stay one night and earn two qualifying nights well so that can be a thing too yeah um but whether you use points or cash those qualifying nights will look out as long as you book them through Mariah's site and not through um the actually I can't remember if the qualifying nights count read books in portal I don't think they do you definitely don't earn points but anyways if you you don't earn points I can't remember the qualifying nights hit but I don't think they do um so if you hit your 40 nights off the cards yeah you have two cards and one gets 25 nights one gets 15 then you stay 35 nights organically maybe it's actually 25 and you get a few that are on that double night bonus then you've hit titanium I love it and then that's where you're getting sweet upgrades free breakfast and late check out the big deal too I know you guys were just like yes let me check out right now they check out at this hotel right and so it's much nicer to have you're taking calls you can work till four in your room and go to the airport for a six o'clock flight yeah rather than have to get out at 11 yeah and then you're like what I do for five hours yeah so those kinds of things help Eli anything anything else anything else that I've not asked that I mean I this has been a true I asked you I was like bring the value and you brought the value my mind's being but I hope our audience enjoys this as much as I am because this is like fun for me because I like figuring out hacks and yeah and like and then there's return on spend like what you what did you say on average your people are getting seven to nine percent average yeah on their spending that's amazing yeah it's really cool yeah that's amazing yeah I mean it's actually they're spending money on things that bring joy to them and or if they're in business bring a return yeah but it's like if I mean what do you think at day for amc saying debit cards like is do you just lose your mind when people are spending money on the benefit of a debit card or not I don't see any other than the psychology behind it for some people is probably good but that's Joe and other people I'm talking to but like yeah I guess if someone really can't manage their finances and is like out of control and they know like if I get a credit card I'm gonna just I'm gonna max it out probably not because you started crewing a lot of interests especially like personal personal card interests I mean with business cards there might be seasons where it's like I'm you know borrowing a little more like yeah that's that's that's individual there's also 0% cards like that's a whole thing that's a whole different strategy of like strategy yeah yeah yeah there are cards that stack 0% interest and good points earnings so those are okay um but yeah I'm not a big fan because I think you're just missing out on a lot of benefits and you're gonna spend the money anyways so my philosophy would more so be for most individuals is like get your mindset right around not overspending and then enjoy the benefits because like you're just limiting yourself and basically you don't believe in yourself like you're just saying like I can't manage money therefore I need to restrict myself onto a debit card it's like that's not bad if you know you can't like contain yourself but that better option is like figure out what's going on with these psychologically so you can actually just manage a credit card yeah in my world I there's people on TikTok and YouTube that I roll my eyes at because they're like while you're like over pitching something or like way over the top is there anything in in your world that when people open their mouth you don't have to call anyone out by name but is there any like things that you should be careful of if like you're watching you know or trying to learn the points game like there are people out there that are saying stuff they're like hey this is sketchy or that I actually don't endorse this this thing um yeah that's a great question there's there's a few things for sure there's something called manufactured spending which is where people get excited about points I was explained to you I felt it when I'm like you start seeing the power you're like especially when you're when I was young and I didn't have any money I was like this is my gateway to freedom like that's why I named the company Freedom Travel System because I was like this feels like freaking freedom and so you start thinking how can I earn more points and if you do that then there's a thing called manufactured spending which is definitely against terms and and we'll violate their terms but it's essentially where you would find things that can create spend that aren't organic spend so there's things where people will like pay pal each other and like why are the money back to their account or they'll go buy things and return them onto a debit card or they'll do stuff like that and so there's a lot of things like that that are very gray area which I don't suggest because if you violate the rules and they catch you they shut you down they'll take your points and you're never working with them again so I just say play by the rules if you grow real business yeah or you have like any have just organic expenses maximize those buying miles is great looking for sign up bonuses great referral bonuses are great like so if I were for you a card I'll get a bonus so you play the game better there and you start to stretch these miles more and you don't have to do any of the kind of sketchy stuff like that so I don't think there's too much else I mean there's this is like the financial world is this is a game of infinite strategies and tactics and stuff like that so without going super in depth everything I think we've covered the majority of what people need to know cool we'll have links down below with different credit cards but we'll also what what is the one thing that you want to give our audience like if if not everyone's ideal to work with you directly so why don't you just say like who who is the people that would get a return in working with you but if they're not we'll make sure to have resources down below and I'm excited we've been talking we're gonna incorporate some of your expertise into what we do at better wealth and I'm stoked about it because it's I don't know I'm just you've seen my face on this whole video it's been yeah it's been a lot of fun yeah and so what what kind of called actions are there and yeah yeah I mean people can get in touch via the links below I think the core message here is more around like living boldly like if there's things that you want to do and you're not doing them because it feels impractical or you feel guilty around how much you're gonna cause or you're afraid of like if I spend this much money on trip like I feel regret there's probably things you aren't even letting yourself think about because you don't want to deal with like how and that's gonna feel for you to think about spending that much money and when you start to get this right you get to be like let's go and especially for you know guys that in relationships that have families people that are married or people that want to provide something like it's such a cool tool to blow people's socks off in their life with like I know as a corny's term to ever use but just do I think I'm taking my girlfriend first class to Europe yeah paying nothing for it and we're gonna have the time of our lives and to me that is like so cool and I don't you know I'm not that financially wealthy this point of view I never pay for that flight I would never pay for at this stage but I get to do it now and so to me it's it's about going after the things you really want in life and travel is one of those those things that really brings us alive so I love it who's who's ideal to work with you like how much they need to be spending yeah even think about 10K is a good a good amount a year or a month 10K a month okay 10K a month so if you're between business and or personal okay okay so if you're if you're spending over $10,000 a month your US base you travel at least three times a year okay and you have a desire for big epic experiences in your life awesome perfect yeah Eli thank you so much and I look forward to very bright future and maybe more upgrades yeah yeah more first class tickets a last question I have for you so if you weren't going to spend points on hotels or airlines what would the third category be so the only other option so that's actually a great question because people like can I use it for trains and like can I use it for Airbnb can I use it for rental cars you technically can because you can go through the travel portal but you're not going to get optimal value so the only things we're going to get optimal value is flights in hotels okay I guess I would go through the travel portal and I don't know do something okay but it's a flights in hotels are top yeah and everything else is yeah and only hotels with those programs I mentioned Merriott Hilton technically iHG hi it technically a core but like those are the ones where you're going to get the value because if you like let's say you wanted to go say at the mandarin oriental or the shangri law or the four seasons you're not going to get you're not going to get point value what you can do is you could use some of the benefits called like amics fine hotels and resorts and you can get some upgrades some status free breakfast hotel credits for those properties if you do book through there yeah so you're still not using your points effectively but you're still getting the perks so yeah but that would be that would be my recommendation all right thank you very well thank you man