Guest: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast, where we speak with Jack McCall and talk about credit. So, really what I highly advocate and I think is so incredible, which is pretty much a a newer product to to to the to the world is 0% interest business credit cards, which is 0% for the introductory period of a 9 to 18 months. After that period, it goes up to the normal 15 to 20% um credit card interest, but you have that introductory period where you’re not paying interest.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Denson and with me as always is my business superstar co-host, Scott Tretch.
Scott: Always excited to FICO the next thing out with you, Mindy.
Mindy: It’s definitely to my vantage, Scott.
Scott: Look at that.
Mindy: Oh, that was way better. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.
Scott: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments and assets like real estate, or fund your your very own or first business with a credit card, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Mindy: Scott, today we’re talking to Jack McCall. He has an interesting way of generating business credit and he’s going to teach us all about that. But before we bring him in, we are going to talk about our new segment, the Money Moment. This is where we share a money hack, tip, or trick with you to help you on your financial journey. Today’s money moment, one credit card hack we recommend is to have a credit card dedicated to recurring expenses only. This is a good way to keep track of the overall recurring spend as well as make decisions on what to cut. Do you really need Hulu and Disney Plus? In addition, it’ll be easy to spot any errors or overcharges. Do you have a money saving tip for us? Email us at moneymoment@biggerpockets.com.
Okay, before we bring in Jack, let’s take a quick break.
And we’re back. Jack McCall is the founder of credit stacking and scaled from $0 in business credit to $500,000 in available business credit in just over one year, which he has used to fund a variety of new businesses and investments. And now he teaches other people how to do this too. Jack, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: Awesome, Mindy and Scott. It’s so incredibly great to be here. I’m really excited. Thank you for everyone listening. Um my job on this podcast is to provide all the listeners with as much tangible value as I physically can on this podcast. So thanks for being here and thank you guys.
Scott: Awesome. Well, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and the business you started?
Guest: Yeah, so my name is Jack McCall. I’m the founder of credit stacking. It’s a mentorship program where I teach entrepreneurs on how to dial in their their personal credit essentially so they can get access to business credit. On business credit, there are 0% interest business introductory offers. So you can borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars at only a 0% interest rate for one to two years. So I specifically teach people entrepreneurs on how to do exactly that.
Scott: Awesome. So what um, walk us walk us through some examples of that credit and why why you need to build up your personal credit in order to begin accessing those.
Guest: 100%. So the the personal credit profile is the foundation to many, many things in life, not just as a a normal non-entrepreneur, but for an entrepreneur as well. If you think about even if you’re not in business, you need good credit to get a good rate on an auto loan, a good rate on a mortgage, to get approved for a lot of good apartments. And then when you’re thinking about starting a business, maybe you’re already a business owner, the personal credit profile is the number one single most important thing on be able to get high limits on these business credit cards or get any type of business funding through credit products. So the the profile is very strong and it’s much more much more important than just a score. So some people can have a 750 score but only one or two credit accounts. So we’re looking at much more than a score, we’re looking at the entire profile. We want to optimize each of the sections on the FICO report to make yourself as attractive as possible to the lenders. So you as a entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur can get access to money very, very easily when you need it.
Mindy: Can you share the difference between a business a credit profile and a credit score, just so we know what we’re all on the same page?
Guest: Yeah, so a credit score is the score you’ll see when you check your credit. Maybe it’s a 600, that’s very low. Maybe it’s an 850, which is perfect. If if you’re anywhere in the 700 club or 800, you’re in a very, very good spot. Ideally 750 and above. But really when you apply for different credit accounts, like business credit cards, personal credit cards, different types of loan products, they’re going to look at your credit report or your credit profile. So they’re looking at your score, they’re looking at your average age, they’re looking at your comparable credit, which means the limits of your current credit accounts, which means is your revolving limits only a thousand? Is it 10,000? Is it 70,000 of collective personal credit limits? So there’s there’s definitely a range there. Also, they’re taking into consideration the amount of hard inquiries you have on your profile. And essentially, when you apply for a new credit account, you get a hard inquiry. And so if there’s too many hard inquiries, you look riskier to the lenders. And so, um, and one other factor I will mention is the type of accounts are very important. So if you have a Chase personal credit card, that account is weighted better on your profile than if you had a credit card at a local credit union because the Chase account is a tier one account. So they’re looking at the limits of those accounts and they’re looking at the the banks that are giving you those accounts. And then, uh, they’re also looking at the diversity in your credit mix. So do you only have revolving accounts? Like do you only have personal credit cards? Do you have any installment loans? Are those installment loans paid off? Do you have any auto loans? Do you have any mortgages? So if you can create a diversity in your credit mix, it’s going to increase your score than if you only had personal credit cards.
Scott: Awesome. That that’s actually really interesting. I I had no idea about the the various tiers of credit of of types of debt that and how they would count to the score. Um, you know, I feel like I’m I’m 32 years old, but I feel like I’m an old dog now because it used to be, it seems to my opinion, where there was just one score, your FICO score. But nowadays, and you know, I’m screening tenants and there’s a renter’s score. There’s a vantage score. There’s um the FICO, there’s FICO one, two, three, four, five, eight, 10, right? Um, what score are we looking at when we’re talking about this? What what is the actual number that that I should be worried about as a as a consumer in building up my profile?
Guest: It’s a great question. So FICO 8 is the Bureau or is the score that most lenders are looking at when you’re applying for credit products. When you’re personal credit cards, business credit cards and loans, um installment loans, they’re looking at that FICO 8. If you’re applying for an auto loan, they’re going to be looking at a different model, but uh it it’s still very similar to the FICO 8.
Scott: Yeah, and landlords of course are now using this uh renter score uh with many applications, which is a whole different one of them.
Guest: One thing I will jump in there, Scott, is the best place, my favorite place to check your credit score is a platform called my score iQ.com. It will show you your FICO score and there is a difference between your FICO score and something called a vantage score. If you look at a lot of the free apps like Credit Karma or creditwise or any app that’s in or any credit monitoring service that’s in your bank app that’s showing you for free, that’s 99% of the time showing you your vantage score. This is a decent way to look and see what accounts you have, your utilization, the age, things like that, but when it comes to your score specifically, the vantage score is, it can be a much more inflated score. So if you’re actually trying to check your credit before applying for credit cards or any credit products, you want to be making sure you’re checking your FICO score, which you can do on myfico.com, experian.com, or my favorite is my score iQ.com. For those services, you do have to pay a monthly fee, but if you want to look at the report that you know the banks are going to look at once you click submit, those are where you want to look. And every time I’m about to submit my applications for something, I’m of course looking at that report because I know when I click submit, the banks are going to look at it and I want to see it first.
Mindy: Okay, that was gonna be my follow up. is is this a free uh score or is this a uh is this a paid? How much does it cost?
Guest: About 30 bucks a month.
Mindy: Okay, that is interesting. Um so, you know, make the make the decision based on if that’s something that’s worth it to you. Uh, I don’t know, I don’t I wouldn’t recommend that if you’re just getting started, if you’re just thinking about this, but once you’re really trying to build up your credit, $500,000 of business credit in a year, I think would be worth $30,000 or $30 a month. Not $30 a month.
Guest: Yeah, and one thing I will say there Mindy, to start, if someone’s starting in credit, they haven’t checked their credit profile yet, I would start with Credit Karma and Experian because Credit Karma is a free app, same with Experian, just the one bureau. So credit Karma will show you Equifax and TransUnion, which is two of the three bureaus for free. Experian, the free membership will show you Experian, which is the third bureau for free. You can pay extra on Experian to show all three, but if you want a free option right now, get Credit Karma and Experian and then you can check your your reports on all three bureaus. And it is important to check all three bureaus because each bank is going to pull from a different bureau. So for example, if I’m in California and I apply for a chase credit card, I know that Chase is going to pull from Experian. But if I’m in, say for example, maybe Texas, Chase might pull from TransUnion in Texas. And so I want to know what each bank, each bureau looks like based on where I live because they could be pulling from a different bureau. And so the hard inquiries could be different from bureau to bureau, the accounts reporting could be different from bureau to bureau. And so you do want to check all three, not just one.
Scott: Just to kind of um, hammer this point home. What what is the difference between the number I see in credit Karma and then the number that the the credit score that shows up when I have apply for a mortgage, which is different a lot of the time? What what is the reason for that and and and how do I view that number?
Guest: So if you go on to My Score IQ, you can see all of your different scores. FICO 8 is what you want to look at if uh if you’re going to be applying for personal credit cards, there’s an auto loan card, there’s a mortgage card, uh just different profiles depending on the products you’re going to be applying for. But again, back to credit Karma, it’s going to show you a vantage score, which is probably an inflated score. That app does is very helpful to see how many accounts you have, what’s your utilization at, how many hard inquiries do you have, what’s your average age? Things like that, which is definitely valuable and it updates daily, which is also very helpful. But when you’re looking at your score, it could say 780 on van on Credit Karma, but if you check your FICO score on my score IQ, it could be maybe only 720. So maybe you want to work on it a little bit more.
Mindy: But there isn’t going to be a gross difference, right? You don’t check Credit Karma and it says you’ve got an 800 and then the banks are pulling and it says you’ve got a 410. There’s not going to be a gross difference, right?
Guest: The difference won’t be that big, but where it’s very important is if Credit Karma says 720 but your FICO score is 690, you know, to to be in 690, that’s you’re going to get much worse results than if you thought you had 720.
Mindy: Okay, that’s a good point.
Guest: Yeah, because they’re looking at FICO score, not vantage. So you always want to check FICO before you do the applications, generally.
Mindy: Okay. So let’s talk about business credit versus personal credit. Can you get business credit if you don’t have personal credit? There are some people in the financial space, uh the biggest one is Dave Ramsey who recommends not having any credit score. And I want to clarify that the FICO score goes from uh is it 300 to 850? And if you have a zero credit score, that’s way better than a 300. That means you have nothing as opposed to actively bad credit. But if you have a zero score, are you going to be able to get business credit?
Guest: Absolutely not. I think for someone not to build strong credit is probably the most irresponsible advice I have ever heard, not just for business owners, but for non-business owners. Like we said at the beginning of this podcast, you need a good credit score to buy a house, to get an auto loan, to get into some apartments. One of my good friends from college, he his dad was on the big Dave Ramsey train about budgeting, no credit, etc. So my friend, he didn’t build credit, he tried to go buy a house at 25 years old and they laughed at him because he didn’t have much on his credit profile. He wasn’t able to buy a house for his for his, you know, for him and his his brand new fiance, which is, you know, quite embarrassing. So, even if you’re not in business, it’s very important to build your credit because you can just do so much more when you have a good credit score. Then, if you want to get into business or if you’re already in business, by having a strong score and a strong profile, this now gives you the ability to get access to 50 to $200,000 at 0% interest for the introductory period, which is between nine and 18 months. Now, some people will say, well, that’s fine because I don’t need that much money right now. Okay, maybe in six months or 12 months when this recession hits hard and you’re trying to take advantage of discounted assets like purchasing more real estate or you need capital to keep your business afloat, you will want good credit because if you have good credit, you could essentially snap your finger and get access to this type of 0% interest capital, but if you don’t have good credit and you don’t start building now, it can take many, many months. And when you need that capital, you might not be able to do it.
Scott: Yeah, and I’ll qualify this a little bit by saying it’s not always true that you need personal credit to build business credit, but it is you can find exceptions if you’re a nitpicker. But this statement is overwhelmingly true, right? Like Bigger Pockets or a large business could go out and get a loan from a bank or if you have a large real estate portfolio, you you could find a non-recourse hard money private lender to do it. But by and large, you’re going to have a very difficult time getting any type of loan uh for your business if you don’t have good personal credit. Is that a good qualifier, Jack? Would you agree with that?
Guest: Yeah, I I would Scott, but what I would say to go off of that is if you’re going for financing on products that pull your personal credit score, you will need to have good personal credit. And specifically the 0% interest business credit cards that I was referring to, those require no income verification and no tax returns. So a business with solid, you know, very strong tax returns, bank statements, etc. It would be easier for those businesses to go out and get business loans, but you have to show the financials and on a business loan, you’re paying interest. So for 0% interest business credit cards, all you need is an optimized personal credit profile and I’d love to go into that deeper as well to give you guys more context and tangibility tangible strategies, but having that profile and providing no income verification and no tax returns, that’s how you can get access to over 100 grand, 0% for 12 to 18 months.
Mindy: Well, and just tagging off of Scott’s comment, maybe you can get this credit or maybe you can get a mortgage with no uh no credit history. uh, like the Dave Ramsey, they’ve got the what is it? manual underwriting? You’re just making it so much more difficult. You’re just making the process so much harder. In this real estate market that we find ourselves in right now, it’s starting to heat up in Denver. It’s I’m starting to hear from all sorts of agents around the country that the market is heating up, maybe not quite as hot as last spring, but definitely hotter than the last six months of last year. Um, so to make it harder on yourself, you’re going to make it infinitely harder because if I just listed a house on Friday, it’s Tuesday now, I have seven offers in my hand that I have to now figure out which one I want. Somebody who has manual underwriting and is going to be a nightmare to get, you’re automatically off the table. You have already lost the opportunity to buy this house because you’re weird, you’re different, you’re difficult and you can choose to live your life any way you want. I’m not the boss of you, but I’m going to tell you you’re going to make it a lot more difficult.
Guest: Yes.
Mindy: I wish I was the boss of you because I would then be able to tell you stop doing this stuff. You’re making it harder on yourself.
Guest: I I agree, Mindy. And I think having good credit is a very alpha thing for any individual to have. It makes yourself stronger as a person in society, makes yourself stronger as a business person, and it makes yourself makes your life much easier. Not even to mention the personal travel cards you can get where you can get all these hundreds of thousands in points where you can get free travel. We can go into that in a in a little bit, but Scott, one thing I I will will want to tag on there, uh you mentioned something about building business credit. And so one thing I will say on that is you can build business credit, like the business credit score, but to get access to business credit cards, it’s not even necessary for people to build a business credit score. The only thing you need to have is an optimized personal credit profile, a business entity, ideally in a low risk industry, which we’ll dive into as well. And then some sort of banking relationship and then understanding what cards to apply for, when to apply for those cards and how exactly to apply for them.
Scott: Awesome. Let’s get into that. How how uh walk us through some of these incredible debt products that you’ve kind of advertised here earlier in the in the show and how do I get access to them? How do I set myself up to use these as a tool?
Guest: 100%. So the 0% interest business credit cards, let’s talk about that because that is my favorite for sure and to prepare yourself to make yourself attractive to these lenders, you want to have a specific amount of revolving collective limits. So ideally, I want to see at least a collective $15,000 in personal credit limits. So say you have a $5,000 card, a 2,000 and a 10,000. Great, you’re at 17,000 of collective personal credit. That’s what I like to see. If you’re someone that has maybe only $5,000 of collective personal credit limits, I would recommend to go out and apply for what I like to call them high limit personal credit cards. and I’ll list them. One card that I like that that I’ve seen gives very, very good limits is the Apple card. Another card is the Chase Freedom unlimited and then thirdly, the American Express Delta Gold. I’ve seen those three cards give the highest limits. So if you’re someone listening and you have lower limits, you want to build up that comparable credit because the higher limits you have on your personal cards, the higher limits you’re going to get on the business cards. So that is that’s talks about comparable credit right there. But before you start applying for anyy type of accounts, you want to make sure your utilization on every revolving credit account on your personal credit is under 30% utilization. And so you can use the full balance on your personal credit cards, but you just have to pay it down to 30% at least four days before the statement closing date. And each credit card is going to have a different closing date. so you can log into the app and you can check and just make sure you bring your balance down to at least or under 30% before four days before that statement closing date. So once you can confirm all the accounts evolving accounts are paid under 30%, then you can consider, um, applying for these, these uh personal credit cards to build up your comparable credit. Another thing you want to keep in mind is the amount of hard inquiries you have on your personal credit profile. If you have more than two in the last six months on any of the three bureaus, it’s getting on the high side and there are different companies, credit repair companies that you can, you can hire. so they can actually dispute and remove those hard inquiries to allow you to get better results moving forward. So we’re looking at the amount of hard inquiries, we’re looking at the percent of utilization on each revolving account, not just the average but each account, and then we’re looking at your comparable credit. Once you have no more than two hard inquiries in the last six months, once all your revolving accounts are under 30%, then you’re okay to and I also should say no late payments in the last two years and no collections in the last two or so years. At that point, you can apply for the personal cards to build up your comparable credit. Then fast forward, it’ll take 30 days for those accounts to report. Say you fit all that criteria and now you have over $15,000 of collective personal credit limits. At that point, you’re probably in a good position to start applying for these 0% interest business credit cards.
Scott: So Jack, how would I use my great personal credit score and this and this checklist that you’ve identified for us of, you know, 15,000 in personal credit limits, um keeping my utilization under 30%, making sure I don’t have any hard inquiries or any other derogatory marks. How can I then leverage that to get access to financing for certain business initiatives?
Guest: Yeah, so once you fit all those requirements on your personal credit profile, once it’s optimized, I keep liking to call it, then you want to figure out what banks you have available to you in your specific state. If your business is registered in California, that’s going to give you a specific list of banks. If you’re in Florida, that list is going to be different, if you’re in New York, that list is going to be different. So you want to do some research to find what lending options you have available to you in your state, which an easy way to do this is type in California banks who offer 0% interest business cards. Start to put together a list. Some of the banks you will want to have an open business checking account. This is to start to build that relationship with the bank so they can get more of your personal and business information. So ideally, you can put a little bit of money in that account so they start to trust you more, but not all banks need open business checking accounts, but the two most important banks to do that at before applying for business credit accounts is going to be Chase and Bank of America. Doesn’t matter what state you live in, I would highly recommend to prioritize building your relationships through Bank of America and Chase. Chase being Chase being number one for sure. Chase has the of many branches, the best online platform and they give out the highest limits up to $100,000 of 0% interest capital between one or two credit cards. So to do that, go into a chase branch, make an appointment, open up a business checking account for your business. Tell them what your business does. They’re going to then open that account for you. At that point, I would let a little bit of money sit in that account for a few weeks and then if your personal credit profile is good, you’re ready to apply for the cards, then go for an online application or you can apply in branch as well. So those are the first two ways you can apply for these business credit accounts, but the best way and the most effective way to get exceptionally high limits is through business relationship managers. These are the individuals that work directly with the underwriting teams. So if you can get assigned a business relationship manager, um, that’s where you’re going to get the best limits.
Scott: Awesome. And what businesses are are these are these types of credit cards most accessible to? I think there were some industries that are it’s easier to get one and other ones where it’s harder. Is that right?
Guest: Yeah, so it all comes down to the the industry risk. And so the banks will look at the NAICS code and that will classify the risk for your business type. So if you have a construction business, that’s a little bit more risky than say, for example, a consulting business because they’re looking at the overhead expenses that businesses in that industry is going to have. Right? A consulting business, there’s not too much overhead. A marketing business, there’s not too much overhead there. And if you do real, if you do fix um if you do wholesaling, if you think about what that business does, it’s a lot of marketing, it’s a lot of lead generation, it’s a lot of finding the buyers, right? So is your is your wholesale company, how much marketing does that do? Could that be a marketing business, right? If you look at um a physical gym, that’s going to be much more high risk to the lenders. So something to consider, the lower risk your business is, the higher chance you can get these high limits. But again, the most important thing is optimized personal credit profile. Also the bank relationship and then it comes down to what type of business do you actually have?
Mindy: You just said something about a business relationship manager. that sounds super fancy and like my company has to be big and have a lot of money. Is there a minimum income threshold or business size or something before I can ask for this or before I can expect to get something like this?
Guest: Generally, if your business is anticipated to to do between 1 and two million or above, that’s when you’re able to get a chase business relationship manager. Each banks have different thresholds, but Chase is at the 1 to 2 million threshold of revenue, of projected revenue, I should say.
Mindy: Okay, so that’s more of a maybe down the road thing. But definitely something to to bring up and and talk to them about when you’re starting this out. Uh I mean, I really think the most information that you have is just going to help you process everything. Oh, I didn’t know this was an opportunity. Maybe if you ask about business relationship manager, they say, hey, your business doesn’t qualify now, but there’s another program or we’re rolling out this pilot project or whatever. Um I think that asking questions is always the best opportunity. Always the best option.
Guest: I agree. Ask those questions, build that relationship for sure. Yeah, Scott?
Scott: Jack, what about some more advanced options here? Um so this sounds like a great way to get a credit card to fuel your next entrepreneurial endeavors. Um but what if I want to use an SBA loan for example to make a small business purchase or combine some sort of debt to finance an acquisition with a credit facility with a seller financing or those types of things? Can you walk us through any more, you know, next level examples of how to use um your personal credit to finance interesting investment opportunities?
Guest: Yeah, for sure. So another good credit product to talk about, there’s really two I want to go into. One being a business line of credit. There’s some banks that you don’t need business financials like tax returns or bank statements, um like Truest, PNC, KeyBank are a few of them, but most banks will require two years of previous tax returns and bank statements. and the more attractive those are, the higher amount on a business line of credit you can get. and essentially what a business line of credit is, it’s an amount of money that you have access to and you only pay interest on the money when you’re using it. So for example, a 50k line of credit, you can get a key bank. They don’t require income verification, no tax returns. the 50k, you can pull 30k of it and when you have that 30k, you’re going to be paying interest on that 30k. But once you give the 30k back, then you’re not paying interest on that product anymore. And so if you’re a business owner that that has these very strong financials, tax returns, profit and loss statement, and attractive bank statements over the last three months, they’re going to give you a specific amount on a loan based on your revenue and profit figure. Generally, they’re going to lend about 10 to 20% of your top line revenue.
Scott: Awesome. Yeah, and I I’ve talked to some some folks who run businesses and like, oh, I keep 50 or 100k in the business and you know, they’re trying to invest. Well, why don’t you just open up a line of credit and you can pull that number down to 25 or something like that and probably be able to to conservatively operate your business and not have worries about that. So I think those are that’s a that’s a fantastic tool um to add in there. Uh And what about um what what types of um business credit loans whatever are dependent on your personal credit score?
Guest: They anything that pulls your credit is going to be based on your personal credit profile. So the the 0% business cards, the business lines of credit, the term loans are all going to be based on your personal credit profile. If you do hard money, probably not, they’re not going to pull your credit. If you do any private loans, um they’re not going to pull your credit, but credit is pulled for most credit products.
Scott: Well, Jack, is there anything anything else that we should know about when it comes to credit and um using your personal credit to access really great debt um and and and harness it for incredible investment opportunities?
Guest: Yes, sir. I think for the business owner’s listening or maybe you want to get into business soon, the the first step to get into business lending, I think the easiest and the most effective is for these 0% interest business cards because there’s no income verification. If you’re a little bit more advanced than that, then that’s when the business lines of credit or the term loans come into play because not only do you need that good personal credit, but then you have to show those business financials. So that’s kind of the the next step to graduate to. And then additionally, you can also start building out your business credit scores. It’s interesting and actually one thing I had have not mentioned on this podcast is business credit accounts, they don’t report to your personal credit profile. And so if you max out a personal credit card, it’s going to high ly negatively affect your score. But if you get approved for a 50k business credit card and you max that out, because that account doesn’t report to your personal credit profile, your score stays unaffected. So this is exactly how I’ve been able to get approved for half a million dollars in business credit in just over a year while using the business credit because those accounts don’t report to your personal credit profile. So that is a key and it’s very it’s much less risky to leverage business credit than it is personal credit for your business because if you have a high balance on a personal card and you can’t pay that back, your personal credit score is wrecked. But if you have a high balance on a business credit card and you can’t pay that down for the next few months, your score is still unaffected. So you can always get approved for another personal another business credit card and balance transfer the balance from the first card to the second if you need more time for 0%.
Scott: Jack, I I I have a question here. Let’s suppose that I have a flipping business, so I’m a house flipper and I’ve got $500,000 in a business line of credit, um or a business credit card with a 0% APIY for the first year. Um, and I’m being responsible, so I’ve also got my paid off home, which I could borrow against in order to repay that. Would you recommend to someone in that situation to consider using that 500,000 to fuel my next flip instead of going to a hard money loan or taking out a heloc on my primary assuming I can complete the flip in the first year. Would that be a use case for this?
Guest: I work with many, many people that do exactly that. If you can get access to 50 to $100,000, imagine how many more deals you can do. And then even when you get to the point where you’re paying that 15 to 20% interest, a lot of times people can do flips in a three to four month period, maybe six months and you’re not even having to pay that much that much in interest. But if you’re borrowing it for free for the first year, I know so many people that can do two flips just during that introductory period before they pay any interest on the card.
Scott: Well, I I think I think it’s an really intriguing and interesting tool here. Um and like any tool, it can be used to propel you forward and you can hurt yourself with it uh if you’re not being smart. So it sounds like a really interesting option for some folks, um that want to have, you know, a the opportunity for better rates.
Guest: Did you have um any final credit card hacks for our audience before we go?
Scott: Credit card hacks. One thing I will mention is if you’re someone that loves to travel or maybe your your business that requires some travel to go visit possible deals, to go visit business partners, etc. another major importance of having good personal credit is to get top tier cards that generate points and rewards. I have cards that get four times, 4x points per dollar spent. So if you have a good score, you can get access to the best credit cards, which will generate you the most amount of points and miles so you can use those points for free travel. So that is another major, major value ad of having good credit if you’re someone that likes to travel or your business requires travel.
Scott: Awesome. Is there a good resource for folks who are I I understand that that credit card hacking can be a uh like a full-time hobby essentially. Uh you can really go down deep into that world. Is there a place for folks to go to get started and learn a little bit more um and begin dipping their toe in and find a couple of ones that might make sense for them?
Guest: Yeah, 100%. I actually have a link in my bio on my Instagram where I have my favorite personal credit offers, which my Instagram is King of debt, King of debt on Instagram. If you click the link on my bio, you can see a link to my favorite personal credit cards and you know, they’re there for a specific reason. A lot of people don’t understand what options they have available to them, what benefits these cards come with and I’ve put together my my list of my favorites.
Scott: Awesome. Well, we really appreciate you coming on, Jack. Thanks so much and um it sounds like uh folks can find more at find out more about you at King of debt on Instagram.
Guest: That’s correct. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Mindy. Instagram @kingofdebt. Hopefully I’ll see you guys there and thank you guys so much for hanging in.
Mindy: Thanks, Jack. We’ll talk to you soon. All right, Scott, that was Jack McCall and that was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about credit, specifically the credit profile. I think that’s a very interesting uh turn and I’m hopeful that our listeners were able to learn something about credit and credit scores and how to generate business credit so that you can go on to fund your business as well.
Scott: Yeah, and you know, like I mentioned, I think this is a a tool and it can be a very dangerous tool or it can be something that spurs folks on. And you know, who who are we to say don’t lever up when you’re getting started to go and and and crush your goals, right? I mean, when I when I when I was starting out my financial journey, I bought a duplex making $48,000 a year for 240 grand, five or six times my annual income uh in in debt to purchase that. And so of course that’s a dangerous all-in move and I think some folks will feel that they kind of have to take that to some degree to do this, but recognize that if you’re financing a big investment on a credit card even at 0% and you don’t have a backup plan that can really put you in trouble if things do not go according to plan and so I’d really really encourage folks to be to use this, consider this as a tool um but but really be wary of it um and not get addicted to it, for example, if if if you do decide to go with it once and it works.
Mindy: And just like with any real estate investment that you’re doing, with any startup business that you’re doing, have backup plans, have backups for your backups. I’m opening up a helock. That’s great. What else do you have in case this doesn’t work out or you’re opening up a business line of credit that has a 0% interest rate for a year? Great, what happens on month 13? You should be thinking about these things before you take a dollar out of the account, before you borrow any money, you should have a plan to repay it because um if you don’t, that’s just irresponsible.
Scott: Yeah, and and as always and I I again, I harp on this all the time, map your debt to the use case, right? Use short-term debt for short-term investments, right? or short-term needs. Don’t use short-term debt for long-term needs. That’s how you get in trouble when things don’t go as planned. So map those map those use cases and be smart about it. But um really cool tool and it’s it’s um really impressive how Jack has kind of clearly outlined each of the steps necessary um to to build your credit and get access to the first serious round of financing, um or serious access to a credit line for a lot of folks.
Mindy: Yep, huge thanks to Jack for his information today. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, toodle-oo, kangaroo.
Guest: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Speaker 1: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Winetraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
