Mindy: Today we’re talking about travel hacking. It’s one of those areas that people in the personal finance world love to take advantage of, and for good reason. But it can get very overwhelming very, very quickly.
Scott: To demystify it all for us, we’re going to have the outstanding Eli Fasenda joining us on today’s show. Eli is going to give us a crystal clear framework for travel hacking, and he’ll answer our very specific questions about how you can optimize your spending and points. He’ll also show us how to organize your system so you don’t end up confusing yourself or forgetting about your payments for points.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my co-host Scott Trench, who I always like to give a lot of credit to.
Scott: Nice one, Mindy. I’m going to give you a couple of uh points for that one. All right, we’re 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’re starting.
Mindy: Eli Fasenda, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: It’s great to be here. I’m really excited to dive in and talk about, you know, credit, points, travel, all the good stuff.
Mindy: Let’s give a brief overview of what exactly travel hacking is.
Guest: Yeah, so, so travel hacking is really taking the money that you already spend in your everyday life and turning those purchases into points. And then using those points for travel. Okay, now I say specifically for travel because there’s people that do things like cash back or they’ll take their points and go to Amazon or they’ll get gift cards, and you’re leaving a lot of money on the table when you do this. So travel hacking is about using your credit card spend and turning it into your ideal lifestyle, whether it’s to upgrade your everyday travel or to take these bucket list trips, and really finding ways to work smarter and not as hard by, again, leveraging something you’re already doing, which is spending. So, that’s how I see travel hacking. It’s a loosely defined term, but what it means for different people can vary widely. Some people want to do all sorts of luxury experiences. It’s about five star, it’s about first class, it’s about the flash. For others, it’s, you know, I want to take my family of five to Disney once a year. And for others, it’s I’m a corporate road warrior or I’m doing a ton of fix and flips or Airbnb investments. And I just want to make sure that when I’m traveling, you know, around the country for domestic travel, I’m getting lounges, I’m getting, you know, free airport, uh, free airport lounges and cutting the line in security and all sorts of stuff like that. So, that’s what it is, but it applies differently just based on your situation and your overall goals.
Scott: Let’s get another practical example because I think that that’s how I learn and maybe how a lot of other folks learn. Like, specifically, I plan to spend $10,000 moving, right? With new furniture, other other kind of stuff. Um here. How do I use that to finance a trip for a family of three or a family of five, whatever your example you want to use there to Disney World? How like how like what what are the steps? Like what literally what do I type into Google? Where do I what do I like, is there a website I sign up this for? Like, yeah, all of it from start to finish.
Guest: Yeah, so so the way that, so the way that I look at things and the way that like when I’m, when I’m working with someone to do this, like the way that we want to zoom out is we want to break it into three buckets first. Okay? So there’s maximize every dollar that you spend. So there’s maximize your points earnings, really is the first kind of bucket. Okay? The second bucket is going to be to maximize the value out of your points, and then the third bucket is going to be to maximize your perks and benefits. So let’s say you want to go to Disney. Well, if that trip was coming up around the corner, hopefully you have enough points already stacked up to do that. If you’re saying, hey, Eli, this trip’s in 2025 sometime and way in the future, like, let’s go with that one. What I’d want to do is I’d say, okay, let’s get you the most amount of points based off of your type of spend between now and when you’re going to book that trip. So we’d look at your everyday kind of categories of spending and we’d make sure that you have the right cards on the right expenses to get the most points. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you go you’d probably eat, I imagine, on occasion, right? And so that’s either going to be a grocery expense or a dining expense in almost all cases. Okay. So there’s certain cards out there that earn one point per dollar on everything. That’s kind of like the standard baseline. Well, there’s other cards out there like the Amex Gold card, one of my favorite cards, will earn four points per dollar on groceries and dining. So let’s say you had a card like the Platinum card from AMEX that a lot of people have and they just use it for everything, you know, it’s a big shiny card. People think it’s the best one because it’s so kind of, uh, renowned, but it’s actually not a great card for everyday expenses. So you switch that to the gold card and let’s say you had a family, you know, you spent $1,500 a month on on those kind of expenses, you now have four times the amount of points. Instead of getting 12,000 points, you’re going to get around like 60,000 a year, okay? Now, you have those points and you want to be able to use them for travel. Okay, so now they’re in, let’s call them AMEX’s website. Well, there’s ways to use these points by converting them into airline hotel programs, which I can, I can kind of break that down, but high level, you’d convert those over and then those 60,000 points, instead of them being worth $600, which is what AMEX would give you for those points, you could convert them into airline hotels and use them to get hotels and flights that on average could get you around 1,500 to 2k worth of travel out of the same points. So, if I break that down, scenario A, right, you spent $1,000, or $1,500 a month on your groceries, right? And you you’d probably get like a maybe, you know, a couple hundred dollars back at the end of the year for that. Scenario B, you change your card to the MX gold, you use those points a little bit more effectively, and now you’ve got maybe a $1,500 or $2,000 trip to Disney, flights and hotels included for the family. So that’s high level how you’d want to think about it and how you want to plan ahead by getting as many points as you can in the right programs with the right strategies based on on how much you’re you’re spending on different categories.
Mindy: Okay, so how do I find out what cards are offering which one? You just said uh an example of a card that has 4x points on groceries and restaurants. Where is that information so that I’m using my cards to the best? Cuz I know my Costco card gives me like three or five times points on gas. So that’s the one I use for gas all the time. But there are other but I only know that cuz I go to Costco and it says it on the big board.
Guest: Yeah, so there’s two things this. Number one is is is making sure we earn the right type of points. So think of these points like currencies and certain currencies can can do certain things, right? Like I mentioned there’s, you know, four main bank points that can be transferred around. Well, even within those, not every bank transfers to every airline or hotel. So for example, if you want to stay at a Hilton hotel, you can’t transfer Chase points to the Hilton. If you want to stay at a Hyatt hotel, you can’t transfer Amex points to Hyatt. So, getting the right cards aligned with your specific kind of travel programs, which is a little bit of a deeper dive here, that’s going to be the first step is making sure are we even earning the right type of points. Because I mentioned that grocery thing, right? The Amex card earns four points per dollar on groceries. Well, there’s other cards out there with banks like US Bank or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or TD or some of these other smaller local banks that will also earn points on dining and stuff, but they’re not going to earn the right type of points. That’s the first thing. Now, in terms of finding the right ones, it always is a little bit of a custom setup to really maximize it, but overall there’s some really powerful tools out there and there’s tons of blogs and social media accounts like, you know, I have a social media account that teaches this stuff, so it’s pretty easy to follow stuff there. There’s other kind of points and travel hacker people out there. There’s a lot of blogs and YouTube channels, uh, social media accounts for you to check out and and uh that will help. So, first off, I’ll I’ll throw mine in there, Eli Travel Guy on Instagram. Um, my business partner and we we help people do this stuff. He’s amazing with this stuff. His is Travel like Tommy. Uh one of the best for just like seeing really simple explanations is going to be Max miles points. So MAX miles points. His stuff is great and he’s got an awesome YouTube channel. Um and then in terms of blogs, there’s two blogs that I really like. One one of them is called one mile at a time. And the other one is called Upgraded Points. Those are my if I was going to give you like, hey, here’s like five things to go check out, those would be some really good ones to start with. And on those sites and, you know, on our social media accounts, we’re going to be talking about different cards. And there’s even some really powerful apps. For example, there’s an app called card pointers. What and what that Apple do is it’ll help you not only find different cards, but it’ll help you organize the cards that you have so that you’re fully utilizing those benefits. Cuz, you know, as you get different cards that come with different perks, right? Okay, I’ve got this card that gets lounge access and this card that gets Uber credits and this one that gets dining credits and this one that gets this. And it helps you organize things to know which cards to use in which situations and how to make sure that you’re maximizing all the perks and benefits that come with those. So it’s a very long answer to a short question, which is I would check out some of the different social media accounts and blogs and then some apps like that out there. And then there’s all sorts of people that give help, you know, courses, mentoring, stuff like that, if you want to go deeper into it. That’s what I ended up doing. When I first started out doing this, I was just doing it the hard way. I was reading blogs, you know, reading credit card websites, and it took me a long time to piece it together. I eventually got some help and it was like everything made a lot more sense and I was able to take more action on it. So that was my path. But there’s so much more uh resource available now because of social media too, that a lot of people are just using that and relying on that to get the information that they need.
Mindy: We’re taking a quick break, and when we’re back, we’ll be talking about how you can use your points wisely to curate your preferred travel experience.
Scott: And we’re back. We’re talking to Eli Fasenda about the steps you can take as a beginner to optimize your credit card for travel rewards. Yeah, this is great because we don’t have to go through that. We can just listen to you and get a framing there. And and, you know, I I love it. You know, I I think that the Southwest companion pass is such a particularly enticing one that it’s always a good, it’s a good example to just start with because why if you’re going to get into this, why not just go there. It’s super safe. You ever need to go to a wedding, you need to go anywhere around the United States or nearby, you know, uh like like Mexico, Cancun, those kinds of things. You can Southwest will usually take you there for most places in the country. and it’s just a really good all-rounder benefit um that kind of introduces the benefits of travel hacking, I think. But then there’s so much more to it. And that’s what I think we’re really excited to hear from you about and this great framework of, yeah, max first, max think about maximizing points, then make sure they’re the right points, and then make sure that they’re transferable to the things you want, which I guess is related to the being them being the right points.
Guest: Absolutely. I I think you’re spot on. And one of the one of the things that happens with the Southwest companion passes, it just depends on on who the person is and what they value and what they like. It’s ultra convenient and it’s obviously you’re just saving a lot. For people that like maybe are they spent 20 years traveling corporate or they just have a they’ve flown first class a few times and they’re like, I don’t want to go back. For that kind of person, Southwest isn’t really going to work because they don’t really have first class, right? That’s part of the deal with the airline is it’s very convenient, um, easy. Obviously the boarding style, some people don’t like that where everyone has to pick their own seat. And I I love all like the there’s always like social media reals like of like making jokes on that stuff, but but for convenience, it is an amazing play. For someone that wants to go overseas, for someone that wants more first class, or if you live in a major hub where it’s not a lot of Southwest flights. Like if you’re flying out of Miami Airport, right, you’re going to see a lot of American flights and that’s going to be like a better potential um, option for you just because they have different aircrafts, different seats, and they have more direct routes on American. So where you live will matter as well.
Scott: Great. So, so let let’s go through another practical example. What would I want to do, how would you approach it if I wanted to repeat that exercise, the close the closest comp to Southwest with American?
Guest: Yeah, so with American, there’s actually some really cool uh changes they’ve made recently to their loyalty program and how you can earn status. And status is a huge benefit because you earn way more points when you travel, you get free bags, you get lounge at times, um you’re going to get early boarding, you’re going to get upgrades on occasion to first class even if you just book economy, which is a huge perk. And so with American, they’ve actually uh enabled you to get towards status just through spending on their cards. So depending on how much you spend, you could get a couple different cards with them and that will enable you to earn towards status just through using those cards. So I would be getting potentially a couple of American Airlines co-branded cards. So there’s city cards and and Barclay’s Bank, those are the two that issue American cards. And you could get a few of these, you’ll obviously get some sign up bonus points, which means, awesome, you can just go on to their website, click, you know, search with miles when you go for the booking and instead of paying cash, you’ll just pay points. And that’s a that’s a great redemption right away. Uh but then additionally, if you use those cards on an everyday basis, depending on how much you spend and how much uh that will accumulate to over the year, you’re going to get different levels of status, which means all those upgrade benefits as well. So that would be a different situation uh for for someone that like to fly American. But um for someone that’s looking at, uh just looking at like best deals overall, I mentioned earlier having these transferable bank points is one of the most powerful things and that’s even still something I’d recommend. and I’ll give you an example and this is going to kind of dive into the weeds here, okay? So stay with me. Um in the airline world, there’s alliances. Okay, so you guys may have heard of these like Americans part of the One World Alliance. United’s part of the Star Alliance and Delta’s part of the Sky team. So there’s three alliances out there. These alliances are basically partnerships of airlines. So, inside of the the American Airlines one, called the One World Alliance, there’s actually ways you could book American Airlines flights using points from other airline loyalty programs. So, for example, I could take my amax points, I could convert them into British Airways, and I can oftentimes book in American Airlines ticket for half the price on points that American would even book it for or it would it would even charge. So I’ll give you an example. I flew from Miami to Austin. I’m down there back and forth quite a bit. Normally, like a first class ticket from Miami to Austin would be like 30,000 American miles. If I was going to use British Airways, it’s only like 15,000 and I can convert those from American Express. So you can see there’s different ways to kind of slice and dice the situation. The safest play overall is always going to be to earn those as many of those transferable bank points as you can because they have the most versatility and flexibility. And then to your point, like if you want to play the Southwest companion past game, you go that route. If you live in Miami and you want to fly American a lot, you would then go that route. But I’d always say start with these uh transferable programs, specifically Amex and Chase are my two favorites, because that’s going to always give you the most options to use these points in the most powerful way.
Scott: Okay, so this is where you think a newbie should start is get one of these all-rounder cards, and specifically just for the people in the back, one more time, what are those cards? Like, what is the safest first dip your toe in the water travel rewards program?
Guest: Yeah, I like if I was going to go brand new, someone just starting out, let’s say they got good credit and and first off they understand how credit works because I always advise, make sure you’re educated on this stuff, uh as a whole. I think that for most people, the entire way credit works was just left out of the education system. and so most people don’t even understand like how a credit profile works, how a credit score works. So always good to know the rules. Then assuming that’s all good, you feel comfortable, you’re confident, you understand how it works, then you get the Amex gold card, that’s for groceries and dining, and then I really like the chase Sapphire and chase Freedom cards as well. These would be personal cards. So, um, the Chase Saphire card is great. I love Chase points. They’re my favorite points currency and the freedom is a good is is also a really good card to pair that with. So those are three easy ones to get. If I was going to throw a fourth one in there, I’d say the capital one venture X. There we go. That’s it.
Scott: Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Guest: Nice, there you go. So I like, I liked those a lot. Um, I would potentially, depending on travel, uh tastes and what you want, I would potentially get the Capital One Venture X. Um, this is another great card for everyday spending and it also comes with priority pass and so that’s a lounge benefit that comes on a ton of the premium cards and priority pass will get you into 1300, over 1300 lounge worldwide. So if you’re in an airport, there’s a good chance there’s a priority pass lounge and many of these cards come with it, but the capital venture X does.
Mindy: Okay, I want to give a little extra pointer about the Capital One Venture X card because there’s different Capital One cards and in Denver, they don’t have a uh a lounge, even though Denver is like a huge airport. They don’t have a lounge, a priority pass lounge, but Venture X made their own lounge or Capital One made their own lounge. If you get the venture card, you can only go into this lounge like one or two times a year. but with the Venture X card, you can go in anytime you have a flight. So, uh, a point or a tip that I would suggest is figure out where the lounge are in your local airport or in the airport that you’re traveling to a lot and make sure you have a card that’ll get you in there because I have the priority pass and it doesn’t do me any good at my home airport.
Guest: It’s a great point. Yeah, a Amex has a lot of those lounge too. They have the biggest kind of uh banker credit card program lounge network. So Amex has Chase is coming up with a few as well. Like in Austin they have a a chase terrace. It’s like a low-key, kind of like a lounge, not not officially, but um, but that’s a great option. And and to your point, I would think about specifically people that live in maybe smaller cities where they’re consistently connecting through a bigger hub. Like if you’re somewhere in the Southwest area and you’re consistently connecting on maybe a family in New York and you’re consistently going to Salt Lake to get to New York, you’re probably flying Delta the majority of the time because it’s a big Delta hub. So it makes sense to look at, okay, how do I align this so I can get those Delta lounge too. For me being an Austin, you know, if I had American status, that means I’m probably connecting through Dallas a lot of the time if it’s not a direct flight. Uh, and so I would be thinking about, okay, how do I make sure that my my plan is optimized so that I’m either getting American lounges or I get into the center lounge at Dallas or the capital one lounge. So you you made a great point there.
Scott: Is it is it too much of a stretch to say that most credit cards offer some form of point build up um and probably folks that if they haven’t been paying attention to it, have points that they should go to take a look at or is that too general of a statement?
Guest: It’s general if you’re considering the entire slew of credit cards that are on the market. If you’re looking at the top cards, then yeah, you’d be correct with that, but that’s going to be like with the major banks, you know, again Chase City, Amex, uh Capital One, um, you know, those are going to be the main ones that we’re looking at here. If you’re looking at uh points with like, you know, a local uh regional bank or something like that, or a credit union, those points just can’t do the same things. They have what we call a fixed value on them. So you can only take them and get a fixed value of usually around one cent per point. Whereas when you take these points at the other banks, you can get double, triple, three times, five times, sometimes up to 10 or 15 times the value. I can give some examples on that. But that’s where this game turns in from, okay, cool, I got a free trip to like, oh my gosh, I completely change the way my travel lifestyle looks and what I even believed was possible. That’s what happened for me. was I was not even in the realm of thinking about like traveling all over the world. and then I started to open my eyes to what’s possible and I was like, wait, I just went to London on a $6,000 business class ticket. I paid $5.60 and I used all points and I’m making 30,000 this was years ago. I was like, I’m making like 30,000 a year and I just got a $6,000 value ticket and I didn’t pay for it. I was like, this is insane. I was like, this is crazy. So it does depend on those general points that are going to stack up, but if you’re with Chase City, Amex or Capital One, I’m going probably keep repeating those, then yes, the answer to that is yes, if it’s with other banks, then the answer is I would still switch those cards to other points earning cards.
Scott: So I may be the only one with this and I’m supposed to be good at this, so this is kind of embarrassing, but I have more several hundred thousand chase points that have been racking up because I just haven’t been paying attention to this thing for several years. I signed up for them when I got into travel hacking 5, 10 years ago, spent and just spent on that card, which is what they want you to do. That’s why they give you these bonuses in the first place. So like, what’s what’s like advice for people who are in my situation who maybe have just put it all on one credit card that has racked up a good number of these points. How do I how do I now start making the use of them? Because like I feel like it’s a waste. I feel like I’m I’m sitting on these things, they’re not earning interest like they would in a savings account, and it’s potentially thousands, maybe a $10,000 plus if I’m smart about the value in there.
Guest: Yeah, I mean there’s so many ways you can do it. So there’s two ways. One is we have trips, how do we use the points? The other way is have points, how do I take a trip, right? And so one is going to be like already kind of fitting around your life. The other one’s like, let me get the most bang from my buck out of these guys. And so it just depends on how you want to use them. but uh one of my favorite uses just of chase points is going to be for high at hotel stays. So I’ll give you an example. I was actually uh, just doing this in San Diego and you could do this at a luxury five-star level or, you know, standard kind of three-star level or whatever. It doesn’t really matter. if it’s with the high at program, you could this strategy will apply. It’s just the scale of savings is going to be bigger if the more luxurious you go because the prices are are larger. But I was in, I was actually speaking on an event in Orange County, uh decided to stay in San Diego for a couple days, uh had been on the road for a while so I was like pretty tired and was like, this would be a fun little weekend getaway. So my girlfriend came out, we booked this awesome hotel called the uh Alila Marea Beach. It’s about 30 minutes north of San Diego and Entus, California. on the coastline, brand new build. It’s like unbelievably luxurious, like really nice. The average room there was about $1,000 a night. Okay. So there’s three ways I could have booked this. I could have paid cash for it, which is $1,000 night, which I am like never going to do. That’s just to me that’s just I’m not going to do that. Option two is I could have gone to the Chase travel portal and I would have paid about 100,000 points a night or if I had the Chase preferred, I’d get a little bonus on that. so it’d be probably like 75 to 80ish thousand points a night. Okay, or option three, I can convert these points from chase into Hyatt and I’m able to book that room for 35,000 points a night. So I can get three nights for the price of one comparatively. Now, that’s an example there. Plus I had status with with Hyatt, so I got upgraded to a suite that was like ocean view and it was like a probably worth like 1500 to 2k at night, which is crazy. And then I got breakfast and all these other benefits. So that would be an example of a great way to be like, okay, I was in California. I didn’t need to stay at a five-star hotel on the beach by any means, but I was like, if I can, that sounds great. I also had the choice if I wanted to, I could have stayed at something that was a little further more inland. The same thing would have applied, but instead of using 35,000 points a night, I would have used like 10 to 15. And instead of saving, you know, $1,000 a night, I would have saved like $3 or $400. So that’s an easy example of using higher points from transferring them from Chase. Uh but really again, it depends because they have partnerships with airlines too. So if you wanted to do something where you’re you’re going to the Middle East, I don’t know, maybe you’re going over to Europe or you want to go to South America. There’s ways you can convert those chase points into different airlines and use those really well for some of those uh for those flights and that’s also usually a bigger expense. So that’s a nice one to to knock out for people that want to save money.
Scott: All right, we’re going to take a quick break and when we’re back, Eli Facenda will break down some of the pitfalls of travel hacking.
Mindy: Welcome back. We’re talking to Eli Facenda about the risks of travel hacking. Okay, these are really great tips. I am super happy with everything that you’ve said so far. I’ve learned a ton even though I’ve been doing this for a little bit myself. Uh, but I know from personal experience that beginners make mistakes. I made a huge mistake. I didn’t get all of my benefits because I didn’t make all of my spend. What are some common beginner mistakes and how do you avoid them?
Guest: Really common beginner mistakes is number one, on the car, there’s two buckets. There’s card and points earning, so which card do you use how you earning points? And there’s there’s how you use them. So there’s a couple of mistakes in each category. Number one, cashback cards. I am if you’re someone who travels or will potentially travel in the next few years, getting good points earning cards will, in my opinion, always out yield any cashback card by like a lot in my from the numbers that we’ve seen. We’re looking on average, like when we do this or when we work with clients and stuff, we’re getting them around 10 to 12% back of their annual spend if they optimize this well. A top cash back card will get you on average 2% back, and in some categories it might get 3, 4, 5% back there. But usually the average is around 2%. So sometimes we’re able to 3, 4, 5x that total value. So getting cashback cards is number one, if you’re a traveler, big mistake. Okay? Using a debit card for everything, huge mistake because number one, you’re missing on the opportunity to earn points, but also very importantly, there’s some security benefits that come with credit cards that debit cards don’t have. So, a lot of newbies that are getting into this, they’re concerned with making that switch, they have more Daycy mentality and I’m not here to knock Dave Ramsey, but I just think there’s um there’s a way to manage your credit cards responsibly where you can still treat it like a debit card if you want, mean you can pay it off every single day if you had to or you wanted to, and that allows you to get the upside the benefits without the downside. So, those are two of the card ones. And then I’ll give you one on the on the points side. One of the biggest things that I see and they make it very tempting, so I understand why people do this, but using their points for Amazon purchases, because what happens is when you go to Amazon or even if you get like gift cards, you have all these points and people are like, oh, I’ll just cash them up for gift cards for Christmas or for holiday bonuses or whatever, depending on who they are. Um, you’re going to get on average around six tenths of a cent. Okay? The travel portal was going to give you almost double that automatically. And if you convert these points into the airline or hotel programs, you can get 5 to 10X that pretty easily. And so you’re just completely dumping and wasting your points if you’re cashing them out, if you’re getting gift cards or using them on Amazon. That’s probably the biggest, most consistent thing I see for anyone who’s started a little bit is that they’re just completely dumping their points.
Scott: So, there are ways to use these points for shopping or other things, but you’re saying that the ROI, if you will, of points on travel is way higher than what you can get really almost anywhere else with using these points.
Guest: Correct. Yeah, there’s only really two scenarios where I would ever tell someone that’s a good idea. Number one is they literally don’t travel like at all. They have like no trips in the next like year to two years for whatever reason, that can happen. And so cashback sure, then may makes sense or using them for some of these uh these things to cash out your points might make sense. Number two, and we work with some business owners that are like, you know, they’re spending a lot of money and they have more points than they know what to do with and they’re spending so much that they just like earn and replenish those so quickly and it’s like, all right, if you want to use, you know, some of these points to go do that, you’re going to have so many more that like you you’re still going to have extra, so go for it. But otherwise, I would say you always want to save them for your travel. And particularly, if you, you know, are running a business or you’re doing real estate and you’re paying yourself out of a company, points are non-taxable. And so if you use them for personal trips where you’d normally use after tax income to pay for that trip, there’s an additional benefit to that too. So that’s a whole other kind of piece.
Mindy: Uh, what are some really easy beginner wins?
Guest: Yeah, so some really easy beginner wins would be a couple of things we covered. So some of those like Southwest companion past type things. Um, one of the things that I would recommend, this is not even like getting free travel, just how do you keep it simple? Because it’s a big question that people ask. It’s like, okay, I got all these cards, like what do I do and and uh when I started my stuff, that was a big pain point for me. and that’s why when I started my company, I called it Freedom Travel systems because it was like the systems and simplification piece is so important to this. And so, the the top things I’m going to say is there’s a couple main apps you want to get. Number one, I’d get either something like a award wallet or Tripit. These are two apps that will help you sync all of your points into one place. So, you got points with Amex now and Chase and now you have Marriott points and Hilton points and Southwest miles and how do you see them all on one spot? Get something like a ward wallet, and the added benefit is it will even notify you if your points are potentially going to expire. So you don’t lose them. Okay? Now, it’s pretty easy to make sure that doesn’t happen anyways, but it’s great to have that additional benefit. So that’d be that’d be one tip right there. Um, another tip on the app side would be to get something called lounge buddy. and so if you have priority pass, all these benefits that come with other cards, it will tell you what airport lounge you’ll get into when you’re traveling. So again, this this is just going to help keep things simple. It’ll tell you, hey, by gate 43B, across the hallway, up the stairs. That’s for the lounge just because half the time people have access to a lounge, they don’t even know how to use it or they know how to use it, but they can’t find the thing. So it’s like, so that’s helpful too. So those are a couple really easy uh easy beginner ones. And then one of the third uh tips that I’ll I’ll mention is when it comes to, you know, if you get a few cards and you’re like, okay, these fees are starting to add up, what could I do? You can negotiate or ask for what’s called a retention bonus. So retention bonus is where you would call in or chat them in, um, and you’ll just reach out and you’ll say, hey, you know, I uh, I I haven’t been getting the value of the card or I’m, you know, not sure if I want to cancel it. And if you mention that and you ask for any sort of retention bonus, if you’ve been an active user, often times they’re going to say, hey, Mindy, no worries, you know, we’ve seen you’ve been loyal for two years, you’ve been using the card actively. We understand you don’t want to pay the $295 fee or the $95 annual fee. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to give you 30,000 extra points if you spend $1,000 with us in the next 90 days. and those 30,000 points could be worth like $600 or $1,000. So that’s a huge, it’s a huge uh easy benefit. And then I’ll even give one more, which is referral bonuses too. So if you get a card and you, you know, you’re using it, you send a referral link to other people, you’ll get a ton of extra referral bonus points, which can help stack up to earn a lot more extra volume. So those are those are a few easy wins. I could go into a gazillion more, but uh that’ll hopefully keep things simple and give you some tactical options too.
Scott: So in in in in the, you know, just to kind of I want to distill a couple of things here and we’ll talk about this in the outro as well here. But, you know, looking for a place to start, the Chase Sapphire preferred card is a pretty safe, one of many safe options, right? It’s the one I use. I know Mindy I think you have that as well. Um, there, that’s that’s one. If you want the Southwest companion pass, type into Google Chase Southwest Business credit card and Chase Southwest personal credit card, right?
Guest: Yeah, just make sure you’re getting the ones that get the 120,000 points if you combine them too. combine the two. That’ll be that’ll be it though.
Scott: That’s right. You’re looking for the business card with 80,000 and the personal one with a 40,000. and then you need like 5 more thousand for actually flying Southwest or otherwise racking up those points in order to get the companion pass but you’ll be there. And those those are very simple practical like you don’t have to go crazy land to do those things. like almost everybody, especially if you have a real estate can do that. You’ll have legitimate business expenses that can go right into that and and uh knock it out. What however is the limits that this can be reached and I would love to illustrate that Eli, if you could tell us what you personally do and the uh magic, magical experiences in first class trips. Uh please wax eloquent and share some stories.
Guest: Yeah. Wow, there are some unbelievable things that you can do with points that first I didn’t realize were possible, then when I realized they were possible, I thought they were impractical and then eventually I was like, I want I’m going to go do some of these things because if I can, this is a cool time to be alive and go make it happen. So, um, a couple of things, you can shower in the sky on different first class flights on some of these major international carriers. Particularly Emirates’s first class. There’s a shower on the plane and a full on bar. It’s kind of like a James Bar scene, or James Bond bar where there’s literally like a cocktail bar in the back and they’re serving up caviar and Don Perignon and like fancy drinks and top shelf stuff. And it’s a double decker plane. It’s on an aircraft called the A380 for any aviation geeks out there, but it’s a huge plane and the first class section, you get a full suite to yourself with a bed and you get the shower. They also have this on an airline called the Ed apartments. And I’ll tell you so that Emirates’s first class one just to give an example of how I did this, right? Because people think, okay, that must be
Scott: Where did you go from and to on this flight by the way as well?
Guest: So this was from uh New York to Dubai. and uh I did this one with my business partner last last year and here’s a a little breakdown of this. So this is a $15,000 ticket one way per person in first class. So again, I’m I’m never paying that, okay? Maybe there’s some oil sheiks out in Dubai and that’s that’s chump change to them. To me that’s a that’s a big number. Um and so there’s three ways to book it. I could have gone through the website and paid cash, $15,000. I could have gone to the Amex travel or Chase travel and used my points through their portal. again, most people are doing this and you’re going to get one cent per point roughly, so it’d be around 15,000 or sorry, uh 1.5 million points for that. So 15,000 in cash, option B, 1.5 million points. Option C is what I did where I transferred them 136,000 points and I paid $500. So instead of 1.5 million, I got up for 136,000. So how would you get 136,000? It’s like, well if you’re doing a few different real estate investments and you basically just spend on the right cards with your groceries and your everyday living expenses, you’ll earn 136,000 probably every few months or so for most people that are just like normal household expenses. So it’s not that I mean it’s still a decent chunk, but with a couple car bonuses in there, that’s very attainable and a pretty cool thing to be able to do. So that’s one. Um, you know, there’s all sorts of crazy hotels you can stay in. There’s a lot of overwater villas in the Maldives and Bora Bora and stuff like that where you can use your points and you could do, you know, some of these unbelievably luxurious things where you have like the the private pool that just like overlooks this the horizon on a overwater villa. Those are cool. You can stay in castles in Scotland. That’s an unbelievable experience. There’s an airline Singapore, uh Singapore Airlines. They have a thing called the Singapore suite, which is which is what I have uh flown as well. And these suites are like they’re basically probably like 10x 10 rooms is like your your seat. And so it has a full bed and then like a separate kind of like almost like a Dr. Evil looking chair. It’s like this big comfy chair that swirls around. a couple TVs in your suite, and the bed actually comes out of a wall. Now, if there’s two people that fly together, that wall will come down and it will turn into a double bed in the sky. Okay, and so that’s just like you get like basically, or it might be even like a queen if they if they fully lay it out. So it’s like a, it’s a crazy way to travel. So those are some of the things that you can do. Um, and the last thing that’s really crazy and this is you have to have a lot of points for this. Uh, there’s actually ways to go down to, uh spend a week with Richard Branson on his private island, uh Necker Island, and if you have Virgin miles, which you can transfer from Amex, if you have a certain amount, you can go down there for a full week and hang out with Richard Branson and it’s like use, I think it’s like 1 point or a million or 1.25 million Virgin miles to be able to go do that. And that’s a that’s a big one. I haven’t done that. I know some people who have, it’s a pretty cool experience, but all sorts of wild things that are that are potentially available. Um, but more practically speaking, you know, for most people they’re are like, that’s cool, I probably don’t really need to go shower in the sky or have like a big desire to go do that. And I I totally get that. I’d say one of the biggest things that I would think is like a little bit out of reach for a lot of people, but now it becomes possible with points that they actually want is if you are going to Europe or Asia or South America to get one of those lay flat seats. That’s a game changer. Like when you go overseas and you fly on like an 8-hour flight to Europe or a 9 hour, 10-hour flight and you get to get a lay flat seat, you get some nice food, you get the wine, you maybe you get the lounge before and they have like massages there and you know, some of these lounge even have like bubble baths that you can take it, it’s crazy. Uh but you get that kind of thing. that lay flat bed will be a game changer for your your entire trip. It’ll make it way more fun. You’ll enjoy the actual travel instead of just like dreading the flight. And it’ll make you show up more rested and rejuvenated for your actual trip. So that’s kind of a whole breakdown of how you can do it.
Scott: Let’s end on that one. Walk us through how how I could go from Denver or you know, pick a pick a major hub but what I’m going to be more familiar with and uh Texas or whatever to Paris or London or one of the big hubs that you you’ve done there. What’s the practical way and how much is it going to cost me in points with one of these base programs?
Guest: Yeah, I mean we just did this for a bunch of clients. Actually there Air France had a had a promo. So some of these programs will do promos on their points. They were doing 50,000 points one way from major US uh hubs to Paris in business class. And so Air France is a great airline and these flights are normally around like $5,000 per person, maybe between like 4 to 6K depending on where you’re flying and when. but that’s that’s about average. 50,000 points, if you go to Chase or AMEX’s website, it’s normally going to get you $500. So all you do is you convert those chase, Amex, City, or Capital One, Air France is a partner with all four of those banks. You would find the seat you want. So you’d say, okay, I’ll just use an example, New York’s an easy one because it’s a big hub. You’d say, okay, New York to Paris. that’s maybe a $5,000 ticket. It’s 50,000 points. You convert your chase or Amex or capital one points that you have into Air France, you’d search your dates, you’ll see a pop up, it says 50,000 points. You’ll probably pay like 150 or $200 in taxes for that. You convert them over, you basically log into the bank site, you say, like what program do you want to send it to? You click Air France, you punch in your loyalty number, so you have to have a loyalty account set up for that, which is super easy and free. You send it over, you log into your Air France account, voila, 50,000 points are there, and then you just click search with miles, you search the flight, you click book, and then you just got that seat all all booked up for you. So 50,000 for a $5,000 ticket is what it’ll be a 10 cent per point. That’s kind of the key metric here. So that’s really good value on your points whereas again, if you went to cash them out for Amazon and you got your vacuum cleaner or whatever you were going to get your water filters, you’re going to get 6 tenths of a cent. So this is almost 20X the value compared to what you would have got on Amazon.
Scott: That is fantastic. Eli, this was absolutely one of the most remarkable interviews we’ve done in Bigger Pockets Money. We just threw all of this random questions at you, practical advanced questions, tactical, going back to strategic, and you just handled everything so wonderfully. It’s a clear you’re a master at this subject. Really have studied it a long time. Really know what you’re doing. Really have seen a lot of examples around this. Thank you for the advice that I’m personally going to be able to take away from this and for what I’m sure you added to a lot of listeners. Where can people find out more about you and follow you?
Guest: Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate the kind words and it takes one to know one. sometimes, you know, people that have been in the game they’re like, oh that that person knows what they’re doing. So I always uh I appreciate that. But um yeah, so so two places, uh Instagram, I post a lot of stuff there, reals, property reviews, cool hotel flights, but most importantly, you know, as I’m doing this stuff for myself or doing it for clients and I’m showing how a lot of like reals and stories on how to do this on your own. and so that’s going to be at Eli Travel Guy. and we have a free mini course. It’s normally $50, but if people want that, they can just DM me the word mini, M I N I and we’ll send over their mini course for free, which is like a great starter pack to unpack a little bit of this stuff in a more organized way. So that’d be on uh Instagram. And then um our company website is freedomtravelsystems.com. and so most of what we do there, we help, you know, individuals and business centers, really maximize all this real estate investors, everything and, you know, turn the right cards on so they can get more points, better points, have a more comprehensive travel plan and redeem them more effectively and we help with all the strategies there. So if people want to check that out or get a free consult or anything they’re, they’re more than welcome to go to freedomtravelsystems.com as well.
Scott: Awesome. Yeah, so everyone, remember that we’re going to link to all this in the show notes at biggerpockets.com/money. But uh go check out at Eli travel guy. That guy knows what he’s talking about.
Mindy: Okay, Scott, that was so much fun. I learned so much and I am so excited to download all those apps that he was talking about and go visit all those websites and try to figure out how I can optimize my travel hacking because I’m not right now. I have the Southwest card, but not the Southwest companion pass, and I have a hiat card and the Venture X card. The Venture X card is amazing. But I’m not really optimizing. I’m not spending, you know, on this card for this thing and this card for that thing. And uh pro tip, if you have a card or a bunch of cards in your wallet and you want to remember which one to use where, just write it on the front. Just write on the front of your Costco card. This one’s for gas and this one’s for groceries and this one’s for, you know, whatever it is that it’s uh that you’re trying to do because I think that that will help you remember which cards to use when you’re in the moment.
Scott: Yeah, this this guy was awesome. Eli is fantastic. He knows what he’s talking about. Um, he knows what he knows that he knows that he’s talking about, as he pointed out towards the end of the show. Love that, love the confidence. And like, you know, is travel hacking the first step in to building wealth? No. But if you’ve got your budget in place, if you’ve got an investment approach in place, if you’re optimizing the income front, like, wow, the quality of life improvements that you can drive from just doing the same things you’re doing anyways with your spending and budgeting is super powerful here, and it’s a great tip to bring back some of those luxuries or the parts of the good life uh into your into your life through some of the mechanisms and frameworks that he just described today. So it’s a rabbit hole to go down. Hopefully this show is one of those where you took out your notepad, wrote a thing some things down, or you’re going to go check out the show notes, um because there’s a ton of resources in here and a ton of rabbit holes to go down. if you can pick pick get a hypothesis for what you want out of uh travel rewards and um, plan approach, plan an approach accordingly with your credit cards and spending to get there.
Mindy: Yeah, I had a great time and like I said, I learned a ton and I am so excited to dive in even deeper. Um and yeah, if you started listening and you didn’t have your notebook with you, then go ahead and rewind and listen to it again. All right Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott: Fine.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He of course is the Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, goodbye, Key Lime Pie.
Scott: 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.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
