How to Hack Your Next Vacation with Chris Hutchins

in other ways too. So if you are somebody who wants to save money on your vacation and don't want to use credit cards, stay tuned. Oh my gosh, you're gonna get so so much from this episode. We basically say hello to Chris and he just gives us all. He starts, he starts, he just start. It's in, so we won't we won't hold you back from the deluge. Just remember we have all the links that he mentions in our show notes, so don't pull over to the side of the road, or worse, try to visit them

while you are driving. We've got them in the show notes, all written down for you. And if you are interested in other episodes on traveling, we've got some of those for you too. But first, this episode is brought to you by Debt Free Stories. We still got them, We're still releasing them. This is our ten episode YouTube series where we are interviewing listeners just like you who have paid off debt in various ways, various amounts, from various backgrounds.

So there is going to be someone in some story that you relate to. There just has to be. So they are so amazing, so had to YouTube dot com slash Foogle friends to catch all of them have been released so far. We still have a few to be released, so subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so that you're the first to know when the next ones are released. It all right, So if you are interested

in vacation NG, I mean awesome. If you're not, I'm sorry, I mean maybe your life is so great you don't need a vacation from it, and which, of course awesome. You're probably not listening to this episode, right, So a few of our other episodes if you are interested. We've got episode to fifty, which is how to Save money on travel, So this is kind of like an extension

of that one. Basically, listen to this one and if you want more non credit card tips to save on travel had to episode to fifty if you want really like true travel hacking through credit cards, Episode one fifty travel hacking for beginners. It's my five card strategy for starting with credit cards to travel hack, and it is definitely for beginners. So episode one fifty is the one

we send everybody too. And then we also have episode one nineteen where we talk with Danielle Dezier of The Thought Card about staycations, local travel, road trips, so that's more your jam. Episode one Night Team is for you. Yeah, plenty about travel. We love talking about travel. So let's get into our interview with Chris. Chris is a phenomenal

human being. He's an avid life hacker, financial optimizer. He's the host of the podcast All the Hacks, where essentially he just shares in every episode his quest to upgrade his life without having to spend a fortune. So he is definitely doing that. Here we are benefiting from all of his life hacking skills and we're so excited to share with you. Let's get into it. Chris, welcome to the show. We're super excited to talk about hacking things. Of course, I'm excited to be here. We need. We

need all the hacks. And for those who didn't have the privilege, it really wasn't a privilege of being with us before we hit the record button, It's very obvious we we just need to hack our way through life because we're not hitting it, so we need hacks. So thanks for being there with us, Chris, I think this would be helpful for us and our listeners. But we want to specifically talk about travel hacking. It's one of the things we get asked about a lot. We're not

experts at it. We've dabbled, we dipped our two in the water of hacking. But for you, based on experience, how can one get started with travel hacking? What do we need to know? What does beginning look like? So I think traditionally travel hacking is kind of synonymous with playing the credit card points and miles game. I don't think it has to be. So I'm gonna I'm gonna zoom back and say there's like points and then the

non points version. So in general, if you don't want to get into the credit card stuff, and we'll get to it, don't worry. But I'm gonna just gonna go through a handful of kind of travel hacks that have nothing to do with credit cards, even though that's kind of the bulk of where everyone kind of traditionally goes. So there's a lot of stuff. They're just like better searching, right if you're searching for flights, I think Google Flights is the best search tool you want to get the

best deals. You don't necessarily need to book with points and miles to get a good deal. And so that includes stuff like being able to search multiple airports. Either in the Bay Area, there's three airports. I'm always searching all of them to try to figure out where I

could go, searching different dates. Google Calendar has this amazing ability to say like seven day trip from San Francisco to like New York, but you could pick all three San Francisco and all three New York airports and then look at a calendar and be like, which week is going to be the cheapest or which day is going to be the cheapest for a year. So I think that's one thing when it comes to thinking about flights, and I'm just going to dive in here so I

don't have like we're here. They can always replay this when you're going internationally. Another really important travel hack when it comes to flights is around what i'll call positioning. So if you're going from San Francisco to New York, it's really straightforward. Almost every airline that flies to New

York or San Francisco flies that route. But if you were going internationally to maybe some less common destination, maybe an island in Greece or something like that, most of the airlines that fly from your home city, wherever it is in the United States, probably don't also fly to an island in Greece. In fact, even if you include

their partners, they might not fly to that island. But there are a bunch of airlines that fly to the islands in Greece or all over the world that are not part of a big you know, travel collective of you know, alliances with United American Delta, those kind of airline. And so if you just searched San Francisco to Santorini, you might only find a couple options, and they're gonna be usually the most expensive options. But if you try to just get yourself to Athens and buy the ticket

to a Greek island, it'll add on seventy dollars. But from San Francisco to Athens. There's probably hundreds of options because almost every carrier flies to the major cities in Europe, the major cities in Asia, etcetera. So a really important thing is if you're ever looking to buy a flight to somewhere that's not a major city, also look and see if getting to a nearby major city is much cheaper,

and then just buy that extra flight. After the fact, leave yourself enough time to go collect your bags and recheck them if you're if you're checking bags because you know you're not gonna be able to transfer them directly because of that. But if you're looking at a two thousand dollar ticket, then all of a sudden became eleven d dollars and you've got a family of four and

you're saving you know, almost thirty dollars. Yeah, well then it's totally worth having to budget a few extra hours or maybe even just spend a couple of days in that city before you move on. So true. I love Google the Google flight search function. There's certain airlines that don't show up on it, especially for people who come to the Southwest Allegiance or don't show up there. Sometimes Southwest does, but the price is always hidden. Yeah, the

price is always hidden on Southwest. Someone actually created a browser extension that would fill it in and then Southwest suit them, so that doesn't work anymore. So yeah, so you'll see the Southwest flight, but you have to go check the price. But other than Southwest, it's it's pretty good. Yeah. The hack there is if you go to the Wikipedia page for any airport, you can look at all the

places it flies. That's one. There's a website called flights from dot com or flight connections dot com and you can put a city in it will show you all the routes there. So I like to do that more for countries internationally because Google flights might not be the perfect place for every island. And Thailand and or Greece it's pretty good, but those other websites are pretty good

at showing you every flight from that airport. That's awesome. Yeah, And flights are one of the biggest barriers to entry for vacations, Like it's typically the flights that get families from traveling to these, you know, far away places. It's usually kind of you're limited by where you can drive when you have a larger family. So like, yeah, being able to save five hundred, nine hundred dollars per ticket on a flight by just checking out the variables is

a fantastic hack. That's a great stuff. So that's flights. When it comes to where you stay, a few fun things. So one, you can negotiate your Airbnb every time if you're booking Airbnb. We made the transition from no kids to two kids, which is synonymous with the transition from staying in hotels to staying in rented houses because there's just no to make it easy once the kids are old enough that you could like leave them in a room with a closed door. I think hotel has become

a better option again. And if you're in Europe, actually a lot of hotels have a deal where your second room is fifty percent off if it's going to be occupied by children. Because also, unfortunately in Europe, a lot of hotels have like a two person capacity for the room, so if you're a family of four, even though there might be two beds, you might not be able to have everyone in there. But definitely asked the hotel if they give a second room at a discount, which is

common with a lot of chains. So yes, always negotiate your Airbnb s. I always email the host and say, hey, we're coming. It's a little out of my budget. Or there's a place that I like that is a similar price, your place is a little nicer. If you could drop the price, I'd book it right away, and then I do, and I'd say at least fifty hit ray getting people

to drop the price, especially if it's last minute. Also, especially if you're trying to optimize for a good deal, look at the calendar and if the place you're staying at has like six nights free in their calendar and it's booked before and after that, you might have a lot more leverage trying to get a deal, because if they got a three nights day, they might not be able to fill the rest. So if you're like perfectly

slotting in their opening, you know that's a good opportunity. Also, in other countries, there are a lot of sites that aren't Airbnb that you might not know about, even like local ones. So I always download the main image from Airbnb of a place, and then I go to Google image Search and I do a reverse image search and I upload the picture and sometimes you'll find other websites that are listing the same place maybe without the ten

percent fee that Airbnb charges. We just did that when we went to Paris and we found a place that we found the place on Airbnb somewhere else for less, and we tried to negotiate on Airbnb with that place and they said no. So we actually found a way to get a good deal. If you book a hotel directly with a hotel, email the hotel and say hey, we're coming to stay with you. We're really excited, you know, looking forward to staying with you. That's literally it, and

then follow up a few days before. I think I've had more listeners, like hundreds of listeners send me emails like we got upgraded, we got free breakfast, we got our parking compt like all kinds of stuff because they booked directly, meaning not at trip Advisor, not somewhere else at the hotel's website. Maybe create a loyalty account with the hotel before so they know they have a chance to build a relationship with you and their brand. And you would be surprised at how many things you get.

If you're booking, you know, a budget hotel that doesn't have suites or room service or anything like that. It's probably not gonna get you much. So that's on hotels. On car rentals, there are a lot of programs like Triple A and Costco that give you a spouse free or car seats free or those kind of things. There's a cool site called auto slash that because most car rental reservations can be canceled for free. You just tell them your car rental reservation, or you can just book

through them directly. But even if you've are you booked, you give them your reservation and then they just monitor every day and if they see that it's gone down in price, they email you and say, hey, go rebook your reservation. It's gone down in price. So they'll just

monitor every day. What is that website, it's it's auto slash auto slash, And we'll have all these links in the show notes too, because I know Chris just just gave out a lot of Really, I don't think that is what we are here for, and that's what all of our Listen, this is hacking your vacation, and this is this is it. So I won't go through everything. I've got an entire you know, I'm almost at by

the time this comes out. I bet I've done a hundred episodes on how to upgrade every aspect of your life. But one more I'll leave you with is on if you're traveling internationally. A lot of times taking your domestic phone is going to be super expensive and paying for international data. But now with a lot of phones, especially if you've gotten a new phone in the last couple of years, they all support what's called an SIM which back in the day you used to like take the

SIM card, put it in the phone. Now you can do the whole process electronically. So there's a site I love called air alo a I R A l O dot com. When it's just a directory of all the sims you can buy all over the world. So if you're going to Europe, you might be able to get you know, twenty gigs of data for a couple of weeks for like twenty dollars. But back in the day, you need to go find the store by the SIM card,

put it in activated. Now you can do the whole thing online and it's so easy, So you can save a lot on data traveling internationally doing that. That's fantastic. That's like a little taste of the fact that there are a lot of ways to save money on a vacation when you are not going to play the credit

card points of Miles game. I love that. However, when people talk about travel hacking, the big thing they're talking about is playing the credit card points of Miles game, Because whether it's earning points from signing up for a new card or whether it's just spending in the right categories, you can rack up points at a and make them useful for travel at a rate that's can be far more valuable than just getting cash back, which I think

is why people get really excited. You know, there can be cards with hundred and fifty thousand point or miles sign up bonuses that could cover multiple flights, you know, internationally. So before I go into that, I will caveat that there is no amount of interest charge on a credit card that makes it worth doing anything to earn points on a card. So if you can't pay your credit cards off in full each month, this is a great game.

Once you start to get to the point that you pay your credit cards off in full each month, come back listen to the rest of this episode about ways that you can optimize that. But until then, it's going to be far more financially, better to focus on paying down your debt, getting it to the point that you're not crewing interest and paying interest charges than earning some free points. So I want to make sure that gets

out there. Just do our job for us. Disclaimer. So yeah, a ton of great tips that you don't even need to have a credit card for. And credit cards really just are the icing on top of the like quote unquote like free vacation stuff. But like it is, okay, let's let's dive into the credit card points stuff. Is there any such thing as a quote unquote free vacation?

So look, when you buy most things, not all things, like I can't pay for my childcare with the credit card, I can't pay my property tax with the credit card. But for most things you purchase online, you pay with a credit card, and you can choose whether you pay with your debit card. You're checking account of your credit card. If you use a credit card and you don't have to pay an extra fee to use it, you're going to be able to use a card that gets you

cash backer points. So I would say, if you're comparing a debit card to earning points, yeah, there could be a free vacation. But al cabiat that if you're using a card that gives you two percent hash back, like the City Double Cash, like, you're not really getting a free vacation if you take it on your points, because you could have gotten cash back and use that cash

to pay bills, payoff debt, anything like that. So I wouldn't say there's any anything that's a true free vacation because if you're using points and miles to go on a vacation, those points and miles could have been cash back. That said, I think there's something emotional that is different than the rational mind, which is you accrue a bunch

of points that you didn't spend money for. Maybe you spent money to buy things you need, but you didn't actually buy the points, and then you're able to use those points to fly somewhere, stay in a hotel somewhere, or both, and you're like, Wow, the flight was free, the hotel was free. Yeah, I could have earned some cash back, but it was free. That was awesome. So I would say there's an emotional free vacation. But if you're looking at the like true rational economist mindset of

opportunity costs, it probably wasn't completely free. There are sites that I've used in the past called like CouchSurfing, where you can stay with locals and other countries actually for free. Or maybe when you lead travel ret your place out on Airbnb and if you can make enough that you know it covers the cost, maybe your vacation is free. But when it comes to travel hacking, I think there's a bit of a misnomber of saying like, oh, I

took this amazing vacation for free. It's like, yes, but you could have had cash If you did cash back, would you have been able to take that same vacation with that amount of cash back? Often no, So I think where travel hacking comes into play is that you know, if I spend a certain amount on a credit card, I might be able to earn five cash back, but with points and miles, I might be able to get a thousand or two thousand dollars worth of travel. So

I'll split it into two things. There's like earning the points and redeeming the points. The redeeming I'll just give the high level first because this opens up a huge rabbit hole that could be five more episodes. But in general, when you earn points and miles, you have two options on how you redeem those points and miles, depending on what cards and everything. If you have a hotel card or an airline card, you're gonna earn those points and miles and you're gonna only be able to use them

in that program. So we'll set that aside. But if you earn Amex points or Chase points or Capital one or City or built any of these kind of flexible currencies, those points can either be used to basically equivalent cash rate of buying gift cards, buying travel through the Chase portal or the Amex portal or that kind of thing, or you can transfer those points to airlines and hotel groups. Any trip you take that you are able to use

your points on is awesome. So I don't wanna discourage people from the mindset of like, oh, you have to eke out the best absolute value to be able to take an awesome vacation. I think we're going to talk about mistakes. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make. But oftentimes the best value you can get is when you transfer those points to an airline and book with the airlines program. So like we could go down a lot of rabbit holes there. If you have flexibility,

it gets even better. There are sites like point dot me that make it really easy to go search across lots of different airlines, so you're not going United and searching, going to American and searching, going to Delta and searching. So to get the absolute best value, you've got to invest some time. But even if you don't want to do that and you just want to go I've earned Chase points, I go to the Chase portal, I book it.

You know, in Chase's example, depending on which card do you have, those points might be worth anywhere from one to one and a half cents, whereas if you redeem them for gift cards or cash back, it's usually on it's usually only one cent or even in some cases half a sent. So even if you're just booking in the portal, you will still be able to get some value from your points that will let you take free vacations with air quotes because you know what we just discussed.

But if you want to go down the rabbit hole of transferring those points, you can get even more value. I've got a ton of episodes on that we're not going to go down that too deep right now. But let's talk about earning, because that's like you can't do any of this if you're sitting with a Chase account with one point in it. So there are too kind of level one ways that you earn when you open up a new card. A lot of cards give you a sign up bonus if you spend a certain amount

of money in a certain window. I'd say, like the most common is three to four thousand dollars in three months, and if you do that, maybe you get anywhere from I like to think that the floor is like seventy thousand points is like a good entry, and then if it's anything over a hundred, it's amazing. And that's with these kind of flexible currencies. Hotel points sometimes are worth less than airline points. So you might see a hotel card that's like a hundred and fifty thousand, but I

wouldn't I wouldn't put that on the same level. But if it's Chase, it's am x, it's capital one. Anything over a hundred is amazing, anything over seventy is pretty good, And so you sign up for the card, you get the points. That's it. It's easy. You know, if you have enough spending that you could do that once or twice a year, could be pretty reasonable to rack up hundred two hundred three hundred thousand points a year, depending

on you know, how you're able to do that. There are some nuances to like how many cards you can open in a year, And so I would say like, let's just play you know, one oh one it and say, you know, get one card or two cards and and do that. So that's part one. The other part is just spending optimally. There are cards out there that are really great if you buy a lot of airline tickets, but if all you do is buy buy groceries, it's

the worst card out there. Right. There are cards that are great for gas and groceries, but if you have an electric car and you don't make cook at home and you only go out to eat, that's terrible card. So I always say, go look at where you spend your money, whether you've made a budget, whether the current card you have has one of these annual reports that you can look at for last year and say, where

do I spend my money? If it's all on groceries, maybe optimized for a card that earns a lot of points on groceries if it's all on travel, optimized for a card that earns a lot of points on travel, so I you know, you can go down the one card. I spend most of my money on travel and dining, so that Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve is like a pretty good cover. You can play this game to the point that you're like, well, I also spend money on groceries,

so let me get a card that does well on groceries. Oh, I also spend money, And you can go down and down and stack to the point that you have five ten cards. But to get started, I say, just like, focus on a card that covers where you spend most of your money, and if you want to get a second one, focus on a card that covers everything else. I love the Yeah, I love the Capital one, Venture and Venture X cards. It's just two X on everything.

You don't have to think about it. It's like every purchase I make, it's two points, no worries, so that pairs well. I think that's such an important caveat too, because I get a lot of people friends included, just asking me about my opinions on credit cards just because of this podcast, and I could be so in love with my card and say this has been great for me.

But especially when there's a high annual fee to have the card, it really has to make sense for you if you're going to utilize that card to the highest level of benefit, and if it's actually going to benefit for you for what your lifestyle is. I think that those are excellent things to keep in mind. Yeah, and some of those high annual fees, by the way, there

are credits that try to offset them, almost all of them. Right, It's like, okay, well we're gonna charge you to fifty, but you'll get ten dollars a month in uber uber Eats credit and another ten dollars a month you can spend at you know, like shake Shack or grub Hub or that kind of stuff. So if you get ten dollars a month times two times twelve, you get two hundred forty dollars a month two dollars a year of credits, and the annual fee is two hundred fifty dollars. And

the card I'm referencing is the Amex Gold Card. That's the kind of deal. You're only spending ten dollars, but if you don't ever order online at uber eats, and you're just starting to say, oh, well, because I have ten dollars, let's order dinner. And you're gonna spend fifty dollars to save ten dollars, but you wouldn't have spent any of it first place. We're not really getting anything

back there, You're actually creating yourself more. Yeah, I mean that's why, like Jill and I have different credit card strategies. She uses like a lot of her benefits because she would use them other like anyways, Whereas I tend to stick with the lower annual fee cards because I don't use any of those. I go pick up my own takeout. Jill can't fathom that, And so I'm gonna come into my door yea, if I'm gonna if I'm going convenience,

I'm going convenient. Yeah, I would rather go more welcome bonuses with more lower fee cards and and do it that route. So yeah, it is really the card that's right for you will vary based on what you are already using. Yeah, how do you value these perks these benefits. There are a lot of cards that come with travel credits, like the venture X card has like a travel credit and you can use it in the Capital one portal for hotels and flights. But if you don't travel, you're

never getting that three dollars back. But if you spend more than three on travel and you book your flight or your hotel through Capital one, like, it's almost as good as cash. So you just gotta look at it and figure out am I going to get this value? And be honest with yourself? And if you are, and you know the card is gonna cost you an extra twenty dollars a year, well maybe that's a good deal if it gives you a few more points per dollar

on a category you spend on. But if it's gonna cost you five dollars a year, and it's gonna give you an extra two points per dollar on gas, but like you rarely drive, you've got to ask yourself, is getting an extra thousand or five hundred points a year

really worth that much money? And the answer is usually no. I think points in general come in very different valuations depending on who you ask, but I'd say, at a bare minimum, like all points are usually worth except hotel points, about a cent on the high end, two cents, So that's kind of the range, like the most flexible points like Chase and Amex that you could train it sort of.

So many airlines, you know, people often say they're probably worth about two cents, but if you're spending more than that, you're definitely not getting a good deal. M hmm. We're beginning to already identify some of the pitfalls for people here where it could go wrong, where there is room for mistakes. What have you seen in your area of expertise here related to travel hacking that people are making and and and how could they avoid it? What are

the biggest mistakes? What can they do to avoid it? I think there's two, one, maybe three. We could just go down a lot of them. But I don't want to scare anyone off. But when it comes to trying to get the best use, like use of your points,

the maximum value. I've seen people who have heard stories, and I've shared some of these stories where okay, well, we were planning our honeymoon, We planned a year out, we knew where we wanted to go, We found the absolute best way to get there, and we booked it an international business class, which can be like one of the best, you know, like we were never gonna actually pay for a ten tho dollar fly, but we were able to get a ten thousand dollar flight on points,

So when you talk about it, it's like, wow, we actually got like eight or nine cents for each of our points, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, because if you were using a credit card that even at the bare minimum, gives you two points per dollar, if you're able to get nine cents from those points, it's like you're getting eighteen percent cash back

on everything you spent. So someone will hear that and say, well, it would be a horrible use if I can only get two cents, I gotta find a way to get nine. And then they're like, hmmmm, well, the only way to get a lot of points right now when I'm looking online is to fly in business class. I didn't even want to fly in business class, but now I'm flying a business class And well, we really wanted as a family to go to London, but all the flights I

found were to roam. So now all of a sudden, someone's like trying to optimize for getting the best deal and they end up taking their family in business class to Rome, using all of their miles to get the best deal when all they really wanted to do is go to London and they were totally fine flying in economy, And so they end up optimizing the trip around getting the best deal, then going where they want to go

and doing what they want to do. So I'll say, it's always awesome if the stars align and where you want to go, what you want to do, when you want to do it happens to be the best deal. But don't hold, you know, beat yourself up over not getting the absolute best deal that you hear me or anyone else online talking about. When it comes to, you know, the number of the dollar value you got from a

certain amount of points. I'd say, if you're getting any amount of value of your points over a penny a point, you're probably doing better than you would with cash back, and that's awesome. And if you're still just getting one cent a point, well then you're getting the same thing you would have with cash back, so that's also awesome. And for a lot of us, I know, I've had

lots of months where like cash flow is tight. If you're taking a vacation that didn't require you to dip into your cash because you didn't have it, well, that's awesome, Like, so I don't want anyone to beat themselves up over thinking that they have to get the best possible deal, because it can be stressful and it can end up resulting in things that you don't want. That's so helpful.

I need to hear that because I have like over almost close to two hundred thousand points like wracked up just because we're in the middle of cash flowing renovations and I want to use it on a really long international flight. But then in the back of my mind, I'm like, oh, but I could use that on multiple domestic flights, Like do I really want to just dump all of them into this one international flight versus getting

the most amount of travel out of these points. But hearing you say whatever it is for you that that you've planned and had this idea of how you want to use it, go for it super permission giving Yeah, Like, if there's a wedding that you really want to go to, but cash flow is tight and the points are gonna let you go to the wedding, Like, that's a great

use of points. But if cash flow is not tight, and all the short domestic trips you can afford in your budget, but you're never going to spend, you know, five thousand dollars a person to go on that like honeymoon level international vacation, then maybe that's for you. Is the better, better use and you know so, so that's that's kind of how I think about it from a

wrist standpoint. Look, I'll add a few other fun hacks just for people to kind of keep in the back of their mind if you want to earn more points. So one is, uh, every one of these websites that has a portal like Chase am X, most of them all have these shopping portals, so you can go online and look, and there's portals like racket in where you

can also earn cash back. But for a lot of the points websites, they similarly have one where you could say, oh, I'm gonna go buy something from Apple, so why not click the link from the Chase website and earn one cent per dollar on my Apple purchase? So similar to the cash back portals, they have points portals. One thing I like to do, especially if you're someone who doesn't spend a lot, but you really want to get these

sign up bonuses. So let's say you only spend a few thousand dollars, let's say in less than a thousand dollars a month, and you've got to sign up bonus and you need to spend three thousand dollars in three months, and that's just not what you normally put on a credit card, like you're super frugal. Well I don't, I'd say, don't go buy stuff you don't need to meet the minimum spend, Like that's never gonna help your budget or

your financial situation. But is there something that you know you're going to spend money on in the three months that follow that you could pre buy, you know, a gift card for So let's say you always spend two bucks a month on Amazon, Well maybe you could buy a five Amazon gift card so that you can meet the minimum spend to get that sign up bonus. And then the few months that follow, you could spend that

gift card. And that gift card to Amazon could be a gift card to the grocery store, it could be a gift card to the gas station, anything like that. And if you want to really ramp it up. I mentioned the m X Gold earlier because it's it's four x points on dining and groceries. So anytime I want to buy something that doesn't have a bonus, so take rid of it. We've talked about renovation like home Depot lows. There isn't a great hard that earns a lot of

points at Home Depot unfortunately. But I have a card there's four x points at groceries, So I just buy Home Depot gift cards at the grocery store and then pay for my Home Depot purchase with home home Depot gift cards. So I'm getting four x points on home Depot because I buy gift cards at the grocery store, where I have a card that has a high bonus. You may have a card that has high bonus at drug stores while they sell gift cards at CBS and Walgreen's.

You might have a there are some business cards that have a high you earned five points or something three points at office supply stores like you know Staples and Office Max, Well, they sell gift cards there. So I like to play the gift card arbitrage game where if you have a card that earns a lot at a place that sells gift cards, you can always buy the gift cards that you can spend somewhere else. I wouldn't

have thought that it worked that way. That's insane. I have heard you do want to be careful with like manufactured spending, like buying like American Express. So those types of cards, Yeah, So retailer gift cards like a you know, I don't know gap, old Navy Home Depot, those things usually don't have fees to buy them. But when you buy a Visa gift card or you buy an am X gift card, they usually have activation fees for those cards.

And if you break that activation feed down into like a percentage of the purchase, it usually doesn't make up for the cost. Like it usually ends up not being a good deal. So buying a five gift card at the grocery store, that's a Visa gift card, and pain whatever the activation fee is probably isn't a good deal

on an ongoing basis. But if you signed up for a credit card and you need to spend three thousand dollars in order to get seventy five thousand points, and you're a two thousand, nine hundred dollars and there's nothing you need that you could buy a gift card for anything, and you just buy a hundred dollar Visa gift card and you have to pay six dollars to activate it. Well, the six dollars was worth the seventy five thousand points that you would of foregone if you didn't get it.

So in those like final few days you're trying to meet the minimum spend. If you have to pay a fee or something to use your card, it's probably worth it if you've got ten or a hundred thousand points on the line. But just generally if you're like, oh, I want more points, I'm gonna take my grocery gift card and just keep racking up these Visa gift cards, probably not a good use. Lots of strategy involved, Yeah, definitely.

There's some crazy advanced, weird stuff that I'm not going to get into, where like their websites where people like who want to buy things online but there's limits, like you can't buy an unlimited number of iPads. Someone's like, I want to buy a thousand iPads and ship them to a country where they're really expensive. If you just buy the iPad and mail it to me, I'll pay you. They're called buyers clubs, like their ways to earn more points. But even I haven't gone down that path. That's the

only one. The only one I really love it is. I'll encourage anyone listening because it's a way to trade your time for more points. And sometimes when we're trying to be frugal or willing to spend our time for benefit, and that is like raise your hand to volunteer to plan the next group trip. So travel is one of the categories that always gets the most points. There's so many cards that are in three to five points per dollar on flights and hotels. So something I always love doing.

No one seems to like planning a group trip, right. It's like coordinating everyone and all the stuff. I would always raise my hand and say, hey, guys, I will plan this trip. I'll book the hotel's all, book everyone's flights, I'll collect money from everyone. I'll coordinate it all. You don't have to pay me, of course, because like, why would my friends pay me? That's weird. But I'm gonna put it all in my card and you guys all have to like venmo me or zell me or something.

And depending on how much you trust your friends, you might ask them to venmo you in advance. Uh, if you trust them enough. You could say way too. You know, you could, you could book everything and then ask them to reimburse you. But when you do that, Let's say you've got a group trip with five six let's say six total people, and you're booking flights. I don't know, you're going to Nashville, you're going Austin something like. That's two fifty dollars. Well, that's of flights. You know, you're

booking three nights in a two hotel rooms. Maybe it's another thousand dollars on hotels you just spent. Maybe you did it on a card that earns three points per dollar on travel. You're almost earning ten thousand points from planning this trip from your friends, which is a meaningful contribution towards your points balance. I've been lucky enough to be able to do this for like twenty person group trips. You've got twenty people, Well that's just like four times

as much. And uh, you know, if you you're taking a group trip with maybe you want to plan your next family reunion, like who knows, But that's a way I've been able to rack up a lot of points without having to spend a lot of extra time. My friends have gotten wise to this. We're out to dinner. It's like, well, I'll put it on my car and everyone Ben Momi, all right, I'll put you did that last time, so it's my turn now. But yeah, and we can we can share, we can pass the baton

on who gets to put it on their card. Yes, I love that strategy. It's taking somebody else's points from them who probably isn't travel hacking anyway, so I don't feel bad and it's everybody wins. But unlike the dinner one, you're you're you're at least and I said, it doesn't cost you time. I mean, it doesn't cost you extra money, but what you're trading your time for the points because

for something that people don't like doing. It's like most people don't like organizing travel and group trips and planning and logistics. So you're saying, hey, I'm gonna take your points from booking this trip, but I'm gonna do all the work. And for some reason, if I wouldn't frame it like that, by the way, okay, I'll plan the whole trip and I'll put it all my card and you guys can reimburse me. And if they're like well, I want the points to be like, if you want

the points, you're welcome to do it. You just have to play in the whole trip. And almost always they'll be like, okay, no, never mind, you play the whole trip. So any any way that you can can do that. I'll just caution that sometimes, you know, volunteering to pay for things is great, but sometimes there are cases where you have to pay a fee to do something. So I get so many questions like, oh, I spent so much on childcare, but they don't take credit cards? Is

their way to do it? The short answer is no, Like there are a bunch of services out there that will say, oh, you know, put it on your card and we'll mail them a check or send it to them on PayPal and we'll pay my credit card and you'll pay a fee. Almost all the times, the fees are greater than you know, two percent, And even though you might be able to argue that the number of points you'd get might be worth you know, effectively three percent,

I don't like to play that game. I think you're you're basically paying fees now for the prediction that you will be able to make your points valuable in the future, and I just don't think that's worth it. So and you're sending you're sending your money to a bank who has enough money and not to maybe like a smaller like airbnb renter or somebody else who could really use the money if you just like paid for your vacation.

So like it's just it's who's getting the money? When are you gonna pay it in fees or you're going to buy a vacation Like that's how I think of it. Like I'm not going to go out of my way to get more points if I have to pay fees because I don't want the banks to get more of my money. That's not why I do this. Yeah, yeah, but all I will say if you have rent, which

is something that you can usually not earn points on. Uh, there's a company called Built and they don't pay me to say this, but they have a credit card that lets you earn points on rent, and they've worked some crazy partnership to make this possible. And unlike a lot of cards where you get a big sign up bonus when you sign up, you get no sign up bonus.

So they've chosen to say instead of a sign up bonus, we're just gonna let you earn points on rent, and they'll let you earn I think up to fifty thousand points a year on rent. So it's also three x on dining and travel card like it's a it's a great card, good cell phone protection, that kind of stuff. But if you're paying rent, the built card is a great option to start earning points on rent. There's no annual fee, so it's a good low low fee card.

I don't make any money, but if you want to use my referral code, it's all the hacks dot com slash built, I might earn some points, but yeah, built cards a good option. That's like the one expense where there is actually a way to earn points on it. But all the others property tax or childcare or your you know, your law person that tells you that they charge money and they don't take credit card. There's there's unfortunately no secret there. But obviously you could ask them

do you think you could take credit cards? But usually the answer is no, I don't want to pay fees. Yeah, you know what else doesn't take credit cards? Who or charge fees is pretty much good all the way around of the week. That's right time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bill Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton,

this is the bill of the week, Chris. Now that we've yelled at you, we'll tell you that. Every week we invite a listener or our guest to share with us their bill of the week, and so we'd love to hear yours. So my bill of the week is car insurance bills. And so here's something that I think a lot of people probably don't do as much as they should. So I was on State Farm for like, I don't know, ten years, and they were always like, we're pricing in this. You've been a customer forever. Discount,

It's awesome. And I just just and then we got a new car and I was like, wow, car insurance went up. Newer car usually it's more expensive than older cars. So I was like, okay with it. And then I just started racing around and I was like, wow, even with this, like you're a super customer discount, Geico was like cheaper and I know it's like their ad some save some percent, some number of minutes, get right. Yeah, But I'm not saying Geico is cheaper because a lot

of my friends it was the opposite. They're like, I'm on Geico, but I checked State Farm. It is shocking how regularly the data on cars is changing for each individual insurance company. So my challenge to everyone this week is go online, check out a few different sites that you know, like with U s A, if you're a member Geico, State Farm, whatever it is. There's some comparison sites also, but and go reprice your exact policy and

see if somewhere else is cheaper. And I know you might be thinking, well, I already paid six months, so I gotta wait till then. No, if you cancel your insurance policy, all the insurance companies will actually just pro rate your refund so you can do it at any time. You don't have to wait till the end of the cycle. And I was just shocked at how much cheaper it was to ensure the exact same car with the exact

same limits on a different insurance carrier. And unfortunately I obviously I've lost my State Farm super customer discount but I save like hundreds of dollars a year on insurance now, so that's my bill of the week. It's so funny because we were on Progressive for like ten years, and then when we repriced, it was cheaper with State Farm. So that's who were we have now. But we also just got a new car, so it's time to re check.

It's time to return by the scene right now. This is true for your homeowners insurance, this is true for your renter. Like all these policies, it's a pain, but you know, sometimes I remember telling some friends this over lunch, and like all of a sudden, now everyone's repricing their insurance policies. At lunch, like half the people in the room saved like over a hundred dollars a year on their insurance. So you could do this at any time forever.

On one of those like boring zoom calls. It's like, all right, well, while while I'm like paying half attention, let me just go and reprice all my insurance policies and see if I can save some money. So I don't know, I love seeing people save money. So that's my that's my tips from the same cloth, Chris. If you all listening want to save hundreds a year on your car insurance, or you want to talk about how you did, or you are a person named Bill. You

know we're calling you out, Bill Curtis. Visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your bill. We are here for it, ready and waiting, no fees, and now it's time for all right, So for this week's Lightning Round question, we will all we will all answer this one, Chris, but as our guest, you will go first. I thought the benefits should be that I get to go last. I mean, you will have the easiest time.

It's always the guests that has the easiest time. Answering the question what was the toughest situation you've been in while on vacation and how do you solve it? Mm hmmm.

I have an answer for this one too. So Life and Thad and we were on a bus and we were going to Malaysia on a bus and we pull into this I don't even remember what border crossing it was, and we were looking for the bus that we were supposed to get on that goes to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Delagia, and there was no bus there's not even a bus station. So we start like walking around it's night and we're like, where's the bus and they're like, oh,

there's no bus. So we went to like a the equivalent of a seven eleven, and we were like, hey, how do we get there? And they're like, yeah, there's no bus till tomorrow and there's no hotel. So we just stood outside of the comedian store and we just asked every person that walked in, are you driving there? Are you driving there? And finally so I was like, no, but my buddy drives a truck and he's driving there.

And it was definitely a sketchy situation. And they were like, this guy gave us a ride to a truck that was like parked on the side of the highway and he's like, hop in the truck bed like in the it was like a semi truck, not like a pickup truck, and we just, I guess hitchhiked our way in the back of a truck for the next four hours because we somehow mistakenly ended up in a town with no busses and no hotels. Wow, and internationally that's one of

the most intense situations. But we didn't know this at the We didn't know this at the time, but we had e trade as are like checking account that year because the trade had no a t m v S. I don't think they still do. I don't. I'm not going to endorse them, but that was who we had. What turns out, the trade did not allow cash withdrawals in Malaysia, so we didn't know it at the time, but we didn't actually have any money, and we we maybe had like ten dollars to our name, but we

had no money and no way to get money. So it turns out if we had to take that bus, we wouldn't have been able to buy the ticket anyways, So we probably would have found ourselves in a similar situation. But if you ever find yourself there, what we did was we literally just found groups of people like that we're in Malaysia, that we're related to, some hobbies we like. So I was interested in startups at the time, so I like start up Malaysia and I just emailed everyone

on the list. It was like, Hey, could I PayPal someone some money and you could like give me some cash, So that was our hack to get cash. The next day, Wow, credit cards worked which now in this was like fifteen years ago, Like you can usually use your credit card most places. Back then, we couldn't, so it was it was a little bit of a tough situation, sounds like it, but you you figured it out and you're still alive. You're back in the States now. There were some doubts,

but we're here. Yes, that is awesome. I'm reminded every time I think about travel. I love it. I love it so much. In some ways I feel a little obsessed and addicted, But then a question like this reminds me that literally, on pretty much every single trip, domestic or international that I've been on, I have faced significant difficulties, And when it's happening to me, I'm like, this is why I should just at home, and then I do

it again. The one that's just standing out to me in the moment is my husband and I were in Jamaica and had booked This was one of the first times that I had booked an airbnb internationally, and I kind of got a taste for the fact that international airbnbes might not be for me, because it just feels like the checks and balances and accountability is not there at least in my experience in the one place we booked in Jamaica, and so we show up, I was

expecting a really amazing time and vacation and a beautiful spot and we got there and that was not the case. It was not as advertised, like the door didn't lock, there were no actual windows like secure there was there wasn't opening in the room with some bars, but there was no screen and there was no glass or no nothing. And it was a shared porch with other people who were out there smoking weed and it was just wafting

into our room. Nothing to do about it. They could literally reach their hand through the window or hear our conversation. We could hear there didn't even that was the biggest problem. Yeah, it just felt so like, oh, we're just kind of being looked at and watched, and like, whoever's on the porch is like sharing our bedroom with us now? And it was not. It was not the vacation I had envisioned. And so my husband and I decided what we're gonna do is just get a taxi out of there and

see what resorts in the area had bookings. While it ended up being that it was pouring down rain because it was the rainy season, and it also happened to be Valentine's Day. It was February fourteen, and we just walk onto this property of an all inclusive resort just to see if they had any room for us in the end, and they didn't, and we're soaking wet with our backpacks asking if this. They're like, how did you

get in here? How did you get that security? We're like, don't worry about it, but can't you book us a room? They couldn't know. Oh. It was like the most vulnerable feeling to be like, I don't want to go back to where we're staying. No place in the area has a spot for us. It's downpouring on Valentine's Day and we're sitting in the rain with our backpacks, like where do we go? What is possible for us? Ended up calling the airbnb host and explaining the situation. He had

another room still on the same property. It was a little bit better, but it definitely really was not the

best vacation. Your turn off hold on one thing. I just took advantage of Airbnb's air cover policy, which is like their new insurance thing, and I will say I was very impressed so if you check it, if you're listening, if you check into an airbnb and it's not what it was described and the host doesn't offer anything to fix it in your case, TBD, whether, like you know, whether that was a fair compin Airbnb in our case, was willing to pay the difference for us to move

to a place that was equal to what we were supposed to have. Yeah, believe that we did reach out to Airbnb, but again it was Valentine's weekend and they were like nothings. We were really up the creek. Yeah, Oh my goodness. Yeah. I So when Travis and I went to Bali, we were staying half of our trip in the southern part and then half of our trip in central part of the country or of the city state. Oh my gosh, it's been so long and I have

so much pregnancy brain. We were somewhere and it's a country. We transferred, got our transportation and realized when we were an hour out that Travis had left his phone at the airbnb, and his phone was also his wallet, so his wallet had the debit card. So we were Travis had no phone and we had no access to money, and so um, when we got to our final destination. We agreed to pay the driver to go back and get it and bring it to us the next day,

and he miraculously did. It was missing our debit card, so we were fortunately we were able to like cancel it very quickly, so nothing was able to be used from it, and it was a separate I think we had. We got the Charles Schwab debit card because that was yeah, yeah, so it wasn't even our regular checking account we had. We were only putting money into that account for the trip, so it's not like it had a lot of money

on it. We canceled it immediately, but then we had no debit card because that's like we didn't want to bring our other debit cards because we didn't want them to get stolen. So we spent the rest of the with that whole week we were kind of relegated to

the places that would take credit cards. But that was a scary day having your phone, debit cards, all your money kind of in the whims of somebody whose name you don't know, and then you get there and then they have taken your debit card, which was the thing you worried about. So just to be clear, those experiences for all of us, they were not great. But if you had said, what's the ratio of great travel experiences

to poor ones? I just want it for anyone out here who's like, Hey, why am I listening to this episode? Why am I even trying to earn points? I don't want to travel anymore. I would say nine nine till like one point one in terms of like the awesomeness of travel compared to the downside. But even those stories, that's life, that's life lived. Problem solved out in the

rain on Valentine's Day in Jamaica. I mean, you know, if it would have gone perfectly, who knows if I would have remembered the trip, so you would have remembered I remember them here for the travel, I agree, Chris. And if people are just here for more from you, tell us where they can find more. Yeah, I'm if you listen to podcasts, which you probably are. I have guests called All the Hacks. We talked all about upgrading life, money,

and travel. Just search All the Hacks. If you want the show notes to anything, it's at all the Hacks dot com. And if you want to support me and the show and you want to sign up for a new card. Do it at all the hacks dot com slash cards. I'd appreciate it unless you can find a better sign up onus somewhere else than go get the most points. But if you can find it on all the hacks dot com slash cards, do it. They're awesome.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us, Chris. Thank you for having me who I feel like I have a lot of hacks when it comes to travel, and I took my own notes. There are a few things that stood out to me related to the rental cars and the bit about exchanging your points are transferring your points to a certain hotel to get more for them. I didn't know those pieces, so I am also excited to get more from Chris at his podcast. Absolutely yeah, what a great what a great, great time, and good

luck to you all in your travel. Yes, please let us know where you're going, especially if you're in the Frugal Friends club, then we can see pictures. Who love those pictures. Anyhow, Thank you all for listening so much, and many of you know the membership that Jen just mentioned is for our listeners who are paying off debt, where we do monthly money challenges, we offer accountability groups, and we congratulate certain members on this podcast, like this one.

Michelle shared in our group her recent gratitude post and said, I am so grateful to Jen and Jill for faithfully showing up for us every single week over the last five plus years, and for creating this amazing community. I remember back in the day of the o G Facebook, a frugal Friends community, when it seemed like every other week someone was like, is there an accountability group for this?

And now there is. You did it, ladies. You're doing such an amazing job and your passion and perseverance really inspires me. Michelle, we are nothing but hearts over here. If you are grateful for us, we will definitely read it on the show, and we will we'll keep bringing it at you. All this all all the opportunities, from the debt free stories on YouTube to the membership to just this podcast. Yes, but she also said she was

thankful for other things like look about herself. She's grateful for her kids, her fiance, finally in a financial place where she can spend money on things she wants to do, like the Frugal Friends club and amazing supportive community and friends helping her pursue her goals. Wonderful, Michelle, way to be grateful. Yes, so excited for you again. Thanks for

being here everyone. If you want to check out our membership where we have these courses, interviews, challenges, and so much more to help you in your financial journey, head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club. You can just check it out. Just check around. You don't have to give us your money yet, just see what it's about. Yeah, we got a list of all the well most of the stuff we have right on that page. So well, we'll see you next time. By Frugal Friends is produced

by Eric Sirianni. Are you going to spend Valentine's Day in the rain today? Valentine's saying it's raining. We don't know if it's going to be raining. If it's raining, then I'll probably study indoors. Oh man, what a memory that. That's the thing. Though, Like, if it weren't for that experience, I don't like it wouldn't stand out to me as much. But like Eric and I bonded that day. It seemed really awful at the time, But in some ways I'm

kind of grateful for that experience. I don't know, I just prefer bonding in other ways, like a beautiful, all inclusive the Yeah, that's just like my personal preference for traveling to each their own cruises, all inclusives, Like I don't really want to work for anything or have anything go wrong on the vacation. But that's me, right, that's you, and that's and we're different. You know, we're different in that differently suffering and uncertainty and chaos. I have enough

of that at home. Yeah, I have a toddler, all right. Well,