Mailbag #9: Best Two-Card Combos, Travel Hacks, Finance Apps, Health Hacks and More

Hello, and welcome to another episode of All the Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm so excited you're here today for another Mailbag episode. Yet again, this episode is packed with a ton of amazing hacks, questions, and wins you've all sent in. There's a ton of stuff related to travel hacks, points, and miles, but I'm also going to share my take on United's massive devaluation, what that means for you, MX's increased bonus on the green card. I'll share some of my top two card combos, talk about some major travel hacks I learned from personal experience on my past two trips, and I'll cover a few other great hacks related to health, money, cell phones, and more. So thank you all so much for sending in such great hacks, deals, wins, questions. I get amazing feedback from you all about how much you love hearing from the broader all the hacks community through these episodes. So please keep those coming because there is another Mailbag episode coming soon, but there is a lot to cover today, so let's jump in right after this. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Daffy, a fast-growing modern platform and app for charitable giving that I am so excited to partner with for this episode. Daffy allows you to give to any charity across the US with just a few taps, but it's so much more than that because they do it all by helping you set up a donor advised fund or Daff, which is a tax-advanced account that lets you contribute cash, stocks, or crypto on a one-time or recurring basis, take the tax deduction at the time of the contribution, and then distribute that money to over one and a half million charities, schools, and faith-based organizations whenever you want to. Amy and I love Daffy because it's our one-stop shop for all our charitable giving and helps us be more intentional with giving. We've already set up donations to so many charities that we care about, like zero the end of prostate cancer and charity water. And Daffy stores all our donation history for us, so we have a single summary for tax time and can evaluate and adjust our giving whenever we want in one place. But best of all, they have a mission I think we can all get behind, helping people be more generous more often. So if you want a better system for your giving, head on over to allthehacks.com slash Daffy, and for a limited time, if you visit that link, you can get a free $25 to give to the charity of your choice. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash Daffy, D-A-F-F-Y. So first I'll start with a few great wins. This one's from Chris about a trip to Europe. He said he's learned a ton from listening to podcasts and he just booked a trip to Europe with friends this summer using miles and he managed to get four business class tickets from DC to Istanbul for 45,000 points per person and two business class tickets back from Prague to DC for 61,000 miles a person with only about a $1500 out of pocket total. He said that point dot me had the value of all six tickets at over $27,000. So if you subtract out $1500 from fees, you'd take 25,500 divided by the 302,000 points Chris used. That's a value of over 8 cents per point, which is amazing, awesome redemption. Hope this trip is amazing for you. He said before this, he was one of those people that would always just use the portal to book and this is a major upgrade. He's very excited for the trip and I'm also excited too. So hopefully that can inspire other people to find similar trips. RJ wrote in that he just got 100,000 points deposited to his account. I assume from a sign up bonus, which is going to help him take his family to Kauai next summer. Ashley wrote in saying that she's been listening for a year. She had no credit cards and very little debt and she wasn't taking advantage of all these rewards. And since then, she's got two cards with sign up bonuses, met the requirements, gotten the bonuses, paid off everything in full and took a trip to Grenada with her husband that saved her over $1500. Though awesome. I hope that trip is amazing. Last, I want to share an awesome win from James, which is maybe a little different than others. So he recently went to Fiji and got a great deal from LA for $800 a person round trip. He paid out a pocket and used points to get to LA from where he lives in Bend. Then for hotels, he booked it over water villa at the Marriott Momi Bay and burned through some serious points. What I loved was that he said, did I optimize 100% probably not. But did we get things done and locked in and he can further worry about optimizing down the road? Yes. And I love hearing that because yes, sometimes I can get stuck in that mode of trying to optimize the perfect, perfect this, getting the best deal. But at the same time, I'd look back to my episode with Bill Perkins about optimizing for net fulfillment. Sometimes it's really just about having the trip you want. So awesome job, James. I'm going to congratulate you not necessarily for getting the best deal, but for hopefully having the best trip. So I want to jump in and talk a little bit about some unfortunate news from United Airlines, which is a massive devaluation on the points front. So if you look at a lot of international trips, both economy and business, you're going to find now that those trips are a lot more expensive. So trips that used to cost 30,000 in economy look like they're now costing about 40 to 44,000 points, depending on whether it's on United or on partners, trips in business that used to cost 60,000 or 70,000 are now costing anywhere from 80 to 100,000 overall across the board. It looks like depending whether it's on United or partners. It's anywhere from like a 30 to in some cases, 50% increase in the number of points that you need for these flights. So obviously if you're earning points directly on United or United credit cards, there's not much you can do here. But this is just one example of why I love flexible points from credit cards over earning directly in the airline itself. Delta is an example of an airline that kind of took a path like this and went even further. And now it's not unusual to find international business class flights on Delta, costing three, four, 500,000 miles each way. So United's not quite there yet, but seeing this kind of a change is definitely unfortunate for lots of us. And reminds me why you don't want to just sit on massive numbers of points. The industry kind of calls it points deflation, which is over time you're going to see these devaluations and it's just a part of the game. So using your points, definitely a way to avoid any future devaluation of your points. Also earning points in these flexible currencies. So if you're looking to fly flights on United or Star Alliance, I think right now you should absolutely be looking at programs like Air Canada's aeroplane where you can transfer from Chase, Annex built cap one pretty much everywhere, but city and Avionca life miles where you can transfer from Annex, you transfer on cap one in city, but not Chase or built. I think you're going to get a much better deal using those points to book on Star Alliance flights and United and honestly, I don't see a lot of use cases going forward for transferring Chase points to United unless you're looking to book a flight in business or economy and it's just so expensive, you don't have the cash, you need to take that flight. And even though transferring to United is going to be a lot of points, it's a better deal than the portal and that's your only other option. Otherwise, other options for Star Alliance that you should be focused on and unfortunate for people, especially myself who have put a lot into the United program, have earned a ton of miles and have a few hundred thousand United points that are going to get me a lot less further. So that's one piece of news. Speaking of United, I recently had a couple trips, both of which ended up being ununited, neither of which were intentionally ununited and I learned a few things along the way. So one was a very quick trip to New York where I went to record the episodes with Gary and Sahil. I had booked flights on British Airways using points and I learned a few things that I want to share. So one British Airways as much as I love it as an option for redeeming miles to book flights on American, I learned a rule that I was very hard to find. In fact, I still can't find it on their website and am arguing with British Airways about it. But if you're booking flights with British Airways points, you are unable to get anything back if you cancel those flights within 24 hours of departure. So two things. One, keep that in mind. What ended up happening with me was I didn't know this rule. I couldn't find it online on almost every airline. If you cancel a flight booked with points before departure, you can get those points back. Maybe with a fee, maybe not. So it turns out I wrapped up things in New York about eight hours earlier than I thought and I saw a flight ununited for about the exact same number of points I had paid with British Airways. So I ended up canceling the British Airways flight online, booking the United flight and taking it home. Well, it turns out I got nothing back from British Airways and burned through almost 50,000 points, which is really frustrating. One hack here I learned is if you need to write letters to airlines to try to get them to give you refunds or something, I suggest using an AI-based tool to help you write those messages. I wrote one in Notion AI. You could probably also use chat GPT, but that was super helpful for writing those notes. But British Airways, so the one trick, obviously don't cancel within 24 hours so you'll get nothing back. To be clear, I was using British Airways points to book an American Airlines flight. The other, which dovetails into this next one, if you book two one ways, it's almost always the exact same number of points. But if you cancel, the cancellation rules are based on the first flight departure. So I'd always recommend booking two one ways because in this particular instance, you would have been able to get your British Airways points back if you would cancel more than 24 hours before departure, but after the first flight, whereas if you book it as a round trip, you wouldn't. British Airways did nothing. Their responses and email were terrible. I'm quite frustrated with them. Meanwhile, United, my flight was a few hours late, and they ended up sending me a $75 certificate. So that was great. Thank you, United. Unfortunately, your points aren't worth as much, but now I've got $75. But the second trip was a trip to Cabo for a friend of mine's bachelor party, and we showed up at the airport, and there were seven of us waiting for an Alaska flight that just kept getting delayed 20 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour, and then we asked them what was going on. They told us they needed to replace the plane. They were going to place it with a plane from LA that hadn't left yet. And we decided this just doesn't seem promising. And it turns out that United had a flight to Cabo leaving an hour later, and it was the exact same price almost all of us had paid for Alaska. So he said, let's cancel. Let's go book the United flight. Well, there were a bunch of situations that different people were in who'd booked that Alaska flight that made it much harder for them to cancel their flights and get their money back. So I just want to share some tips. So I had booked a one-way flight on Alaska directly with Alaska, and it was so easy. The gate agent was actually able to cancel it, refund everything, no problem. A couple other people had booked round-trip flights on Alaska, and for them, they said if they canceled their outbound flight, they're going to have to cancel their return flight as well, and they're going to have to re-book it. They said, if you call up, you might be able to get someone who can separate them and cancel them. But because they were all priced together, it's not clear how much you'll get back. And so again, another really important reason to not book round trips unless you're going to save a lot of money. Because if something happens, you often get in a situation like this. But the worst was for someone who booked through AMX Travel. AMX Travel told them to call Alaska, Alaska told them to call AMX, and they couldn't figure out how to get this flight canceled because no one knew what was going on. And so they were on hold all the way up until about two minutes before departure. I do think they figured it out. But what took me five minutes of talking to a gate agent took them at least an hour on hold. And so my general advice is, I'm all for booking in the portal if you have credits to use. And they're going to make your flights a whole lot cheaper. But unless that's the case, I would always book directly with the airline. I'd always book one ways if it's the same price because whenever something comes up, it is so much easier to deal directly with the airline and deal with one way flights. So those are two things I learned. One other quick thing. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I will share a link to a couple posts or videos. But I just keep seeing great examples of people using their capital one points to transfer to wind them to book vacassas. And now that my in-laws have a vacasa in Belize, I've started learning a bit more about the platform. I'll even link theirs in the show notes if you guys want to go to Belize. But definitely something to look at if you have cap one points and you're looking at book lodging somewhere, it just seems like it's a great use of points that I've heard a lot from. A few more. So I talked about the APEC business travel card a little bit ago. And it's this awesome thing you can add on to global entry that gives you access to the crew diplomat lanes, but it's not really talked about that much. And technically, it's only four people who are doing international business travel in the APEC region. But Danny, thank you for reaching out and letting me know about your experience. He's used it in Singapore, Australia, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, China. And he's been able to go through the crew line on his own. And he's even been lucky in Thailand and Vietnam. It's not supposed to let your whole family come through, but he's had success there. He said the card was amazing and so helpful. And even in some countries, they have an APEC lane for departing that lets you skip the line on the way out. So definitely something to look into. However, I ended up trying to add this feature to my account. I paid the $70. I went in for my interview at SFO and got denied. And best I can explain for why I was denied was that I have done business travel to the region, but the company that I now work for has not yet done international business travel to the region. So even though in past roles, I've had business travel to the region in my current role, even though all the hacks is actually currently planning a trip to Japan and doing some work with partners that are in foreign countries in the APEC region, I haven't actually taken trips since running all the hacks to the region, mostly because of the pandemic. And so for that reason, they said they denied it. So I would say your mileage may vary. I've heard other people walk in and just get a green light right away and no interview at SFO. That wasn't the case for me. So I'm going to reapply once I actually have some established business travel for my current business, but it sounds like an awesome thing to add if you're eligible and definitely worth looking into. My fitness routine this year had a few rocky starts, but I am back into it now. And honestly, one of the things that helped me get back is that I just added some new work out gear. And if I'm going to buy more, why not have the best performance apparel out there, which I think is Viori, and I am excited to be partnering with them for this episode. Viori makes performance apparel that's incredibly versatile, everything's designed to work out in, but it doesn't look or feel like it at all, and it is so freaking comfortable you will want to wear it all the time. But it's not just for men, my wife is obsessed with Viori as much as I am. While my personal favorite will probably always be this Sunday performance joggers, I have at least three pairs. I just got a few pairs of the core shorts and three or four strato tech teas, and I'm loving them. Honestly, I can't think of the last time I went on a run, bike ride, or walk in anything else. Their products are so versatile, you can use them for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, or yoga, but they're also great for lounging, running around town, or they even have a few things you can wear for a night out. Honestly, I think Viori is an investment in your happiness, and for all the hacks listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase, as well as free shipping and returns on US orders over $75. So you should definitely check them out at allthehacks.com slash Viori. Again, go to allthehacks.com slash V-U-O-R-I, and get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. Did you know that temperature is one of the most important factors in improving your sleep quality? When you wake up in the middle of the night, or feel extra groggy in the morning, temperature is often to blame. Why? While traditional mattresses trap heat throughout the night, sciences shown that your body temperature actually needs to drop in the early and middle parts of your sleep, and then rise in the morning so that you can fall asleep fast and get more deep sleep. So what can you do? The pod cover by 8 sleep will improve your sleep by automatically adjusting the temperature on each side of the bed, based on you and your partner's individual needs, and I am so excited to partner with them for this episode. It can cool down and warm up, and adjust based on the phases of your sleep and the environment you're in, and it fits on any bed just like a fitted sheet. Basically, it's the best thing that's ever happened to our sleep, and it's easy to know that because every day I get my sleep report of how last night went. So if you want the ultimate sleep experience, invest in the rest you deserve with the pod cover by 8 sleep. Go to allthehacks.com slash 8 sleep, and save $150 on the pod cover by 8 sleep. That's the best offer you'll find, but you must visit allthehacks.com slash 8 sleep for $150 off. 8 sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Then another shout out to ESA for sending in a great reminder that actually really helped someone out that I know if you signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, when the bonus was 60,000 points, and then it bumped up to 80,000 points, they are honoring that if you write in. So funny enough, our Opares boyfriend actually signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred for the 60K link. Once the bumped up to 80, I felt so bad that he didn't wait, but I shared this tip with him. He called up, got their customer line, asked if they could do the extra points, and they said that they would note it in his account, and he ended up getting the 80,000 points. So if you signed up during the 60K window, you might have luck calling into Chase and asking them to match the 80K that everyone else got. I don't know if it'll still work because the 80K public offer is not there anymore, but it's definitely worth trying, and you can reference that at least two people you know have had this success because that's the case. But speaking of card bonuses and card signups, I want to talk a little bit about the American Express green card. It's kind of a silent card. People don't talk about it that much for a lot of reasons. One of which is that they haven't really had a compelling signup bonus. Another is that MX hasn't really ever worked with partners on the green card, which they're now doing. But right now the elevated welcome bonus is 60,000 membership rewards points after you spend $3,000 in the first six months, plus you get 20% back on travel and transit purchases made in those six months up to $200 in the form of a statement credit. The card does have a $150 annual fee, but you get three points on all travel, three points on all transit purchases, and three points on restaurants worldwide, including takeout and delivery in the US, and then one point per dollar on everything else. So it's a pretty comparable card to a Chase Sapphire preferred or reserve. The annual fee is $150, but you do get a credit for up to $189 for clear and $100 towards lounge, buddy. So it's a pretty compelling offer that I think is comparable to the Chase Sapphire preferred or reserve in terms of getting dining and travel covered. I don't totally understand MX's strategy here because there's a lot of overlap, so you're getting three X on travel. You get five X on airfare with the platinum. You get three X on restaurants, but you get four X on dining with the gold. So it's not necessarily a perfect pairing card with other MX cards, but it definitely is a great one-stop MX card, especially if you're thinking about the gold, but you don't spend a lot on groceries. Here's one where you get travel and dining covered at three X across the board at a lower annual fee. So despite the fact that I've got all of these categories covered, I do think it's an interesting card. So if you want to learn more and check out the 60,000 point welcome bonus, you can go to all the hacks.com slash MX screen. Speaking of how cards fit in together, I just wanted to share the result of a little bit of research I did for a presentation recently that I gave to a wealth management firm's clients all about credit cards. And so also, if you happen to be in any industry where you think it'd be interesting to hire me to come give a talk like that, let me know. But the specific thing I wanted to cover now is around two card combos. So if you search around about cards on the internet a lot, you'll hear people talk about trifecta, the chase trifecta, the city trifecta, and I'm definitely going to do an episode in the future diving deeper into all of those. But as part of the research for this talk, I built out a model where it basically looked at all the cards you have and you could add on new cards and see how that would affect your overall earnings for the year, either using point valuations or just raw number of points earned. And the delineation there is that I'd rather earn an MX point than a Marriott point. So you can look at it either way. And it was really cool because I could tag all the cards that I have and then I could tag a new card and say, well, if I added an MX green, what would that do? And in my case, since I already have 4x dining on the gold and I already have 3x travel on the chase reserve and 5x on airlines with the MX Platinum, he'd actually did nothing other than add on an annual fee. So it was actually not a net positive for me and the cards I have. I'm actually going to take that model, I think, and I'm going to share that with all the hacks members. And so as I think about the future of the all the hacks membership, one of the things I'm actually thinking about is taking a lot of these little mini research reports I've written and making them available to members. So that's something to keep in mind. You can check out the membership at all the hacks.com slash join, but I do want to just share here the result of some of that research when it comes to two card combos. And so the way I did this was I took the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the average spending of a household that makes over $200,000 and I just spread that across all of the different card categories. So I got a sense of what the average person would earn in all of these cards. And the card combos that I pulled together that I thought were the most interesting weren't necessarily ones I think everyone's considered. So one was the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Freedom Unlimited, which I think is a good combo that will end up getting you 3x on travel, dining, and 1.5x on everything else. On city, I looked at comparing the city premiere and the double cash. So at the premiere, you get 3x on dining, grocery flights, hotels, gas, and 2x on everything else. And then with Capital One, I paired the Venture X and the Saver, which gets you 4x on dining, 3x on groceries, 2x on everything else. And then on Amax, I looked at the Gold and the Green, which would get you 4x on dining grocery, 3x on travel transit, and 1x on everything else. So the interesting thing I learned applying the average spending to this is that one, having a 2x everything else card adds so much value. So for example, Capital One, if you take the average spending and apply those points earnings, the average earning is 2.41 points per dollar spent. So across all your spending, you'd earn 2.41 points per dollar. If you take the city combo, you'd earn 2.35, but if you take the Chase combo, it goes down to 1.9x, and if you take the Amax combo, it goes to 1.95x. Now in all the portals except Chase, you're going to only be getting 1 point per dollar. But if you are using portals as the way you book, getting 1.5 cents per point with the Chase Reserve makes that combo slightly better if you want to book in the portal. But for the sake of just earning, that was the learning I have. So my takeaway here is that those are kind of the best 2 card combos. That's just within one platform. But if you took that Amax gold and green and you swapped out the green for the Venture X, getting 2 points per dollar, or if your eligible Amax has the blue business plus card, which earns 2 points on everything up to $50,000, that bumps the average earning on that combo of Amax gold plus Venture X to an average of 2.49 points per dollar, which is the best combo. So my takeaway from this at the end, and this got really technical. It was almost 75 of 80 slides, but I summarized it at the end and said, if you want to stick within one program and you already have either a capital one or Chase card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Freedom Unlimited is great, has a slight edge if you're redeeming in the portal over all these others. And then the Capital One Venture X and the Saver card are awesome if you want to stick in. But the best two card combo, if you're good earning points across two programs, was the Amax gold and the Venture X and that was based just on my spending in this spreadsheet tool that I'm going to make available to members. You can go in and you can actually model out your cards and your spending and see how this will change. So stay tuned on that. But those are the best two card combos. I think if I had to add one more, it would be the city premiere in the city double cash. At the end of the day, I think I have a slight edge for earning cap one, Amax or Chase points over city points. And so I put those three combos slightly above there. Obviously, if you pay rent, adding a built card is a no brainer that I would absolutely be doing to these combos. But just thought I'd share that that presentation was actually really fun to put together. It actually seems like it might be the framework for a course that I build out. There's a whole part three on earning more points and a part four on maximizing your redemptions and then another thing on card benefits. So there's really going to be a lot there and I'm excited to find some way to share that. In fact, there were a bunch of questions you guys wrote in that I think tie into that presentation that I'm going to give some quick answers to or some quick shares to. But hopefully we'll get to more in detail when I build out those other sections and share that on the show. So one was from Josh. He said, what are the limits on how many capital one cards you can have and how often you can apply for them? He likes no annual fee cards and capital one has a bunch of those. So the rule with capital one, you can only have two personal capital one cards at once. And I think you need to wait 90 days between applications. I haven't tested these. I only have one personal card, the Venture X and one business card, the Spark Cash Plus. So that's my understanding there. The rules change for every different issuer. So Chase has rules, MX has rules, capital has rules. Part of what I want to build out when I start to build this into a lot more, whether it's multiple episodes, a course, a guide, something is this information on each individual issuer and what those rules are. So stay tuned there. Several day I got an email from Willie who was concerned about some of the language city has about taking legal action to recover losses for people that are effectively trying to churn through bonuses. But I was reading through the language because I wanted to give my take. And by the way, of course, I'm not a lawyer. I don't have experience in all these situations. But a lot of the restrictions seem to be around repeated cancellations of cards within one year. That seemed to be the red flag area. The other ones were like taking advantage of offers that weren't intended for you or purchasing things and returning them after the bonuses hit or not using a card for your own personal spending. Those ones seemed pretty easy to mitigate. But the one about repeated cancellations was one that I wanted to address. And I think the answer is not canceling the card within a first year and waiting until the annual fee posts and then cancel it within 30 days. And within that window, most of the card issuers, if not all of them, I can't say for certain, will give you back your annual fee if you cancel that window and then you won't be canceling within one year, which kind of makes that rule or the stipulation in the terms not apply. That said, as I've said multiple times, if I have an annual fee on a card I don't want, I will definitely first look at either downgrading that card or reaching out to see if there's a retention offer. A lot of issuers will offer you huge deals, sometimes lots of points or waived annual fees to get you to keep the card for another year. And so if you don't want to keep it because of the annual fee and they can waive the annual fee or give you 50,000 points, it might totally be worth it. So that's my advice there. But again, things like this, the rules around opening and canceling are things that I want to include in the future. But I do want to share an awesome hack that Marco shared. And this also deserves a little bit more of a deep dive than I'm going to give it today. But he mentioned how I haven't covered the fact that a lot of the business gold and platinum AMX links are what are called no lifetime language links, which means you can get the cards multiple times. And so this seems crazy, but Marco wrote in and said he's gotten four business platinum's four business gold cards. He says he's on track to earn at least one and a half to two million AMX points from doing this. Yes, they're business cards, but he's done it all as a sole proprietor doesn't have a business with an EIN and he's just verified that the first time you do it, you do it with the best link you can find. Then after that, you find the links with no lifetime language and you can do them every 90 days. He put out that AMX allows you to have up to 10 charge cards so you can do any mix of business golds and platinum's and you can cancel them after you've had them 12 months. It seems crazy. I want to do a little bit more homework, but he's cycled through a lot of these cards and been able to rack up hundreds of thousands by the time I'm recording this, probably millions of points. And so that's definitely something that if you're eligible for business cards and you have the spend to do it, there is a formula here that I want to dig into a little bit more in the future. If I can find anything he's written publicly about it because I know Marco's written some posts. I'll share that in the show notes. Another question came in about credit card approvals with low credit. So Ed said that his player too got denied for a card because they didn't have enough credit history and wanted to know some advice. I don't have a ton of experience with this, but a few things I wanted to share. One, I love the credit karma app because it shows you not only nuance of your credit and what you can do to improve it, but it also sometimes shows you cards they think you're likely to get approved for. If you Google around, there's a tool called the card match tool that does something similar where you can get matched with cards you'll get approved for. And then Amix just launched a tool that lets you know if you're going to get approved for a card before you apply for it so you don't have to take the credit hit. So those are three things I would be using if I had a lower credit score and I wanted to try to make sure I wasn't applying for cards that I got denied for another question from Yvonne about the Apple credit card and what I think about it now that it's tied to a savings account. I got to say I am a huge fan of Apple products, but I'm not a huge fan of the credit card. Yes, you get 3% at Apple and so if you spend a ton of Apple, maybe that's worth it. But for the rest, you get 2% back on Apple Pay and 1% everywhere else. You can use the city double cash. You can use the venture X to get 2% back or 2X points on everything else without having it to be on Apple Pay. I think recently there's been a small sign up bonus, maybe $100, $200. So for me, it's just not worth it. If you do the math on what you'd get from a sign up bonus, it just makes using this card totally not worth it. The interface supposedly is great. However, I think that it's very difficult to sync Apple card data with most budgeting tools. And so actually, I think that's another downside. I know that a lot of the products I've been playing with, it's like, here's how you can link any of your cards and for the Apple card, you've got to download and export your PDF statements and upload them manually. So for me, I'm not a fan of the Apple card. If you want 2% cash back, there are a lot better cards to do it that don't require Apple Pay. This podcast started as a side project I did because I wanted to share my passion for upgrading my own life. I didn't intend to start a business, but here we are. And maybe you're like me and have an idea, but you don't know where to start. Well, I love how Shopify makes it easy for anyone to successfully run their own business, and I'm excited to partner with them for this episode. Whether you're selling Japanese tea or custom travel guides and please reach out to me if you are, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. And they even let you sell across social media marketplaces like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. What's incredible to me about Shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify is there to empower you with the confidence and control to take your business to the next level. Now it's your turn to get serious about selling and try Shopify today. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at allthax.com slash Shopify. Go to allthax.com slash Shopify to take your business to the next level today. Allthax.com slash Shopify. I've heard too many stories from friends, family and even listeners about identity theft and fishing scams causing so much pain and hassle, and it's just not something I want in my life. And I feel like we have the right to stay private and protect our personal data. One of the biggest reasons a lot of this happens is that there are dozens of data broker sites out there selling and sharing our personal information online. When I first looked up our family, there were hundreds of pieces of our personal info out there, but thankfully I started using DeleteMe to automatically get all of our personal data removed from the web and I am so excited to be partnering with them for this episode. DeleteMe is an amazing service that will not just find and remove your personal information from hundreds of data broker websites, but they'll continuously scan for new data that shows up and get that removed as well. DeleteMe removes data from over 500 websites and on average they find and remove over 2,000 pieces of personal data for a customer in their first two years. When I first signed up, I was actually skeptical about needing to service on an ongoing basis, but these data brokers are relentless and I've seen my personal data pop up again and again throughout the year, so I love having a service that continuously sends me updated reports on all the removals they're doing in the background. So if you want to get your personal information removed from the web, go to allthehacks.com slash deleteme and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash deleteme. I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com slash deals, so please consider supporting those who support us. On the point of cards and perks, I want to answer Kate's question about the best uses for travel credits. So this is a good one. Between my wife and I, I think we have seven cards that have travel credits. We have three that earn the AMX airline credits, two capital one cards that get their travel credits and two chase cards that are in their travel credits. So on the AMX side, I'll talk for a second about their airline credits. So the way it works is you have to specify an airline at the beginning of the year and spend money on that airline, but not on tickets. It needs to be on any incidental seat fees, Wi-Fi, priority boarding upgrades, that kind of stuff. I will say the fire talk has a number of tremendously helpful posts for every single airline that will help you figure out what codes for those travel credits and what doesn't. Southwest, one of the most interesting things is it seems that tickets under $100 code for credit. And so one thing I've seen people do is buy tickets for $80, $90. And then if you're not going to use it, cancel it and then apply that ticket towards a flight that's more expensive. That's a strategy I know has worked really well to redeem those airline credits easily. So I think Southwest has been my choice for all of our AMX credits to be able to redeem and we've been pretty fortunate to be able to make sure we're getting the max value there. On the Venture X side, those travel credits with capital one, I don't know if there's a best use though I prefer using it for airlines over hotels because I think on the hotel front, booking directly gets you a lot more perks, being able to reach out, talk about upgrades, which I'll get to later in this episode. I've used all of our Venture X credits for booking flights. They've almost always been flights where there were one way and I was very confident I was going to take them and it wasn't something too far in advance. So that's how I've used it. On the chase side, it's so easy because they just reimbursed your card for travel spend. So you don't really have to do anything other than spend $300 a year on travel, which happens naturally for us. And so I haven't had to do anything. Love those credits. I wish every airline credit was as easy to use as chases. Speaking of airline benefits, Ben corrected something that I said earlier. I was talking about using your priority pass to get some of these airport spa benefits and he pointed out that I might have gotten the cards wrong. So the AMX and capital one priority passes are not able to get the spa experiences. In fact, they're usually not able to get most of the non-lounge experiences, including restaurants, but the Chase Sapphire Reserve priority pass does qualify. So if I misspoke, I'm sorry, if you've got your priority pass through Chase, hopefully you're eligible for dining and spa benefits with priority pass. Also, I mentioned the clear credit with the AMX green above, but I've got a lot of value out of clear recently. And I just want to make sure that people know about some of the other ways you can get a better deal on clear. So obviously, if you have an AMX platinum or green card, you get clear statement credits. But if you're a student, you can get clear for $60. If you're in the military, you can get it for $99. If you have any status on Delta or United, you can get clear for anywhere from $179 all the way down to $0. So just being a member of those programs will get you $10 off. So that's a no-brainer. And then if you have multiple people, you can add them for $60 to a family plan. So I definitely think it's worth if you're trying to have clear with a partner and you don't have any credits for it. So let me make sure you pull your accounts. I know that all of our family is in one clear account, including parents, because we wanted to make sure we save as much as possible. So that's one thing there. So that was a ton of deals and hacks on points. There's still a few more travel ones I want to get to, and then I'll get to some of the non-travel ones. So Garrison wrote in and wanted to say, first off, that he used the hotel upgrade tips to get an incredible experience at the Fairmonton San Francisco, double room upgrade, significant drink credits, all the result of emailing in. So again, if you haven't emailed in to your hotel to get upgrades, definitely do that. The trick is to book direct, reach out in advance, let them know you're coming. You're excited to stay at the hotel, let them know if you're celebrating anything. And see what happens. And I've seen so, so many listeners get amazing deals. But I will say, Carol wrote in asking, how do you get the hotel email? Sometimes it's hard. And so I'll say that here are all the tips I have. Sometimes it's easy and it's on the website. Sometimes it's not. Recently, I tried using Google Bard because unlike chat GPT, it's using more up to date information and just said, can you find me the email address for the hotel? That worked. If that doesn't work, you can call the front desk and you can ask for an email address to send something in. You can search around. You can look on flyer talk or trip advisor. Sometimes the concierges or the managers leave their email address in comments. You could try to find the GM or the head concierge on LinkedIn and use one of the tools. I like one called Lucia to get email addresses from people's LinkedIn profiles. All of those options could work. And hopefully if you use all of them, you'll be able to get an email address. I do find that just calling or checking the website or using a tool like Google Bard is the fastest, but plenty of options. So one hack from Francis was that when he was on his honeymoon, he met someone that told him one thing he always does when he's traveling internationally is email the hotel manager and ask if there's anything he can bring from the US. The manager in this particular situation asked if there was any chance he could buy a couple English books. They were under $20 and brought those to the manager and got upgraded to the penthouse suite. I love this hack adds even more to the email to the hotel, obviously it's not always going to work. Maybe somebody doesn't need anything, but definitely worth asking. And I think we'd all love to get the penthouse suite upgrade anytime we're traveling. So hopefully that works going back to Garrison's email. He also pointed out that getting into the points game as a Canadian can be a little tricky, but he was really happy with using point dot me to find some great flights and maximizing arrow plan points and suggested that if anyone's in Canada, they should get on top of the MX arrow plan reserve card, which he's got a tremendous amount of value for. I don't have any partner links for that, but I will put Garrison's link. So if you're a Canadian listening and you're looking to get the MX arrow plan reserve card, Garrison's link for that referral is in the show notes. Obviously, he would love it if you used it, a couple more things on hotels. So call wrote in and asking how I think about resort fees and taxes when I'm redeeming points for a hotel. And I think it's pretty straightforward for me. Whenever I'm trying to figure out what a hotel will cost, I'm not looking at the regular rate. I'm looking at the final final rate and double checking that it includes any extra fees, especially resort fees, which can be quite expensive. And then I'm comparing that to using my points. And so sometimes you'll look in a hotel might look like it's $120 a night. And this is especially true in Vegas. But by the time you check out two nights at that hotel, which should have been 250 end up being $400 because there's resort fees, there's taxes, there's surcharges and everything like that. So anytime I'm trying to compare redeeming points and booking with dollars, I'm always looking to that final, final rate and comparing that. This is especially good for people booking high at Hilton, Windham or choice hotels because all those programs wave resort fees on award bookings. So definitely a chance to save a little extra. Unfortunately, Marriott does not wave resort fees on awards days, which is unfortunate. But there's not really a good trick around that. Also on paid stays, if you can achieve high at globalist status, I know that you can get your resort fees waived as well. I've never stated hotels enough to get that kind of super premium top tier status, especially on a high at, so I haven't had any experience there. Finally, this almost never works, but there are cases where it has worked in some places. You can always ask to wave the resort fee. It doesn't usually work, but every now and then it does, especially if any of the amenities listed on the resort fee are not available. So if a resort fee is supposed to include a room safe or Wi-Fi or a business center and any of those things aren't available, then definitely you should be able to get the resort fee waived. So that's something to look into. I hate resort fees. They drive me crazy, but at the end of the day, there's just sometimes you can't do anything else about them. Also Ben wrote in, long time listener, Ben, thanks for listening. He noticed I mentioned all the flight drops on flights and car rentals, but I didn't talk about hotels. He said he's been using a cool free app called Provo PRUVO for the last few years. He says it's kind of like auto-slash, but for refundable hotels, it saved him hundreds of dollars and offered him some last minute savings, so he said definitely check that out. He might not know this, but it turns out that auto-slash actually launched hotel slash as well. So that's another option for monitoring hotel flight drops. And another great hack from Casey around hotel prices. He's planning a trip to Scottsdale for winter break, and it was going to be $2,200 to book on Hilton's website for a refundable option. So he tried hotel slash, and he found a fully refundable option for 1,800, so he booked that. But there wasn't a place for him to add his Hilton honors number in the process, and that's true. A lot of the times you book hotels in portals and on discount sites, not only might you not be able to add your number, but you also might not be able to earn points. So he called the hotel to give them his Hilton number. And as they were looking it up, they mentioned that the reservation actually came from Expedia, which is important for what happened next. So he remembered that Hilton has a price match policy, where if you find a lower price somewhere else, they'll match it and take 25% off. So he called the Hilton customer service line and asked for the deal. While they said hotel slash wasn't one of the sites they recognized, he had learned that that booking actually came through Expedia. So he had them verify the price on Expedia, where they did find the $1800 price and they would match. So Hilton ended up lowering the price by 25%, and he ended up paying 1,400. Still fully refundable, and now booked directly with the hotel, which meant he could send an email and definitely have a higher chance of getting upgraded and certainly earn his points. So moral of the story is, with any hotel chain that has a price match policy, if you ever find better rates on other sites, definitely worth trying to see if you can get them to match it so that you can book direct, you're going to have a better experience if you book direct. So hopefully that helps somebody else save. As with all of these deals and hacks and ideas, definitely, if you have success send it in because I know people love hearing about all these wins, there are plenty of examples of people who heard me mention unclaimed money multiple times, and it wasn't until they kept hearing stories about people having such great success that they tried, and then they found hundreds or even thousands of dollars. So hopefully that helps. And just as I was about to upload this episode, I got an email from aways, which is my favorite hotel award searching product, that they're having a huge summer travel sale until June 27th, where anyone can get 40% off their premium plan, but all the hacks listeners can get 50% off with a three day free trial at all the hacks.com slash aways a w a y z. If you haven't checked out a ways, it's a hotel search engine that shows real time cash and points pricing for all the major hotel chains. It really helps you get the most out of your points when you're planning a trip, or you can use their annual award calendar, which will let you find the best deals at the most desirable properties anywhere in the world. It's such an amazing tool for using points on hotels. They also have a free plan that lets you do five searches a month. But if you want to check out the three day trial on the premium plan and get 50% off, go to all the hacks.com slash aways a w a y z. And let me know what you think when it comes to air travel, Francis wrote in and said that she had a broken stroller on her American Airlines flight. And even though it was outside of the 24 hour window, she was supposed to reach out to get any compensation. She still had the photos, so she ended up trying anyways, and they ended up replacing the entire price of the stroller. So for anyone who ever has anything damaged, don't forget to reach out. Even if the airline won't do anything, go back to episode 113 where I talk all about the credit card benefits, it's possible that your credit card might have you covered here. Okay, finally, the last travel related hack. I know we've got so many of these. Hopefully you guys enjoy all these travel hacks and you can get a lot of value. Please shoot me an email, tag me on Instagram, at reply me on Twitter. Let me know what you think. I'm always trying to find out the right format for making these episodes great. But this one's from Mike, and he pointed out that he does a lot of international travel and wanted to share some rental car tips. So he always denies the rental car collision coverage. He's using his venture acts to get his collision damage covered through his credit card. But in the past few years, he's noticed that internationally, a lot of the rental car companies are requiring a letter from the credit card company stating that they provide collision damage coverage. He said the letter is easy to get. Usually you can email support or call the card concierge and they'll forward you something, but it does take time. So if you have some time to kill before you're traveling internationally and planning on using your card for rental coverage, it could be worth getting a printed copy of a statement saying that you have this coverage in advance. He said, you don't need to email it to them. You don't need to plan, but I would bring it so that you can show it to them at the counter. The second was about a car accident in Costa Rica where the person needed to actually use one of these claims with this credit card company. And so the important piece of information here, no one was hurt fortunately, but he said the insurance company wanted so much documentation. And fortunately they had it, but the most important thing he said that was essential was getting a police report. So if you're in an accident in a foreign country using a credit card or really anything for insurance, make sure that you get a police report. Only enough, the only circumstance I have of this happening was also in Costa Rica. And we did get a police report. So definitely make sure that you can get the police report when that happens. It's very important. Fortunately, after many phone calls and many escalations, he was able to get fully covered. But the $2,000 deposit they held on his card didn't get released until that was all resolved three months later. So just know that that can happen, but getting the right documentation, making sure you get everything you need can really help and make sure that you get covered at the end. Good news is he did get covered. It wasn't a problem in the long run, but it was a little bit of hassle and had he not had that police report. The assumption was that it probably wouldn't have gotten reimbursed as he had expected. Finally, I've got a few things that aren't related to travel, but are great hacks and great learnings and great questions from you all. So the first two are on health. I've talked a lot about different health and blood related diagnostics to do. You all know I'm a big fan of Inside Tracker, who's a partner of the show, and I've used them multiple times over the last few years to do a lot of my blood work and check biomarkers. So definitely if you're interested, you can check them out all the hacks.com slash Inside Tracker. But Beasy wrote in and wanted to share a program called All of Us, which is currently being sponsored by the NIH, and it's geared towards precision medicine. I took a look at it and they're looking at all kinds of information related to genes, hereditary disease, blood work. But the cool thing for Beasy is that in her location, due to a grant, the blood work was all free. So it cut down on the cost significantly. So definitely something worth checking out. I haven't spent a lot of time looking into all of us, but I'm always a big fan of the government-sponsored programs that could help you get blood work done for free or really anything that would help you be more intentional with health. I'm excited, Beasy, you're doing that this year in 2023, and hopefully this helps other people. Similarly, John sent me an email letting me know that for the Grail Test, which is a cancer detection test using blood work, that there's actually a giant study called the Pathfinder II study happening all across the country that ends up giving free Grail tests as part of the study. Unfortunately, for anyone under 50 years old, that is a requirement of the study. But for anyone over 50, it's definitely a way to get this test done for free. I know my doctor recommended this test as something to consider. Not necessarily something necessary for my age, but the question I actually asked my doctor, which I'd encourage other people to ask, because so much of medicine is based on what insurance covers, I said, hey, if I was willing to spend a couple thousand dollars this year on my health, are there specific diagnostics or tests that you would recommend? And the Grail Test came out of that conversation. If you do some searching on the Grail Test, you will see an article in the New York Times recently that sounds pretty bad. For the people affected, it probably very much was. They had a system error that falsely sent either letters or emails to 400 people, letting them know that they test came back positive for cancer when, in fact, it wasn't. I think the silver lining was it was much more related to back office work than the quality of the tests. Obviously, not a great situation for them and even worse for the people that got that message, but I do think that they've probably figured out how to make sure that doesn't happen again. So I am interested in this test. I haven't done it yet, but it's something that is on my plan for this year. And so the Pathfinder 2 study, which I'll link to in the show notes, might be great for people listening, or if you're too young, maybe people who's listening's parents. I've talked a lot about how I love clipping deals in the Safeway app, but Sarah wrote in to tell me to let everyone know that you should also be looking at warehouse stores. So she was heading to BJ's and she checked their app and they had coupons for $10 off any purchase, a free case of water, free chips. She ended up getting over $20 of value for 30 seconds. So whether it's Costco, Sam's Club BJ's or your grocery store, Kroger, Safeway, definitely check those apps. I think almost every single time I open up the Safeway app, there is a $5 to $10 off your next grocery purchase in that app. So every time I open the app, I almost always say $5 to $10 again for 30 seconds of work. So definitely something that you should all be doing. Thank you, Sarah, for the reminder to do it other places. Couple things on money, Ryan wrote in wanting to say that we talked about high yield savings accounts in the episode with Ben Carlson, but we didn't talk about the Wealthfront cash account. Maybe it's that I worked there and I feel a little bit like I don't want to constantly talk about Wealthfront, but I will say I'm a huge fan of their product. I have my money in the Wealthfront account, it is super simple and seamless. Tons of FDIC insurance, easy deposit withdrawal. Is there a window of time right now where you might be able to earn higher yield or better tax advantage yield from short term treasuries? Yes. If you're not in a high tax bracket, maybe it doesn't matter as much or maybe you live in a state with no tax and it doesn't matter for you either. But his top money hack this year that he's been sharing with everyone is using the Wealthfront cash account and I just want to flag that that is where I keep majority of my cash. Also if you sign up with anyone's cash referral link, you should be able to get an extra 0.5% boosting the 4.55% of 5.05% which is pretty awesome. I'll put a referral link for my account in the show notes if you want to use that or if you want to use anyone else's and if you're signing up for any investment accounts which by the way Wealthfront recently launched a cool bond portfolio which is kind of supposed to live somewhere between the risk of cash and investing and if you want to use that or any of the investing accounts, you can get $5,000 managed free with a referral link and I'll post mine in the show notes as well. Speaking of personal finance, Tony wrote in a question asking what apps I use when it comes to tracking all of my spending and budgeting and I'll share three options. There are plenty of tools and services out there. I know a lot of us used to use mint back in the day but I've kind of grown tired of mint and I've settled on three that I think are great recommendations. So if you don't want to pay anything, I'm a big fan of the RocketMoney app. Yes, they're a partner of the show but I really think they have a great free tracking app that lets you manage all of your transactions, categorizing, getting alerts on when things get refunded or unusual purchase sizes. I'm also a big fan of the premium version of RocketMoney that will just cancel subscriptions for you. So definitely check out RocketMoney if you want a free app for this. If you're an Apple or Mac user, I'm also a big fan of the co-pilot money app. They don't have any of the canceling your subscription features you'll get from RocketMoney. It's purely focused on budgeting and transactions but it's really great UI. Personally, this is my budgeting app and the premium paid app that I'd recommend. I love it. It's so seamless. I will put my referral link, I'll get a couple of months free if you use it. So thank you, but I do love this app. I pay for it. They're not a partner of the show. I think it's great if you're willing to pay and you're an Apple user and you value the UI UX and some of those extra features of a premium paid app. And then last, if you don't really want to use apps and you'd rather manage everything in a spreadsheet, check out Tiller HQ. I've used it in the past. It's a pretty cool product that pulls all of your transaction data into Google Sheets or Excel, letting you kind of run your own analysis, but being able to benefit from kind of plating, yodely, style, syncing, where you're able to get your transactions pulled in automatically. So those are three I'll recommend and I'm really glad you asked that question Tony because I love that. You didn't ask Tony about net worth tracking and budgeting and forecasting, but my two favorites there are the Wealthfront app, the product we built for financial planning and being able to model out the future based on home purchases based on sending your kids to college and all that stuff. I don't think there is a better net worth for forecasting tool than what we had at Wealthfront. I say, we, I don't work there anymore, but what Wealthfront has is my favorite there. And then for tracking net worth, if you want to go to a little bit more nuance and you want to dial in things a little bit more detail, I'm a huge fan of Kubara. It's how I track my net worth. I don't do my forecasting there, but I do track everything there. They did recently launch a forecasting tool that I haven't spent enough time with. So I can't endorse that tool yet, but if you want to check out Kubara, I'm a huge fan. I'll put a link in the show notes. I think it's just all the hacks.com slash Kubara. And I'm actually working with them right now to see if we can get a deal for members. So stay tuned there. Last thing to close us out is about cell phones, two hacks from Scott and Chris. Scott wanted to share his experience spying for phones for his family, which includes a bunch of teenagers who always seem to want the latest iPhones and regularly break them. He said that he's been using a site called Swapa SWAPA to buy mint condition or very good condition iPhones for anywhere from a third to half off. He's bought over 10 iPhones here, out, is what he said in his email, but he hasn't been burned yet. So that's how he's buying iPhones to get a huge discount for his family. And then Chris pointed out, I've shared in the past using phone barn to buy numbers so that you can port to get deals when you're transferring numbers to carriers. He pointed out that Google Voice can do this for free. You can get your line from Google Voice and then you can transfer that number over to another carrier to get a deal. You may have to pay a $3 unlocking fee, but it's very minor compared to the $500 to $1,000 you might save porting a number over to a new carrier. So he said that was a great tip. And then last Francis asked a question, which I'm going to have to punt on, but it's in this camp. I want you to think I wasn't covering it. Just about covering cell phone plans and how to compare them and how to figure out what to do. Part of the reason I'm not including it is because I was going to talk about Verizon and then they just up and changed all their plans again. And I still don't even know how that affects my own plan. So stay tuned in the future. I'd love to talk more about cell phone plans, but not going to be this episode. Wow, I know we covered a lot of hacks, deals, questions, hopefully this was helpful. Definitely reach out to me and please share more. I love getting questions. I love doing these episodes and I know they're really valuable to people. I can see it in the feedback I get. I can see it in the download numbers. So keep them coming. Still, this is overdue, but I've been saving all the questions related to family, children, travel with kids, college savings for a big episode to do all those things together. That's coming soon. So feel free to add more there. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week.