The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
EP 81 - Hacking Credit Card Points to Unlock Free Luxury Travel Credit Card Points w/ Eli Facenda
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The podcast episode reveals the transformative power of mastering credit card points, providing practical advice from expert Eli on maximizing travel experiences with savvy spending strategies. Listeners are introduced to key steps for optimizing their points, including selecting the right cards, maximizing their earned rewards, and creatively using points for luxurious travel experiences.
• Understanding tax savings through credit card strategies
• Historical insight on Eli's journey with credit cards and travel
• Importance of return on spend metrics
• Optimizing credit card point accumulation
• Maximizing the value of points through transfers
• Leveraging credit cards for business expenses, including payroll
• Unique applications for accumulated points as gifts or incentives
• Practical tips for high-value travel experiences
• Resources for further exploration and engagement
Learn more about Eli's system at: https://www.freedomtravelsystems.com/
Your tax savings is going to give you all your down payment back. The rest is just profit coming in. It's like you're investing in real estate for free. He was a limited partner, so there was zero risk and he really liked you. This was one of our more risk adverse clients. All right, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:I always love nerding out with experts in the world of money and finance. All right, welcome everyone to the Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast. This is probably, of all the episodes I've done recently, I'm most excited about this one because I love talking to people who really know how the system works here and who can share with me ideas that I never had a chance to learn, and I'm about to learn a ton of amazing stuff. That's very powerful, not only for me so I have the opportunity to get free information but also for our audience here, and this is something we haven't had much chance to talk about yet besides talking on the tax side of things. But this is very applicable to you guys because it's even more exciting than talking on the tax side of things. But this is very applicable to you guys because it's even more exciting than some of the tax savings we can create. Here we have an opportunity to create additional sources of cash and tax and in funds here through credit card strategies.
Speaker 1:so Eli knows how the system works and he helps entrepreneurs and business owners work, that system to maximize credit, the point system and that whole world of stuff that I wish I knew and never had a chance to know. And we're having an amazing conversation. Eli, can you introduce yourself? 30 seconds for that?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely yeah, mark, thanks for having me here. Man, I'm really excited. I think you know those that are listening to this. If you're listening to mark and you're a fan of his work, you're in that optimizer mindset around finances and really getting more bang for your buck, squeezing every drop out of your, out of the, the wealth that you've created, and be able to live life to the fullest with more effective strategy. So I'm excited to dive into that now. Um so so, as you mentioned, you know my name is Eli Vesenda online. If you look me up, I go. I go by Eli the travel guy. It's just Eli travel guy on Instagram. That's the main place you'll find me, but I'll tell you the backstory of how I got into this, if it's okay, just sharing that. So there's been a couple of different, really pivotal points throughout my life where this leveraging of credit card points became a total game changer, and I want to tell you the first one. So I went to school near New York city, a university called Lehigh university.
Speaker 2:And I had just graduated, you know, lehigh, yeah, and I was a finance degree and I had no interest in going to finance but I had a bunch of friends who did, and I was always more entrepreneurial. So what happened is I'm a year out of college and I'm like I'm going to grow this startup business, I'm going to start a company, and I had no money. I had this strong desire for, like freedom and travel and adventure. You know, young guy in his twenties and I had a lot of really rich friends who were able to take trips that I wasn't able to take. Okay. So that perfect concoction Led me to learning oh, if I can figure out this credit card points thing, then I can have the travel experience I want. I can have these experiences with my friends I want, and I don't have to go sacrifice my dreams of creating a business To go take a corporate job that pays me more so I can do those things. So I found this strategy where I was able to leverage points to have the lifestyle experience that I really wanted, without the trade-offs of having to sacrifice my career. So for me at the early age, that was the big game changer. But the defining moment, the moment I got. I went from like this is going to be useful to.
Speaker 2:I am obsessed, and the reason that I spent thousands and thousands of hours over the last decade learning this stuff is when I was again 23,. I was flying over to Europe One of my first ever international trips solo, as like an adult, and I remember I was going to this personal development conference I really wanted to go to and I was like, damn, I can afford the ticket, but I can't afford the plane ticket, and I felt this kind of internal conflict, like I want to go to this thing, I need to be there, I want to grow, and I ended up finding a ticket that was $6,000 in retail value and it cost me $5 and 60 cents. Okay, so I'm 24 years old, or 23 at the time, when I can't remember exact age, but I'm literally, you know, walking onto the plane down the jet bridge a little bit of a buzz for having probably too much champagne in the lounge, cause I was just so excited and I remember walk on the plane and the flight attendants look at my ticket and they turned to their right, which is my left, and, like Mr Presenta, right this way, you know, seat 2D or whatever it was, and I'm walking down the business class area and I'm like I do not belong here. This is unbelievable, and so I just got absolutely enamored with this thing because I was able to leverage points to do that entire trip. So that was my first trip.
Speaker 2:Since then, I've taken hundreds and hundreds of trips. I get, on average, around $100,000 a year worth of travel, usually 100 to 150K off of my points, and that's while having a business that spends around 20 to 25K a month, so getting a lot for not that much of spend, and I've helped by now I mean. As for clients, well, into the several hundreds close to a thousand clients and customers, and then several tens of thousands of people online with doing the same, from their business and their points and their spend. It's a long intro, but hopefully that gives some backstory into why it was so impactful for me and how it's been a game changer.
Speaker 1:Cool. So you know and I know, I once sat in a conference with a credit card point guy and I knew there was opportunities, but I never had the opportunity. I you know the tax code is complex enough as it is and all the opportunities in the tax system I can. I can spend an eternity and not even learn at all. So I'm always learning there and I was just like man. This would be a really cool thing to download into my brain, if only I had the time. Uh, now I'm wondering here um, you know, let's say I really want to work with this credit card system and I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to try and do it.
Speaker 1:I don't even have time to do my own laundry anymore. I hire someone else to do that Exactly. Yeah, and you know, if I'm going to learn something, I'm going to learn something I can do at scale for our clients and leverage my staff.
Speaker 2:So how, if I wanted to get what would it look like if I wanted you?
Speaker 1:guys to help me out here and leverage a specialist to maximize the points. So how much do I have to know and how much time would it be if I wanted to leverage you guys to create some opportunities here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic question. And I think it's the right question to start with, because most people don't know the kind of the context of the game before they jump in and it's really helpful to kind of zoom out and be like how deep does this rabbit hole go? Is it even worth me going down? Because, quite honestly, if I had spent all the time that I spent learning about points, I was a nerd and I got obsessed with this stuff. So I did it out of like fun and joy and pleasure, because it was cool. But if I had taken all those hours and put it into maybe real estate investing, I'd have like a hundred million dollar portfolio by now, probably Right.
Speaker 2:So so, in terms of how much time it can take to become an expert, you're right, it's very similar to taxes. There's a lot of nuances, it's always changing, there's a lot of kind of loopholes and codes and it can be extremely lucrative. But you have to keep up with it. You really have to know the ins and outs. So, in terms of how to think about this, it's really again similar to how you would work with a good accountant, a CFO, a CPA, because if you're a business owner, you should know what your profit and loss means. If your accountant gives you numbers, ideally you can interpret that and they can help you make a decision around what that is. But you probably shouldn't be doing all your books on your own right. You probably shouldn't be filing your own taxes. So in a similar way with points, you should have a general idea of what the different points programs are, what a good deal versus a bad deal is, some of the different benefits of these different card programs and perks. So ultimately you can understand what's actually getting you a strong ROI and what is good value or not.
Speaker 2:And then, beyond that, I just say the 80-20 strategy is just enough to kind of make sense of. It is the effective dose If you have either an assistant or a pro that, like an expert, us or someone else out there that you're working with because they're going to do the heavy lifting, decodify everything and speak in the points nerd jargon that you probably don't want to deal with. If you like it because it's fun and you think it's interesting, you want to gamify it. That's kind of a different case, but for most people they're like I just want the epic vacation, I want the $30,000 first class trip to Italy on Capri and a five-star resort and an upgraded suite, and I don't want to think about that. If that's who you're talking about, if that's what you want and you're going for that, then just basics of knowing a good deal versus a bad deal, understanding a couple of the programs generally, how airlines work that's what I would say, and just try to delegate the rest. That's your best effective dose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, similar to the tax code where you know I mean you can go really far with tax savings. There's a million strategies out there, but some folks are like, okay, am I really going to take the time to implement this Augusta strategy to reduce my taxes by three grand when I'm doing a million things, when I already have?
Speaker 1:this strategy that's going to reduce my taxes by 500 grand, or am I going to go through all this extra effort to make my vacations tax deductible when I'm already buying all of these depreciating assets? So there's a spectrum on how much you're going to commit and how far you're going to take this, based on the value of your time and the ROI here Exactly.
Speaker 2:Okay, very cool. So so let's let's get into how this thing works now, which is I know there's some cool stuff out there.
Speaker 1:You could trade and swap points and everything else at a high level. How, how does this? How does the point? How do you do like? Can you help me me and the audience understand the impact of having an effective awareness of how the credit card point system works and what's? What's the difference between? Like right now, because I don't know any better. I just, you know, I pay with my, my myx card, I get Delta points, I get Sky Lounge, which is kind of cool, although I always overeat at the Sky Lounge and feel guilty about it, and they don't let me take leftovers for free.
Speaker 2:So I feel guilty about it.
Speaker 1:But it's a nice little thing and I get a free flight here and there.
Speaker 2:But I'm certain there's more out there. So what's the difference between a guy like and I think I'm like most guy people.
Speaker 1:They stick with like one or two cards that they are used to and then they're good.
Speaker 2:What's the difference between a guy like me and someone who really knows the system and what's the difference you can make there yeah, great, great question and that's a question that I had been asking for years is how do I create a system around this so it's easy to follow, because without that it's just like a bazillion little tactics and strategies and it feels like overwhelming and chaotic and you don't know what you don't know. So what I've done is I've kind of codified a little bit of a system here. I can walk you through it and that will create context around how the game kind of works. Okay, so before we get into the main steps, if you just want to know how to know if I'm winning or losing numbers, right, people are going to you because they want to know the numbers. So there's the stories and there's the strategies and that stuff's cool and we can talk about that.
Speaker 2:But just from a hard numbers perspective, the key metric we want to be looking at is what we call return on spend. Every dollar you spend in your business in life, what percent are you getting back? Pretty simple, the baseline, you know, is about 1.5 to 2%, cause it's pretty easy to go out there and get a card that gets you cash back at 1.5 to 2%. Most people do that or they have it already, and even people that are using points. Most people aren't effectively maximizing them, so they're probably getting that return on spend back if they were to calculate it when you optimize your cards and you optimize your points, our clients, for example, get, on average, between 7% to 9% back on their spend. Wow, really simple math. You spend a million bucks a year in your business and household combined, that's 70 to 90,000. You spend 500 K. It's you could just do the math.
Speaker 2:But the formula for that is is it going to get a little technical here for a second? You take the points per dollar spent, so how many points you earn for every dollar spent, and then you get the cent per point. Okay, so each point has a different value when you use it. And then there's an amount of points you're going to earn when you spend. Okay, so most cards earn one point per dollar and most people go to a site like Amex Travel and get one cent per point. So they're only getting 1% back.
Speaker 2:If you now just got a card that earned two points per dollar and you went to Amex travel and you got the same 1 cent per point, you just double it. You got 2% back. But if you get a card that gets two points per dollar, and then you use your points more effectively and you get an average of 4 cents per point. Now you've got two times four equals 8% back. Okay, so I probably some people are probably like I need to re-listen to that the amount of points you earn for every dollar you spend times the value you get for them. Those are the two buckets we want to optimize. Okay, so that's how you know how to increase the overall kind of value you're going to get back. Okay, now the three kind of a little bit here ahead.
Speaker 1:So you're saying that the average is a 7% to 9% return on spend when they work with you. How does that compare to a guy like me.
Speaker 2:What do you think I'm getting right now?
Speaker 1:Maybe 1% or 2%.
Speaker 2:Probably around 2%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I would think, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause, like you said, you have a Delta card or something like that. Did you say that? Yeah, yeah, like those points are worth less than most other points because of the way that Delta prices with what's called their reward chart, so it's hard to get good value. So even if you have a card that earns two points per dollar on things, delta miles tend to be difficult to get good value out of. So you're probably getting around 1.5 to 2%. Okay, so we want to switch that up and I'll talk about those different things. But there's three key buckets to think about If you want to truncate this there's. The first bucket is maximize your points earned, so getting the most points, but not just the most points, the right kind. All these points are different. I just mentioned Delta in the points where we call them sky paces because they can tend to be worthless.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I got a bunch of those yeah exactly, you got a bunch of sky pesos, but that's the thing. So here's an example I was helping a client the other day and going from uh, from the East coast to Europe. Okay, this flight from I think it was Boston to Paris on uh, it was on Delta you could there's it was like $5,000 for cash. So there's three ways you could book this. You pay five grand. You go to Amex travel and you pay 500,000 points. Okay, I guess four ways. You go to Delta site I think it was like 450,000 points on Delta site. Or Virgin, which is a partner from American Express. You could convert your points from Amex into Virgin no-transcript Delta's points. You're stuck with Delta.
Speaker 2:So that diversity of having more valuable, what we call transferable points is the key. And the main banks that are chase Amex, city capital one and now built Okay. So those are the ones you want to start with. And when I say Amex, I don't mean the Amex Delta card, I mean Amex membership rewards. It's like Amex his own currency. Okay, so that's the first bucket. We want to think about maximizing the points so we get the right cards and the right expenses to do that. So you needed the right points earning cards with the right multipliers for you. That sets you up to just amplify your points. Now, this is key because if you think about how often are you spending money Literally every day so it's already being spent and so if you don't optimize it, you're just wasting opportunity every time you spend money to capitalize on something that could be free. Okay, so I'll pause there for a sec, because then we'll go into the second step. But does the maximizing points earnings make sense? Is that pretty clear?
Speaker 1:Yeah, is there for a sec Cause it will go into the second step. But does the maximizing points earnings make sense? Is that pretty clear? Yeah, well, I got a question for you now cause I'm in Atlanta and obviously Delta is the line for Atlanta. But I think you can. Even if I exchange it for like Virgin, cause it was more valuable, I think I can still book a Delta flight through Virgin, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So that's going to bring us to the second step, which is to maximize the value of the point. So I kind of alluded to this in that first step, where you're going to transfer the points and get better value. And so this is where you start. There's different ways to talk about it. In the points world, people will call it send per point is kind of the nerd metric. Another way, if you kind of flip it, it's basically how much you save. So in the example where you used $50,000 instead of 500,000, you got it for 90% off or you paid 10% of what it would have charged. They would have charged you Okay. So you want to optimize that we're seeing on average we get clients around 80% off, aka we get them five times the value out of their points in standard, and that's through converting them to the right airlines at the right time. So you're right about that.
Speaker 2:There are alliances and there's kind of two sets of partnerships in this game that make it possible. There's partnerships between the airlines and then there's partnerships between the bank and the airlines. So, like for Delta operated flights, they're in the sky team Alliance and you can convert Amex points directly into Delta to book that. Or you could convert Amex points into Virgin, who's a partner with Delta but has a different way of pricing Delta flights. So you can do that. It doesn't happen on every single flight. There's kind of like a different pool of inventory depending on where you book. So again, this is why there's like a lot of nuances, right, because, like, an airplane might have 300 seats for an international flight. You can pay cash for all 300. Delta will issue maybe 150 on their own mileage program and then they're going to issue like 50 to their partners. So there's like kind of tiers of this. So, like, virgin may only get a certain number of seats that they can issue and once those are sold out they're gone. So that's called award availability and you have to be able to find good award availability to book a flight. Okay, I'm really explaining the nuances here. I tend to not go this deep because it can lose some people, but hopefully I'm keeping you here. But that's that.
Speaker 2:Second step is maximizing the value of the points through transferring them. It works for airlines and hotels. If you want to do cruises, you want to do rental cars, you want to do Airbnb's, this isn't going to be the play for that this is for hotels and airfare. And one quick tip prioritize the big international personal trips that you want to do in luxury first. Right, there's the tax benefit that you know about. Points are tax free and that's where you're going to get the most value for your points and it's also going to create the most transformative experience in your life, like if points unlock a first class trip to Japan that you've always been wanting to do.
Speaker 2:That was normally 70 grand and even putting off Cause, you're like God, it's expensive. And now you get to do it and you get to take your parents or whatever, and you're like, oh my God, I got to use points for that. That didn't just save you money, it was actually the mechanism through which you justified taking a trip you already wanted to take. So that's why I always say prioritize that first for the value. Okay, so that's our second block. So I want to pause there too, because that's a lot, a lot of information as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm going to chime in on some tax strategies here, which is now.
Speaker 1:it's interesting because the travel lobbyists back in the day when they introduced these point systems, they convinced Congress to make any points or credit card rewards untaxable, which is really cool, and sometimes we see errors in clients' books where they get cash back rewards from their credit cards and the bookkeepers don't know what to do, so they classify it as other income and it becomes taxable, and we'll back it out as untaxable income, which is really interesting now on, even though it's awesome to have untaxed income on the other side of the spectrum here.
Speaker 1:If you spend money using credit cards is not tax deductible in your business, so you'll talk about it in a little bit here. But if I'm using my credit cards to offset my business trip, I'm not going to be able to write off those costs. It still may be worth it, the savings may be so good. It still may be worth it here. But usually you'll want to prioritize, like you said. You're going to prioritize those personal trips because you're not going to write them off anyways. Or maybe fly your family. You're too busy. You're an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:Fly your family to visit you using the points.
Speaker 1:So now you're taking time in your business. You're using your credit card points. You still get your tax deductions for your business if you're not using the points there 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's totally the move, but you can use points for anyone in any kind of use case really. So we do have some clients, depending on the amount you have. Like I always say, prioritize those first, your personal vacations, right off your business travel. But in some cases there's things they want to do that could be written off for the company. But they have enough points to cover their own stuff. Where they have enough left over, they're like what else can I do?
Speaker 2:And so a good example of this let's say you have an incentive program for your sales team and you want to tell your top sales reps of the quarter of the year the winner is going to get a $50,000 value trip to the Maldives for them and their spouse, five-star resort, all-inclusive, first-class flights the whole way. You may not want to stroke a check for 50K. Let's say you were normally going to give them a $15,000 bonus, but now you're able to give them an experience that's going to keep them more loyal, more engaged, save you way more money and you don't have to come out of pocket for it. If you have enough leftover points, those are really creative ways to leverage those for, ultimately, what's going to drive more value, a motivated employee that feels very loyal. So you can think of it differently, but prioritize those personal trips first, and then I like to think about some of that other stuff later, awesome.
Speaker 1:And then I like to think about some of that other stuff later. Awesome, you know and funny I was, I was telling you I know a business owner who would rack up all these points and gift them as a bonus. And then I saw him on your website.
Speaker 2:Our buddy, uh, a lyric uh he was the first person to talk about that strategy.
Speaker 1:I was like oh you're, what a coincidence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, You're the one who helped him learn how to do it exactly. Smart guy, awesome guy, by the way, yeah, really good guy, okay. So there's one last step I can cover that. So we talked about zooming back out right return on spends, a key metric we got maximize the points earned by getting the right cards on the right expenses. And one other thing on that.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, when they think about this, like I don't want to have 20 credit cards, my credit score, uh, managing is too confusing. I like to use one card. Now here's my advice on that from having worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs If you get between three to five total cards a couple personal, a couple of business it tends to be meaningful for the amount of complexity that it adds, because it's very minimal complexity and the upside is like almost like a passive $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 just for having an extra credit card or two. I do not suggest getting 10, 15, 20 cards. That is not for someone who's busy and wants to just enjoy the travel perks. But if you get a couple of the right ones on your personal setup and a couple of the right ones in the business, your points will skyrocket and that's what's going to unlock all the value for you If you only have one. It's a lot harder to get really good amount of points earning unless you spend like just a ton of money, okay, and even then you're still just missing on free value. So three to five total cards is my recommendation, um, for the points earnings, okay. So so we got the, we got the cards, we got the using the points, and the last bucket is going to be to upgrade and optimize your travel.
Speaker 2:So this means when you're going through the airport, do you have like you know, we have a checklist. We run people through TSA pre-check clear? Are you skipping lines at check-in? Are you getting the free lounges? Are you getting the first class upgrade? Did you get free bags? Does your bag come out first? Do you get the priority line at the hotel? Did you get a suite upgrade? Did you get free breakfast at the hotel? Do you get the lounge access at the hotel, late checkout so you can work in your room later? That's what I'm talking about with upgrade and optimize.
Speaker 2:Those are all perks and benefits that you can get from having the right cards, and some of these cards will have higher fees. The Amex Platinum or Business Platinum, for example, is like $700 fee. But if you use Just on one trip alone. In December we were in Switzerland. We used one perk just one perk on the Amex Business Platinum card called the Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts.
Speaker 2:I got a $200 credit. I got free breakfast for two nights. So that alone, right, there is $400. Plus we got an upgrade to a suite that was worth around $1,500 per night. So that's three grand. So we just saved like $3,500 worth of value off of one perk on a $700 card. So if you use these things, you get tens of thousands of dollars sometimes from maximizing that, but most people just have the card and they don't even use any of it. So that's the last piece is making your travel that you're doing for work, for personal vacations, whatever you're doing more seamless, more comfortable, more luxurious, and you just fully maximize those benefits that the banks are giving to you so you can get the most value.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Now, one of the things we talked about earlier and I want to learn more about here and we have a lot of accountants who listen to this podcast because I may get a little too technical for the masses at times the tax enthusiasts love this stuff and we have a lot of accountants that our most common expense and we have a lot of accounts that are most common expense and we have a lot of it is our payroll costs, and right now I run it my payroll, through gusto, and you know gusto does ACH payments and I think if I were to switch to I'm not sure if I'm allowed to, to switch to credit court or card, or if I did, there might be like a 2% fee.
Speaker 2:So for someone, like me, who has a lot of payroll like. I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:let's say I have a payroll between 800 and 1.2 million. Let's say that's my payroll. If that's the case in that range, how would I look at this and see this? Could this be a potential opportunity and how would I implement taking advantage of all the points by switching this to payroll?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So I'll answer that, and then I'll talk about also what happens if you have a lot of spend and if you're a frequent traveler, because there's one other little status strategy we'll talk about later, but so I'll just earmark that. But for this it's a super, super good question. And it's not just payroll. Some people they're not. They're big expenses in payroll, it's merchandise, but they're buying it in wholesale or bulk and they can't pay on a credit card. Or they have a commercial lease and they can't pay it on a credit card.
Speaker 2:And there actually is a way to literally put anything on a card, and so this is going to be using a third-party merchant processor like Plastique. So P-L-A-S-T-I-Q is one that's a good one. There's a few others out there. Melio is another one. There's always a fee involved and that fee, if you do the math right, it makes total sense in a lot of cases. And so for me, I put all my payroll on a card, everything. And so here's what I do. You're going to get a 2.9% fee, okay, but if you have a card like the Capital One Venture X for business, that's a really good card for this I'd recommend for people. It earns two points per dollar on everything. Okay.
Speaker 2:Now, this is why you'll see that return on spend is so key. Because If I just put the spend on that card and I go to Capital One Travel and I only get one cent per point, I just paid 2.9% in fees and got 2% back. So I just overpaid by an extra percentage point. Basically Not good. But if I get that card and then I transfer the points to the airlines and I'm able to leverage them for you know, we average again around five cents per point I just got 10% back and I paid 3%, so I just saved 7%.
Speaker 2:But again you got to think about it, what your business goals are and stuff like that, because that 7% in savings it might be a $50,000 vacation that you got. So it's kind of a personal savings, not to the business. So maybe if you're in a position where you're going to sell your company and you really want to increase profitability, then maybe it doesn't make sense to put that 2.9% transaction fee on the business P&L because it's going to be reducing profitability In other businesses. Maybe it's more of a lifestyle business where that's a part of running the payroll and how you have it set up. That's more your wheelhouse of what people want to do with that, but that's kind of how the mechanism works. So if you put payroll on a card, huge, huge opportunity to do that and potentially, if you're going to be a frequent traveler, you might want to get top level status, like if you were flying, let's say, twice a month out of Atlanta. I'd say we should get you Delta diamond status because it's going to you already have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but anyway sorry for interrupting. Continue, okay, great.
Speaker 2:No, I'm saying so. Advise people. If they don't travel with a high level of frequency, the status benefits aren't worth it because there's an opportunity cost of putting the spend on that card that could go on other cards. So we could talk about that for you if it makes sense or not. But for, let's say, you were traveling a lot and maybe you are um and you want to get Delta diamond. Well, you could use that card for your payroll to skyrocket the amount of spend. You have to hit that status faster, which means more upgrades, better benefits, stuff like that. So it's situational for everyone as to when and how they're going to use that. But I'm a big fan of doing it for those, especially if you have large transaction sizes to certain vendors, even if you don't have payroll. Let's say it's a construction company and they're buying things in $200,000 purchase orders at once, 15 times a year, even if there's a fee. You slap five of those on a card, you're going to rack up some serious points.
Speaker 1:What if I'm afraid of planes and I don't want to go on too many vacations because I'm a workaholic Sure? What are some other opportunities potentially where?
Speaker 2:I can.
Speaker 1:What I typically find is that the travel is a most, you get your best bang for the buck on the points. But what if I have, like all these points, amazed from all these expenses or some other ways I could potentially leverage points?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Great question, great question, I mean. My first advice this is not a, this is just personal opinion is life is short and you should go travel anyway. So if you're the workaholic like you gotta work something out because go prioritize your own enjoyment with the people you love. Go take some more vacations. I see, man, it really breaks my heart how many entrepreneurs just are so addicted to work they don't prioritize going out, seeing the world, living, having fulfilling experiences Like it really makes you come alive in a different way, and I think that's my wish for people to have more of that. So that's a side. That's my own personal opinion. Some people might say I don't care, screw you, that's fine too.
Speaker 2:So for the, what else can you do? The hotels are great, so I'll give you an example of that. There's a prop. I live in Austin. There's a hotel about 40 minutes away on Lake Travis called. It's called Miraval. There's three of these in the country. Oh, called um, it's called Miraval. There's three of these in the country. You've been okay.
Speaker 2:So you know it's a. It's like. I mean, how would you describe it? It's like it's like adult summer camp, wellness, luxury resort, right, I mean it's like all day activities and all inclusive food. You put your phone away, you know massages and spa. It's like an amazing experience.
Speaker 2:These are typically a thousand 1500 bucks. When it's two grand a night, well, these are typically $1,000, $1,500. When it's two grand a night, well, that's a Hyatt property. So you could convert your chase points into Hyatt to book that cover that. So, whether you want to go, or sometimes for my fiance, she likes the luxury stuff so I can gift her a nice getaway and that's really nice for her to have a reset, so you could use it for that. So those are the hotel side.
Speaker 2:The last thing is, if you want to use your points for other things, you can do it. You're just not going to get the same value. That two, three, four, five, 10 X multiple on the point value in terms of using them is only going to be for flights and hotels only, not private flights either. Commercial flights and hotels, specifically Marriott, marriott, hyatt and Hilton branded properties, okay. If you want to use your points for a concert tickets or cash back, you can technically do it. It's just way worse value. You know a million points If you go to Amazon, instead of it getting you potentially $50,000, it's going to get you a 6,000. So it's like you could do it, but it's just worse value. But if you're not going to travel at all, then maybe that's still better for you.
Speaker 1:So, and like I said earlier, if you're tired of traveling, then you can fly your family to visit you or you can give out gifts. You can give out we were talking about earlier if you want to have an incentive for one of your staff. You can give wedding, for a wedding and birthday and all sorts of holidays. You can gift these packages, which is really cool as well. So there's all sorts of holidays. You can gift these packages, which is really cool as well. So there's all sorts of creative ways where we can gift these amazing things now and we're not spending money and there are incredible opportunities here. So that's really awesome.
Speaker 2:Now I think you said I was going to ask something else, but I think there was a third part you wanted to talk about right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I covered it. So it was the three kind of high level things maximize your points earnings, get the right cards and the right expenses. Then you want to maximize the value of those points by converting them from the banks to the airlines or hotels strategically and there's a couple of things I can touch on that to really hone that in if we need to. And the third piece is to upgrade and optimize your travel through leveraging perks and status that you get from using the right cards. So those are the three kind of key steps.
Speaker 1:Where are some little nuggets you can maybe share that that someone listening in the car right now could be like oh, this is really cool, I can go home and do this little trick right here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give you a. I'll give you three. One is a little less like you could do it right now, but it's going to be like wow, that's super cool. And the other two are like you could do it today, okay, so the first one is if you want to take a really epic trip and you want just the most ridiculous experience, um think honeymoon style stuff, and my, one of my life philosophies is a honeymoon a year. So if you're in a relationship, most people take a honeymoon once in their life. And I'm like dude, you're running a business, take a honeymoon once a year. You got the points, let's do it. So if you want to do that, you could go to Europe on Emirates first class. If you don't want to go all the way to Dubai, it is the best flying experience and, personally, that I think you can have.
Speaker 2:So luxurious the flight attendants. You have $300 bottles of Dom Perignon. You have caviar, limitless caviar like lobster mac and cheese, tuna tartare. It's like, it's insane, like you don't want the plane to land. Not only that, they have a bar in the back so you can hang out in a cocktail lounge. In fact, I once, uh, I ran a ski trip. There were 25 of us that were on the in-flight bar together on that plane we were going over to Europe. It was crazy, it's a ridiculous thing. It was like the seatbelt sign came off and it was like ding and like 25 guys stand up and you know, girls and stuff we all are on the back having cocktails at 35 000 feet. So I mean like ridiculous thing.
Speaker 2:But everyone booked on points, so that's that made it possible. So they have a bar in the back and then the last part of that one is there's a shower in first class. So if you want to shower at 35 000 feet and have a ridiculous experience, to go from new york to milan in first class on emirates is about 11,000 to $12,000 cash. That's about 1.1 million points. If you go directly through Amex, if you convert the points like I just did in December my fiance and I we got two of us so $22,000 worth of flights total it cost me $200. And I used 206,000 points Converted my Amex points into Emirates to book that Shower isn't from code word for anything, is it?
Speaker 1:What's that Sour? Wasn't a code word for something else? Okay, no, yeah, yeah, that is where my jokes get cute?
Speaker 2:That's definitely not. Yeah, it's funny. It's actually funny they, I don't know.
Speaker 1:This is TMI. You have uh yeah, you can.
Speaker 2:When you look at the bathroom it says max occupancy two. You're like interesting, nice move emirates, that's, that's so you can bring your dog and boom your dog on the exactly exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you nailed it, you nailed it. That's why everybody wants to do it anyways, so continue. So that's one, so that's a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Obviously you have to be going to europe, but they fly from new york to milan too. So if you want to go to Europe and you're like I'm not going to Dubai, jfk to Milan, that's a good route. Okay, and so that's one Simpler. If you are someone that just wants consistent hotel suite upgrades, I talked to a lot of folks who are like, yeah, this is cool, luxury travel vacations Not right now, but I'd have travel for work, conferences. Man, I really like getting the suite upgrades. I don't like paying a thousand bucks a night for them.
Speaker 2:What's the option? The fast track on this? There's a lot of different plays here, and I tend to like Hilton or, excuse me, I tend to like Hyatt and Marriott for this. But the fastest way is getting the Hilton Aspire card. It gets you automatic diamond status at Hilton, which means you get suite upgrades, free breakfast, early check-in, late checkout, hotel lounges, you get a night credit, all that stuff. So that's the only single card you can hold, where just by holding it, you get the top level status. All the other ones require either a combination of spend or night stayed to get there. So if you just want the fast track to diamond status, that's your move, and these suites can be big time. I mean, I'm talking, I was just in Paris and we got upgraded to this awesome suite for four nights. It was around $3,000 a night for the upgrade, so that's like 12 grand on just suite upgrades as a perk from having status. Okay, so really really nice uptake. And the Hilton Aspire card is that one.
Speaker 2:So that's my second tip. My third one is if you have a family or spouse and you live near a Southwest hub so Austin is one and you're doing a good amount of domestic travel Okay, maybe Nashville, austin, a Southwest hub so Austin is one and you're doing a good amount of domestic travel Okay, maybe, nashville, Austin. You know a lot of BWIs one, there's one in Chicago, they're all over the country, um, with a lot of Southwest flights. But a lot of people know about the Southwest companion pass. Okay, but what you can do is if you hit 125,000 points in a single calendar year, you'll get companion pass for the year that you qualify and the entire next year. What that means is, when you book, you get one person to fly free and you can even use points for your flight.
Speaker 2:So the move here is at the end of the year, like right now. It's 2025, february at the end of the year, so December 2025, you would sign up for the card. You'd make sure to hit the signup bonuses in January of 2026. Mark, let's say you qualify for a companion pass, you add your spouse, your significant other, then you have two years of you and them flying one person free on any route that you have for Southwest. Okay. So if you have kids and you have a family of four let's say you and your wife want to do it you could each sign up for those cards and add your kids, and now you have a family of four flying for the price of two for two years. Awesome. So those are some tactical ones.
Speaker 1:Very cool. So you know one of the things I was thinking about here. Well, you know we were talking earlier. You know you're going to have a Q and a. We're going to schedule a Q andA with our clients and I'll probably schedule it after the release of our podcast. So you guys who are clients that are interested in if you guys actually listen to this and are interested in a one time guest pass. Just email marketprosperalcpacom.
Speaker 1:But anyways so just to take our let's, let's take our mind away from the credit card points for a second, sure, and I just want to know some things, some business and just other things what is your most what? Is your favorite book that's had the greatest impact on you.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, you know there's or give me a top three. What's that?
Speaker 1:Or give me the top three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So a couple of different ones. Uh, the first book that it's a lesser known one in terms of what a lot of people would typically answer that to this. And, uh, it was a book that really changed my life. It's called clarity by Jamie smart. I read this, um, in my early twenties and it was it's kind of a book around psychology and this was really powerful, man, it shifted a lot. I was going through a period where I was feeling really depressed, like really depressed, like as pretty much as low as it gets, and in a couple of pages I just like something hit me and it was like it was like depression gone. I was like, wow, that was crazy. So that's one book is more psychology. It's not really business related at all. That's one. That's one.
Speaker 2:Recently, one of the books that I've really loved is 10X is easier than 2X, dan Sullivan phenomenal book. Any entrepreneur, I think, has to read that book. And again, the message I was shared with go take vacations. It's not just because they're enjoyable, it's because if you are a business owner or an entrepreneur or an investor, you get your best ideas, your most creativity. Your biggest breakthrough is when you're not in it. You get away, you go to another destination, you let your mind at rest for 10 days. You come back and you're like I got all these ideas. It always happens. So Dan is big on. He likes a three-day work week where you take a lot of days for creativity and breaks, and for most entrepreneurs that is so shattering to our paradigm of how work is supposed to look like it's really confronting. So I love Dan's work because that book's amazing. And the last book I really love I don't know if we talked about this Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. Do you know that book?
Speaker 2:I've heard about it never had a chance to read it.
Speaker 1:Wonderful title, by the way.
Speaker 2:So he's a really successful hedge fund investor and he talks about essentially the value on experiences, and people talk about the time value of money, but no one really talks about the time value of experiences.
Speaker 2:He articulates it so well and really the core idea of this is you're always going to make more money as you age, but your opportunity to have certain experiences.
Speaker 2:There's a finite chapter in your life where you can't go back, and so one of the examples he talks about actually in the book is he's coming out of college and he didn't want to take a week off to go to Europe and go backpacking because he didn't want to miss a week's worth of pay early days on Wall Street. And he's like my best friend went and he just said screw it, I'll make the money later. He's like in today's terms, I would pay like $20 million to go back and have that week, but I can't go back to Europe and backpack as a 20-year-old. So it's this idea of now is the time to create experiences. It doesn't mean be wasteful with your money, but it's about prioritizing fulfillment and experiences over just the accumulation of more. So I think it's a really great book for anyone that's on the path of wealth building and I'm really early on that journey, but I think it's just a great mindset book.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad you gave me answers I wasn't expecting, because we hear a lot of the same books, so that was really great, cool, okay, well, wonderful, well, eli, thank you so much for your time. Now, if you want to give the listeners a call to action where they can learn, we'll put in the show notes. Where do they go to learn more about what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first thing I spent a lot of time on Instagram in terms of going behind the scenes, sharing tips, stories, fun, tactical things, showing the travel. So if you want to just follow along and you're there, it's just Eli travel guy. And then, um, we have what we call the CEO points playbook. So there's a full playbook that breaks down everything that I just talked about in a little more depth. There's actionable steps and stuff like that. So you can grab that too. You can just DM me playbook or go to freedomtravelsystemscom. We can maybe link that below freedomtravelsystemscom forward slash playbook.
Speaker 2:This is really designed for business owners and entrepreneurs and investors on how they can maximize their points. And if you're interested in getting more help from us, we have a community, we have services, we have all sorts of ways to help. I'll be sharing more of that with your audience and we do a lot of these kind of live workshops and presentations for communities. So I'm really excited to get to talk to your folks and lay this out in a more visual way where they get to see it and have that interaction. So, Instagram, website those are the two main places.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And, for those of you guys listening to us, if you want to learn more about our services, go to prosperwithanlcpacom. Slash apply to learn more and check out all our free resources on the site. Thanks everyone for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this wonderful conversation and stay tuned for more great stuff coming your way.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mark, Appreciate you having me on man Absolutely.