How I Traveled To Japan For FREE

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I was reading, I'm like, I have it pulled up right now. I loved your article, Authority Magazine. So I was just pulling that up a little because there was some stories in there that I was like, yes, let's talk about that on the podcast. Okay. I love— have you ever done like one of those, the authority pitches before, like where you answer the questions and then just send it in?

This is the first time we've done it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm like, I have a client who just did it and she was like, oh my God, this takes forever. She got like really anxious about it. She was like, it's taking me 40 hours.

Yeah.

It did take a fair amount of time.

So I'm like, sorry, girlfriend. Thanks so much for doing it. I love what you said. People would just come to you and kind of ask you for your advice and And then did that just idea spark and you're like, why am I not doing this? Like, as a— why am I not providing this as a service?

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I've always been obsessed with, with points and miles. And so just in general, I'm someone that, that A, is a little bit cheap, and B, kind of likes to, to figure out kind of how to maximize the system or work the system a little bit. And so I started maybe 12, 15 years ago and signing up for different credit cards and getting the bonuses. And I have a spreadsheet of about 100 different cards that I've had at different points in my life.

Wow.

And tracking, you know, if you got the bonus and how much the bonus was. And, you know, I've run my own business for the last 15 years. And so, there are business cards that you can use. You can sign up as your spouse. I mean, with obviously my wife's permission.

Wait, what?

And there are some situations where, like, there was this American card that was giving 100,000 miles and you could sign up. And then my wife signed up and then you waited 2 months and you could sign up again and then she could sign up again. So we got 400,000 miles in no time. And you can redeem American miles on British Airways. And so we flew in business class to Europe for the summer and covered our flights home and then some. And so, yeah, for me, it's— it was a hobby, right? And that's really how I got into it. And I think I may have mentioned my friends, when they use a card at dinner, I will, I will totally like give them a hard time. And they'll be like, well, what card should I use? Um, I mentioned this once, but I, um, I'm— I will secretly judge people at the grocery store, right? Because like when they're checking out, you can see what cards they use, right? I'm like, oh, that's a bad choice. Really, you shouldn't be using that card here.

Some unsolicited advice really quick.

Exactly. I wanted to print out business cards that would say like, you're using the wrong card, go to gigafoints.com and we'll tell you what you should use.

I love it.

I've always thought about starting a business like this, but I've always wondered what I could do differently because there's dozens of sites out there. I read a lot of them. There's The Points Guy, there's NerdWallet and Credit Karma, and then there's all these niche blogs that people in the space know that there's people that write them that are semi-famous. I knew I couldn't really improve on that. But what fascinated me was to try to bring an analytical perspective to it. Most of these blogs and so forth are written without knowing anything about you. They don't know how you spend money or how much money you spend. I just realized that there was a programmatic answer that if I could actually see your spending, I could say what the best card was and we could quantify it because that's always the first thing I would ask people is, you know, what do you spend your money on and how do you want to use your points? After I sold the last company that I was running, we decided to go out and build a prototype and we started testing it. I built an Excel model to try to do all these things and we realized it would work. And so that's sort of how we started the company and just kind of grew it from there.

So how do you get everybody's information? Like if So tell me kind of how, when I'm envisioning, like I sign up or go on the website and then do you need like access to my bank statements or what? Do I just fill out like a questionnaire?

Yeah, sort of. So, so we use a third party called Plaid, which is the same service that American Express and Venmo— like if you have a Venmo account and you add your checking account, they use Plaid to basically deal with the backend piece of it. And so we as GigaPoints, we never see your username. We never see your passwords. But Plaid is the one that manages the integrations to all these different accounts. And they work with thousands of banks. I think something like 40% of Americans have actually used Plaid without realizing it, right? Because it's sort of a backend service and it's super highly secure and totally safe. But that essentially gives us read-only access. So we could never do anything with your funds anyway. That gives us a revocable ability to start analyzing your transactions, right? And so you can go in, you can add the cards that you use. Choose. You can pick and choose. Maybe you have a business card that's mixed in there that you don't want in the analysis. And so then we're able to pull down that data and pretty much instantly, once it's connected, it takes about 30 seconds or maybe a minute depending. We'll go out and we'll model for your situation. You know, maybe the card you have is actually a really good card, in which case that's great. And there's not a small percentage of people that have what's really pretty good cards for them. But if there are other cards that are better, We'll show those and then we'll tell you how much more you would earn. Right. And right now we're seeing that our average user could earn about $1,000 more a year by switching cards. Right. Because the rewards out there right now, they're so big that optimizing can really save you a lot of money. And we also allow you to filter and maybe you want points or maybe you want a specific type of points or you want— you don't want to deal with points, you just want cashback. We can show you all those things if you want an intro APR. Because you're carrying a balance. We can kind of look into all those things for you and really try to make it both quick and easy, but also very specific as to how much you might save.

So we use, me and my husband both are, we use Credit Karma just for, you know, to look at our credit score, which somehow that's like kind of addictive, even though like, what is it really? You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, this is the kind of fake information, but anyway, him being in the military, he has like Hilton Honors rewards. And because he's active duty, he has like a certain level or whatever. So when we were on Credit Karma, I believe it was like last week, it was like, you qualify, you know, for AMEX Hilton and you can within, you know, if you get the card, you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months, you get 100,000 points. And we were like, yes, let's do it. Yeah. But before we were, you know, we had to like sit and chat about it. Like, we're like, okay, are we going to like always use Hilton now for forever? Like every time we travel, you know, is that going to be like our place, you know? And then just reading all of the other rewards, like, okay, is there a yearly fee? And what is the balance as far as like, okay, if we pay a yearly fee, which his yearly fee is waived because of active duty.

Yep.

But it's just like, very interesting, um, the little piece that will draw you in, and then you're like, this is the best card for me. That's right, 100,000 points, spend $4,000, that's easy. Yeah. So what do you have to say about like the words that they— that credit cards use like that? Like, I don't know if it's called clickbaity, but kind of like to draw you in, even if it really isn't the right card for you. They just want you to sign up, right?

One thing that you'll see are the signup bonuses, right? So that 100,000 points is really what grabs you, and you know that those are often really good deals and they'll offer different things. So Capital One right now is offering one that's 100,000 of their points, right? The other, the first thing though that you kind of need to figure out is what the points are worth. And each of these are kind of different currencies and you can think of like, okay, a cashback card is sort of like the US dollar. Like one point is worth a penny. There are some like Hilton, It's sort of like a Venezuelan bolívar. It's not worth nearly as much. And so 100,000 Hilton points actually doesn't take you very far. And 100,000 Marriott points, those aren't as valuable as, say, 100,000 Chase points. And so one of the things that we do is we assign a value to all the different currencies. And so we can instantly compare across those currencies and say which ones are more valuable based on, on kind of our analysis. And so that's one of the first things to watch out for, um, is a signup bonus may sound really good, but if it's really hard to use those points or they're really not that valuable, then it's just not quite as appealing as it sounds. Um, and then there's, there's sort of what we call wallet cards and drawer cards, right? And there are certain cards that you want to use, you want to carry with you, there are certain cards that you might have for the benefits, right? Or for the signup bonus, let's say. So maybe a Hilton card, you know, if he has status because of that card, like, I'm not sure, it sounds like he has it just because he's military, but there are certain cards that maybe you get free checked bags or, you know, you get gold status at some hotel. Um, the American Plat— Express Platinum is, is one of these where it comes with lounge access and you get Uber credits and all these things. But it's actually a pretty poor card for your daily spending, right? And so you might have cards that you keep almost just like as an annual discount coupon, right? A lot of the hotel ones come with a free night. And maybe you use that free night every year, and it pays for itself. But that doesn't mean you should use it day to day. And so that's kind of another thing that our algorithm is able to look at is, is kind of what it— what the value is on an ongoing basis. And we assume that people aren't switching every year, but we do have a toggle that we can show you the value of the welcome bonus, right? And if you're looking for something that, that you really want to maximize that welcome bonus, we can kind of show you that. Um, but we assume that you're going to have this card for a little while, and that's how we, we look at the ongoing value of it. Um, but we do try to weigh all these different things. Some cards have, have discounts that they give you, and we try to put those into the algorithm as well.

So do you have any input on like a store credit card and if you should or shouldn't?

Yeah, I mean, it depends. So like a Macy's, Target, Kohl's card, they're usually not kind of worth the hassle on their own, right? I mean, I think it all depends on you and that, you know, some people like getting access, early access to sales that they get with their Nordstrom card. But usually the benefits aren't quite worth it, I think, to justify the hassle. But it's such a specific thing that it doesn't matter. There are some cards, like you can use your Gap card at all sorts of other merchants. And, you know, maybe if you're really attached to the Gap, that might make sense. But usually you're better off with a more broad base card.

Okay. I'm like, even just as a consumer, I think it's almost, it's such a great marketing tactic, right? Like they're like, sign up, you get $75. And if I'm gonna go to Sheehan's, everything is already $75. So I'm like, that's a free item. But then I almost feel like I have to go to Sheehan's if I'm gonna look for any sporting good ever. So I'm like, oh, you know, we need new life jackets this summer. We better go to Sheehan's. Even though I know that if we went to like Walmart or even like the local thrift store, we find a life jacket for, you know, $5, whereas Shields is $50. But I'm like, but I have the credit card, it'll get me points and then I'll get a $25 gift card. It's fine. But I, I really think that that is like the huge pull that kind of all credit cards have is that like exactly kind of like what you were saying, like that sign-on bonus of like get this much. So what is your like a tip or trick if somebody is feeling like this sounds really great, should they just go to GigaPoints, right? And like, type it in? I don't know. How do— how would they know?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, one of the things that, that we can't always capture is all the psychology of it, right? And what it is that's important to you. One of the, the big differences is cash back versus points, right? And we have some philosophies on which points are the best to earn. Generally, it's better to earn flexible points. And what we say is that you can usually earn more with points, but it takes a little more work. Is you have to figure out how to use them. But there's a psychological piece that comes into it as well, which sort of hits on what you're talking about is some people like just getting the cash back every month. And it shows up on their credit card statement and their statement is 2% less than it would've been otherwise. But other people really like saving up for a trip. If you go to Florida or Hawaii and your hotel is paid for, for 4 days, or maybe your flights are covered, because it's your annual trip that you use all your points on. For some people, they just love that ability to say, I didn't have to pay for this trip, right? And they'd rather have that than, you know, save a couple of bucks every month on their statement, right? All these things, you know, these merchants, like you mentioned, they're very sophisticated. They know that if you have your card, you're probably more likely to buy your life jackets there, right? With our algorithm, we assume that most people won't get a new card every year or every 2 years. It's— I didn't build this for myself because I I will change cards. I'll sort of switch things around. But we kind of assume that someone's going to have one card that they use for most all of their spending and they don't want to hassle a ton. And so that's what our algorithm can analyze for you. Now, of course, we'll show you all those different options. Like I mentioned, if you want a big signup bonus, you know, the fact is most people just don't want to be getting a new card every year, don't want to hassle with it. And so the algorithm is really sort of tuned to how much could you earn every year on an ongoing basis.

Okay, I want to go back to something you had mentioned earlier. So you said that when your wife both applied for a card and then like 2 months later you could reapply. Like, tell me more about that and what, what is that?

Yeah, so most of the credit card companies have changed their policies since then, and there's all sorts of stories in the community about things that used to happen in the good old days, right? You used to be able to buy dollar coins with a credit card. And then take them to the bank and turn them into cash. Right. So people were just buying thousands of dollars of coins and generating miles. Right. So there's, there's all these tales. And, and this particular deal was with Citi years ago. And so the credit card companies have kind of figured that out and cracked down on it. Some banks are really strict. Chase, for example, if you've applied for more than 5 cards in the last 2 years, they won't give you a new card, just period. The banks have made it harder, um, and they're a little more careful about people that are opening accounts just for for the signup bonus and then closing them. So it's a game you can play, but you really kind of need to do your research. And there's, there's tons of forums online. People will discuss churning. That's kind of the name for it. It can be a good hobby, but it really kind of needs to be a more dedicated effort to make sure you don't run afoul of the rules.

Yeah. Okay. That's very interesting. I had never even— that would have never even crossed my mind that that could have ever even been a potential, like a possibility. So that's Pretty, that's so crazy.

If you do it reasonably, there's, there's nothing wrong with that, right? The banks understand that they use it as a lure and not everyone's going to cancel their card in a year and they'll keep customers. And so it's, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And you can earn anywhere from $200 to $1,000 signing up for a new card.

Well, I mean, we got our Capital Card, God, years ago, like 4 years ago, and we've just been banking up the points, just banking them up and any big purchase we have. So like, when we put a down payment on the truck and then we just immediately will pay it off like as soon as we do it. But I'm like, it's almost like, it's exciting kind of like how you said to look at it and be like, oh my God, like when we decide to take a trip, everything is going to be paid for, which is, it's almost like a savings account type of way, like thing. I don't know. Like it's cool. And it almost sounds like you guys, I mean, You did that too. Like you banked up all of your points to be able to— didn't you say you fly or you flew first class to Japan? Yeah. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

No, I mean, we've had some pretty amazing trips and we like to travel internationally and to be able to do it in business class with a flatbed or something is pretty darn cool because I would never pay those fares otherwise. Right. And you can do it, you know, for, for not a ton of miles if you're able to book in advance and, and kind of figure out, you know, when you're going to travel and so forth. So there's definitely a lot that's available. And, you know, credit cards are just such a lucrative space. I mean, we estimate the credit card companies give away about $25 billion a year in rewards, um, and they make a ton of money from it. And so it's kind of like if you're not getting your share, then you're, you're missing out.

Is there any demographic that you think should not have a credit card, or do you think everyone could benefit from one?

Well, that's a really important point, is that we focus— our service works best if you pay off your debt every month, right? And, and that's an important consideration because if you are paying interest on your credit card You shouldn't worry about points, right? Because the best points cards will earn you kind of around 2% or a little bit more, right? And when you mention it as like found money, it's great. But if you think that the average credit card interest rate is something like 20% a month, right, that that's really going to wipe out anything that you earn from the points. And so your first goal is to minimize your debt. And then once you've— once you don't have any recurring debt, then you can think more about how to earn points. And so we sort of— we do focus a little bit more on the, um, essentially the more affluent audience that, that pays off their debt every month, because then you can start worrying about optimizing points. And it is really important that, that you pay off your debt first. There are cards that, that are much more focused on low interest rates Or even considering taking a personal loan from a company like Upstart or some of those that will have lower interest rates than a credit card is kind of worth considering as well before you start worrying about points.

So I was never taught about credit cards and I always just thought like you got a credit card and you put all of your stuff that you needed on it and then you just paid it off like whenever you could, right? Like $100 here and there. Like, I did not understand APR. I did not understand, like, you know, you probably only want to put like 3% of, you know, like what your monthly expenses are on and then pay it off. Like, I just didn't understand that. And I learned a really hard lesson when I was like 25 and I was like, oh, AMEX, wow, I have like maxed out my credit card. How did this happen? And so now it's empowering, I think, when you understand, and exactly kind of what GigaPoints does, I almost feel like it empowers you to understand your finances, your spending, and then how to reward yourself for that. I don't know how else to describe it.

Yeah. We as a country could do a much better job teaching personal finance, like a required class in high school or even in college, because there are so many kids that come out of college or go into college and this is their first time managing their own money and they don't really know what to do, and you can, you can get really far behind really quickly. And once you get behind, it's really hard to catch up because, you know, the interest rates are so high.

Um, do you guys provide any, uh, like classes or courses or resources as far as if there was somebody who was interested in GigaPoints but they also were like, I don't even know where to start? Where do you guys provide resources for that?

Yeah, not yet. You know, we, we're still a startup, and there's, there's so many good resources out there. Um, Before this, I had a site called rothira.com, which essentially helps people figure out their retirement savings. And Roths are good for younger savers, especially. And so we did some of that education. There are a lot of really great resources out there, and it's definitely something we'd like to add over time. But for now, we are focused on, okay, once you've gotten to that point, how do you optimize it? How do you take care of it? Um, but one thing that does happen is when you go through our tool, we'll show you a chart of where all your spending goes, right? How much you spend on the major categories. So like dining and travel, gas, things like that. Um, and then we do like essentially a report card on your existing cards of how much you've earned, how much those rewards are worth, and then the annual fee, right? And so we can kind of show maybe you have this one card that you don't use that much that has a $90 annual fee and you kind of forgot about it, um, and you're just not earning enough on it, right? So we'll give you a little bit of a, of essentially a checkup on your existing cards as well that you can see how they, how they compare before you start looking at other cards.

So when you guys were able to travel first class, how much would you say that you had to spend on that card, or how Like how many years did it take to build that up or was it just being super strategic?

Depending on the timing and where you're going, but to go from the US to either Europe or Japan or Asia in business class, it's usually right around 70,000 miles. You know, what's nice is with some of these programs like American Express and Chase, they have flexible points that you can transfer to different airlines. Right. And so in our case, we actually transferred them to ANA. Which most people don't know, but that's All Nippon Airlines that flies from San Francisco to Tokyo. And sometimes you can find, you know, 62,000 miles or something. And so that's either, um, if you get like a card that offers you 50,000 or 80,000 signup points, signup bonus, um, you know, that, that may cover you one way and maybe you fly one way in business and you fly in coach on the way back or something like that. A lot of people, you know, rather save the points and just, just do it in coach. Um, but that's kind of the level, right? And if you have a business card or something, people can, can rack up additional spending there, but then there's all sorts of different levels of things. Right. And there's cash back, but there's also, you know, maybe you spend $20,000 points a year and you transfer it to Hyatt for, you know, a nice night in Hawaii or something like that, that, that you can kind of supplement with other things. Or if you go to, Go to Florida or San Diego or something, you transfer it to a hotel for a couple of nights on the beach or something like that. So there's all sorts of different levels that you can use. And that's kind of where the flexible points are, are kind of the most handy, but really it just all depends on how you want to, want to try to use them.

So what would you say if there was like, so Kurt and I, instead of getting just like an add-on card or a user, should have I applied for my own card?

Probably, at least for the signup bonus, right? And so some people worry about credit scores and things like that, right? So in general, it's funny you mentioned Credit Karma earlier because people do kind of obsess about their credit score, right? And it's— your credit score is, is useful and important, but only if you're going to do something with it, right? So if you're going to buy a new house, you need to be careful, right? Um, and you need to think about things. But lots of times I talk to people that make a ton of money and don't plan on ever moving and don't really plan on getting a new car or anything, but are still like totally concerned about their credit score. Right. So anyway, but if you open up a new card, it sort of affects your credit. Generally, if you pay your bills, you're going to be fine, right? Because there's all these countervailing factors. If you open a new card, it can help your credit score in a way because your utilization goes down. You have more credit available to you. And so the percentage that you're using goes down, all other things being equal. So that can actually help your credit score. But then there's these inquiries. There's all these different things that are very complex. But yes, to answer your original question, when you have two people in the household, you can open up different cards and get different bonuses as separate individuals. So I'm just waiting for my daughter to turn 18 so that I can sign her up for cards and and use her as a brand new family member instead of a secondary cardholder.

Totally. That's very interesting. I'm like, I never really thought about that. Also, what we noticed too is we just paid off one of our vehicles and our score went down, which was weird. Like we thought it would go up, but somehow it went down and we were like, what is this even like credit score? Like it doesn't account for the, you know, two decades of actually paying all of your bills on time. It just accounts for like one time, you know, it's very, um, It's all kind of like a mind game a little bit. But I'm so glad that you talked about this. This is really great information. And I think, I mean, really for anybody, especially as an adult, not, not me when I was 25 and not knowing what I was doing with a credit card, but for people who are already to the point of like understanding. And I think that that's great, especially to use it for like family vacations and like, it's incredible. I love that. Thank you so much for chatting about it.

Yeah, happy to. It's my pleasure.

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