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- [00:00]
Chris Hutchins
Over the years, I've gotten thousands of dollars of value for my credit cards, but not just from welcome bonuses, points, cash back, or even those big monthly credits. Sure, I've earned thousands of dollars there as well. But I'm talking about the benefits you get that no one talks about. Things like getting your broken iPhone or
- [00:16]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
your MacBook replaced or repaired for free,
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Chris Hutchins
getting a car rental claim without having to run it through your own car insurance, hundreds of dollars of cash back from card linked offers, and a lot more. So I wanted to find all the benefits not just for one card, but
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
for every major issuer and network.
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Chris Hutchins
And as I did this, I found
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
out a lot has changed.
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Chris Hutchins
Some benefits disappeared, some improved, and there are quite a few new ones that
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
I didn't even know existed.
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Chris Hutchins
For example, I bet most people listening to this have access to free international data, no matter what carrier they're on. I also think that most people are probably able to get some of their public transit costs partially refunded if they have the right card. So, so today I'm gonna walk through
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
all this and make sure you are not leaving any money on the table
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Chris Hutchins
and that you always know which cards
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
to use so you're protected with every purchase.
- [01:02]
Chris Hutchins
I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, please leave a comment, share it with a friend, and if you wanna keep upgrading your
- [01:07]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
money points in life, click follow or subscribe.
- [01:11]
Chris Hutchins
Okay, coming off the heels of last week where we went deep on travel insurance and some of those benefits on your card, I wanted to cover all of the other benefits of all of our credit cards because I did this three years ago and did an episode
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
and a lot has changed.
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Chris Hutchins
This also took a lot of research, reading a lot of Guide to Benefits, especially Cap one, which is super complicated because they actually don't publish which card is in which platform. It's kind of crazy. If you go to their website, you will see a credit card and you'll realize it doesn't actually even say if it's a visa or a MasterCard. And who knows if in the future it'll be a Discover card other than the Venture X that is very clearly labeled a Visa card. So there's a lot here. And for most of these benefits, the only requirements to get them is to hold the card or to use the card. And so if you want to know the specifics for your own card, you just search Card and Guide to Benefits, whatever the name of the card is. And sometimes those are easier to find, sometimes they're harder, sometimes they're just linked on the website, but go pull that up if you want to know the nuance of them. But I'll run through most of the things that you need to know and give you an idea of what to look for, what what matters and where
- [02:15]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
you can get value.
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Chris Hutchins
Now the first bucket I'm going to talk about are purchase benefits. And for many of these benefits the only requirement is you put the cost
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
of your purchase on your card.
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Chris Hutchins
And filing claims is super easy. I've probably done four or five of these over the years. I've been reimbursed well over a thousand dollars, very hassle free. Definitely worth understanding this because that's a thousand dollars I wouldn't have had if I didn't do this. And so the first one I'm going to talk about is purchase protection. This one of my favorites because you get reimbursed for repairing or replacing items that you buy on your card that get stolen, damaged or sometimes lost within 90 to 120 days of purchase. So this is a very common benefit. Almost every card has it. Premium cards usually have better versions of it. It's usually limited to a high number, $10,000 an item, $50,000 a year on the high end. And while there are exclusions, things like animals, software, perishables, vehicles, money, most common purchases like electronics or home goods are covered. So a couple examples of this. One time I ran an SD card through the washing machine and it actually didn't get ruined but I didn't trust it. So it was within the first 90 days. So I replaced it and then I bought an iPhone once and dropped it and cracked the screen and was able to get the cost of repairing the screen covered because it happened within 90 days. Now most issuers have seemed to converge on a 90 day window, but Chase excluding residents of New York have 120 day window. And only Amex and Chase premium cards cover loss, meaning not that it's stolen, but it actually you just lost it. So that's one thing that is unique. Most cards are not going to cover this if it's just lost, but some do and that's super valuable if you're in that circumstance. And so when I say premium cards I mean the Gold Platinum Centurion on Amex, Delta Reserve, Hilton Aspire, Bonvoy, Brilliant on the Chase side, Chase, Sapphire Reserve Reserve Business, the Ritz card, sometimes the Premium co brand cards on Capital One, that's a Venture X, Adventure X Business on Citi, that's the Strata Elite and sometimes the American kind of exec Globe cards. On Built, it's the Palladium. On bank of America, it's the Premium Rewards Elite, the atmos summit on U.S. bank, it's the Altitude Reserve. It's usually when the annual fee is over 500 is kind of a good proxy, though the Venture X is below that. Now you only get reimbursed up to the amount you actually charged on the card. So that's important. If you were to buy something and pay for it 90%. With gift cards, it doesn't help you for this benefit because you've only put 10% of the charge on the card. Now it depends on the price. You know, if you bought an iPhone and it only cost 150 bucks to repair the screen, but you, you know, paid for it half. With gift cards, that would be okay. If you run through the issuers, there's not that much difference. It's kind of all converged around $10,000 for these claims on premium cards. For non premium cards, it's US $511,000. Wells Fargo notably has none of this coverage. So that is one reason not to put any purchases like this on a Wells Fargo card. Though in general, putting these purchases on Amex and Chase is great because you get that loss coverage in case you lose something. Next is extended warranty. And so most cards have this. City and Built have the best. So this is going to be coverage that extends your manufacturer's warranty usually by an additional year, but in some cases two years. And similar to purchase protection, it's usually limited to $10,000 an item, $50,000 a year and also, you know, usually is capped at the amount you put on the card. The best ones here are City and many high end mastercards because you get two extra years. Also the Built cards fall into that under the kind of, I assume, MasterCard kind of world Legend, World Elite Land. But not every MasterCard world legend, world Elite card has this. It's a little confusing. So I'd say if you're buying something and you care more about the warranty than losing it, then Citi and Built would be the right cards to put this on because you get an extra 24 months. Whereas if you're more worried about losing it because there's no loss coverage on those two issuers, then I'd probably put on a Chaser and Amex. Now the Built Blue card does not have this benefit. Everyone else is usually 12 months or sometimes worded as double the coverage. And so that's just something to keep in mind if you have bought something that doesn't have a warranty, that there are some cards that say, well, we'll just double the warranty. And of course, doubling nothing doesn't do you much. Wells Fargo also no extended warranty coverage. Discover also not so in general, not a lot of purchase protection from those issuers. Next one is return protection. And this is not most cards. This is usually just premium cards. And it's actually completely absent from City, Wells Fargo and Bilt. But what return protection does is extend the return window of an item. So it lets you create a return policy where one didn't exist. For example, if you buy something that's final sale and you want to return it and they won't take it back, you have protection there. Now, keep in mind this protection is pretty low. It's usually in the 250 to $500 range and it's very limited since Visa and MasterCard pretty much killed the network level return protection in the past. And so you get this on like a Chase Sapphire Reserve or a Ritz card, an AMEX premium card, and you've got 90 days to return something and get back three to $500. You also get this on a Venture X personal card, but not the business and most of the premium cards from bank of America, but again, no Citibank, no Wells Fargo, no Built, no coverage here, no Discover. And so this is great. I haven't actually had to use it, but I do think it can give you a little bit of confidence if you're buying something that you can't return and you won't like it. You know, this can take care of it as long as it's not that expensive. If you bought something that's $5,000, you might get $300 back. And usually you have to, depending on the price of the item, you might have to forfeit the item if you are trying to get this coverage back, but I don't have a lot of experience using this. And then last is price protection, which is very rare. In fact, I could only find two cards that had it, which were the Venture X business card and the Built Palladium card. And so this will reimburse you if a price drops on an item. Now, I have had a few cases where I've gotten a retailer to refund a purchase when a price drops. But in general, if you're buying something and you're kind of really worried about the price dropping more than any of these other purchase protections and you've got the Built Palladium or a Venture X Business. This could be a great thing. But keep in mind that the amount is pretty low, right? It's capped at 250 to $500. So that's a pretty decent size for something to drop in 60 to 90 days. But just want to flag that some of these benefits can go up to 10,000, some of them go up to a few hundred. But again, Amex, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, bank of America, US Bank, Discover, none of them offer price protection. So when I'm generally purchasing something online, where these benefits come into play is kind of around how I optimize what I'm earning. I am going to not be as focused on getting the most number of points if I really care about these purchases. Whereas for some things I don't care at all. Like I don't care about purchase protection for groceries, but I really do for something that is an expensive electronic item that I'm going to own for more than a year. And so making sure I put that on something that I'm going to get an extended warranty is important. But for something that I carry around with me a lot that I might leave somewhere, I probably care a lot more about purchase protection. And if I'm buying something online that's non refundable, I probably care a lot more about return protection. Occasionally there's something where I need to buy something and it's in October and you know, I'm like, gosh, Black Friday isn't going to happen and I bet this thing's going to be so much cheaper then, but I need it now. That's where price protection can be kind of interesting as a benefit and focusing on that because you know, you might know sales are going to happen now it's on you to monitor that price. And so, you know, that is something to keep in mind. But otherwise that's kind of generally how I think about this stuff and how I think about, you know, buying gift cards to get a deal on something that I want these protections on and I want the full value. I'm probably not going to use those gift cards on those kinds of purchases as much as I might in other ways. So that's credit card purchase protections.
- [10:08]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [12:28]
Chris Hutchins
The next is travel benefits and last week I did a very very deep dive on when you need travel insurance and covered all of the travel insurance benefits that you get on cards. So I will at the highest level talk about what they are but I am not going to go in the details. So if you want to understand them, definitely go back last week. So trip cancellation and interruption insurance is something that's going to cover the cost of your non refundable or prepaid travel expenses. If something comes up it has to be a covered situation like a Major medical situation for you or your family, sometimes severe weather, named storms, jury duty, death, hospitalization, that kind of stuff usually on most premium cards and kind of mid premium cards, maybe 100 to 300 annual fees. Also Amex and Chase are definitely the best here. And in general, the best travel benefits are on the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Chase Ritz card. But Amex does pretty well also in the trip cancellation. Then we have trip delay which is kind of going to cover you if your trip ends up getting delayed or canceled and you have to rebook your flights and that kind of stuff that's on most premium and mid tier cards. But it's capped at $500 a person and has a six hour threshold usually. So you've got to wait until you know your six hours delayed. Now the 500 is per person, so if you have more people, great. But in general it's on most premium and mid tier cards. Delayed luggage is one that's rare. It's kind of only on premium bank of America Chase cards and the Venture X business. And that's going to cover delayed bags of usually six hours, but it's only going to cover about $100 a day. So good. But it's not going to be lucrative if there's some really expensive stuff you need and you don't have it. Lost damage bag insurance is also one that's covered on most premium and mid tier cards. And that's going to be somewhere between 500 and $3,000 as long as you book the flight on the card. And for a lot of these, if you're booking an award flight and obviously there's no dollar amount of the award flight other than the taxes and fees for most of these, that's okay. It's only going to cover you up to the amount of those fees. So if someone gets sick in your family and you can't go on a trip with trip cancellation, you know, you might get those fees back, but you're not going to get the miles back. But you're going to need to have put all the charges on that card. Now there's some nuance to this about how it works with award travel on the trip cancellation interruption, the benefit there is, it's also often going to cover your hotels and your other expenses. But you do need to put the flight on your card. And depending on the issuer, they may or may not allow the award taxes and fees to count. If the points used to book that flight were not earned with that card, there haven't been a lot of Stories of people who've challenged this and the language is definitely kind of confusing. But Chase and Amex are the best here in that the trip cancellation interruption seems to be okay if you book with miles, even if they're not from that program. Other ones, it's a little unclear, but when it comes to delayed luggage and lost damaged bags, you can put the award taxes and fees on those. Except for if your bags are lost and you did it with amex. Amex explicitly for that one perk says it could not have been booked with points and miles, it has to be paid ticket. But in a lot of the lost damage bag. Also, to be totally candid, a lot of the expensive stuff, cameras, jewelry, computers, sporting equipment are often excluded or capped at at $500 or $1,000. So keep that in mind on the lost and damaged bags. But most cards on the premium and mid tier have this. But the expensive stuff in your bag is often not covered or covered with a low cap. Rental car coverage is another one when you're traveling. That is awesome. Most premium and mid premium cards have primary coverage except for Amex and then and Citi. Who? Citi has primary coverage, but only outside of your home country. And so this is great. Rent a car, decline the car rental insurance and put it all on your card and you're covered if something happens. Now you're not covered if you have an exotic car, a truck, an antique, a full size van, that kind of stuff. But this for me is way better than relying on my US car insurance because I just assume that if I report something to them my rates are going to go up. So I love this. I use it all the time. It usually only works up to kind of 30 day, 31 day rentals and it's usually up to 50 to $75,000. But a lot of the premium and mid premium cards offer this with I think best in class for all of these travel things is the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Ritz card and then now the Chase Sapphire Reserve business. But even the a lot of the other cards have primary coverage. Bank of America, Summit Premium Rewards, Elite built even some United cards and then the City cards and whatnot. On Amex you don't get primary coverage unless you sign up for their premium rental car protection, which only cost 12 to $25 per rental and covers you for 42 days and up to $100,000 has no deductible. But you do have to enroll in that and then put the charge on your card and pay that extra fee. So if you only have amex, still a great option, probably cheaper than the rental coverage from the rental car company. But if you have a lot of these other cards, there's no reason to be paying Amex for your rental car coverage. One important reminder, liability coverage is not included. And so if you don't have car rental insurance, that will cover liability, meaning if you cause damage to other people or property, that's something where you're gonna wanna make sure you're covered either from your insurance or from a liability policy that you can get on your own or a liability policy that you get from the rental car company. And sometimes your home coverage may cover you in the US but not internationally. So look into that. And then finally, there are a handful of countries, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Jamaica, that various credit cards exclude for rental car coverage. So that's one where you'll want to look up if you're going to one of those countries, whether those countries are excluded. Now, when it comes to rental cars, not only do you get coverage, but you usually get both status and discounts for those rental cars. So if you have a Visa Infinite card, which, by the way, a lot of these perks on your cards are indirectly tied to the issuer, the Visa, the MasterCard, and the Tier of card, there's kind of Visa, Visa Infinite, Visa Signature, World Elite, World of Legends and World mastercards. And so having different tiers of status of the card which you don't earn, they're just kind of tied into that card. But those things are things that definitely kind of drive the perks for some things. But they are cases where the issuers are not required to pass on all of the perks. And sometimes where they're kind of generic. I would say when it comes to things with limits, a lot of the perks I've said earlier, they fall into that category. Whereas a lot of the things I'm talking about now, discounts and benefits and free things, those are kind of definitely more for almost all of the cards that meet that requirement. So on rental cards, if you have a Visa Infinite card, you get status and discounts on Avis, Herz and National. If you have a World Elite mastercard like the City Premier, you get status and discounts with Hertz, 6th and Avis. And then if you have an Amex Platinum, you get status and discounts with Avis, Hertz and National. And then, interestingly, if you have Priority Pass from another card, your Priority Pass will get you Avis Preferred plus, which also gets you a discount on Avis. Or if you have Delta status from Delta cards, you get hurt status as well. And then United has a similar thing with Avis, so you can get status with Hertz, Avis national with a lot of different credit cards and sometimes sixth as well. And so that's definitely a thing to look into because there are a lot of benefits of having rental car status. And if it's free and it comes with a discount, I've definitely found myself saving money with the Capital One Venture and the Amex Platinum rates. And even better, the Amex rate with Hertz includes an upgrade and includes a four hour grace period on returns. And so one of the things to keep in mind on that one particular benefit is that there are times, you know, when I'm renting a car, I'll land at noon and my flight home is at 4 o' clock or 5 o'. Clock. So I know I'm going to have the car for 26 hours. And in that case almost every other rate than the Amex Platinum rate is going to charge me two days and the Amex Platinum rate is only going to charge me one day. And so that's something that in that scenario I use all the time. So that's just something to keep in mind. Now if you want to go deep on rental cars, go to episode 66, all the hacks.com 66. I did a whole deep dive on rental cars and all the different ways to save money there. But with your credit cards you can often get status and discounts. Now when you're in your car you can also with many cards get roadside assistance. I'm not going to talk about all of the cards that offer it because many of the cards that offer it don't give you a deal or a discount or anything free. It's just you have assistance that is interesting but not enough to cover. Whereas if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve Reserve Business or the Ritz card, they do have a roadside assistance benefit. It looks like it's $50 per service with a max two gallon fill up and you can use it four times a year. So if you have one of those cards that actually feels like a real benefit. And so that's just something to keep in mind, I would write that number down so you have it easily accessible and can use it if you need it. Last week we also talked about a couple other travel related benefits. Emergency evacuation, in this case, if you need to be transported from a medical facility to another medical facility because you can't be treated properly at the one you're at this insurance covers that and it's usually between 100,000 and $1 million of coverage. And Amex is hands down the best here. If you just have an AMEX premium card, you are covered whether you put the trip on that card. Whereas Chase and Bank of America offer this, but you have to actually pay for the trip on the card. Now, all of these perks only kick in when you call and coordinate all of this through the issuer of the insurance. So you've got to call Amex or the, you know, insurance company associated with it in order for any of this to be covered and they coordinate the whole thing. So great benefit to have it does not let you choose which facility to go to. So if you are, you know, picky and you're like, well, I don't want to go to this hospital, I want to go to another one. You're going to need another insurance. And go listen to last week's episode because I talked a lot about that. But if you just want to make sure that if you have some medical emergency and the hospital you're at can't treat you and you want to get to a hospital that someone you know would determine could treat you, you are covered if you just hold a premium AMEX card and you're covered if you have a premium Chase or Bank of America card and you book your trip on that card. Now, if you're traveling and you have medical situations that aren't emergencies only premium Chase and Venture X Business have emergency medical and dental coverage. It's only $2500 of coverage. It has a $50 deductible. So it's nice to have. And again, further reinforces why I think the Chase Sapphire Reserve is hands down the best travel card when it comes to travel benefits. But it's not a huge amount of coverage and you're probably going to want to rely on your U.S. medical insurance or other options. Again, went deep on this last week. The last one we covered last week was travel accident insurance, which some people read and think, oh, this is for travel accidents. Like, you know, I get sick or I get hurt. No, this is if you lose your life or your limbs. And so this is coverage that most cards on the premium side, except Amex and Citi, cover 100 to $100,000 on these circumstances. Again, all the medical stuff. If you're worried about medical stuff while you're traveling or you're worried about travel related benefits that kind of tie into travel insurance, go back and listen to last week. What are some Other things you get with your cards. I think most people know that that many premium cards include access to lounges. In the last few years, one thing has changed. A lot of the issuers have opened their own lounges. So you've got Capital One lounges, Amex lounges, Chase lounges, and then most premium cards include a Priority Pass membership as well. So that is lounges. We did a whole episode, episode 2, 24 on lounges and how to access them. There are some MasterCard lounges, if you will. I think they're like dining experiences that have launched in Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and soon in Mexico City at the airport. But they're only available to World Legends cardholders, which is a small number of cards built Palladium, City Strata Elite and sometimes a City Globe card. And so lounges are a benefit of credit cards. I don't want to dive too deep because one, we've done an episode and two, you know, lounges, I wouldn't necessarily say are that hidden of a benefit. I think most people know that. But there are sometimes, like on the Amex situation, there is a lounge collection that extends beyond just the Centurion Lounge and Priority Pass things like the Escape Lounge and others. And so definitely make sure you look into that and go deep on that episode. If you want some of the other tactics like joining the lounge wait list before you get to the line, you can do that. Another benefit of almost every premium credit card and the premium programs From Visa and MasterCard is access to some luxury hotel collection. So that could be Amex, Fine Hotels and Resorts. Capital One has a Premier collection. Chase has the Edit City has the reserve built, has home away from home. There's MasterCard Luxury and Visa Luxury. And for the most part the numbers they publish are kind of between 900 and 2,000 hotels. There are probably somewhere around 7,000 luxury hotels that have these kinds of programs. And so they're kind of split amongst these programs. Or you can work with a luxury travel agent who has access to these benefits. The way they all work is that these luxury hotels all want access to high end customers. So they partner with programs that are associated with people that have higher amounts of disposable income filtered by the tier of credit card they have or the fact that they work with a travel advisor. And those hotels agree to give perks like late checkout, early check in, upcoming property credits, free breakfast to the travelers associated with those programs if they book through those channels. The rates are usually the same, sometimes they're a little higher, but I typically find them. They're the same as what you'd find on the hotel website. So if you're booking a luxury hotel with cash and you're not trying to use a credit associated with a card, you should absolutely do it through a program where you can get the best perks. We have a whole program set up for our perks. You go to allthehacks.com upgrade you and we've got a whole way that you can get going with that. This is all powered by the fact that I am also a travel advisor and we've built a lot of these relationships and I've partnered with a company to make that possible and that partnership unlocks those kinds of perks at about 7,000 hotels. So I do think we have the highest number of all of these programs. But again, do not use our access to those perks. If you could instead, you know, use a $300 credit for Amex fine hotels and resorts, that's going to be the far better deal.
- [27:07]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Mercury Banking. Designed to work the way modern software does. I spend a probably unreasonable amount of time optimizing things. I've got credit card setups that squeeze points out of every category. I've rebuilt my travel booking process more times than I can count and I'm constantly testing new tools. But for years, my business banking was just fine. That's weird, right? Every dollar of the business runs through our bank, payroll, operating costs, everything. And I just somehow accepted good enough. Mercury fixed that. I've used it for years and it's the first banking product that actually feels like modern software. Doing things I didn't know I wanted until I had them. Every new project I start now gets its own bank account. 30 seconds to open. Automations move money to where it's supposed to be. ACH and USD wires are free and take seconds. No phone calls, no forms and no waiting on hold. The assumption was always that good banking meant trade offs except the friction to get the features. Mercury doesn't have that trade off and it's free to get started. No minimum balance. If you're running a business, you have
- [28:11]
Chris Hutchins
to check it out.
- [28:12]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. That's mercury.com Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC. Insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC this episode is brought to you by Quint. I love summer. Amazing weather, more time with the family and more traveling. And with that comes a summer wardrobe with clothes that feel lighter and more breathable. That's why I keep coming back to Quints. They make the best high quality essentials that feel and look amazing.
- [28:44]
Chris Hutchins
In fact, I just picked up a
- [28:45]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [29:36]
Chris Hutchins
One benefit that I had no idea existed, I don't know how I missed it, is that if you have a Visa, there is a partnership with Gigsky that gets you access to free international data in the form of ESIMs. And so there are a couple different ways this works. One is that select U.S. bank, Navy Federal, UBS and Chime customers have a separate program. And so you could look into that if you have one of those cards. If not, if you have a Visa Signature or Visa Infinite card, you basically get a free international Data Sim for 175 plus countries. And there's kind of two tiers and it looks like you can have both of them. So there's one tier where it works at any of their countries. And if you have an Infinite card you get a 3 gig 15 day plan for free. And if you have a Signature card you get a one gig 15 day plan and you get each once per 365 days. The way I read it and other people is that you get it per card. So if you have four Visa signature cards, you might be able to stack four 3 gigabyte EIMs. So that's pretty cool. And then there are a handful of countries that are listed in this program where you get unlimited data for seven days if you have a Visa Infinite card. So right now that list is a little unclear because there are two parts of it on the Gigsky site. One of it says North America during the World Cup, France, uae, the UK and Thailand and then another part of the site says North America, as if it's all the time. France, uae, uk, Thailand, but not Thailand. It's not on the other list. So at least for France, UAE and the UK for sure. Free 7 days unlimited data for every Visa Infinite card you have. And then for a signature card, free three days once per country. So you could use three days in France, three days in the uae. And that's true also for the Infinite card. So really awesome perk. If you're traveling, that might not be enough data. So it kind of depends on your situation. But I was talking to someone, another parent at my daughter's school last night, and they're about to go to France and they're gonna be there for six days. And I was like, oh, do you happen to have a Visa Infinite card? And he looked his wallet, sure enough, he did, and boom, he and his wife both have one. And so they're both going to have free 7 days unlimited data that's going to cover their entire time in France, which is awesome. Last one. I think everyone knows about Global Entry and TSA Pre being included. So if you have a premium card, there are 40 different cards that offer this perk. And I would highly recommend signing up for Global Entry and TSA Precheck. You can do either. Global Entry comes with TSA Precheck, so that's a perk when you're traveling that comes with so many different cards that I think it's worth checking out. And so for anyone curious how I thought about what benefits and perks to include in this episode, the general idea was things that apply to multiple cards because of the issuer or the benefit or the network they're on. Visa, MasterCard. And so that's why I'm not talking about all the travel benefits of every card. I'm focused on things that apply across cards. So that's travel. Those are all the travel benefits. The interesting bucket is probably this bucket of benefits that don't really fall in travel or purchase protection, but are kind of common across a lot of cards. So the first one is cell phone coverage. And this is one that's evolved a lot recently for two reasons. One, more and more credit cards have started adding this benefit, but to the negative, more and more cell phone issuers have started charging money to pay your cell phone bill with a credit card. I'll walk through how this works and then I'll talk about how I think about it. Usually the Card has a 25 to $100 deductible and then it covers up to 800 to $1,000 in damages or repairs and usually twice a year for any phone on your plan as long as you pay the plan bill with your card. So this is great outside of your purchase protection window, right? If you're within 90 days, go use that. If you're outside of 90 days, this is awesome. And a ton of cards have these benefits. So mostly premium cards, but not all. So you've got Wells Fargo put it on their consumer cards. The Chase Inc. Business Preferred, Chase Freedom, Flex, Amex, Platinum, Amex premium cards, Venture X, Venture X Business. The built cards have it. The US Bank, Altitude Reserve and Connect. I would say if your card has a high annual fee, it probably has it. And if it doesn't, it might also have it. The downside though, like I said, is that you might have to pay a fee to to pay your bill on a card. And whether that fee is worth it probably is kind of two factors. One, yes, you'll earn points from paying your phone bill with your credit card, but in general your bill is probably not so high that that number of points is that meaningful. There are cards that offer up to 5x points on credit card bills. So I'm not saying don't do that. But if you have to pay $10 to earn, let's say your bill's a hundred dollars, you're going to earn 500 points, but you pay $10 to do it. I'm not sure that's worth it. But if you're otherwise going to pay for cell phone insurance and that is going to cost you more than the fee to put the bill on your card, then this is a great option. The other thing is that there are some carriers that while they charge a fee for a credit card for autopay, they don't always charge a fee for a credit card if you just make a payment before the due date. So you might be able to enroll in autopay from your checking account. But then right before the due date you could run in and pay your cell phone bill with a credit card. Some also don't charge a fee for your credit card, so that makes it even better. So I know us Mobile doesn't. I know that right now I think I'm supposed to pay a fee for T mobile business plans, but I don't think I'm being charged it. So your mileage may vary on this, but there are a lot of different ways to get this benefit. But know that the benefit for lost phones is not a part of this. It's for damage to your phone, not for losing your phone. The next one is one that could probably be an entire episode. So I won't go incredibly deep into it, but that is card linked offers. And so for almost every card on every major issuer, there is some portal on the website where you can go find all of these benefits linked to your card. And sometimes they're silly, like go to this restaurant and get 2% back. But sometimes they're get $100 off $100 purchase. Or you know, Chase did one where I got this whoop and it was like $359 back. If you go and kind of regularly look at these anytime there's a really interesting one, I'll put it in my newsletter. So if you're not up all the hacks.com email then you kind of don't have to do a lot of the searching yourself. But you can regularly find some pretty great offers related to travel, related to shopping. And I'd say probably five, ten times a year there's an offer that, you know, I was going to do something already and I earned something back. So I looked right now and you know, I've earned over a thousand dollars on Amex and over a thousand dollars on Chase from these card linked offers. So highly recommend using them. Or if you want to make this easy mode, there's an app called Card Pointers and when you're logged into your bank with the browser extension from Card Pointers running, it'll auto enroll you in all of the offers. And even better, it'll auto enroll you in the offers on multiple cards at the same time. Whereas on Amex if you enroll in one and then go to another card, you usually can't add that same offer to another card. But if you hit the Amex servers at the exact same time, you can. And so that's what the card pointers cart extension does. And even better, when you're on any website where there is a linked offer in your one of your cards, the browser extension pops up and it's like, hey, by the way, did you know you have this offer? You can also use card pointers to search across all of them across all of your cards, which is great. And they've got an amazing mobile app. I think they just got Editor's Choice on Apple. So I love Card pointers. I've used it for years. Emmanuel, the founder, is a member and he's offered an awesome discount. You get 30% off if you go to all the hacks.com card pointers and if you're a member of all the hacks, our private community, all the hacks.com join, you get 50% off. So definitely check out card pointers if you want to optimize the card linked offers, which is kind of how I do that. So next perk is concierges. So most premium cards come with this 24.7concierge service that you can use. It sounds so cool. It's like everybody gets a free assistant. They could do restaurant reservations, vacation requests, personal shopping. I have not found anyone to regularly get a lot of value out of this unless they want to treat it like a travel agent. I do know a few people who use their amex concierge as a travel agent for them. Outside of that, I think I have found limited value. The one place I think I found some value is trying to get help in a foreign country. Because a lot of the concierge programs have people that speak, speak different languages or researching something. They've somehow been willing to call around a, you know, a dozen stores and ask questions. I feel like some of these use cases AI will solve, if not has already solved and is not worth the hassle that most of these concierge services you can only engage with by calling them. And so it kind of defeats the purpose. Like if I could message them, I'd use it a lot more. But I imagine that's why they don't make it easy, because then everyone would use it a lot more. So I have not found a ton of use cases for these concierges, but I'd be very curious if people have. And if you have, send me an email podcast at all the hacks.com I'd love to share that with everyone because I just, I've yet to hear a ton of great use cases where this is better than doing it on your own. Another benefit a ton of cards have is a free credit score. So obviously you can go to Credit Karma and sites like that and get free credit scores, but it's almost never your FICO score, which is what's often being used for a lot of decisions. And they often show you your Vantage score. But most card issuers give you a free FICO score. So Citi, Amex, bank of America, Capital One and Wells all give you a free FICO score. And even if you don't have a credit card, Myfico and Experian also give you a free FICO score, unlike the Vantage score. So Chase and US bank still do a Vantage score. They don't give you a FICO score. And if you want to go really, really deep on credit scores, I went as far down the rabbit hole as you can in episode 221. But one of the perks on many of the cards you have is a free credit score. Now when I thought about which benefits to talk about, I was trying not to focus on monthly credits and things like that. But there are a couple benefits that feel more wide across multiple cards than, you know, feel like monthly credits per se because they're smaller dollar amounts. And I thought it would be worth touching on here because they're not that card specific. And also they're both of them or at least two of the big ones are Chase specific. And I have yet to do a Chase episode where I break down all the cards in Chase like I have for most other issuers. So the first one is the Instacart benefit and that is for many Chase cards. So almost all the co brand cards, Bonvoy, Southwest, ihg, Hyatt, Avios, aeroplan, Disney, and then separately in another bucket, United because the perks are a little different. And then the Chase Inc. Business cards, but not the Ink business preferred the no fee cards. So the way this works is for most of these cards you get three months of Instacart plus and you get probably around 10 to $20 a month of credit as long as your Instacart plus is active. So at first glance we don't use Instacart a lot, so this didn't seem that exciting. But more and more we've been using it and using it probably multiple times a month now. It's great because we have multiple of these cards and so you can use multiple of these benefits. You can't stack them on an order though. You can stack your free months of Instacart Plus. I think I added five cards and that would add 15 months of free Instacart Plus. I should also say MasterCard for all cards, including a MasterCard debit card. Give you three months of Instacart plus and $10 off your second order each month as long as you have Instacart plus active. And it does say your first order needs to be on a MasterCard as well. It's unclear if it has to be the same MasterCard, but I could see this being something that actually doesn't get enforced like you would imagine. And I could also see this as a way to kind of stack out your Instacart plus into forever. I'm logged on right now and I'm adding a MasterCard and I hit continue. And it says applies to your second order each month. It does not actually say, even though the search results, I found that you have to put the first order on the same MasterCard. So I don't know. I'm adding it and it's. It's just extended my Instacart plus by three months. So I think I could probably get my Instacart plus extended quite far, given that it's all MasterCards. So that's really cool. But the reason that I've been using this a lot is that it turns out that most of the extra cost of using Instacart is negated by the 10. So, for example, we needed to bake a cake last night and the only grocery we needed was eggs. We'd already done our grocery shopping for the week, and I went on to order a dozen eggs. And the cost of the eggs, once I met the $10 threshold, plus all the fees, plus a tip, minus the $10 credit I had on a card, came out to under $5. So it was actually cheaper for me to order eggs than it was to go buy them at the store because it was a small order. Now, I personally don't love Instacart for one primary reason, which is it seems like things are always out of stock. Earlier this week, we were trying to, instead of make a cake, we were trying to buy some cupcakes for taking to school. I ordered the same two boxes of cupcakes from three different Instacart stores, one after another, and all three of them were out of stock. And so my biggest complaint with Instacart is if what you're ordering is very specific and not easily replaceable, then it might be out of stock. And if you're ordering something where you're making a recipe and you need seven things and one of them's not there, then it's a huge pain. And we found that Amazon Fresh does much better at inventory and almost never has something out of stock. So that's why I don't like Instacart. But if you need eggs, if you need milk, if you need shredded cheese, where there are a lot of suitable alternatives, you are unlikely to have an issue. And especially if you just need 10 or $20 of something, the savings from your Chase card or MasterCard can be awesome. It can negate all of the service fees and the extra fees and make it way more convenient than driving to the store. So I used to not love this benefit because I didn't Like Instacart. And then I realized I was thinking about it as a whole grocery solution instead of a gosh, I really just want a pint of ice cream tonight. Can I get it delivered to my house and not pay any more than I would have if I went to the store? And some stores in at least where we live, the delivery happens in less than an hour. It's really impressive. Also, you don't have to pay the remaining balance with the card. So you can use this to knock off 10 to $20 from your order and then pay for the rest with gift cards, which you can often get on Instacart for way more of a discount than the number of points you would earn on Instacart. And so sometimes they go on sale. You can also go to all thehacks.com gift cards. I know we have Instacart gift cards today as of recording at I think six and a half percent off. But that varies day to day, week to week, month to month. And so when there's a big sale on Instacart gift cards on the Internet, a lot of the suppliers that you know power our gift card site drop their rates as well and you get a bigger discount. So also, Instacart plus includes a free membership to Peacock and NYT Cooking. So indirectly your Instacart plus membership gets you Peacock and NYT Cooking. Which now that I think about it, I often share New York Times recipes in my newsletter and people write back and say, hey, like I don't have New York Times cooking and now I didn't realize this until I went through this, but if you have Instacart plus, you have Nit Cooking and if you have a MasterCard, you have Instacart Plus. So everyone should have access to NYT cooking recipes similar to Instacart. There is a doordash benefit across a lot of Chase cards and it's usually either a free dash pass or 12 months of free Dash pass based on when you activate it. So anytime you activate it, you get 12 months or through 12, 31, 27. And on top of getting Dash Pass with Chase, Sapphire and co brand cards, you also get a discount. Now a lot of the discounts are for non restaurant orders, which I guess is competitive with Instacart. And I just don't have the mental overhead to think of two platforms for non restaurant orders. But maybe I should. There is a $20 minimum, so if you get a $10 off coupon, unlike Instacart, it doesn't negate the full order as much as. But you also, with a Chase Sapphire Reserve, get $5 off a month at restaurants. And so that benefit applies both for pickup and delivery. And I know a lot of people that want to optimize, you know, the limited number of fees for instacart and doordash benefits. They go in and only do pickup orders and then that, that saves a little bit.
- [46:19]
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Chris Hutchins
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- [47:32]
Chris Hutchins
On the topic of dining, there are three different programs that offer restaurant reservations outside of what anyone can get. And so if you have a Chase Sapphire reserve, there is a program called Sapphire Tables. And I know I've seen a handful of restaurants in San Francisco that have Sapphire exclusive reservations that you wouldn't have without that perk. So you link your Open Table account. Amex has Resi Tables, so you link your Amex to Resy and then you're able to get access to reservations that you wouldn't otherwise have. I haven't seen the Amex reservations as often as I've seen the Sapphire Tables ones, but they have way more restaurants. And then according to MasterCard, the Priceless program priceless.com has access to restaurants and reservations that you couldn't otherwise get. But I have not been successful in finding that easily. But I will talk about that when it comes to experiences, because there are a handful of opportunities with MasterCard there that do make sense. So that's dining when it comes to getting to dining and maybe ordering out from Uber. The Uber one membership is free for a bunch of Amex cardholders. So if you have an AMEX Platinum, it's free perpetually. And then if you have an AMEX Delta Gold, Biz Gold Platinum or Reserve or the business variations, all the Delta ones, on the Gold level, you get six months, and on the platinum reserve level you get 12 months, you do have to enroll for the Delta cards by 6:25. So that will probably be a couple days after this episode comes out, around that time. And so that is something you can do if you have either of those cards, you still get it for 12 months. You just have to enroll by June 25th. But if you have an AMEX Platinum, you get it in perpetuity, at least for now, until they cut that benefit. And so that gives you a little bit of discount there. Now, there's also a benefit for Lyft, but that's tied to a network, which is MasterCard. And so I'm going to put all the network benefits at the end of this episode. But I'll briefly touch on Lyft because it kind of fits in the theme here. And if you're a World World Elite or World Legends cardholder, which you should be able to see on your card, you get 10% off scheduled rides on Lyft. And then if you take three rides, you get a $5 lift credit each month. Or if you have the City AA Exec card, you get a $10 lift credit in the month. So that's the lift benefit. Dining adjacent would be drinks. And so if you have a Capital One card, Capital One has 50 cafes across 16 different states. And if you have a Capital One card, I think you always get 50% off drinks at a Capital One cafe. But on Mondays from May 25 to September 7, you get a free drink. And so if you are near one of these or work near one of these, that's a great deal. And the kind of regular free drink promos, I feel like this is not the first time they've done free drink promos over windows of time. So right now it's called MLB Mondays, but that doesn't mean there's not another version of this that will come after. But you always get 50% off at capital One Cafes of drinks with any Capital One card. So that's a cool one. Also, if you're in a city where a lot of these Capital One things are, there are probably museums. And if you have a Capital One card or a Bank of America card, there is a perk to help with museums. So on bank of America, it's way more generous. Any bank of America card, including a debit card, you get free museum access to over a hundred museums on the first full weekend of every month. And some of these museums are small, obscure ones. But in New York City, for example, you've got the Intrepid, which is a sea, air and space museum. You've got the MoMA at least through the summer, and you've got the metal, and there's tons of other ones. Unfortunately, you don't get any guests. But because it includes debit, it might be pretty easy to open up an account at bank of America for kids or other family members and get debit cards issued in their names, or add authorized user cards for cards that offer authorized user cards free. And that might be a way to get around that requirement so that you could have all four people in your family, or five or six, or however many there are, could get into all these museums on the first full weekend of every month. And then Capital One has a partnership with a program called the Cultivist. And originally this was a free program. And when it first launched, I think I remember it being free. Now you get 50% off, which brings the price down to $220 a year. And for that membership, you get free access as a cardholder and one guest to a bunch of museums. And they have a bunch of museums that I've been to. They've got Versailles in Paris or outside of Paris, They've got the MOCO in London, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the LACMA in LA. And so if you're planning a trip to go to a couple of these, or you're a frequenter of museums, especially the ones on these lists, that $220 fee could make sense. I don't think that for me, if you're taking two people, that's $110. That's probably, I don't know, three or four museums. I don't think we go to enough museums on this list that that would be a good deal. But if you do and you have a Capital One card, you're eligible for the cultivist membership at 50% off. As for other experiences, I could do an entire episode on the whole experiences platforms, because every single program, amex, Capital One, Chase City, Hilton, World of Hyatt, Marriott, Wells Fargo, all have their own exclusives, moments, experiences, entertainment programs. And what most of these are are access to events that they put on, usually in major metros. Sometimes it's 10 of them, sometimes they have hundreds of them. And sometimes they're limited time things, sometimes they're pop ups, sometimes they're auctions and they're all kinds of things for concerts. Sometimes it's access to pre sales. And so just know that if you are someone who likes live entertainment, who likes going to events, it's worth looking at these programs to see what they have. It would be impossible for me to give a detailed overview of what all of them have because they change all the time. And on top of all of the ones I mentioned, MasterCard with priceless and Visa have their own programs as well. And I haven't taken too much advantage of these. I would say we're not the biggest fans of live sports and live entertainment. That's just not how we're spending our time right now. But I do know that when we were at the Olympics in Paris, you know, Chase and Visa had a pop up event that you could go to and get free drinks and free food. And that was really cool. Actually we got to meet a couple Olympians there which was even more cool. And so yeah, these experiences, there's a website for all of them and I would just go check them out. Like if you're someone who likes having access to unique things, there might be restaurants with special meet and greets that you can either get limited access to or bid on. Definitely something that all of the programs that you probably have from every single credit card has some version of this. Couple other unique benefits that are a little strange but interesting. One is the ability to get cash out of your credit card. And so every credit card that I'm aware of has some way to do a cash advance, but it usually comes with a pretty high fee. And so, you know, if you needed, you know, some cash and you didn't have access to it in any other way, you could take it out of an ATM from your credit card and pay egregious fees. However, there is one alternative to this for Amex and one for Discover that's kind of interesting. Amex has a program called Venmo Send and Split. And you can send money through Venmo using an Amex. Now you're not going to earn any points, it's just going to kind of directly apply to your bill. But if your bill's not closing for 30 days and you don't have to pay it for another, you know, 15 to 20 days. Then you might get know some float on a Venmo charge that you have up to, I don't know actually know what the limits are, but if it's up to the limit of your credit card, it could be a pretty meaningful amount of float. If it's a big charge on Discover at checkout at a handful of merchants, which I'll link to in the show notes, you can take out up to $120 on your credit card every 24 hours. And so it's called Discover Cash at checkout. So I don't have a Discover card, I've never tested this. And I also fortunately have an emergency fund that is in a situation where I've never thought about needing to tap my credit card to have access to cash. But it is a feature that especially on the Venmo side could be interesting even though you're not necessarily able to earn points, you know, if you were paying rent, you could buy an extra month of having to actually owe and pay the bill on that rent. Last one I want to cover is around instant and virtual card numbers. So instant card numbers are sign up for a credit card and as soon as you get approved get a credit card that you can use. Either they give you the numbers, they let you add it to Apple Pay. It's not always clear which cards get this, but Amex, Chase, Capital One and City have all, at least for me, given this at various points in time, but not for every card. And then virtual card numbers is one that I found myself using a bit more for another reason. And that is something you can get with Capital One, Amex and City. It's not all City and Amex cards, but on Capital One it has been every Capital One card I have. And you're able to generate a virtual card number and use it for whatever you want. And so I've used my virtual card number for, you know, you're buying something from a random merchant you don't necessarily trust or you are doing a 30 day trial and you think you'll remember to cancel the trial, but you might forget. And so I can put in a virtual card number and immediately deactivate it and know that that merchant is not going to be able to charge me for something. And so recently this happened where I needed to pay a deposit for something and they said, you know, there might be a future charge. And I was like, I want to be in control of whether that future charge comes and so I put it on a Capital One virtual card and they actually did try to charge me, even though they weren't supposed to. And I'm fairly confident that I could have gotten them to refund it. But instead they kept trying to hit a Capital One virtual card that was turned off and they were unsuccessful. And I kept getting notifications that they were trying to charge. And eventually I emailed them and said, hey, you guys know you're charging me even though you're not supposed to. And they said, okay, we'll stop. But I only emailed them because it was annoying every single day to get the text that the charge bounced. So that's all the benefits I wanted to cover, other than network specific benefits. And I will get to that. There are obviously other benefits that many different cards have. And so I'd encourage you to read your guide to benefits or. Now I found that a lot of the sites have gotten better at showing them. So if you go onto the app or the website for your card, you can. There's a button that's like benefits and you'll find things that you didn't know existed. And so like Venture X has a free 6 month premium subscription to Venius, a digital publication on wine. This was not meant to be every possible benefit that exists under the sun, but it was kind of the broad categories of benefits that apply to lots of cards that I find most interesting. However, on the network side, there are a bunch of other benefits. And so if you have a Visa card, you unlock a bunch of things. I'm not going to cover all of them, but a couple interesting ones. If you're going to Universal Studios in California or Orlando, there are discounts and perks that you get. As a Visa card holder, you do have to book through a link in the Visa platform, but if you search Visa Universal, you'll probably find that if you like intimate live music. So far, Sounds is this company that puts on these kind of very small concerts, but I don't think they actually tell you who the musician or artist is in advance. But the idea is you're like, you're more interested in going to a small show that might have 40 or 50 people or 20 people than you are a show for a specific artist. And they do buy one, get one for all shows for Visa card holders. And then if you're a golfer, there's this program called TR Rewards that I don't know anything about. But as a Visa Infinite holder, you get 20% off and platinum status. And as a Visa signature holder, you get silver status and 10% off. And then I mentioned this last week, but you know, a new benefit that I didn't know existed is that Visa has a nurse and online medic line where you can get 24 access to virtual consultations with registered nurses and certified doctors for non urgent things. So you don't need to go to the hospital. And that's available for infinite and signature cardholders. Okay, so for MasterCard, one of the most interesting benefits here is around transit. Now it's a very small dollar benefit, so maybe it's not as interesting, but I just think it's a kind of unique thing, which is any MasterCard, including debit cards, if you spend $10 a month on transit, you get $2.50 back. What I like about this is it's not complicated. It's just use your card for transit. And it covers almost all the major transit networks in the United States, except probably the most major, which is the New York City mta. It also doesn't cover the IMMUNI and SF and a few other smaller tier markets. Houston, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, but all the other major transit networks, which maybe as I'm saying this doesn't seem like a lot, but when I went back and read the list, I was like, oh no, this feels like it's, it's most of the networks, you get a discount on your MasterCard. So I just think it's kind of interesting because especially if you are a regular commuter, you could probably stack this with a bunch of different mastercards. I think New Jersey transit was on here. So that's one where if you're constantly buying New Jersey transit tickets, this could stack up, you know, with lots of mastercards. Peacock, if you have a World Elite or World Legends card, you get $3 a month each month back on Peacock. Premium or Premium. Plus here's one that I actually didn't know existed. And if I go to any of these cities, I'm interested to try if you have a MasterCard, World Elite or World Legends card in Dubai, Rome, Doha and in Istanbul, they have a airport fast track that you get to skip and use as a Cardholder of a MasterCard, World Lead or World Legends. So I've never used that. I've never seen it. I haven't flown through those airports recently. But I guess if you're not flying in a cabin, that would probably similarly get you that fast track status. I don't know if it's a separate line or not, but that's kind of cool. Just as a benefit if you have a MasterCard, you don't have to pay for it. And then if you have MasterCard World Legend status, which right now I mentioned earlier, it's Built Palladium City, Strata Elite and City A Globe, so very small list. I mentioned earlier that there are a couple lounges that you get in Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and soon Mexico City airports. The one other perk is that you get a Soho friends membership. It's $130 value per year, but it doesn't look that interesting to me. Unless you really like to regularly stay at the Soho House as a non member because they're hotel rooms, you get access to them and you get discounts. So if that's really interesting to you, this could be interesting. You also get to use their publicly accessible restaurants around the world, but it gives you no access to the Soho House clubs at all. I think unless you stay at one of the hotels in them, you might get access to them, but otherwise that's it. That's probably why it's only $130 a year, but it is free if you have a MasterCard World Legends card. So I guess I should probably activate it with my built Palladium card, but I don't foresee using it at any point in time. So that is it. I really hope you enjoyed it. I really tried to go and read a lot of guide to benefits to find any of the unique things that I haven't seen and update them from the episode we did three years ago. I hope that everyone listening saves at least maybe a hundred dollars over the coming year because of one of these benefits. And if you're someone who ends up saving a lot more, let me know. I'd love to share that story. If you if you have thoughts, ideas, questions, podcastlthehacks.com or if it's a question for a future episode, Please go to allthehacks.com ama for Ask Me anything. Submit a question and we're going to be doing a lot more AMA episodes soon. That's it for this week. I will see you next week.
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