C (2:10)

That's.

B (2:10)

That's a great P2. No, she could just wear a little P2 one. You have a P1 at the airport. You guys will match three on the kids.

C (2:16)

Even though they're not. They can't. They're not old enough yet. But I know people are like, I'm excited to have another player because one of the joys of this game is that when you have multiple people, it's not just that you get to open up the same card twice. It's that you get a referral bonus when you refer your partner, and then it keeps going. So what I want to do today is both explore the tactical side of this and maybe the less tactical side and the emotional side of what goes into playing this game with multiple people and kind of just see where it goes.

B (2:47)

It's definitely a multi layered kind of a thing because there are so many different tiers to it, I think. And I think a lot of people who are earning a lot of miles and points have probably experienced this. A lot of people listening to your show, it's just like you start getting hit up by friends. Can you book this thing for me? They see how you're traveling basically, and they're like, how do I do that? Can you do that for me? It seems pretty easy. And then I think that becomes a decision point for you of, okay, how much investment do I want to put into this for this other person? Do I want to go all in and manage them entirely? Which is, I think is a tier that we can definitely talk about and get to. Alternatively, maybe you just do it as a favor or you try and educate them.

C (3:29)

And the spectrum of this is a lot of people I know manage per se, their partner because they might not want to get involved, but it grows beyond that. So I've met people where it's okay. I manage my partner, I manage my kids, I manage my family members. And then there are people that manage friends, family, and there's even people who as a business manage strangers for a fee to do this. So I think we can explore all sides of this as we go, but I think at a high level. Let's talk a little bit. Obviously you can get multiple bonuses by, you know, new card comes out, awesome offer. You can get it and your partner can get it. But how else have you found playing this with a partner has made the game even more lucrative.

B (4:12)

Yeah. The thing I found most telling is that having a second player. So for me, it is my wife, we end up making more than the combined if we did solo. So one plus one does not equals two. It equals more like a three. I did a end of year recap for 2024, and we made almost 5 million points plus, I think $40,000 in cash. And that's with both myself and my wife. And I did, just for kicks, like, calculate how much it would have been if it was just me, because I know not everyone has a P2 for this. And if it was just me, it would have been more like fifteen thousand and two million. So it more than doubled by having the P2. And the reason for that is just through things like referrals, you can now refer yourselves each other to a lot of these offers, and that makes it extremely more lucrative versus just referring friends. When you refer friends, it's kind of a quid pro quo situation. You refer them for one, they refer you. Still beneficial to do that. But ideally, if you can have a family member or a spouse, yeah, it can really escalate.

C (5:17)

I think another area that we've found is, let's take hotels, for example, or even airlines for loyalty. It's like we've each taken one. So my wife has Hilton and she has all the Hilton cards. She's got Hilton Diamond. If we're staying at a Hilton, we're staying under her name. And then I have Hyatt and Marriott. And so if we're staying at Hyde or Marriott, it's always me. So we're able to split these two things apart. And I think if it was just me, it would just be too much. So if she's traveling, she's like, well, stay at a Hilton. Or we'll both stay to Hilton and she'll check in before I get there. And then I might miss my flight or just might not end up there. And that's okay sometimes.

B (5:52)

So you gave your wife Hilton and you took Hyatt.

C (5:55)

Now, I would say 90% of the time we're travel traveling together, but we've separated different airlines and hotel groups. Now, with hotel groups, most of the time you can transfer points freely between people. So it's actually not that difficult for you to earn higher points in both players and then combine them. But that makes me think also a lot of these offers in shopping portals, promos, stay two nights, get a lot more points. You can only do it once. The player two, you can do it twice. And you could start to layer those on.

B (6:25)

Yeah. And the same applies for credit cards if you're under 524. So if you have less than five new accounts at Chase over the last 24 months, you're able to open a lot more cards, especially the business cards. But just being able to double that capacity with the P2 I think is one of the biggest benefits from a credit card perspective. Because now we're both able to just open so many more and do a lot of these Chase business incs and the other offers that come through.

C (6:50)

Sometimes I think 524 is overrated. And some people are like, I just don't want to open another card because I don't want to go over 524. If you have a partner, one of you could just blow it out of the water. One of you can be at 1524 while the other one's still there. And a lot of the times I talk to people about why they don't want to go over 524, it's because I don't know, this Chase offer might come out and I might want to take advantage of it. And if one of you stays in the clear, then you'll still be able to get whatever that card is if it ever comes out in the next 24 months.

B (7:19)

I will say though, the issue with that is that if you are trying to maximize these referrals between you and a P2 and you do want to tackle Chase and Chase is one of the more lucrative programs out there, like Ultimate Reward Points, I think are my favorite currency to use for travel because it applies to Hyatt. You can use it for United if you do the referrals between yourself and a P2, especially for like those Business Inc. Cards. It can be Problematic if your P2 is over 524 because you can't do it anymore. Although I will say I think they just changed how the referrals for some of those ink cards work now. I think you need to be a new customer.

C (7:55)

Yes, I think you have to be a new customer or could be a new business.

B (7:58)

So maybe P2 is about to blow through 5:24. Currently we're both at 4:24 and just cruising. Yeah.

C (8:03)

And on Amex, another interesting one is I know your referrals are based on the card you refer from. And so sometimes the more cards you have, the more you might land that lucky referral. I know some people have 40,000 point referral links and so I think the more cards you have, the more chances there are of hitting those better referral links. Or in the case of Amex or Chase offers, sometimes you don't get them on every card. So when you have multiple players, it just increases the likelihood that you get a great offer or many great offers. In the case of ones that get distributed across all cards. One thing that I see people that are kind of new to this game thinking about is, oh well, why would we do that? My wife's already an authorized user or my husband's already an authorized user, and they're usually surprised to hear how people who play the game a lot treat authorized users. Do you guys have authorized user cards on almost any of your cards?

B (8:53)

We do not have a single authorized user, except the one time when I accidentally got added early on to my wife's freedom Unlimited card or something because authorized users show up on your credit report and that affects your 524. And that's one of the risks of not managing this process directly for someone is that if you instruct them to do a thing, oftentimes the thing that seems beneficial at the time may not fit well into the bigger picture because there's a knowledge gap.

A (9:21)

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C (11:59)

Few edge cases where I think having an authorized user card or an employee card from your spouse makes sense. I know I have the Citi Business Card and if you add an employee and fortunately my wife happens to actually be an employee of my business, so I'm not doing anything nefarious here. But at least in 2025, if she spends on her employee card on the Citi Business AA card, she earns loyalty points and me as the primary user do so. There are some cases where I could make a argument for opening up an authorized user card, but for the most part I think I don't see a lot of use case and I would rather if there was a card that I wanted my partner to be using, either use mine or get another signup bonus and have her open it. I also think one benefit is that only one person is usually doing a lot of the work. If you think of the one plus one equals two, traditionally it's two people are playing this game, they're researching all the cards, they're trying to figure out what moves to make and then you add on a second person. It's not like I have to go learn what new cards are coming out. I'm already doing it for me. And so the more players you have, you don't need to double, triple or quadruple the knowledge because you're probably doing all of that work yourself.

B (13:04)

Exactly. And it does scale nicely. I think the amount of work that you do as a solo person, absorbing all the knowledge, learning all the stuff, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, bring on a second person. If you're managing for them, it's still going to take you more time because you are doing more work, but it's not going to take double the time and it's going to yield, in theory, more than double the results. And then it kind of just scales in that direction. So your third person shouldn't take as much time as your second person. Your fourth person shouldn't take as much time as your third person. And so at some point you can get into this process where you have so many people that you're managing that and you kind of alluded to this, it kind of just becomes a business. And I think a lot of things in this game at scale just look like businesses. And I think that's almost by design.

C (13:51)

Which actually is great if it turns into a real business because then you have all kinds of ability to produce business financials to get more credit, limit on business cards and all kinds of stuff. But let's talk about the mechanics of managing a P2 because there's both the hard tactics of how do you just deal with passwords and two factor codes and all of that. And then there's the softer side of it which is how do you handle when your P2 needs to make a phone call they don't want to make, oh, we didn't get approved. We need to call the reconsideration line. There are quite a few people who I've seen get into frustrating P2 and P3 situations that all stem from the fact that you might be able to manage a lot of it, but ultimately there are things you can't manage.

B (14:34)

Exactly.

C (14:34)

Yeah.

B (14:35)

That's something I've learned the hard way because I think most of us get into it without really understanding the difficulties. The best example here of like two factor codes, for example, the amount of times where I've been managing this where I've had to be like, oh man, P2 is not going to be home for three hours. I need to make sure that I have to do it now when she's home and then she gets home and forget to do it. And now it's delayed by a day because we're now cooking dinner. All of that can be better thought through, I think. And I'm trying to move into that place now with a lot of the setup where we should just have separate devices, shared accounts when it comes to passwords, depending on how much you're managing, let's say you're full blown managing for your P2. We're talking like have a separate phone. Doesn't have to be an expensive phone, but Just a phone with a dedicated number on there so that you can receive these text message two factor codes.

C (15:28)

Let's run through it. So first off, I think having a shared repository of information, some kind of password manager where you have logins that you want to share, you have credit card numbers that you can share, all of that seems like a baseline what you need to do when it comes to how you sign up for things. I think you have a couple of options for email and phone and so I know some people who have their partner use their email address and then they're always like hey, can you get this thing? You can create a Google group and your partner's email could be that you can set up Gmail filters that say, you know, any email from amex or Chase Auto Forward. To me I've actually found that email is not usually an issue. Very rarely does an email come that needs to be seen quickly. So for us we've just kept. You have your email. I have my email on rare occasions for like maybe a shopping portal where I know you're not going to need to log in and they have email two factor auth. I do have an alias that's like just goes to me but has my wife's name. But for most of the banking stuff I want her to be able to access stuff in a situation where she can't get me. It's still her email. What about you?

B (16:35)

Yeah. What level of trust and sharing do you currently already have with your P2? I think it will predicate a lot of this stuff for my wife and I. Our finances are open to each other. We use the same Simplify account now we use Monarch Money and it's like, like we have joint things in there. We can log into each other's stuff. I can log into her email, I see all of her emails, she can see all of my emails. I know that's not what everyone does, but it does make it easier. But like kind of just gauge what amount of sharing currently exists and if you're not comfortable with that level of sharing then yeah, setting up these separate dedicated accounts will make a lot of sense. Definitely the password manager for sure that streamlines a lot of things. But even nowadays with password managers you still need the two factor codes. Right?

C (17:20)

Almost no financial institution that I found actually uses passkeys and app based two factor codes. But I think for SMS there are a couple options that I think exist outside of just getting another phone. One of which that we use is at least on iOS there's the ability to Use the Shortcuts app and you can actually set up a rule that says if a text message comes in with the word code, which I found to be the most likely thing, and I'll put a link in the show notes to like someone who wrote up a tutorial for this, forward the message to this number. So my wife gets all of her two factor codes and then they just forward to my phone. The nice thing there is one, it shows up in your message stream so she knows that this thing got forwarded. You could also open a free Gmail account, sign up for Google Voice and share that if you're not comfortable sharing the same email account.

B (18:09)

Part of what you said there, like, kind of reminds me of just like how much does your P2 want to be involved? If she wants these codes and she wants access to be able to manage to some degree, that's great. I'm probably going to set up that Shortcuts app after this. But if they just want to be totally hands off, you can get like a tello subscription plan for a cell service for like $10 a month and then you can eim that and add it into your phone. So now you're getting multiple phone numbers into one phone and you're getting those SMS codes that way and they can just be completely hands off.

C (18:38)

And I think that's a question you have to have because there was definitely a moment in my journey of playing with my partner where she found out she had a credit card that she didn't know about. Now I, to this day I believe I told her about it, but I also believe I probably didn't tell her about it. But I think you need to be on the same page about what that looks like because for her, she likes to know that she has a card. And so now anytime we're going to open something, I'm like, hey, do you want to sit down and just click the submit button? Just so you know that this happened? Now I will say I did a little bit of research and technically I don't think for your partner, your family members, you actually can apply for credit and, you know, click the submit button legally. I'm not saying it's a big problem. I'm sure many people do this, but technically, if you're thinking about this, especially as it scales to other players, you might actually need like a very limited financial power of attorney to legally be able to do some of these things. That said, if you know your partner's Social Security number and address, you can usually get through most of this. There might be a few of those questions that, depending on how long you've been together, you already know the answers to. But you've got to have this conversation because if they want to be really involved and know about every card and they don't want to get some email from a bank saying, oh, you know, you're over your limit or you missed a payment and they're freaking out and they don't even know they have the card, that's a conversation that I think early on we didn't have at the depth we should have, and now we have a really solid understanding of. I'm going to tell you before I do anything so you know about it and then I'll manage it from there. And I think that works a lot better.

B (20:17)

I recently had dinner with a friend and he's also pretty big in this game and has a P2. And we were hanging out and my P2 was there as well. And it kind of became like a P2 support session where they were just chatting with each other, being like, isn't this crazy? Like, what our husbands do? But I love all the travel and stuff and I wouldn't do it any other way. But like, when I tell. This is P2 speaking, you know, like, when I tell my other friends about it, they're like, are you okay? Like, is your husband, like, taking advantage of you? Like, he has all your info. Do we need to help you in some way? And they're like, no, this is great. But to someone outside looking in that's not in this kind of hobby or game, it looks like a lot of data being shared and the amount of trust required there is, I think, higher than just your standard level of, like, marriage, I think. And so that's when it gets really interesting, when you start managing this stuff for friends as well.

C (21:10)

Now, if we go to the full end of the spectrum. So I'm going to talk about managing this for friends or other family members, but there's a couple people online who have websites where you just pay them a monthly fee and they will manage your application schedule. So I've been thinking about this a lot because I. I can't tell you the number of friends who are like, hey, I love that you rack up millions of points. I don't want to think about it. Can you just do this for me? And I'm like, what does that actually practically look like? I don't really want to get in the game of actually applying for these cards, shipping them to my house, putting the spend on them, and So a version of this is managing that schedule. Hey, once you've hit your bonus, let me know and I'll tell you the next best card to sign up for. And there are people out there for somewhere on the order of two to five hundred dollars a month that will just manage that process for you usually for like a 12 to 18 month stint to just try to kind of accumulate 1, 2, 3 million points and then take a little break. And so you can outsource that if you want or if you're managing this for other people, you can insource it and say, hey, I will help you with this and you can choose how you want to do that. I know one model that many people do is they split the points or they say, you know, I'll help you do this and, and beyond what you would have gotten, right? Like anything beyond a 2% cashback card, we split that. And whether that looks like me booking trips or transferring to Hyatt and then transferring to me or whatever method you want to use. But there is a model for this in the community of people who manage this for other people with some kind of rev share in there, or if you're doing it for family, it might just be to help out.

B (22:42)

I think anything going to that scale just turns into a business and there are people that have made it into a business. I do like the idea of just like feeding someone a schedule that they can just follow themselves because that does remove a lot of the complexities of getting mail, of setting up two factors and all that stuff. The thing I've run into on a more casual basis with friends is that it can be hard to get people to follow through on the thing that you're advising them on because it isn't their main priority. And this quickly escalates into just a lot of work for me personally. And now I'm just like, I think the upfront filter is a lot more important of like kind of deciding like what is the right avenue for that person. Because it's not like a one size fits all kind of a thing.

A (23:28)

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C (26:06)

At one of these sites that will manage this for you. The Pro tier the 500amonth tier includes an award booking service where the guy who gives you this schedule, he and probably his team are going to actually plan all these trips. Because one thing that I find often happens is a friend will ask me for some advice and I'll say, well, if you're looking for a new card right now, this one's a great bonus, and given what you have, it might be a good fit. And they're like, oh, now I have half a million points. What do I do with, like, how do I book that trip? Like, I want to go there. And then I get stuck in this place where I'm like, well, I have this podcast. You could go listen to it. And they're quite, I don't want to. Just tell me how to do this. And now you become their travel agent.

B (26:41)

Yes.

C (26:42)

And so make sure that if you're offering to help friends play this game, you understand what that might also mean in terms of helping them figure out how to get the value out of this. And you're clear with them. Now, sometimes I say, here is an award booking service, so know that I will help you figure out how to accumulate a lot of points and tell you some cards that are good, but at the end of the day, you either need to learn how to do this, you need to treat these points as being worth one to one and a half cents booking in the travel portal, or you can Pay this service 100, $200 per person, per trip, and they will go and do all the work. And usually if they don't find anything good, you'll just pay like a $25 search fee. And so I try to make that very clear. But there are still some people I know who are like, hey, can you just do this? Can you just manage the whole thing? And I think 10 years ago, I probably would have been more excited to do that, maybe more willing to take on that risk. Now it just seems like something that I'm not sure I want to be. Signing up for cards, putting in people's socials, having them shipped to my house. It just feels like a lot of risk. And then the other way is okay, or we go set up limited powers of attorney, and I've got notaries involved. And now it just feels like a lot for friends.

B (27:51)

Yeah. I had heard this quote from someone, I think, Logan from Align Incentives. We were grabbing dinner and he runs into similar situations we do where people hit him up. And I think the thing that he said that stuck with me is just like, you can pick where you want to go, or you can pick when you want to go. But I can't give you both. Now, technically you can do both, but doing both is a lot of work. And the reason is, if you're flexible about when you travel to Japan, I can get you there. I can get four, six, eight people there. But if you are very specific that you want to go during cherry blossom season, that might not work. But if you really want to travel somewhere in March, which is when cherry blossom season is, I can get you somewhere very cool. But it might not be Japan. And trying to do both, which is what often people ask you for, is where it gets complicated. And I will say that there's like a third one that I've sort of added to that is you can also pick what you want to travel on, like what you want to fly. Oftentimes it's like award airlines like Lufthansa first or Ana First. You have these, like, bucket list planes that you really want to get on, like Qatar Q Suites. If you want to do that, then hopefully you don't even care about where or when you travel. And that is the thing. But those three things are sort of like mutually exclusive. And I think the trap that I've run into in the past is trying to satisfy even two out of the three at the same time is where the most amount of stress comes in when it comes to helping your friends and family with this stuff.

C (29:14)

I'll add a fourth to your list, which I think adds even more stress, which is, look, if you want to go to Europe and you want to go in the summer and you want to go during these two weeks, I might not be able to help you right now. But if you're flexible on when you find out that you can go, I could probably help you. It just might mean I'm not going to know the flights until 48 hours before departure.

B (29:34)

And that stresses people out.

C (29:35)

A lot of people right now we're dealing with this because we wanted to go to Japan for our kids spring break, which just happens to be during cherry blossom season. So we're going to go to Tokyo during cherry Boston season. We booked our tickets at schedule open. So, like, I was ready. And I've thought about this more than one year out. How are we going to do this? And we still only have two business class seats on one flight and two business class seats on another flight. We're still not flying together. And my wife is kind of stressed out about this because she's like, not that we haven't been to Japan, not that she's not comfortable traveling. Just like you know, you have two small kids. One of us takes one. I definitely got the younger one. I volunteered and I told her, I said, Look, I'm 90% sure we're going to be on the same flight. I just don't know when I'm going to be able to tell you that we are. If you want to know more than 14 days before we leave, I'm 5050. But, like, within 24 hours of departure, I feel like I'm 90% sure we'll all be on the same flight. Like, I just don't know when we'll find out.

B (30:29)

Yeah.

C (30:29)

And, like, that is stressful for some people. For me, I'm like, it's fine. I know inside it's going to be okay. But for people that are new to this, they're like, am I going to be able to go on the trip? So it adds more complexity and stress. But I do think if you really have your heart set on going to Portugal in the summer and you know that's prime season, but you're willing to just wait until the day of and find out that you're going to go that day, it could be possible to meet all your other criteria.

B (30:52)

That's true. And that fourth condition is probably the most stressful thing for someone who isn't familiar with how it all works. And I think, like, the reason we don't feel as stressed is because we've been doing this a while and we have that knowledge. It's hard to, like, acquire, but also hard to even just wrap your head around that, like, this is how it works.

C (31:12)

So we talked about both ends of the spectrum, managing a partner, but then all the way to this concept of managing friends and other people. But what about family members? I know that is your P3. How have you thought about how to do that?

B (31:23)

Yeah, with family, it is both easier and more complicated, depending on what you're personally trying to get out of it. I think it is very straightforward if you view it as a donation of your time, a good thing that you're doing because you care about this person and you want them to be able to travel well or, you know, whatever their goals happen to be. On the other hand, you really have to gauge, like, not everyone wants to be taught. And some people will say they want to be taught, but then not do the thing. That's where the complication, I think, comes in with family is like, how much hand holding do you want to do? And because it is someone that you're related to, I think I give a Lot more grace than I would with. I don't know if I was running a business or something.

C (32:03)

I think I'm fortunate. None of my family members seem to either want to be involved in this or care about going to that extra level. So some of them are just like, we're going to open up cards whenever that happens and we're not going to really try to optimize it. And I kind of really like that. I've talked about my sister in law a couple times because they have a business, they have tons of business expenses and they just plow them all on Southwest cards so that they earn companion pass for both of them and then they have a ton of points and they can go anywhere they want that Southwest flies four for the price of two, but they're paying for those two with points. So it's basically like they can travel anywhere. And a part of me is like, well, you know, there are cards that could get you more than that and you know that if you add signup bonuses in this. But they're just happy with their system. And here I am like with a much more complicated higher ROI system and still not happy with it. So that's probably a topic for another day. Which is why. Why are we just constantly keep chasing more and more?

B (32:58)

I think not everyone has that like mindset for wanting to optimize to that degree. And that's something I've run into as well where a friend wants me to help and figure out what cards to open. And this is where this important conversation I think comes in is like, what do you actually want to get out of this? Do you want to be able to travel? Is there a specific place you want to be able to travel to or do you want cash back? You want more of a budget buffer? Tell me how much effort you actually want to put into this. And I think for most people, when they really think about it, once they get out of the excitement that happens when they chat with you about all these places you went to and they're like, how do I do that too? Once they get past that and it becomes a bit more of a realistic look at what they're willing to do, effort wise, it becomes a lot easier. And I think I've skipped that conversation a few times with friends and it's always kind of come back to bite me in the butt. So that's what I do up front now is like, let's just talk for an hour and let me just try and figure out like what are your goals here?

C (33:52)

So I know you don't have children. I do. I've been thinking about this because I have other friends who have played this game with their children as their players. And that is great because like you said, with family you're always wanting to help, but with your children you're like, oh, I'd love you to be able to take these vacations. So I'm excited to help them. Unfortunately, until they're old enough to get their own credit cards, which certainly is impossible, there is not that much you can do. I will say one thing you can do and you don't need to do it in advance, but you can add someone as an authorized user before they are old enough to get a card. They don't have a credit report yet that you can download and see, but they actually do start accruing information to a credit report that kind of exists but in the shadows. And so as soon as they turn 18, I believe the credit report opens up and now it'll say, oh, you've had this card for a long time. So there are ways to use what you have, long outstanding credit lines, larger credit limits to help boost the credit score of someone else. And there is actually a whole business that I'm not going to go into right now about actually selling that. So there are people that will pay you to be added as authorized users to your cards and they'll pay you because it helps boost their credit score and definitely against the terms and conditions to be get paid to add people to boost their credit scores. But there is a market for that. But for friends and family, or maybe just family, it is something you can do. But we haven't come back to how to make some of that burden easier. We talked tactically about two factor codes in email, but at the end of the day I imagine that for almost every issuer you've had to have your wife make a phone call for some reason.

B (35:30)

Yeah, yeah. It's the worst part of the whole experience for both myself and my P2. You know, she hates doing it and I get it, it's a chore. It feels uncomfortable. You don't really know what you're supposed to say, like how does it even work? And I think that's a pretty common thing because it's like if she was asking me to do something that I had no interest in or cared about, like I would probably just be as hesitant and take some convincing. But yeah, I have not found a good solution to that. Honestly, other than just plying P2 with lots of first class flights, I think A couple things.

C (36:02)

So some financial institutions make it easy for you to be able to do a lot of these requests online. So whether it's through text, live chat, secure message. So one way is instead of making the phone call, sometimes there are things that you can achieve without having to make the call. Some things that I didn't even know are possible to be done. Reallocating credit lines, sometimes that can be done through a secure message. A lot of banks, if you just go into the app or the website or one or the other, you might find the request, credit line, increase, things that are repeated, things that happen. But at the end of the day, there is always a thing. And what I find that makes it a little easier is not to just make it seem so urgent to solve the problem, but to kind of set the context. Hey, we opened up this card and to get this bonus, we've got to do this. Here's why I think it's a great thing. But we've got to call this reconsideration line. Here's what I think they're going to ask for. Here's like all the information you need. Here's a shared note where I've typed up all of it. I'm going to be here. And then the thing that I do the worst and I need to practice is most of the time people that call their financial institution and they have something go wrong, they're trying to solve this problem. They don't know all the answers, like me, you and the people in our community do. And I hear her and she might say something that's not the exact perfect answer. And I want to like jump in. It's fine. I'm sure that there are hundreds of people calling all the time that have no clue what's going on. And so just learning to not make it feel like it's a do or die, make or break moment with what you say. And every word I think can really help.

B (37:39)

So I've also been kind of going down that route of just telling her like, well, to start, just like the importance of this. It's like this is a thousand dollar signup bonus. Do you think this call is worth $1,000? Is 20 minutes worth $1,000? And she's like, yeah, I think we should call. That's a good financial decision. So some ownership there. But then, yeah, just like kind of being clear like what the steps are ahead of time and then letting her take the reins, you know, and if it doesn't go well, we can always hang up and call again. So I fully agree.

A (38:06)

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C (39:25)

Thank you so much for being here today.

A (39:27)

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C (39:41)

And we didn't talk about all the spectrum of things with multiple players. I've been getting into Costco Gold and if you do that all of a sudden now you can have two people that could have a membership that could get executive rewards. There are lots of other different aspects to earning points, earning miles, and I found that some of them are surprisingly more interesting to my wife than others. So if you look at all the spectrum of things, it's like, oh, do you want to go and buy some gift cards? Do you want to go and buy gold? Do you want to go and open up new cards? And as you run through these things, you might find that some of them actually sound like more fun and you can target where you approach. So a bank bonus might be less interesting than opening up a new card.

B (40:23)

Well, it's funny you said Costco Gold as well, because that's one of the things PT was like. She excitedly volunteered to be the Costco gold person because she's like, I go to Costco once a week anyway. I love going to Costco. It is not a big deal for me to go pick up some gold. And if that means I don't have to make as many credit card phone calls, yeah, like, let me just go buy gold at Costco.

C (40:43)

I think overall, trying to figure out how excited they want to be, trying to figure out how involved they want to be is the prereq. And that makes this whole system work a lot better. Anything on the referral front that you try to optimize for to make sure that you get the most out of.

B (41:00)

It, other than just making sure that if there is a referral bonus that she's using my link and I'm using hers, it's very straightforward. I think the whole referral process is one of the easiest ways you can maximize that P1, P2 relationship without having to do a whole lot of work. All new accounts are funneled through her. All new my accounts are funneled just goes back and forth. The other thing you mentioned too, that I want to touch on is because I've been kind of mulling this over from IP2 is like this whole, like shopping portal thing because that gets a little complicated where my wife luckily does this, but my P3 currently doesn't. Is that how do you get them on this shopping portal train if they're not currently used to doing it and used to doing the offers? Because there's so many portals out there, sometimes I'm checking like three or four different portals. I don't know if you found a solution to that aspect.

C (41:48)

So we use Copilot. You said you use Monarch Money. And I would say one way to not do it is to look at transactions that happened and then double check like, was there an offer? And then be like, did you get that offer? And what I found is that if you approach it too aggressively, which I have learned through experience, sometimes it not only comes across like you're just making this game too much, it also comes across like you're questioning the purchase, which is not the intent. And so I think to the extent you can simplify it and say, look, you could go to Cashback Monitor or Save Wise and find the best outcome, or you can play Easy mode and just say, use Rakuten. And so you've got to decide where you want to start. And I would certainly start at the base level of, hey, just use Rakuten. The one thing that I found that has been helpful is we use Card Pointers and the Card Pointers app. When you log in, if you have Card Pointers Pro, it will sync all your Amex and Chase and bank of America and Citi offers to your account. Or you can use a browser extension for this. It'll basically let you search. So the flow is, if you're about to check out on some site, just search card pointers and you'll see if there's a card that has a spend 100 get 25 off. Because even for myself, the idea of going to all the different issuer sites and then going for each individual card in search, it's just too much work. And so I think when I think of how to save money online, I go through the. There's the base version of which card do I use. As you level up, it's which shopping portal should I go through? It's which card linked offers might exist for this. But I didn't start off the bat being like, here's the seven things you have to do every time you buy anything online. I was like, hey, let's just use the right cards and then let's level up and try to make it easy.

B (43:35)

Yeah. And I will say too, that, like, the whole process of teaching someone that is just to, like, not get upset when they don't do it exactly the way that you would have done it. My usual thing that I hear when my wife buys something, she's like, oh, I'm buying this dress. My immediate response is always like, did you check hashback monitor? And so now she just does because I. That was my go to, you know, so just generally letting more things just be, I think is a better way to approach how a lot of these deals come about.

C (44:02)

I find myself getting caught up on missing the deal more than how much the savings was.

B (44:07)

Yep.

C (44:07)

And I'm 100% sure that there is a time where I was like, I can't believe you forgot to do this thing. And the value of it might have been $1, you know, $2. And if you had asked me rationally and said, hey, do you want to criticize something your partner did for $2 every time, I'd say no. But you fight this urge of trying to optimize everything. And I'm trying to get better at okay, if the purchase is under X, I don't even look like I just have. Rakuten is the only shopping portal extension that's always on. If it pops up, I'll click it for any purchase amount because it's easy. But I'M not even going to go to Cashback monitor for a $20 purchase.

B (44:43)

Yeah. But then you have that. And then once in a while, you know, an offer will come around and it's like, this is, I think, a real offer that's happening right now. It's like, get $220 at Kraken, the crypto app, if you use Capital One Shopping to sign up and there's a $75 referral bonus. So together it's like $300 just for signing up for a crypto app. And I'm like, I really want P3 to do this because she's just trying to make $500 a month. But then you think through the logistics of Capital One Shopping is another extension. They don't actually pay out in cash. It's going to take like 90 days to track. And then it's going to be gift cards is what you can redeem it for. Like Home Depot and Lowe'. Like, okay, scale this back. She doesn't need to do this. What are some simpler things? What are some more baseline things we can do? Because we don't want to, like, just jump the gun and go that far into the deep end so early.

C (45:31)

We did an episode before. If anyone here hasn't listened to that episode, we kind of did go off the deep end and we went through all the different things that you could tackle with a goal of kind of hitting the $3,000 a month mark, which we thought was an achievable goal for someone trying to look for deals to turn into a side hustle. So I will direct people back to that episode.

B (45:52)

Yeah. And that's the thing I would say the takeaway from that episode. You really have to just pick the thing that works for you. And I think one of the things I do is to try and give people options of like, what are all the things that are out there? And then you find the thing that works. But I think where it can get stressful is if you think you have to do all of those things and then it becomes a job and you're probably not trying to have a second.

C (46:11)

Job for people who weren't listening last time. You have a podcast where you kind of recap what you're doing in this space and you've done the financial independence path and you're kind of, I won't say full time. Your part time job is to find deals and to try to supplement your income or your lack of income with all these deals. And so you chronicle that on your own podcast. The Daily Churn. And you've got a membership, which is actually why we're here, because it's a community meetup of your community. So I'm excited we're finally hanging out in person.

B (46:40)

Me too. First time doing an interview in person, even. And yeah, you know, I think it's like, even with my podcast, it can be, I lay out the steps that you can do. You can literally just copy it. But even that can be overwhelming because I can't just forward that to P3. She's going to feel like that's way too much. And so picking and choosing and helping her pick and choose is a gentler way to get people into the hobby. Yeah, I love it.

C (47:04)

I'm going to take a second and do an experiment right now, which is we actually have a bunch of your community in this room behind us. If anyone here thinks we missed anything when we were talking about multiple players, I would love to hear what that is. We did get a couple interesting things. So one, your address matters. Maybe just change your primary banking address to someone who plays this game. You might end up getting better offers, which I think would help if your children are trying to play this game. Maybe don't use your college address, use your parents address is probably going to be a higher likelihood of getting better offers.

B (47:36)

Yeah.

C (47:37)

Another tip was just shared that when you refer people, those referral points are taxable and you will get a 1099. And depending on the financial institution, the value of those points can vary. I've heard some people are more aggressive and some people are more conservative and what they value. But with American Express, and I don't know if this is true for other issuers, the card you refer from each card is an account. And so if you refer from five different cards, you're going to get five different 1099. If you refer from one card, you'll get one. And so the advice was to go max out one, then max out the other, then max out the next so that you limit the number of 1099 you get.

B (48:15)

And that's a great tip too, especially if you're trying to minimize the tax burden, because I, I think I probably get over 1001099 during tax season each year. So at this point for me, it doesn't actually matter what's five more. But if you're like kind of starting out. Yeah, it can be a lot to input yourself. And finding a CPA that understands this stuff is also a complicated process. So. Yeah, that's. That's a great tip.

C (48:38)

Yes, I Think as you scale it up, it gets complicated at just an extra 1099 I think will not scare your CPA off. Just for anyone thinking, no, I was going to refer some friends now I don't want to. I think that level of tax addition is not crazy, but some of the reselling opportunities, buying groups, all that kind of stuff can really complicate your taxes. So. So I'll leave that there. And the person who shared that tip actually wrote a post on Amex and scaling up with a new social, so I'll put the link to that in the show Notes. So we got a couple great tips on authorized users. One, if you pull someone off of the authorized user and you remove that authorized user card, it usually clears after 30 days. But sometimes you're actually able to ask an issuer and this example was from Chase to say, could you reconsider my application and exclude the authorized user card?

A (49:24)

So that's an option.

C (49:25)

And then the other question I've gotten a few times is if someone is an authorized user on a specific card, does that preclude them from getting the signup bonus themself? So let's say you have a Chase Sapphire preferred card and you add your partner to it, and then later they're like, whoa, I do want to be a P2. I do want to earn my own points. Let me open that card. Having been an authorized user on a card does not impact your ability to get the welcome bonus on that card in the future.

B (49:48)

That's good to know, because I've actually wondered the same thing and it's. I just want to quickly say too that it's super nice having everyone here because we've never done this with an audience. And it kind of just like reminds me of how much knowledge is spread out amongst people and how having a community does make it helpful. And so if you are getting into the game, finding people that you can talk to about this stuff is tantamount because these questions are coming up constantly and I have a lot of them myself and Google only answers like 50% of them chatgpt, maybe like 20% of them. So it's definitely a nice thing to have because it's a good support structure for learning about a lot of these really weird little quirks that people outside of this hobby don't really ever think about.

C (50:30)

Yeah, and you can scale it up. You could say, okay, I'm gonna listen to a podcast, I'm gonna read some blog posts. There's some forums on Reddit and Flyer Talk where you can Go down and then you could take it to the next level and join. We have a community, you have a community. There's a bunch of them where you actually can go and ask questions of other people and get answers and share things. And so I think in the last year, going and joining a few of those communities has really leveled up how I approach this entire hobby sport. I don't know why we want a game, and it's been incredibly valuable. And There are probably 10 tips that people in this room don't want to share right now because we're live and recording and publishing. And I'd say the other benefit is the more you talk to people in a community, the more you come up with ideas that lead you to things that are even better than what you'll find online. Yeah. Someone just talked about Replit and it's actually funny timing to bring it up because it's how we manage all the referral links for our community. And so one of the things that we built with this, and I've gone down and down and down a path of iterating on software. So for anyone not familiar, Replit's one of the AI coding tools you can use. And I feel like engineers I know like other tools more. The reason I like it is because it can fully host and deploy everything in one place without having to spin up your own servers and spin up your own other things that go into launching software. But we've used it to create a portal where all of the all the hacks members can share their referral links. And so for some issuers we have affiliate links, and for some we don't. And for the ones we don't, we just share out all of the member referral links. And so we built a system that as of this week, will now go and spin up a headless web browser to constantly refresh and check all of the referral links to make sure they're still the highest referral links and basically share them out and cycle through different member referral links. And some of our members have earned hundreds of thousands of points by sharing links.

B (52:22)

So that's super cool. You've definitely outdone yourself too, with how many points? I don't think I'm quite at your level yet. But the trick, guys, to actually making a lot of points is just to have a successful business. And I remember you did that episode like Tim Ferriss where he was like, I don't know how many millions upon millions of points.

C (52:38)

16 million points.

B (52:39)

16 million points earned organically just through spend. And part of me is like, oh my Lord, how much more could it have been? But then part of me is like, that's what works for him.

C (52:48)

Well, clearly it doesn't work because he wasn't spending. They were just sitting there.

B (52:51)

Yeah, he's their ideal customer.

C (52:53)

Earning them a name. Platinum Guard, right? Like earning 1x points.

B (52:57)

Yeah.

A (52:58)

Oh man.

C (52:58)

There are far better ways to optimize that. But I need to check in with him and see how he's doing with that because hopefully he's used some of them. All right, so we've got a meetup to go to, lots to learn. Kai, thanks for doing this in person and letting me do it at your event.

B (53:11)

Thanks for having me on the show again. I'm sure maybe in the future we'll find another topic that will be interesting to share. And yeah, thanks for coming to the event. It's going to be a good one. We're right at the start of it.

C (53:20)

I'm really excited for this weekend. I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you all did. Also, for all the links to everything we talked about, we'll put it in the show notes and if you want to get in touch, podcast@AllTheHacks.com that's it for this week. I will see you next week.

A (53:34)

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