#104 My Favorite Way to Travel with Devon Gimbel

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Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa

Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to Your Favorite You. Today I am so excited to introduce you to my friend and colleague Devon Gimbel.

Devon is also a physician. She's actually also a life coach, and she is a complete credit card points guru who has a few free Facebook groups, of which I am a member of both.

The first is Point Me to First Class for Women Physicians. And the second is Point Me to first class for entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals.

So if you are a woman physician, you should definitely join group 1. If you are anywhere close to being an entrepreneur, a business owner or a professional, you should definitely join group 2. So if you spend money, if you like to travel, if you like to have new experiences, this podcast is for you.

So Devon. You get to answer the same question that every guest of the podcast gets to and gets to answer rather, which is, could you please tell us a little bit about your current favorite version of yourself?

Devon

Yeah, what a great question. I feel like there's so many different avenues that you could take with that. And so I guess I'll just go with the one that came to my mind first, my favorite current version of myself is the one that finally, after all of these years, so I'm 43, so after all of the years of the life thing, all of the education, all the training, all the doctor stuff, all of that, this is the version of myself that for the very first time in my life actually understands how important it is and is willing to ask myself, what do I want?

And I mean on a tiny, tiny scale, like as of, you know, for an hour for the next hour of my day. Just what do I want? And also on a much larger scale in terms of, you know, for my life or for my career, you know, we can take this in so many different directions, but I feel like that is something that never even occurred to me for a long time in my life. And then there was a period of my life that it occurred to me and I just felt like it wasn't available to me. And so right now that feels like a huge positive shift in my life.

Melissa

I love that because I am constantly talking about asking ourselves what do I want and actually listening for the answer and actually taking steps and not thinking that it's selfish or it's the wrong time or, you know, because if you do that, there'll never be a good time to ask yourself what you want.

Devon

Yeah, and I think too, something at least that certainly came up for me. I don't know if other people in your audience can relate to this or if you can is I feel like for so long, for probably a lot of different reasons, socialization, you know, messaging, just the educational paths that we choose to take, I feel like for so long, conformity is the thing that dictates so much of what we do that that's why I'm saying I don't even think it occurred to me for such a long time that I could even ask myself like what do I want?

Because I felt like especially - this is my experience - especially in the medical education and training pathway. I felt like there were just these static answers that were supposed to be true for everyone, right? So it's like there was no point in anyone even asking themself that question because it should have been obvious to us, to us all, right? Like, what do I want? I want to get good grades. I want to get into a good college. I want to get into a good medical school.

Like, of course, you know, like all of these things just seem so standardized that, like I said, you know, for such a long time, it didn't even seem like an available or relevant question, and I don't know if it's just a process of getting a little bit older, finally having a little bit more autonomy or whatever the case may be, but I think especially as folks who are socialized as women, just understanding the crucial importance of just being willing to ask yourself that question, right? 

Like you don't even have to do anything. Like you don't have to make any scary decisions that you don't want to make. But just creating the space to be able to ask yourself that and hear your own answer, right? Not hear that answer of the standard conforming. Well, everybody should want XY or Z and believing there's something wrong with you if that's not true for you anymore.

Melissa

Yeah. And recognizing that although it may have been safe in the past to follow the path and conform and that type of thing. It's like, oh no, like true living and true safety comes from within. And I can create that for myself in so many different ways if I'm willing to see it that way. So amazing.

OK, tell us, how did you get interested in points and points travel?

Devon

Yeah, so interesting. Just as we were talking about that last question, I had this, like, visual slideshow that flashed in my mind of like, oh wow, this really has so much relevance to the path that I have taken and especially what my personal and professional life has looked like and how it has changed over the last really five to seven years.

So I think it's just a really interesting question to start with. But this question that you just asked me in terms of how did I just get interested in this whole world? So this goes back to around 2012. So I had just finished my residency and my fellowship. So I did a residency in anatomic pathology. I did a fellowship in dermatopathology, finished all of that stuff up in 2012, left, you know, my training institution, got my first big girl job in a private practice at the end of the summer of 2012.

And again, I don't know how many people in the audience can relate to this, but at that point where I had gotten my first attending job, it was literally the first time in my life where I was making, you know, a paycheck and actually had some disposable income leftover, right. Like basically we were living, you know, kind of hand to mouth residency. My partner is also a physician. We trained in Boston, not exactly the cheapest, you know, city in the world to live in. And we made resident salaries, right. So it's like, yeah, we paid rent, we bought groceries and that was about it, you know.

And so when I finally got, you know, my first attending job and I had money for the first time. It was terrifying because I had no idea what to do with it. I'd not been raised in a financially resourced family. I had no personal finance education. No one had taught me anything about money.

I also had multiple 6 figures in student loan debt. So it was like this idea of, well, I know there are ways to be mindful and deliberate about money, but I don't know what those look like because nobody ever taught me this. And so originally it was just this attempt to educate myself about personal finance.

You know, how do I make “good decisions” for me? Again, not like good in a universal sense, but how do I figure out how to be my version of responsible with money coming in, given student, you know, student loans and just all the other goals and priorities I had. And so I just started reading, you know, this is sort of like the heyday of blogs on the internet where there was like so much really, really great subject specific content online. And I started reading all these personal finance blogs. I started learning about, you know, financial independence and retiring early.

I wasn't really sure that was super important to me, but I loved learning about these themes and just getting educated about money and finance and kind of adjunct to that, as happens on the Internet when you run a search, you know, it's like you come up with all of these other kind of adjacent subjects and rabbit holes you can fall down. And I just started seeing blogs and websites come up about traveling and traveling using credit card points. And travel is something that had always been fundamentally important to me in my life. But as someone who didn't have a lot of financial resources, didn't really travel at all growing up, and then when I finally did start traveling it was classic travel by any means necessary.

You know, like, it's been so many like 14 hour bus rides overnight so I wouldn't have to pay, you know, for a hotel room somewhere. I lived in Southeast Asia for about 6 months after undergrad and so it was, you know, like an $8 a day budget. And so, you know, I had this love of travel and also again for the first time in my life, I was like, well, I have a little bit of money to start making decisions with kind of how do I do this in a smart way and so starting to read about the fact that people could use credit cards to earn points and then turn those points into really incredible travel experiences hit all the buttons for me, right?

It hit the button for me of loving to solve puzzles and put puzzles together. It hit the button of I really, really want to travel and I don't have a huge travel budget. And it hit the button for me of, like, I love a great deal. You know, like, who doesn't love like solving a puzzle, and then the prize is, oh wow, now you have enough credit card points, yeah, that you can fly business class for the first time in your life internationally, right?

And the it was just almost too good for me to believe it to be true. So I was like, OK, I got to prove this wrong. Like, clearly there's a flaw somewhere, like in this whole proposal, I'm going to be able to find it. This isn't going to be worth it.

You know, and so I came in as a skeptic. And also, again, my background was I'd always been taught credit cards are really bad. They're dangerous. I literally did not have a credit card for, you know, almost my entire adult life up until that point, I got my very first credit card the year before as a fellow, as a 31 year old fellow, right? So I was not like, you know, super financially savvy person. And so at any rate, I started very slow, which I think is important, you know, I started applying for one new credit card, learned how to be very responsible with that credit card and just started earning points and just doing what I saw other people talking about online. 

And ultimately what I learned was, wow, they weren't making it up. They weren't lying. Like, you can actually be very strategic, you know, about earning credit card points for your expenses and then do incredible things with those points.

And this was kind of where a light bulb went off for me because, you know, all the blogs, all the websites I was reading, they were incredibly informative. But the one piece for me that was missing in all of them is that nobody was talking kind of specifically to or specifically about what about people who have higher than average expenses, either because you're paying off multiple 6 figures, you know, in student loans or you're part of a dual physician family and your expenses are high because you need to bring in, frankly, a lot of help, you know, to run your house, run your family. 

Also, you know, I was an employee in a private practice at that time and there were just so many discussions about things the private practice needed to invest in. You know, it was a pathology practice. We had our own onsite laboratory. So there were always conversations about, all right, how many new microtomes at $10,000 each do we need to invest in? You know, are we going to purchase an entire immunostainer at multiple six figures or continue, you know, like a rental service agreement? And it was just so obvious to me from those conversations, wow, these guys -  like just business owners in general, medical practice owners - they are sitting on such a huge potential goldmine of credit card points because of the nature of the expenses and running a business, running a medical practice. And I remember just looking around thinking like, wow, they have no idea what they are missing here. And that is really what started it all for me.

Melissa

I really hope that my colleagues at Emerald Pediatrics are listening to this and start instead of getting cash back on their vaccine, you know, money spend, start to get points and spread them equally amongst the group as much as they possibly can. So, okay, before we get too far down this road and get people all excited about using the money they spend to gain points, who is this not for?

So I know that if someone is not able to pay their credit card bill off at the end of every month, it doesn't make sense for them because of the interest that accrues on the unpaid portion of their bill. Should anyone else not be engaging in this practice?

Devon

Yeah, absolutely. So the first point you made, I think is absolutely the most crucial one, which is that if you are not in a position right now to pay off your credit card bills in full every single month, don't play around with points earning credit cards yet.

The reason is if you ever look at them -  at those offers when you are first applying for a new credit card - the interest rates specifically on many credit cards, but specifically the type of credit cards that can earn you points and miles are, I mean obscenely high, 17 percent, 20 percent, 23 percent.

And so if you again are in a position where you do need to carry a balance on your credit cards, then the amount you're going to end up paying in interest just completely negates any of the value that you can potentially get from points. So first and foremost. This is for people who are in a position where they are able to pay off their credit card statements in full every single month.

Now, in terms of other people for whom this hobby could be a good fit for or not a good fit for, what's really interesting is that if you happen to be someone who's based in the United States, so either you were born here, so you have a US Social Security number or you have access to applying to US issued credit cards. You're in an amazing position to take advantage of this.

Now, if you're someone who's based outside of the US, you don't have a US Social Security number, or you do not have access to applying to US credit cards, this hobby is actually much more challenging for people in other parts of the world because credit cards in other countries, there's just not nearly the same number available to them as we have here based in the US. And the way that they structure giving people rewards in the form of points is much, much lower than for those of us who have access to US based cards. So if you don't have access to US issued credit cards, unfortunately this is not going to be as easy a hobby for you as it is for us.

And then frankly too, I think you mentioned this, but it's really kind of important to emphasize that these are really great for people who love to travel. I think if you're someone who's not that interested in travel or if you're in a phase or a period of your life where travel just isn't accessible to you for whatever reason, get cash back credit cards.

Like, I think cash back credit cards can be so, so powerful, especially compared to using a debit card or using, you know, a store specific credit card for a lot of your expenses, like, you know, a Macy's card or a Nordstrom card.

You know, if you're going to be spending money. My goal is to educate, especially women, but to educate everybody that those expenses can be doing work for you in the form of earning you something. So if you don't love to travel, that's fine. Get a cash back credit card, be earning something for your expenses.

But if you're someone who really loves to travel, especially if you like international travel, especially if you dream of traveling internationally in business class and not paying 10s of thousands of dollars for it. And you have expenses that you can put on a credit card, you are in a perfect position to benefit from this hobby.

Melissa

Amazing. So this leads me perfectly, and we did not practice this. So of course, where are the big areas where people are missing out on their spending as an asset?

So I thought of a couple like paying your mortgage. Most people that just comes directly out of your bank account, which it doesn't have to. Paying your rent. Paying for your children's college tuition, or if you if your kids go to private, you know, high school or grade school for that too. Paying for your taxes. All the spend at the grocery store. My Amazon purchases my dining out like. I can't tell you the last time I've spent cash on anything since meeting you, Devon. So you can just love me for that.

Devon

I do love you for that. And again, as someone who used basically only cash up until my early 30s in some way, shape or form, this has been an enormous shift, you know, in sort of my spending, not my spending patterns in terms of what I buy or how much I spend, but what financial instrument I use to spend the money that I'm spending.

But when I think about kind of main categories of expenses, I think of three main categories. So the first category are things that are usually just not available to pay for using a credit card. Everyone has expenses that fall into this bucket. And you'll know because they're the types of things that when you go to pay, there is no credit card option, right? You either have to write a check for those of us who remember what those look like. Or do some sort of, you know, direct transfer from your bank account.

So I think actually the classic example for many people, if you own a home is your mortgage, right? Most of us, when we go to pay our mortgage, we do not have a little button next to it that says PayPal, right? Or pay by credit card. And that is because a mortgage is debt and so most forms of debt cannot be paid by debt, which is what credit cards are considered. So things like a car loan, a lot of student loans, the actual student loan servicer does not accept payment by credit card.

Now, there's always some exceptions to rules and we can talk about that. But when I think of, like, big buckets of expenses, that first big bucket is things that you just cannot easily pay directly using your credit card. And for those, I tell people, especially if you're very new to this hobby, that's fine. Just kind of ignore those for now. Pay those the way that you're used to paying those.

For some people, that can also include things like insurance policy, you know, premiums for people in business. Sometimes that includes certain business expenses, depending on what your vendor is, that's totally fine. In the beginning, just keep paying those however you can pay them.

But the second category of expenses, which is where we love to start, especially with beginners, is basically think of all the expenses in your life that you could pay using a credit card if you wanted to, where it's not going to cost you anything. And these are the expenses a lot of us are familiar with, right? Grocery expenses, online shopping expenses, basically anything that you can use your credit card to pay, but you're not going to get charged a processing fee or any extra fee in order to use your credit card. And that is the 1st and easiest place for so many people to start. Because again, a lot of our expenses, especially the recurring expenses, the daily, the weekly, monthly expenses, fall into that category.

And then finally, there's a third bucket of expenses. And this is for folks who now are just a little bit more advanced in this hobby because that's a bucket of expenses that you can pay using a credit card, but that you're going to get charged a processing fee in order to do so. 

And so this typically tends to be things and you've mentioned a couple of them already, things like a lot of schools, whether those are, you know, primary, secondary schools or even, you know, university level schooling. If they allow you to pay tuition with credit card, they often times will pass on that credit card processing fee to you as the consumer. So they'll say, OK, you can pay tuition, you know, directly again by check or by bank transfer or you can pay using a credit card, but you're also then going to be charged a 2% or a 3% processing fee in order to do that. And so things like tuition payments, you mentioned taxes. So I think a lot of people don't realize that you can make tax payments by using a credit card, whether you're someone who's an employed professional, so maybe you only, you know, pay your taxes once a year in that sort of April time zone if you do owe any federal or state taxes.

Especially if you're self-employed - if you have the joy of paying quarterly taxes every couple months, you have a tax payment due, you can actually pay your taxes using a credit card.

Now again, this falls into that bucket where you're going to be charged a processing fee in order to do that, which is why I don't recommend that beginners dive straight into also trying to, you know, maximize points earning on this bucket. But once you do get comfortable earning points with credit cards, there are so many scenarios where I actually think it does make sense to pay a processing fee in order to pay for an expense in order to use credit card points when you start building and developing your skill in using those points because, and this is the only reason why I think it's justified to do this, the value you can get out of the points that you earn for paying an expense like your taxes or tuition can so far outweigh the cash cost of that processing fee that you paid that you are essentially getting enormous travel for sale. Like a lot of us - many people who love to travel - if I gave you the offer where I say OK I'm going to charge you $980 but I'm going to give you two round trip business class flights that would otherwise cost you $6500. Like is that an exchange that you would want to make? I mean some people will say no which is totally fine right? But that's the thing - There's a lot of us who would say yes who would say I will gladly trade $980 of actual cash if I know that I'm going to get out of that $6500 worth of experience that I actually do want to take advantage of, right?

So that is how I kind of think in the very beginning for people again who are very brand new to this and I've never kind of heard about it or don't know where to start. I always like just breaking it down into those three main buckets of expenses and say starting with that second bucket is so easy and straightforward because it's stuff you're already spending money on and it's not going to cost you anything extra to pay for those expenses using a credit card that's going to earn you points or miles.

Melissa

I love it. I love it. OK. I know people who also live in this house had a misconception at the beginning that opening credit cards could negatively affect our credit score. And that has not happened. Other adults who also live in this house were worried that they would not be able to keep track of the cards and you know what to spend on what and that type you know like we're out to dinner which card do I use? Or I'm at the grocery store, which card do I use? That type of thing. Can you speak to both of those misconceptions or worries that people have?

Devon

In terms of that first misconception I think first of all this is just so common. So for anybody who has that concern I think it's always really important to just validate that and say yes I can completely understand why you might be worried about that.

But what happens is that so many people have never - again I think one of the biggest failings of our educational system speaking from someone who's gone through you know a trillion years of education is that at least when I was going through all my various various educational pursuits nobody ever taught just the basics of money the basics of finance. And that includes the basics of a credit score meaning what actually impacts your credit score and what doesn't because there are a lot of things that you would think intuitively hurt your credit score that don't actually hurt your credit score and vice versa.

And so, for people who haven't yet kind of dove into this I'll try to keep this pretty brief. But when it comes to a credit score there are five main factors that impact your credit score and they're not all factoring into your credit score equally. So by far the number one most important thing that influences your credit score is your history of on time payments which is just every time you know you have a credit card statement do you make a payment on that statement in a timely manner? That accounts for 35 percent of your credit score. And this is why as many people know even if you have had 10 years of on time you know credit card payments if you miss one payment or you miss two payments your credit score can take a significant hit.

And it's because of this factor.

Now the second factor which almost no one knows about and this is really what blows so many people's minds is the second most important factor in your credit score is what's called credit utilization ratio. And all that means is that if you look at all the credit cards you have issued to you - whether it's one credit card, two credit cards, five credit cards - you add up all those credit lines. How much of that credit are you using at any one time? And this is where I was talking about what you think intuitively would matter doesn't because so many of us would think wowIf I'm being really responsible with my credit I should have one credit card right? Should use it and pay it off. If I have multiple credit cards that actually seems like it would be riskier - more irresponsible - I would think the banks would see that as a really bad thing. No no no no no.

And this is why it's all about this specific part of your credit score - the credit utilization ratio. What banks want to see is that you have access to a ton of credit and you don't use it. Like that's what they think is responsible. So if you're someone again you have one credit card. Let's just pretend you have a $10000 credit limit on that one card. And let's say you have $8000 of monthly expenses and every month you put about $8000 of expenses on that card. But you pay it off in full every single month right? You're being very responsible. You're never hitting your credit limit. You're not doing anything that seems to you like it should be suspicious. But if you're using $8000 of your available $10000 of credit, your credit utilization ratio is 80%. It's just that you're using at any given time 80% of the credit available to you. That is actually what banks think is very risky. If you have a high credit utilization ratio - So anything over 30% even anything over 10% - is going to be seen by the banks or the credit card issuers as “risky.”

This makes no sense to me. I'm just going to pick a random bank. Let me just pick Chase for no specific reason. But you could have one credit card of the Chase again with a $10000 credit limit. You could have all your banking with them your savings account your checking account. You could have $800,000 in cash in your Chase banking accounts. But if you're using 80% of your credit cards you know credit limit every single month they don't care. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

So all of this to say is that when you open up actually overtime multiple credit cards what happens? Each one has its own credit limit. So overtime the total amount of credit available to you as an individual increases dramatically. But again this is not about spending more money. It's not about buying things you don't want. It's just about being smart and leveraging the expenses you have.

So overtime, if the total amount of credit available to you gets bigger and bigger and bigger but you're using the same amount of it your credit utilization ratio is going to drop and drop significantly. And what so many people have experienced is that as they've opened up more credit cards over time their credit score has actually gone up. And it's because of this specific aspect of the credit score their credit utilization ratio went way down as the amount of credit available to them went up. A low credit utilization ratio accounts for 30% of your credit score. So this is an enormously positive factor for your credit score.

And again to me this is so counterintuitive but this is how it works. There's three other things that factor into your credit score. But again combined just paying on time every month and having a low credit utilization ratio those two factors account for 65% of your credit score. And so what I would say to people is I totally understand why you might be worried about this. But once you know the actual five factors of your credit score then you're going to be able to reliably predict what is actually going to happen to my credit score if I make any changes in any of these five factors. And long story short is that most of us who do this as a hobby our credit score either stays the same or it improves over time as we get more cards specifically because of that second factor.

Melissa

Amazing. What I'm hearing is that I should go open up a new card today

Devon

All the cards. Yes.

No, I would never advocate for that. I am just joking. But I do want to alleviate some people's fears, you know, especially if you grew up like I did right where there was a lot of fear around credit cards and even getting one was a huge step for me right? If you had told me when I got my first credit card, oh you're fine. You can go out and get 5 credit cards. Like at that point in my life that would not have been a good message for me right?

And that's why I think it should also always be stated - and this is one of my favorite things about this hobby is that you can move at the pace that's comfortable for you right? This is not a binary kind of thing where either you have no credit cards and you have no points or you've got to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and be like someone who maybe is doing this at a very high level and has more cards than your brain can even comprehend right?

And so you can take this one step at a time. You can go at your own pace. And then speaking to your second question about you know then if you are going to overtime accumulate more than one credit card, how do you keep track of things? Because one of the things that we haven't talked about yet is why would you want more than one card? Because I think there's so many of us where we lived for a long time or are still living with the one card right? Like we have a credit card so that whenever we have an expense that we want to pay by credit card we've got one option.

And for simplicity that makes so much sense. But in this world of earning points and miles and then turning them into travel so many people end up with more than one credit card because - I think about it the same way I think about clothing and I am by no means some sort of style maven, but I was born and raised in Southern California. So basically all I needed for the first 20 years of my life was, like, a pair of jeans, some T-shirts, flip-flops and maybe a sweatshirt for when it got freezing.

And I distinctly remember - So I went to you know all of my lower education undergrad all in California - I leave California for the very first time in my life - I mean not in terms of like having left the state but, in terms of where I lived - finally moved out of California for medical school. And where do I go? Cleveland, Ohio which does not have the same seasonal weather pattern as California. And I distinctly remember the first winter in medical school and we had hit that time of year where it's getting cold - colder than my human body had ever experienced -  And I remember walking to Med school classes in jeans, flip flops and a sweatshirt and being so cold and actually thinking. I don't know what to do next. Like I have never had to have any other article of clothing in this situation. Clearly there's no solution to this right? And so my whole point in saying this is that a lot of us have clothing for our needs. Now that I live in the Chicago suburbs, I and my children have all manner of seasonal clothing that frankly I wish I didn't need but we do right? We need the rain boots. We need the snow boots. We need the 17 1/2 layers for you know like all of our crazy seasonal things. The reason for that is like each thing performs a different function right? Same thing with credit cards.

So all of these points and miles earning credit cards, they have sort of a baseline rate at which you can earn points. So they'll say you know for every dollar you spend we're going to reward you with one point or mile rate. But then all of them tend to also have what are called bonus categories where they say OK but for these special designated items examples are things like restaurants when you spend money at restaurants or when you spend money on groceries we're actually gonna give you extra points instead of rewarding you with one point for every dollar you spend we're gonna give you three points or four points. And so very quickly you can start saying OK if I have one credit card that's great that's solid, but if I want to put together a couple of different credit cards so that all of these major areas that I spend money on are going to give me a really high return on points then that is going to end up looking like having a few different credit cards. So I kind of just wanted to set that context about you know why would somebody potentially want three credit cards or five credit cards? But then once you have those credit cards -  speaking to your point of “Oh my gosh now how do I keep track of this? If i’ve got the grocery credit card and I've got you know the dining credit card or the travel credit card. How do I keep track of this?”

Some of us just -  I think the way our brains work because we like organization we end up being pathologists for example - we just memorize these things right? And then there's other people like, you know, willing but not so enthusiastic spouses who get roped into this whole thing. And maybe they're a little bit less interested in memorizing you know what you use the card for what thing. And so there's a lot of different solutions to this. There is a very old school solution where you can literally take little stickers and put them on the front of your credit card.

This is what I've done for my partner where for certain cards I will just get you know like a blank sticker and I will write on it “Gas” right? Or I will write on it “Restaurants” or “Amazon” or whatever the case may be. So it's not their job to think about it right? Like it's their job to look at the sticker if they can remember that part and that's all they have to do. Nowadays of course we also have some amazing apps so people who, you know, are a little more familiar with digital technology and they like those things. There are some really great apps where you can just load into the app. You don't have to give them your account or your financial information but you can load into the app and say oh I have card A, B and C again the name of the card not your specific personal identifying information. And then the app will tell you,  you know, based on where you are, use card A that has the best return for the store you're in. Or you go somewhere else and it tells you to use card B. So especially for people who love things to be streamlined, who really love you know apps and or who have partners where we want to make this as easy for them as possible. I mean these apps have just gotten so useful and so incredible especially recently. When I started doing this ten years ago that was not the case. But now there is so much technology to help with this.

Melissa

Amazing. OK I might have you share some of your favorite apps and I'll put them in the show notes for people so that they can know and selfishly so that I can have them.

If anyone here knows me and my husband, sometimes when we're out to dinner for example and he wants to trigger me he will pull out the wrong card to try to pay with the wrong card and, like, wait for me to notice.

Devon

If he really wanted to trigger you he would just pull out cash.

Melissa

That's true. That's true. But we never have any anymore. So but yeah that would definitely be like, “What the fuck are you doing?”

So, but yeah, I mean, I think I've unintentionally made him way more bougie than even me. So now he's like the one who's like, how do we maximize our points so that we can stay at this really nice place because we didn't spend any money on our flights to get here other than what we had already were going to spend on our natural, normal expenses anyway.

And I'll never forget when you and I first started talking about points and I was upset about something not being able to use points to pay for it. You gave me the quip, “Well you're either spending points or you're earning points. So it's a win-win either way.”

Devon

Yeah that's exactly how I look at it honestly. I mean especially around travel, is that I think there are a lot of folks who do have a travel budget. It may not be huge but there is a certain amount of money, you know, for those of us who just love travel for whom it's really important we may have allocated A yearly travel budget that we're willing to spend no matter what. And so then where credit card points come in is that I see this as just an amazing way to sometimes dramatically expand and increase your travel budget.

And so like you said, for a given trip if there are no great options to use points and save a lot - and that flight or that hotel falls within what I've already decided I'm willing to pay for travel this year - I absolutely look at that as it's a points earning opportunity. You know any time that you're spending money you're either earning points or you're using the points that you've earned from all of your other expenses and turning that into travel. And so you know in that scenario there's to me that it's a win-win situation.

Melissa

Yeah I think another thing that Jon has really enjoyed and me too with our credit cards, we now have lounge access at the airports and it makes it just so much more enjoyable to have a layover or to have to get there early in order to make sure that we get through security and that type of thing. And we're like oh it's no problem. We'll just go sit in the lounge and enjoy ourselves.

Devon

Yeah I think one of the things that's been fascinating for me because I did so much solo travel when I was younger - And I loved solo travel, it's very important to me - And my priorities when I'm traveling by myself I remember being shocked about how different that looked after I had children and we started traveling with them. Like the things that matter to me when I'm traveling alone, honestly, you know, I can kind of sit anywhere in an airport. Doesn't mean it's comfortable doesn't mean I love it but it's not that big a deal to me right? And also hotels for me -  kind of solo or pre children - I just wanted to be in a well located place. But as long as I had a bathroom connected to my personal hotel room and had a lock on the door and felt you know generally safe honestly that was fine.

Like it to me I just didn't have a huge preference right around stuff like that, and I distinctly remember when that changed. When my husband and I we had our first child. He's almost nine years old now which is hard to believe. But when he was about five months old we had this amazing idea, right? I mean here's this infant, right? He's still obviously bottle fed with formula and he was formula fed. So we had all the accoutrement for formula feeding this child all of the diapers. I mean all the junk, right? I mean anyone who has had or been around children knows just the sheer volume of crap you need, right?

But we're like oh hey you know like we're super smart people and we love to travel and we're gonna our life doesn't have to change because we have an infant right? So we have this grand idea to take this five month old to Mexico and damn it we're gonna have an amazing family vacation right? So we haul this kid all of his massive amounts of crap to this resort in Mexico where of course I had booked us in the cheapest possible room I could find because I love value. Like great, this is awesome. So very traditional hotel room, like 200 square feet, one bed, you cram the little crib you know next to the bed. And again my son's five months old. So not only is he waking up every few hours in the middle of the night but we never had our kids sleep in our room when they were infants. They had always slept in a different room so that my husband and I like we tag teamed like one person would get up each time and hopefully the other person could kind of sleep through one of the feedings. Well I very quickly realized on that trip oh wait a minute we're all awake all night long. And this is absolutely hideous right? And also because he's an infant he's going to bed for the night at you know like 5:30, 6:00 PM. So not only are we drawing all the shades so it's completely dark in this room and both of us are trying to be completely silent because heaven forbid we wake up this infant. 

It was a very different travel experience for me. And I very quickly realized wow if I ever have to do this again I'm going to murder everyone in my family and probably also murder myself because this is so miserable right? Like wow this is impossible. Like this makes me hate travel and I love to travel right? And it was the same thing with the lounges you know? And then when we had a second kid it - there are different challenges to long travel days. You know when you have little humans with unregulated nervous systems. I'm not a little human, my nervous system is also unregulated most of the time. You throw in two kids you know who are struggling. It is rough.

And so, yeah, you know, to be able to have lounge access because you hold a credit card and you do pay the annual fee on the credit card, but you're not being charged $200, you know, for a family to come into a lounge where there's basic food available, right? There's bigger seating, a lot of lounges have family rooms, which is just incredible, right? And for me, one of the biggest game changers has been using points for our hotel stays because I don't know, for anybody who's ever looked to book a hotel room, you know, you have the standard room with the one king or the two Queens and then there's usually like another 1 to 12, you know, like room categories available. And when you get up to that point of true one bedroom suites in most hotels, you know, where you have a bedroom with a door that closes and then like a living room so you can actually have separation for your family. I mean, I don't care where you're staying, those one bedroom suites are $1000, $2000, $2500 or more every single night. And even though I had a travel budget, I did not have a 10, $20,000 hotel budget for our stays.

And that's been one of my favorite things about points is that I have hotel points where I can book one bedroom suites for my family only using points, like no cash required for the actual hotel booking. And we can travel in one bedroom suite with… when I'm by myself or traveling with my husband, that's not important to me. But when I had two kids on different nap schedules and I didn't want us all to keep each other awake all night long, every night. I mean, that has been a sanity saver. And again, that's just something that wouldn't have been available for me booking straight in cash. And so I think the difference in your travel experience can be so dramatic when you learn where some of these opportunities are.

Melissa

Yeah, so amazing. So amazing. Tell me some of the crazy travel deals or travel experiences that you or maybe even some of your clients have benefited from.

Devon

Yeah, I mean, there's just so many that are so fun. So I'll talk about ones that I think are very accessible to a lot of people in points and miles. And then I'll give you some examples that are a little bit more at the other end of the spectrum in terms of just in the points hobby, we call them aspirational, like the things that just kind of blow your mind that you can actually do with points.

So I think for so many people, they never would imagine that they would be able to fly internationally in business class. It's just it's so expensive, especially if you're traveling with more than one person. And I love teaching people about how easy that actually is for certain destinations. My favorite one for this is Europe. And that is because there's an airline that a lot of people probably heard of, Air France. It's based, not surprisingly, in France. And you can use points to fly economy, premium economy, or business class from the States to Europe, through Paris to their, you know, whole route network around Europe, or vice versa. And most people don't realize that on this airline, how few points are required to do something like fly business class.

And one of my favorite things ever is when people sign up for one or two credit cards, again, use them for their regular expenses and within a couple months they have enough points to book round trip business class flights to Europe for themselves, their partner, maybe their kids if they're traveling with their family and they get to experience that first business class flight. And everybody always says the same thing, “I never would have thought this would have been possible,” and that was exactly my experience too and it is incredible.

If you're someone who likes flying economy, it doesn't hurt your body. You're happy, you know, to save the money or the points to fly economy to the ends of the earth. That's amazing. I think that's incredible for you at this age and this body with these joints, it's not happening for me. And so to be able to use points to fly business class, when again, I used to fly like the most basic of basic economy to Vietnam, to India, I mean to so many places around the world. Being able to use points to fly business class is an actual miracle to me and I love it. So that is a trip that so many people can take very, very easily using points.

Melissa

And I think that the other thing that you don't recognize is, yes, maybe you could fly economy, but you're going to pay for it for the first couple of days that you're on the trip and kind of lose ability to, like, enjoy yourself and then of course on the way home, you're also, you know, if you're 51 like me, going to lose a couple of days to try to get used to being back home instead of being able to lay down and sleep if you a able to do that on the flight.

Devon

That is absolutely my experience. You know, when I was 20, I could do anything. Like I remember twice in residency, I flew from Boston to Vietnam and back in five days, 2 1/2 to three days of which were actual travel on plane times and both times bounced back like nothing hit me. 

I cannot go to Florida now from Chicago and not feel jet lagged for literally two weeks. You know, it's like my body just doesn't handle it the same way it used to. And so from a comfort perspective, this is a huge game changer for me. But I also mentioned, you know, using points to book hotel - So amazing.

My favorite hotel chain is Hyatt. I'm very biased. I readily admit that. I think using points to book Hyatt hotels, especially again if you travel as a family, has such tremendous value. We took our kids to Kauai for their spring break. We booked a 1 bedroom oceanfront suite at the Grand Hyatt Kauai entirely on points. That room for spring break, you know, if I wanted to just book it straight through Hyatt, would have cost $17,000 for one week. And again, I personally, even though I have a travel budget, don't know that that would have been available and possible for me. We spent $0.00. We have gotten so much value out of Hyatt Points for stays for our family in so many places. Our other favorite place to take our kids is there's a hotel called the Park Hyatt in Saint Kitts. It's located in a stunning part of Saint Kitts, the very southern tip of the island. It is not deserted, but very remote for the island. And so it is just so peaceful, so calm. Again, we've used points outright to book our winter break there with our kids, saved thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

But on the sort of more, again, aspirational end of the spectrum, this is not going to be things that I think, again, every family, everybody is probably going to take advantage of all the time.

But I think sometimes it is fun to hear like, wow, what actually can you do if you really want to.

There's some amazing points deals, especially in international travel. About a year and a half ago, I really wanted to try a specific airline called Japan Airlines. It's based in Japan, not surprisingly, and has just an incredible, incredible reputation and product. They're one of the few airlines that internationally their aircraft have not only a business class, but a first class, which is an even higher class of service than business class. Usually has like 4 to 8 seats total, just the highest level of service you can get and I kind of on a whim, booked myself to fly first class from Chicago to Tokyo for a day then I turned around and came back on a different airline I also really wanted to try. And the number of points I needed for that flight was so low. It's literally the number of points you can get from signing up for a single airline credit card and a first class flight from Chicago to Tokyo and Japan Airlines. Easily can run 14 to $20,000 again.

I mean something that I only did because for me it was really, really fun and I had points to do it. But I have also flown business class from the States to South Africa. I have flown first class from the States to different places in Europe. Again, all using points. And so there really is such a huge spectrum of what you can do for so many people who do what I consider to be regular travel where maybe you travel once or twice a year. If you have children, you're probably constrained to your kids' school schedules like my life is right now. Maybe your partner has a week or two of vacation a year and you've got to work around that schedule. You know you don't have to be someone who has total time, location, flexibility, you know, who can travel with 2 minutes notice and get yourself to the airport. There are so many of us who are doing, again, regular person travel. You book a trip for spring break or for winter break or sometime during your summer, 6 to 12 months in advance. You want to go, you know, to Paris. You want to go to Hawaii. You want to go to these, you know, typical aspirational kind of, you know, vacation places. There are so, so many options about how you can do that with points.

Melissa

Yeah, so fun. I know Jon and I definitely would not have been able to fly business class without your Point Me to First Class expertise that you shared with all of us.

So this has been so helpful. I really hope that all of my listeners gleaned so much information, but I know like the thing that, well, I love many things about you, Devon, but one of the things that I love about you is that you are just like an encyclopedia of this information and like you have so much to offer.

So how would people find you? How can they work with you? Tell us what you're offering right now.

Devon

Yeah, thank you so much. I will also send you all these links that you can, you know, post wherever you want helpful for people to find.

I think some of the places people can find me, I have a website, it’s called pointmetofirstclass.com. That just tells you kind of all about what I do and how you can contact me or how you can find me. I also have a podcast called Point Me to First Class, which for anybody, if you're just points curious, you're like “I never heard about this or I've heard about this, but I'm not ready to dive in yet,” or “I just want to learn more about this.” 

Come listen to the podcast, right? It's free. I cover so many different aspects of points and mile travel. So if nothing else, it's a little bit of entertainment, so you can find me there.

Again, I have two point me to first class Facebook groups, so you can join either one of those as they fit for you. A then if you want to learn how to do this, how to earn points, how to use points in a way that isn't going to feel like getting a second, you know, advanced graduate degree, because most of us don't have time for that anymore at this point in our lives.

I also have an online course called Points Made Easy where I just try to make points really easy for, you know, hard working professionals, business owners. 

I really, really believe that our expenses are assets. If you are not turning your expenses into something, either cash back or points, you're missing out. And so I just want to do my very best to help everybody out there turn their expenses into something that's useful for them. So that's what we do inside of Points Made Easy.

Melissa

Amazing. And I'll give a little plug for myself on your podcast. Devon interviewed me last week to ask me about the trip that John and I took to Madrid in Barcelona. So it's probably not out quite yet or going to be coming out soon. So you can hear all about that on Devon's podcast if you like.

Devon

Absolutely. At the time that you and I are recording this, the interview I did with you is coming out in four days on Monday. So anybody who's listening to this conversation today, chances are the episode that we did together will have already aired on the Point Me to First Class podcast.

So check it out because Melissa had an incredible trip to Spain. Points played a huge role in it and I loved hearing your story about that. And more importantly, I just want to share it so other people can also take advantage of it.

Melissa

Yeah, thank you so much. It was so fun. So thanks, Devon and thanks everybody for listening. I hope you all have a great week and we'll see you back here next week.

Hi, it's still me.

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