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DadSquadCast
First Class Father
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There’s a weird truth hiding in plain sight: you might be sitting on a small fortune in credit card points and airline miles, and you’re one bad redemption away from turning it into pennies. We dig into the “points economy” and why loyalty programs can be worth more than the airlines themselves, then get brutally practical about how to redeem points for real travel value instead of cash back, gift cards, or sneaky Amazon checkouts.
Jordan shares a clear path for three levels of travelers: starting from zero with the right flexible credit card setup, leveling up with a credit card audit so you actually use the benefits you’re paying for, and then going full points-max with transferable points, award searches, and redemptions that punch way above their weight. We talk TSA PreCheck, Clear, lounge access, and the kind of business class bookings that normally cost thousands, plus a simple, repeatable win for Europe using Air France awards.
Then we get into the fun stuff: why Hyatt can be the best hotel points redemption in the game, how two partners can coordinate perks, and how small habits like messaging a hotel before arrival can lead to upgrades and extra credits. We also make the case for not hoarding points forever because devaluations happen, and award travel is often refundable, so you can lock something in and adjust later.
If you want luxury travel for less without turning your life into a spreadsheet, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend who hoards points, and leave a review. What trip are you going to book first?
The Hidden Economy Of Points
SPEAKER_01If loyalty points were a country, they'd be the fifth largest currency in the world. Most of us dads are walking around with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of points sitting burning holes in our pockets. Jordan, you've built a whole business on this, travel better for less. So am I exaggerating, or is this points economy thing actually that big?
SPEAKER_00I have a mind-blowing fact for you. Guess how many loyalty accounts guess how many loyalty points are sitting in accounts unredeemed right now?
SPEAKER_01500 million.
SPEAKER_0030 trillion.
SPEAKER_01That's like how many Claude code tokens I burned today. That is unreal. Who estimated that?
SPEAKER_00McKinsey, right before COVID. And so it should be pretty accurate. But yeah, I mean, most of us dads, we have a lot of spend on our credit cards. And so we have these points sitting in our Amex accounts, our Chase account, our Capital One account, or even, you know, we have a bunch of Delta points or United miles, and we just don't know what to do with them. I have redeemed more than a million dollars in free travel over the last seven years, and it's something I'm so passionate about. I love to travel and I love to do it in luxury, but not pay the full price. So I'm really excited to share exactly how really anyone can do this as well.
SPEAKER_01Well, if listeners, that describes you as well. Welcome to the Dad Squad. This is our first season, our seventh episode. And today we're talking about being a first class father, not just in how well you do and how present you are, but frankly, which seat you're sitting in and whether or not you get that warm towel. We all want the warm towel. So let's dive in here.
Why Loyalty Programs Print Money
SPEAKER_01I read that the value that many analysts put on airlines, the value of their loyalty programs is actually higher than the value of the airlines themselves, which for me answers this question of why is it that every time you fly, you hear three or four times about the loyalty card and about how excited they are to offer you this welcome bonus and they'll cut in the middle of frozen two, right when Olaf's crescendoing in that song and then pop in with that fun blurb. But what are your thoughts on this? Is that also crazy talk?
SPEAKER_00No, I think that's actually really accurate. Airlines make a lot of money from those credit cards. But yeah, if you think about it, you could get a, let's say, $8,000 round trip business class flight to Europe on Delta One. So that's gonna come with a fully closing door, you're gonna have your own suite, you're gonna have delicious food and drinks served throughout a live flat bed. And if you book that on cash, you're gonna be paying between eight and twelve thousand dollars, right? You can book that exact same flight for 60 to 80,000 points each way. So 120,000, 160,000 points round trip. And those don't have to be delta points. You can actually book those through other loyalty programs that you can transfer over from your credit card accounts. So if you have American Express points, you can transfer those to different airlines and book the flight on points, and you pay a couple hundred bucks in taxes and fees, but you're getting that flight basically for free because of the points you already have.
SPEAKER_01Man, see, I think a lot of people, myself included, I used to travel for work a lot, like multiple flights a week. And there's probably more than one person listening to this who's thinking, man, I've been meaning to get ahead of this. I fly all the time. Ironically, because I'm so busy flying, I haven't had time to sit down and really map this out. So as we start to talk about hacks, folks, this is for you. Of course, our audience, we primarily speak to dads, but as it turns out, everybody gets points. Anyone can use this. So that said, we're gonna focus on things that you can do today to start getting more for your money, and more importantly, more for your time, especially with business travel, provided that your company doesn't uh take your points, which in some cases, of course, they do, but there's even tricks to get around that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's always best to uh pay for it yourself and and request the reimbursement, right? So you get the points yourself.
SPEAKER_01Especially on hotels, in my experience. But that Amex
How Award Flights Actually Work
SPEAKER_01X shots.
SPEAKER_00It's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So let's say I'm a dad. Um, I have a Costco credit card and a debit card. And these are all the things that I have that could be generating cash back or points. Where would you recommend that I get started from basically ground zero, Jordan?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Great question. So a lot of it does depend on your goals, right? So points are going to be best redeemed for travel. That's where you get the most value out of them. Now, what the banks want you to do is they want you to redeem your points for cashback, or they want you to redeem them for gift cards. Because when you do that, you'll get about one cent per point redemption. Basic math, if you have a hundred thousand points, you'll get a thousand dollars cash back. Now, that sounds great, right? That sounds really cool. Oh, a thousand dollars. But those same hundred thousand points could earn you, you know, a ten thousand dollar vacation if you redeem them for travel. So it's really important to earn the right points as well. So, first and foremost, anyone that's you know constantly using a debit card, we want to get you your first credit card, right? And obviously we want to be responsible with how we spend and always pay off the credit card every single month, but it's important to get the right credit card as well. So a lot of people have airline specific credit cards or hotel-specific credit cards. A lot of people have a Delta credit card or a United credit card. And those are great if you fly primarily on that airline. So if you live near one of the hubs of Delta, if you live in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Minneapolis, it could be great for you to have a Delta card. But in most instances, you want to have a credit card that's not tied to a specific airline or hotel because you have a lot more flexibility with those points. If I'm only spending on my Delta credit card, I'm only earning Delta points, right? And if I look at a business class flight on Delta, let's say to um South Korea, for example, Seattle to South Korea, that flight on Delta might cost 495,000 points for business class. But if we have a different point so we book through a different airline program, that flight might cost 120,000 points. So first thing to do is open the right credit card for you, right? There are different levels of credit cards from basic to you know, kind of a middle ground card and then really premium credit cards. So for somebody that has a Costco
Beginner Setup Pick The Right Card
SPEAKER_00card or has a debit card and you know wants to get their first credit card, one that I recommend right off the bat is the Capital One Venture X. And I would consider that more a mid-tier credit card. Uh, you know, it's not going to be your premium $895 annual fee with an Amex Platinum, but it's also not going to be a no annual fee. So it does come with benefits as well. So anybody that's traveling at all, this is a great card to have because the Capital One miles you earn, first you'll get a sign-up bonus, typically 75,000 bonus miles or 100,000 bonus miles. But those points can be transferred to different airlines that you can or hotels that you can use to fly in in premium. So one example of that is Japan Airlines. It's my favorite business class out there. It's voted the best business class in the world. Closing door, live flatbed, you get an 11-course Japanese meal on board. And they routinely have 60,000 point business class flights to Japan from the West Coast. And so you can transfer your Capital One Miles over to Japan Airlines to book that flight. But it's not only the miles, you also get other benefits with the card. So this specific card has a $395 annual fee, but it comes with a $300 travel credit. It also comes with TSA pre-check for free. It comes with lounge access. So before your flight, you know, you're enjoying food and drinks in the lounge and other perks as well. So that's a that's a mid-tier card that I really like that helps you start earning some points that you can transfer to partners, but also give you some travel benefits as well.
SPEAKER_01Man, that was like a zip file of knowledge. That there's so much there that I think most of us that travel with some consistency probably learn the hard way on a lot of those things. You you touched on, as I'm jotting notes down as we go here, you touched on a number of key points that we should dwell on, especially as we're talking about the the dad who's just really getting into this points thing. It is absolutely fair to say that this getting into the points game is actually about getting more for your money and time. And with that said, it's a $400 a year card. Very notoriously, some of the other ones out there went from about $400 to $800 or more now. And getting your money for that, in my experience, early on when I first had a Platinum Amex, for example, I didn't really use all the benefits. I just thought, hey, this is great. I'm getting five X points on travel, and that was fine. Confession time. I burned those coins on cashback, gift cards, and exactly what you said. And at the time, I think I even used them for like one-to-one Amazon purchase.
SPEAKER_00And Amazon is is sneaky. They'll get you because they'll say you have X number of points available that's worth $2,300 in Amazon rewards. And so you see that, and it's like, I want to get my next couple of Amazon orders for free, right? Sneaky.
SPEAKER_01Very, very wise, Amazon. Very wise. But you also touched on all these additional benefits that I mean, honestly, it's likely that most people aren't doing these things. Otherwise, they would be losing money on them. So if you want to be the outlier and get more for it, Jordan just mentioned TSA Pre. If you don't have TSA Pre and you're flying, you must really love taking your shoes off and staring at the back of people's heads in line because it's it's the best. Pairs well with TSA Pre plus clear means that you are until you're stepping onto a private plane like Jordan, you're probably not going to get any faster than TSA plus clear.
SPEAKER_00Well, and and there's no reason you shouldn't have those now in today's world because there are so many credit cards that give those to you for free, right? And so every time I go to the airport and I look over at the general security line, I'm like, why do you guys not have this? You know, it's it's so easy to get and it's free. Why not? Right.
SPEAKER_01And this is a fun fact that I learned after a toddler placed my driver's license, I still don't know where. Your clear access is actually its own form of identification. So if you have a real ID issue or something like that, that is potentially a lifesaver. So I promise we're not sponsored yet by clear, but who knows? One day.
Avoid Cashback Traps And Amazon
SPEAKER_01Okay, so there's the the the the noob dad who's just getting into this thing. Now let's talk about somebody, maybe Jordan, like a tier two. Let's say there's three tiers. One is hey, what are points? Tier two is, yeah, I got a couple hundred thousand of those. Like I know I'm not supposed to click the buy on Amazon button. And they're kind of rattling around, but we aren't quite sure what we're going to do with these things. If you were points maxing, what would you do if you were that sort of middle-tier dad? Let's say I've got 200 into my Amex.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Really good question. I think the first step there is to just go through and analyze which cards you currently have and your current spend because I can't remember the exact number, but it's north of 90% of people, like you were saying, John, do not use all of their credit card benefits every single year. And so you're paying a high annual fee on some of these cards and you're not getting the value out of it. So step one before you do anything with all those Amex
TSA PreCheck Clear And Lounge Perks
SPEAKER_00points is to do a credit card audit and just make sure that you are getting the value out of your current cards. Go through and review which cards you currently have, which benefits those all come with, and make sure you're using those and getting the most out of them. So with somebody like 250,000 points, that's enough to take you know a really big bucket list vacation. And there's a couple things to unpack here because it's not as straightforward as just, you know, transferring those points somewhere and booking the flights. A lot of it depends on destination, where you want to go, and it does take some searching as well. So I'm going to give a couple tool recommendations here of just things you can use to try and redeem those points for the best trip possible. And again, the best use of points is to transfer them to airlines and sometimes hotels. So one thing that you can do to use those 250,000 points is fly in business class. The easiest business class to get for 60,000 points is to Europe on Air France. And Air France has flies to many locations in the U.S. West Coast, you have Seattle, San Francisco, LA, you have Dallas, Houston, Vegas, and then you have um East Coast as well, New York, uh, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Dulles, Atlanta. So you have a lot of different airports you can fly from the US to get to Europe. Now, you can go to Air France's website directly and just search Book with Miles and do a flexible search of months and find flights for 60,000 points in business class to fly over to Europe. And so that's probably that would be my first recommendation of kind of a tier two way to points max is to find one of those flights, transfer your Amex points into your Air France account, and book a trip to Europe. And that that really can take you anywhere. You can you'll most likely you'll stop in Paris first because that's where Air France flies to. But from Paris, you can fly really anywhere. You can fly to Oslo in Norway, you can fly to Italy, Austria, Switzerland, wherever you want to go, and have you know a really nice vacation and only pay a couple hundred bucks in taxes and fees for those flights. Man, so good. So good.
SPEAKER_01The uh the number of tricks that there are to doing this. I think if you've ever sat next to that person on the airplane who has like a folder with all their cards and probably has a spreadsheet that those cards are stored in. Here's the thing those people are amazing. If you're lucky enough to be married to one of those people like I am, you see some pretty incredible gymnastics happen that
Mid-Tier Move Do A Card Audit
SPEAKER_01lead to some unbelievable deals. Let's imagine for a second, let's inhabit the world where it's a two-player game. Let's say that there's a dad, dad has a partner, spouse, you're both high earners, you're both doing a lot, you're flying a lot, you're big decision makers. Let's say both parties have their own cards. Where would you start to make sure that both of those folks, both partners, are doing what they can to points max?
Two-Player Strategy And Benefits Tracking
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So for some context, I have 24 open credit card accounts right now between personal and business credit cards. I pay thousands of dollars every year in annual fees, and I'm totally okay with it because I know that I'm getting the value for all of those. So, first thing to do is to just go through all the benefits and see what's available, right? So if we're talking about an Amex Platinum, I know that I'm gonna get a $300 hotel credit twice a year. And so I want to make sure that I'm planning a trip or just a staycation where I can use that $300 credit for a hotel night. So one way I points max here is uh Chloe and I do a trip every year around Christmas where we do a staycation in Vegas at the four seasons, and we use that hotel credit because it also comes with a $150 property credit when you book through the Amex portal. And so Chloe gets a massage, and then you know, we hang out in the hotel room and just have a really relaxing uh two-day
Easy Big Win Air France Europe
SPEAKER_00trip. So that's the first thing is just to go through and make sure you're using all those, and then you know, Chloe has her credit cards as well, so we'll plan a hotel stay around her cards, but then that also comes with Uber credits. And so, you know, who doesn't love Uber Eats a couple times a year or a couple times a month, I should say, using that credit. A couple times a day. What? Yeah, exactly. So it's it's really just aligning on you know going through the benefits and make sure you're using them. And I I understand it's very hard to keep track of all the benefits. I'm actually building an app right now to help with this because I talk to people every single day who say the same thing. They're like, I just don't know what benefits I have. I don't know how to keep track of them. So I'm hoping to have that live soon. Um, and it'll be really helpful here because you'll just be able to see. You can choose all the cards you have, and then here's a list of all the benefits that come with them, and it'll tell you when you've used them and keep it super simple.
SPEAKER_01And how exciting is it that we live in an era of AI where you can just take the amazing knowledge you've amassed, Jordan, crystallize it, and turn it into an app and put it in people's hands in heck, a week of strong focus on this, right?
SPEAKER_00Like Yeah, it's an exciting time.
SPEAKER_01All right, let's play in the uppermost echelon of points. Let's say I'm Jordan and Chloe, and I have between the two of us enough credit cards to actually make an entire deck of cards. Do you have a Chase Business Inc. Cash? Uh go fish. Let's say that we want to talk about like two hacks that you would be doing. And that and these are the real secret sauce. Like we're we're getting inside of it, y'all. This is the real inside track from the master. What are one or two things that you would be doing if you were, as you are, at Points
The Hyatt Redemption Sweet Spot
SPEAKER_01Master?
SPEAKER_00So we've talked a lot about flights. I'm gonna get into one hotel chain that is the ultimate um redemption that most people don't know about. There are three major hotel chains in the game that people think of when you when you stay in a hotel. You have Marriott, you have Hilton, and you have Hyatt. G would be the fourth. Marriott and Hilton notoriously have the highest point redemption rates for their hotel rooms. So it doesn't always make sense to transfer your points over to there because you might be paying 100,000 points per night at a Marriott property or at a Hilton property. Now, there are there are ways around that. You get a fifth night free when you redeem on points, and there's a Hilton credit card that comes with a free night's day. But for the most part, you want to avoid using points for those days. There is one hotel chain where it makes all the sense in the world to use your points for, and that is Hyatt. And the only transfer partner to Hyatt is from Chase. So if you have Chase cards, if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Business Inc., you can transfer your points directly to Hyatt. And I'll tell you why that's a good thing. Hyatt have categories of their rooms from one to eight, and the price of those rooms is always going to be the same based on points. So a category eight hotel room is gonna be between 30 and 40,000 points per night based on the season and when you book it. Well, there are hotels out there like the Park Hyatt, Ondas, that are category eight hotels that you can book for 40,000 points a night. Think Park Hyatt Tokyo, Park Hyatt London. Some these are five-star luxury hotels that go for well over a thousand dollars a night. I just booked the Park Hyatt Zurich, which was twelve hundred a night for 40,000 points per night. So that's a phenomenal redemption. My Chloe and me and my two kids, we spent seven nights at the Park Hyatt in the Maldives. So we had our own private beach villa with a plunge pool where you know we got free breakfast included because we have status with Hyatt, and we're paying 40,000 points a night. And this is like a $3,000 a night room right on the front of the beach, walk out, dip the toes in the sand. And so if you have a massive stash of chase points, yes, you can still use them for airline redemptions, but you're gonna get incredible value when transferring transferring them over to Hyatt.
SPEAKER_01You hear it here first, folks. We had a great experience doing that with the uh Grand Hyatt in Kauai. Similarly, just a ridiculous discount where you're like push the button before the system realizes that this is some sort of mistake, but it wasn't, and we had an unbelievable stay at something like a 60% cost reduction. It was wild, just wild. I have, in in speaking to Kelly, my wife, who loves this game, I have two tricks to share. Uh one is one that she sourced, one is one for my own business travel days, which I wish that I had known Jordan. I wish that we didn't just meet in 2024. I wish that we had met in well, frankly, I wish we went to school together. That would have been amazing. But anytime earlier would have been great because then I would have understood this and gotten, honestly, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of value out of it. And that's what's at stake here, folks. This is probably over
Staples Gift Cards For 5X Points
SPEAKER_01the course of our lives, let's assume you're traveling for 20, 30, 40 years. This is millions of dollars if we invested intelligently. Anyway, trick number one. Most weekends, our Sunday, will look like this. Toddler wakes up, we have a great breakfast, we get out of the house, and we go to Staples. Why do we go to Staples? Well, Jordan's on his head. I'm guessing more than one audience member here is like, oh my God, I'm not the only one at Staples at nine o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. We don't just love their print-on-demand services, which are phenomenal. We're there for prepaid credit cards. Here's why. If you buy prepaid, it's MasterCard or Visa Card, there's always these promos. If you buy those on your Chase Business Inc. card or it's always something different. That tends to be the one that we use. You get 5x points on the purchase of that card. And now that doesn't seem like it matters that much until you realize that you can use those cards to pay for anything that a credit card could go to, including at places like Costco, which you may ordinarily only be getting nominal cash back on. The best thing though is to use those on things that you get nothing for. If you're going to be using a credit card that ordinarily gives you very, very little or nothing back, and then you're getting five X points on paying for your dental implants. You're getting five X points on your paying for your tax returns to be filed, like all of these. Things that you would never think you could extract value from. And that's where this game starts to escalate, where you're out here hunting alongside others who know how this works. Sometimes there's a there's a Black Friday-esque interaction of the spinning carousel of gift cards, but they limit the number that you can buy. Generally, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10. We call it between five and ten. Sometimes just nine. Let's say it's 200 bucks, though. Let's say that's 10. Every single weekend, that's $2,000 times five. So that's 10,000 points a weekend that you're just getting. And so over the course of the entire year, like there's the math, that's enough to actually take a pretty sweet vacation, especially if you're using Jordan tricks. So it takes some time and you have to kind of like manage it a little bit more. But boy, I'm so grateful to Kelly for doing the work to get good at that and understand how it works. Here's my trick.
Hotel Upgrades By Messaging Ahead
SPEAKER_01And this one's really an Amex or a chase sapphire, a reserve or preferred, whichever, whichever one is the equivalent to MX Platinum. When you book through MX Travel, you're gonna get 5X on certain price points on certain stays. And you're gonna want to look, I'll speak only in MX because that's the one I'm most familiar with. When you book on that 5x, you can also make sure to look for the fine hotels and resorts and various other collections. And when you see that, it's like blue highlight, there's going to be a ton of benefit that you get from that. That's not necessarily a hack. That's literally just looking at a screen and doing the thing that it says. Here's the hack. You almost always have a room upgrade as part of one of those things. And the fine text on that is if available. Well, if you, especially if it's one that you go to often, but if you call ahead or email ahead and talk to the front desk, oftentimes they're able to allocate up to a suite for you. And if you built a relationship with these folks, there's also that level of trust. And so there's no promises here, of course, but that stay that you were going for your company with, that you could have just gone through your travel portal, gone on your trip, and that would have been fine to stay in your king suite room. Instead, you're in a suite or stay in your king one bedroom, that is. You're staying in a suite instead. You are getting sometimes even a hundred, two hundred dollar room credit per stay. You can stack the stays, and so you end up with an unbelievable amount of extra value for just a few little tweaks, including staying in a much nicer room.
SPEAKER_00And that's a good point. I actually will message the hotel, whatever hotel I'm staying at. And I spend almost, you know, over a hundred nights every single year in hotels, and I will message the hotel before arrival every single time. And the reason for that is especially when you stay in a nicer hotel, they're looking for reasons to take care of you. They want to provide extra service and value to give you a five-star experience. And so if you're celebrating an anniversary, a birthday, whatever it is, let the hotel know beforehand. The concierge is going to do something special for you, right? And every hotel is different and they will have different levels of service they'll provide. But they hotels have a budget set aside for this stuff. And so if you're celebrating something, it can be anything, just let them know. And they will more than likely provide you an extra gift or something in the room when you arrive.
SPEAKER_01Don't ask, don't get, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And John, you you touched on one other point I wanted to dive further into quickly, and that was the 5x category, booking through Amex.
Optimize Spend Categories With Simple Tools
SPEAKER_00The those are some more advanced strategies, but something simple that everybody can do is to check spending categories on the cards you already have, or if you're applying for a new credit card, look at what those spending categories are. So we talked about the Capital One Venture X card earlier. Another reason I love that card is because you're getting two points per dollar on every single dollar you spend, no matter what it is. Whereas other cards like the MX Platinum, you're only getting one point per dollar on your everyday spend. But you get, you know, 5x on travel when booked directly and that sort of thing. And then, you know, when we talk about like an Amex gold, you're getting four points per dollar on all of your groceries, dining guests. And so these don't sound significant when you just mention it like that. But when you look at your total restaurant and grocery bill over the course of a year and then times that by four instead of by one, that's significant, right? And that makes a big difference. And so going through and doing an expense audit and making sure you're spending, using the right credit cards on all of your spend will earn you significantly more points throughout the course of the year, which then just turns into more free travel.
SPEAKER_01Man, two hacks to recommend on top of that. I've never loved Apple Pay more than I do now that we're really points maxing because we we actually, until we have Jordan's app, which is forthcoming, until we have Jordan's app, what we do have is a simple spreadsheet that I dropped into an AI tool, in this case, an artifact on Claude on a shared project. And I just talk to it and I say, I'm going to Starbucks. What card should I use? You should use your MX gold because it has four X points. And that that really adds up. One that we um, a recent one that we've that we've done that has been particularly helpful, going back to those prepaid cards, you can use those prepaid cards to buy shop cards at Costco. And we we just talked about this a little bit on that Costco episode. We were talking about that specific to buying gold there, but you can use those shop cards for anything. You can load them onto your app, and then you have yet again this unbelievably convenient thing. And if you're like Jordan and I and our co-founder Jeff, you probably spend a couple bucks at Costco. So the only thing better than cash back is cash back that also gives you 5x points, which is crazy. That's the dream, right? Absolutely. Nice. Well, we are in the very tail end of our episode here, and we all know what that means.
Hot Takes Spend Points Before Devaluations
SPEAKER_01It's time for Hot Dad's Hot Takes.
SPEAKER_00Here's my hot take. Anyone can take a nice vacation every single year with the right strategies. That includes anybody, if you're if you're spending $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month, it doesn't matter with the right strategies. If you have the right credit cards and you're earning the most points possible for your spend level and you know how to use those points and how to transfer those points, you can take a bucketless vacation for 80 to 90% off every single year. Man, that is a hot take in that it's hot.
SPEAKER_01My hot take is okay, let's make it hot. We'll go from just like a hack to actually make it a little spicy. So I strongly advocate for everybody listening to this, if you're currently points maxing or you're just about to get into this thing, no matter what, it is extremely critical that you set a points number and then you use that point number when you get there. Here's why. If you're silly like me and you have a whole bunch of points sitting there at various times, there's no interest gathering on those points. However, there are two factors that you need to think about. One, points get devalued sometimes. Like some of these loyalty programs will just say, hey, instead of 1.5 points, we're going to move to 0.2 points per point for uh travel. And that that's basically you losing a massive percentage of the value on there. But if you've already locked it in and you've made the purchase, that's not the case. You've already made the transaction. The second thing is this we're heading into an extremely volatile time with petroleum. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. We're months in at this point. The real shortages are gonna start affecting the global economy here, something like July. That's when real shortage happens as opposed to deficit. Once that happens, you better believe jet fuel. It's not gonna get cheaper. Anything else is not gonna get cheaper. If you've already bought the tickets and you use those points, then you have done so at what is functionally potentially a huge discount, especially if the price goes up and the value of the points were to get devalued. You could be looking at a five to 10x on your current point value versus what's going to happen. So set your point number, use it when you get there, enjoy the trip. Cancel it if you have to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a really good point, John. And I and one of the other beautiful things about booking a award trip with points, especially if you're booking a business class trip, is that it it is fully refundable. And so I think that's the motivation we all need right now to book a trip for you know anytime throughout this year, you know, before prices get too crazy. So let's all take a vacation. We deserve it.
SPEAKER_01Let's go. Maybe folks use your points to book travel out to one of our live events, which are coming up here soon, right? Like there's a there's a resolution. But certainly in the meantime, jump in, let's have a conversation in the Discord. Let's talk about how you're using points. There's probably about 5,000 hacks that we didn't talk about here that neither of us have even heard of. Let's share it. We'll aggregate these chats and we'll make sure that this is available for everybody through AI summary so that we can also learn from each other in a way that is condensed and effective.
Best And Hardest Destinations On Points
SPEAKER_01Before we coast to the finish line here, Jordan, let's talk about destinations. Is there anywhere that somebody who's really focusing on points should be thinking about avoiding or should be focusing on prioritizing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. There are definitely destinations that are tougher to get to on points. Australia and New Zealand, I love you both so much, but my gosh, it is difficult to fly in business class to you.
SPEAKER_01They gave us Bluey. What? Why would you what?
SPEAKER_00Maybe the Bluey people have some pull on the airlines. Come on, man. It is so hard though. Hey Bluey, you want us you want a partnership?
SPEAKER_01We we can have different dogs on this shirt, right? Like this could be banned.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah. So getting to Europe is the easiest on points right now. Now, some of my favorite destinations over there, I love Switzerland, and it is the most beautiful country in the world, in my opinion. It is also very expensive. And so be prepared for when you go, you will be spending a lot. But you know, you have things there like Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, which is a car free town, and there's waterfalls and mountains surrounding these beautiful mountain villages. The hiking is second to none. You're eating cheese fondue, overlooking just the most gorgeous scenery you've ever seen, beautiful train rides. So Switzerland is at the top of my bucket list, and then right next to it is Austria, which is equally as beautiful and cool, but it's also a little bit cheaper. So that's one of my hacks. I tell people, you know, if you want the Switzerland experience but don't want to spend that amount of money, you can go to Austria and have a very similar experience. And I'll give you one more on a different continent. Uh place I go every single year. The Japanese is written on my hat, but Japan. It is becoming very popular for tourists. And surprisingly, it hasn't diminished the value of it. It is just such an incredible destination, and there are so many flight deals to get out there. And so, you know, I primarily book in business class using points, but there are a lot of economy deals there too, if you just want to go and experience the place. You know, everything from last time I was there a couple months ago, I wrestled an actual sumo wrestler. And I I thought I would be able to move him and push him around. No, he picked me up like a ragdoll.
SPEAKER_01All right, what I'm writing down here is um, okay, Austria is the Kirkland signature Switzerland. Got it. And go to Japan and get thrown around like a ragdoll by a sumo wrestler. Got it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And then after you've been thrown around, just eat your weight in sushi because you've earned it at that point. You can ride a Mario Kart style go-kart through the streets of Tokyo. There's a restaurant I love where you it's all live seafood and you go and you catch your own fish, and then whatever you catch, the chef will cook it up for you however you want, or you can do sashimi. And there's just so much to do, man. The activities in Japan are endless. And so it's a destination I recommend for all levels of traveler too. If you've never left the country before, it's a perfect place to start. Or if you're a very experienced traveler, it's also a great place to go because there's so much to do.
SPEAKER_01Well, my my hunger for travel has now
Bluey Parenting Lessons And Closing
SPEAKER_01peaked. Quick shout out. We don't often call out other podcasts here, but there's one I'd love to recommend. We just said the word Bluey, and it's not just because we're going uh a little daddy-daughter morning to the Bluey experience here in Boston's par where we're gonna go play in Bluey's house and make Bluey slime with Camp Boston. Really intriguing. This will be our first time, so I'll report back. But there's a podcast called Two Bandits Watching Bluey that I recommend. It's these two dads who are who basically identify as bandit, which you all of us do if you've watched more than one episode of Bluey. And it's just just fantastic. It is one of my favorite podcasts that exist in the world that isn't about AI.
SPEAKER_00Next time your kids are watching Bluey, just listen in the background. The show isn't designed for kids, it's designed for adults. And watch it from that perspective. And that changed everything for me. When I was when I start watching it now and I'm like, oh my gosh, these lessons that they're teaching, they are for us as parents on how to be better parents and how to get creative in the activities we're doing with our kids. And so I'm a big fan. I love the show.
SPEAKER_01You know, more than one person has asked if we're gonna do a Bluey episode, and I think that that might need to be bumped up from a season two to a more urgent priority because I totally agree with you, Jordan. When I watch Bluey, first of all, it's very aspirational. Like not everybody has the time to say, you know what, I'm not going to work today. I'm gonna go play on Rug Island with my two kids in the backyard for literally the entire day. It is aspirational, but yeah, every single time I watch it, I'm like, I could be more fun. I could be more accessible, I could be more flexible, more willing to admit mistakes, like WWBD. What would Bandit do?
SPEAKER_00And the Aussie accents don't hurt either.
SPEAKER_01Well, so much more to say about Bluey. We'll touch on that in one of our next episodes. But speaking of which, that's time for us, and we will see y'all in the next episode.