Hangouts On Air: 2020 Recession Credit Cards, Citi Premier w/ Travel on Points

hi good mmm hi everybody welcome tospill the tea this week on spill the tea I am joined by Sarah die Sarah tell usa little bit about yourself and where we can find you hey everyone I am theco-founder of travel on points we have a website and a Facebook group we'regeared towards helping people live what we call their top life so teachingpeople how to travel however they want to whatever works for them using pointsand miles to make it as inexpensive as possible okay so it's travel on pointsin the Facebook group and he'll us the website the website is traveled – on -points com it will be in these notes and across the screen so thank you so muchfor for coming and hanging out with me on this lovely day in the middle ofquarantine everybody please subscribe I need subscribers like you would notbelieve I got lots of views but nobody likes to subscribe to anything I thinkis they're afraid they're gonna get emails I'm not sending you any emailsdon't worry we're not doing data collection so just subscribe to mebecause it helps and give us a thumbs up because now we're trying to beat mark atthis point because marks will come out like a day before yours I think okayyeah so now we have to beat however many likes he has cuz you know to prettygirls vs.

me and marker clearly we should have more likes right absolutelyright okay so we're gonna have a little bit of fun today the whole goal here isto let everybody enjoy themselves and not be too serious because we'reinundated with like way too serious stuff and we just want to have some funright absolutely and so that is what Sarah is here to doI happen to know her from a couple of meetups and from some very inappropriatezooom drinking games and she's really awesome her husband Derek is awesomeokay so the first thing that I've been asking everybody istell me what show you would not be able to get through the pandemic without soof course we watch Tiger King of course would you think it's ridiculous it'stotally ridiculous and I wouldn't say that this show itself is what has got methrough quarantine but all of the means yesErrol Baskin memes Harald Baskin memes I mean if I hadn't watched it I wouldreally be in the dark the show itself was all that great but like the way thedirections that people are running with it is just I can't resist so I think I'dhave to say that one okay so i my friends travel fanboy and him from thebetter life there to casino podcasters they did a chat last week and somebodyasked the best question they asked them both if you had to be one of thecharacters in in Tiger King which one would you be so my question to you iswhich one would you be married to I know oh gosh I mean I guess is a female it'dbe pretty easy to say I Joe exotic freely because I don't think he'd beinterested so he can't be gonna be like so you're like I couldn't marry him buthe won't sleep with me so I'm good there no you have to pick some no no that'sthe easy way out there's really I think I would join the convent first well Iwill answer the question a lot about it since yeah and I think I would go withthe guy who took over Joe exotics farm Ohof the three okay only because he seemed to kind of like not be a total sociopathin the sense that like he wasn't the one who tried to get anybody killed and atthe end he kind of made me laugh when he was like but right afteryou have the baby you're gonna get your body back right and then they showed thepicture and like I could see myself doing that to my mate you identify withhim I identified with that one small piece okay whatever I definitely wouldbe Carol if I was any character because I'm a crazy dog rescue person you knowit's like what I do so I would be the crazy Carol bitch well there's kind of alack of interesting female characters in that show oh so right rightand I actually liked her because she speaks I mean it's hard to tell whethershe was a hero or not right right but if she if she's legit about the way shefeels about the animals and you know you could be as crazy as you want like Ialways say like if if Jose Simpson adopted a dog and went like adopt ownshop I'd be like he's a good person so that's just me well the love of animalsis definitely a sign of a good person absolutely yeah it means like you knowgood heart okay so this week a lot of interesting things have been happeningwith like credit cards miles and points and all that fun stuff that we love totalk about us miles and points nerds um so tell me like anything that's happenedthat you thought was like super noteworthy or were there any changesthat shocked you or do you think like everything is just like business asusual I think that there's it's definitely not business as usual put itthat way I think that a lot of the issuers are now a little bit moreconcerned about who they're giving credit cards to and as a result that'skind of impacting our points in miles space the you know on the blogger sideof things we're not seeing as many good incentives or any incentives at all tomarket certain cards to people who easily that's not what motivates us atravel on points and I'm sure the other bloggers that we deal with you know I'mgood editorial integrity but you just running the business side of it it'sdefinitely drawing up and I think what we're seeing is that issuers don't wantpeople who might be higher risk you know people could lose their jobs in thisenvironment or and take a cut in pay and sothe higher end cards aren't going to be getting the pushes that they were beforebecause it's great if you get the annual fee but not great if somebody defaultsso like the chase preferred just got 80, 000 points for 15, 000 spend $15, 000is a lot of money wait wasn't that a hundred it is a hundred you're rightcould the 80 is usually three or five right okay mm-hmm right it was five foureighty nine hundred like I would rather just take the 80 at that point so that Ican you know like put my efforts elsewhere right yeah yeah I mean ahundred thousand points is definitely the highest spin so it's something I youknow it's attractive you can't really and you know depending on your earningstrategy urs can be a little bit harder to earn right and it's a business cardwhich are usually meant for legitimate businesses right and so they tend tohave more expensive than your yeah I mean business expenses aside I mean Iguess your business could have a lot of expenses right now but generallyspeaking you think they might have less because they're kinda the same whereverthey can write huh so I think there's definitely changes in this space thatwe're gonna see over time but I think I think there's a shift generally inpeople's preferences people aren't as interested in business in travel cardsright now because they're worried about when they're gonna be able to travelagain mm-hmm so earning a whole bunch of points thatyou don't know when you're gonna be able to use and you know those of us thathave a earn and burn strategy where we want to earn our points and spend themas soon as we can if we don't know when we can spend we worry about devaluationso right it's it's a changing environment for sure it's veryinteresting you hit on some interesting like some of the things that I'm mostinterested in lately one of them is going to be blog coverageI'm so interested I wish for everybody who's listening out there I wishsomebody would do study or like just put together a stat sheet of the changes incredit card coverage based on blog I'm so curious because I feel like you knowI bougie I made the decision not to monetize until my base was like largeenough that I had like trust and obviously I realize that people who dothis for a living do not have that luxury you know um I know that you guyslike have jobs and so that's why that's not your first motive and what you doright um and so we're in the same boat there but I think a lot of people wholegitimately do this as their business of course they should be earning moneyand they're providing a huge service but sometimes I think even the unintentionalbias of you know which cards are giving you the highest like affiliate moneyright yeah um so I'm very interested to see how that works out and what changesas far as blog coverage like I feel like now consumers are gonna start to eitherget like the worst cards recommend to them ever because they're the only onesless than the affiliate program or some people will actually like give somehonest coverage to cards that they had really paid attention to before right soI cannot wait to see what happens there I'm like I'm like a little kid I'm likeI can't wait to see who we catch doing bad things I have ideas but you knowyeah I think there's definitely for those of us that are in this space orwho are even if you're not a blogger yourself but you're around enough youstart to have a little bit of a you know a sleuth perspective of Who am I goingto catch pushing a card on these it I know isn't the right car uh-huh theymust be getting some kind of kickback for and I think that you're smart tohave thought about the impact of your own reputation on keep on the ability toyou know to monetize or whether to monetize because I think that inherentlythere's sort of an underlying thing of well how do you make money doing thisand if you're making money you must be pushing things that you don't reallybelieve in I mean I don't think that's necessarily true but I think there'sdefinitely temptation there if you're notso I've spoken to like I know how they do things at miles to memories and Iknow it's all like aboveboard you know you couldn't find like a better group ofpeople who have like literally their best interests their readers bestinterests at heart but I've spoken to actually a lot of other bloggers and sonof them some some of them have really interesting strategies to sort of likesort of like a firewall strategy where they don't tell their their associatebloggers like the people who work for them what the affiliate links are andlike what the money is they put the links in after so that there's like zeroincentive to push certain cards which i think is a really interesting strategy Iwon't say who did that cuz I don't know if he would want me to talk about it butso I think that's kind of an interesting one and then I think others you know getthe the monthly round up and say here are the cards that are paying us 300bucks right everything about those yeah so it's some definitely differentstrategies um and then there was something else that you mentioned that Iwanted to talk about and now I don't even remember what it was but that'sokay because I have so many questions for you okay so most of us have not beenon a plane since like the beginning of March yeah but I know you have uh-huhhaven't you didn't you didn't you go with uh you know the guy who flies theplane your husband did you guys go somewhere you're like right after ourzoo meeting you guys were going somewhere we were going to we didn't doit oh you didn't go no I said well that was like my favorite thing that I wantedto talk about that like how cool is it that you get to just feel like hey guesswhat I'm a travel blogger and I'm gonna take myself somewhere cuz I fly a planeoh we go all the time I mean let's pretend you did go on Metro play justfor fun I was like she's gonna say yes and then you're like I don't know whatyou're talking about and I'm like I know I was there so Derek has thisa pilot's license and we own a fractional interest in a plane so with acouple of other guys and it's not glamorous really it's not it's notbougie although it might sound it if you get a pass it's like from the nineteensixties and they put a lot of sweat equity into it so they you know readit's on the interior or whatever so we we go on some local you know we flyaround we've got some friends that look we live in Maryland got some friendsthat live on the Eastern Shore that we like to go and visit and so flying overthe Chesapeake Bay instead of driving across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge awesomecould not be more jealous so it's it's pretty great it started partiallybecause Derek's family lives pretty far away from usand I really hate car trips I love to travel but I am NOT a road trip personyou get carsick no I just get bored I just don't like ityeah so he had expressed an interest in flying and I was like hey we can do thisand then we can fly to see your family instead of driving and at our time inhalf amazing and so he just decided like I'm gonna get my pilot's license or thatwas first well so he'd been talking about it and then his grandfather hadbeen a pilot just a private pilot had his license and Derek had a chance totalk to him a couple of years ago about all of his interest in flying basicallyand then he passed away and Derek got a small little inheritance but ended upbeing just enough money to pay for the classes to become a private pilot sowhen we were talking about it I was like hey you know this was something thatthis is a bond you had with your grandfather or something he really lovedto do and something you've always had an interest in and this is money that yougot from his estate why don't you honor his memory and go get your license sowell that's a really good wife everybody pay attention I would have been like Iwould have been like boots shoes it was one of those things where I don't knowat the time just felt right right and I'm reallyglad that he did it and it's been something that we both enjoy yeah youbenefited a little so yeah there are no opportunities that's okay I mean but youcan by yourself though we earned plenty of points we just can't really uh youknow use them to defray the cost as you know is the case with like everythinggood in life I think like I know like for our pets right like you guys have adog right yeah it's hard to find ways to like maximize the spending for them Iknow you know recently one of the admins of our site and writers for our blogMeredith she was talking about how they have their pet expenses are a hugeportion of their budget too and she was like we need to carve it maximizes thisyeah I'm really happy to see that Chuy at least is now on shopping portals yeahbecause I mean when I started in this game it was Petco or sometimes Pet Smartright but like I mean I don't know about you but my pets are way busier than I amthey don't sell their food at Petco or Petsmart oh yeahso you know we have to special order it from whoever and this but at leastChewie does have some of their stuff and they are now on there yeah yeah I likebasically you know we're never retiring because you can't really take a taxdeduction for the pets and I don't ever see those going down okay so talk to mea lot are you like a credit card expert person somewhat so you think you're likenot you think but like you're like a jack-of-all-trades in what we do likethe whole miles appoints fear how do you feel about the city changes so I don'tthink they're great I think it's gonna be hard for people to I don't know there's just cards thatthere are other parts that are better in the categories that they tried to makeit better in yeah and so I don't see people jumping at the premiere do youthink most people will get rid of it um possibly I could there's some good downgreat opportunities yes I mean if it over me I don't have a premiere if I didI think Derek does but I'm sure you guys probably have like one of each yeah wekind of balance and try not duplicate a lot I would I would downgrade to adouble cash yes it depends on if you have another thank you points earningcard you know there's some other variables there but yeah in general Idon't see the premiere as being that changes when they take that away I don'tI mean personally I already hate city oh I think their website is a nightmareoh it is yeah right and like I am NOT a transfer partner person unless I'm doingyou know like a huge flight like an aspirational flight all right so mything is finding good qualifying like good flights that earn a ton of milesand points on like qualified like elite qualifying miles mm-hmm that's what Ilike right so I tend to find like if I can find like a $3, 000 first-classflight from here to Europe I'm doing that with my like 1.

5 or my 35% back onFX okay so that I can get my status rightand my miles and points and all that nonsense right so like for me thetransfer partners are for the $30, 000 flightsthey're for like you know the Suites and the apartments things like that mm-hmmI don't need a city for that you know yeah so right now they're my go-to forlike whenever I really don't want to spend money on something I'm like ohjust use city points yeah but it's funny that you guys are both miles and pointspeople vary yeah there's a division of labor thoughI mean Derek really loves the redemption side he really geeks out over the awardcharts and finding the perfect thing and you know his expert flyer is all and inevery alert possible set and you know and then he's always like hey we'regonna go do this and I'm like no we're both points and miles people there'sdefinitely like we it's inefficient for us to both know everything there sirdefinitely both know but when it comes to the redemption side that's definitelyhis passion and I'm just like this is where I want to go and I know we havethe point so that's an interesting point he can't ever tell you that you don'tlike you know like oh we can't really get there cuz you're like no because wehave XY and Z miles right like I know we can make this work so yeah I mean it'sdefinitely the redemption side is his department the earn side is a little bitmore mine I'm you know he jokes that I'm player one so well that's an interestthat's an interesting one because I feel like player one I don't even know thatyou guys are player 1 player 2 I feel like you guys are both player 1 yeah Imean it I think we are but and yeah I I got us into my lesson points I was youknow there's a few you got you got you guys into it and she's the redemptiongeek yeah how did that happen he's just a little obsessive about things okayhe gets bitten by the bug there is no stopping him from learning and doing andbeing everything so he sounds like me I mean just a little bit of that in allof us dude yeah if you're interested in points and miles you kind of you knowentering the kool-aid and the next thing you know you're like yeah going tomeetups and geeking out over things that other people don't care about yeahbut I found the cards and I was like well at least at a minimum we can usethis to something we weren't traveling a whole lot more but we didn't really havethe time or the means to be able to do it the way we wanted to so you know Ifound the points guy of course and found him sign up for a chase garden I'm likeokay so I you know I started dabbling and then once he really got into itstarted joining some of the groups learning more it really kind of becamehis passion and I couldn't really slow down at that point I don't think I couldever even so I'm also like an expert flyer geek like Google flights is myfull-time job oh I did and every day I tell myself like you're limited to anhour of flight searching because then I open up mild calc and then I open uplike all of the partner charts and I'm like okaywell if I do six and I I don't know if you know any of this from like cuz youknow we hang out with mutual people and people like to make fun of me but I tooklike five flights to Europe to meet up with the group and I went through theMiddle East and then on the way home I was depressed because I had only takenthree flight three legs to get home so like if I go to like London let's sayI'm trying to go through Asia because because that's my happy place like Ijust want to be on as many flights as possible and I want to be earning asmany miles as possible and like talk to your status so I'm a little strange inthat respect but I don't think that I've ever convinced somebody from just likethe basics who wasn't you know already aware of the types of redemptions thatyou can do like get into miles and points like my best friend just stilltight send me a text yea or nay you know and I'm like no do this do this do thisright and then every once in a while somebody will shock me they'll be likeoh I was looking at God save the points she messaged me this a few weeks ago andI was like huh I was like like that's like I'm so impressed I'm sohappy you know and then I think they're gonna be there like right there with meand then they're just like no this is too much like just tell me what to doyeah so that's very interesting you must be very persuasivemaybe she's like yes now why might you be very persuasive do you happen to havea profession that I might know something about yeah I think we're all lawyers butI mean right Derek is too and I think you know there's a little Brian who's onour you know with us at travel on points is also a lawyer there's there's a bunchof us in this space I think we we deal with all the terms and conditions appealto us right yeah I would like to solve the pieces of the puzzle and figure outways to make things work that don't seem like they should be able to work youknow all that kind of stuff sort of appealsyou know what appeals to us about the law also feels to us about 8, 000 pointswhat kind of what do you do I do commercial real estate have a nichepractice doing mostly multi-family okay yeah it's a lot of dealing with thefederal government oh that sounds really fun especially now it's interesting um Ireally thought that the coronavirus was gonna impact my practice much more thanit has surprisingly people are still moving forward with their transactionsso I do a lot of like acquisitions and but it must be hard to follow throughwith transactions at the moment because of like kind of things being slowed downon the government's end yeah to a certain degree but I mean I've beenreally impressed with how the government's been responding they'vebeen really motivated to get things done and they don't want to be the slow pointI'm surprised I'm even saying that's yeah that's awesome it's been good job mm-hmm you know the freedom to kindof dabble in the points and miles and yeah you were it can take us is that theend goal in life I think it's it would take a lot okay to leave to changecareer paths shall we say there's the line baby I'm sorry guys there's a lotthat I really enjoy about what I do and um you know the compensation part isdefinitely a consideration I mean that's why people work right like the fact thatI decided not to work for profit for a year it's kind of insane you know like Iwas like I can't believe I'm doing this but I'm gonna do this because like umwhy not you know but um what about Derek is his ultimate goal to transition oryou guys are both like you both love your jobs and this is just like whatyou'd love to do yeah I mean this is just something that we're passionateabout and I think that you know with anything that you're passionate about itwould be great if you could find a way to monetize it mm-hmm you know make itall you do but I think especially like what we're seeing right now with the waythe coronavirus kind of came out of nowhere and is really impacting thisspace there's a greater degree of security in what we do and we we bothenjoy it we're both you know we're pretty good at it and we like the peoplethat we work with and work for so this is more this is something you know it'sa tricky balance and we really have two full-time jobs yeah way at times butyeah just from just from being an admin in the miles to memory Facebook group Iknow that it's so much work just to be like an occasional admin so I can'timagine actually having to run that and you know you must be like on Facebookall the time when you're not working which I mean me crazy yeah we try anddivide and conquer between us there's enough of us on our team that we passedthe torch when we have time let's shout out the team because you guys have somegreat people yeah we do have you got your admins yeah so um you know ofcourse Derek and I started in then our goodfriend Meredith um she's awesome she's been part of ourteam from the beginning and she's one of our best travel companions so oh that'snice yeah so she's great and then we've got um Brian surahs and sheerest liftmanboth of them are awesome you know them they're good people umthey both bring something different to the table Brian's a lawyer too so youknow that and political mind and keep right some of our posts that are alittle bit more in-depth on policies or procedures or what's changing like hejust wrote one for us about all the hotel coronavirus okay policies becausehe likes all the fun stuff I mean that's really good to know you know kind oftakes a while to digest yeah he's also working on kind of our own version of aguidebook for two points and miles are you gonna be the e-book people pleasedon't do it nah you're allowed to put out an e-book but you cannot refer to itevery single time that you make a bomb No so what happens is people want toknow where to start right right what do I dowhere do I start and instead of giving them a list of like the 17 blog poststhat we have that you can read and order that questions people want a 1-pointplace it isn't click click click click click so yes we're going to we're goingto roll out something but it's not going to be please see the e-book and timeanybody asks us a question it's just gonna if you want to have a resource youwant to read through kind of familiarize yourself from the beginning here's whereyou can find it perfect I mean that sounds wonderfulyeah and of course like you know with beginners like they have to startsomewhere yeah and when they start on like onesite and they don't know about the rest of the world they're looking to thatsite right yeah for all of their stuff right oh like they really don't knowthey don't know what they don't know so I can totally see why you would want todo that I think it's an awesome idea it just kills me when like you knowsomebody will be like as somebody in our space I can think of a couple of peoplewho are like oh I wrote a book I'm like yeah kind of right I'd like me say amovie star you know it's not meant to be the only you know waits Bible it's agreat place to start and anytime you have beginners they need something likethat because they don't know where else to lookright go like that's why there can't just be every site kind of has to havetheir own beginner's guide exam you know otherwise like you could lead people inthe wrong direction and yeah so I love the idea um okay so bare naked ladies onin five minutes whoa yes and it's bare naked ladies liveand last week no two weeks ago he played a song that I've never seen him playbefore because I asked him to play it and I lost my freaking mindI like I cried I cried yeah also I was supposed to meet them today in real lifeyeah we're maybe 11 through this wall today 10 oh I was supposed to meet themto eighth and the 11th of yeah in Europe I booked a trip just for myself firstclass across the pond just to go to three Barenaked Ladies concerts and comehome and I finally did it and I bought the upgrade and I bought the upgrade todo the meet and greet and I was finally gonna meet them after having likefollowed them around the world for the last 20 years and yeah it's like anywaycrushed my soul but they're coming to New York in August and they'rerescheduling the whatever and the tickets are still good oh good yeah soI'll be able to meet them just later but so I want to quickly do our game surewould you prefer the bet or the plead the fifth I say please plead the fifthit's more fun okay and then we can do a bet when Derek comes on and we'll justdo double or nothing okay all right so you get have you ever seen watch whathappens live with Andy Cohen no it's okay if you say no okay so here are therules of the game you get three questions they're spicy and you getto fit to one of the questions okay got itand I know you don't believe me because otherwise okay so your first question isshag marry kill yeah this one's fun um I would not pleadthe fits of this one if I were you okay how do we do it on the next one if youwere going to okay do you want guys or girls guys okay hmmall right let's go with Greg from frequent miler trying to think of aboarding area person that I haven't used yet Gary left oh I did use him that'sokay Greg from frickin miler Gary laughs or Shaun Coomer shag marry kill lane to berationale to this right you can or not up to you okay it's so fun though tohear like what people you know the the rationale or not Russian L that peopleend up picking for these I don't know I can't kill Sean so I guess I'm gonnamarry him okay I don't know who I'm gonna kill or shit well I feel like shagis easier because kill is just the default right thank youyeah you don't actually you know but like you have to pick somebody to checkI guess I'm shagging Greg okay okay awesome okay now this one I'dprobably plead the fifth on because the next one's easy all righttell me what blog or blogger you can't stand is a pandemic all on their ownsome people want to answer the question there's not so much there's no one Ifeel that way about okay so you're gonna plead the fifth yeah okay and then thelast question is the opposite who's your favorite who do you think is the bestwho gives you the biggest run for your money as best blogger of all time well Imarried him already didn't I okay but you're not allowed to pick your husbandshe's like I told I told mark you wasn't last pick his boss so other then wellaside from the one I married in real life there's read on your show with yourlast question Oh John Coomer oh I'll go with miles two memories just the wholeteam can I think loved it oh yes you can absolutely whole blog yeah I thinkthat's a great answer and I couldn't agree with you moreawesome all right so again tell us where we can find you sure so you can find uson Facebook in our Facebook group called travel on points okay links will be inme in the description yep and you can alsofind us on the internet our blog is travel – on – points calm you'll linkthat for us – and we would love to chat with anybody we we love helping peoplelive their top life and figure out how to get where they want to go and letpoint some I'll take him there yes and I can attest that these people arefreaking awesome I love them and if you ever see them at a meet up or anythinggo talk to them and maybe even go because they'll be there yeah okay soSarah thank you so much for coming thank you for having me.