The WAY to WOW Shows
Maximize Reward Points, Minimizing Spending
April 7, 2022
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:01] good afternoon everybody and welcome to the way to wow we have an incredible guest speaker today owen beanie and before i introduce owen i want to just give a recap last week we had an incredible guest kira talking about everything crypto we talked about metaverse we talked about nfts we talked about all the things you need to know about should i shouldn't i how does it work why do i need to know about this so if you missed last week's episode go to our youtube channel way to wow in fact you'll see my partner brian balansky with that interview

[0:36] and today i have the honor of having owen beanie on our show i had the honor of meeting him two years ago we met through linkedin that's right came fast friends and you also were able to help me personally with my credit card situation i had no idea that by using my regular banking system my atm for everything i was doing that i was doing it all wrong and i remember going i'm really going to give this guy all my statements to look at how embarrassing i said you know what though if you're going to a doctor you're going to talk about your health and you're just going to do it right we

[1:11] get naked for our doctor right and i you know being that i do financials i i'm in that world and if i'm going to help someone they've got to show it to me so i said i want to do it right i want to earn points i want to maximize this and do it wisely i'm always tired of hearing everybody else do it so needless to say i was so glad i got a lot to learn but more importantly his personality he's got the gift of gab he's got a great personality he's funny he's fun so get ready we're going to have a great time today we're going to learn a lot together if you have a notebook and a pen you definitely want to get that out because you'll probably

[1:47] want to take some notes and of course we'll give you his contact information so you can make a private time as well so bees uh owens all the way in la and um actually you will call you're closer to kevin i'm in valencia right now and so today we're going to learn about something called the points partner so let's start with how how is it that you came into this um idea that you want to be everything credit card points indeed indeed first of all good morning good afternoon or indeed good evening to you all wherever you are around the

[2:22] world uh for those that don't already know me my name is owen i am known as the points partner and what i do is i help individuals maximize their credit card benefits and i help people get as many credit card points and air miles as is mathematically possible for their lifestyle and then i teach people how to use said points efficiently in other words i put people on beds on planes for free that

[2:57] is what i do for a living my website the pointspartner.com is the number one independent website in america for credit card applications and more importantly approvals of those applications uh i do a bunch of public speaking media work i have a regular spot on good morning america talking to the nation about this very topic and i also have a bunch of online courses uh the the one that's making all the headlines at the moment is my fly free academy which is an online course that anyone can sit down and watch and learn

[3:33] how to do this stuff so how did i end up here talking to you guys about credit profiles credit scores credit cards points transfer partners beds on planes well the story goes like this um i lived in london as you can hear from my british accent i was originally from england but now live in the states and have done for many many years and my job was flying around the world every day of the week with photographers shooting celebrities and i picked up this skill set of using air miles and credit cards in order to upgrade and get better benefits throughout my travel experience and the

[4:10] more i got into it this kind of um necessity for sleeping on a plane became a hobby and a hobby became an obsession and an obsession has now become my business so i'm really i fill that gap between credit card companies and airlines and all of you uh i am to a certain degree the tinder or the bumble or the j-swipe uh of putting together the people and the products in order that they can maximize them and truly get the most out of them and i wanted to start by just giving a

[4:46] really brief overview of what i'm talking about i'm sure there's people listening right now thinking this guy does credit card points for a living where is there a living there what's going on so i'll simplify it the average american gets back under 1 of whatever they spend on their credit card in some form of benefit but if it's done correctly that can be as much as 10 and 10 saved is not the same as earning an extra 10 because this is a tax-free benefit so if you had to earn an extra 10

[5:22] you would actually have to earn near a 13 or 14 in order to get the difference there are three different benefits of credit cards there is cash back there is air miles and there is credit card points and they are not created equal i'll say that again they are not created equal they are meant demographically for different people and they are worth different amounts cashback is designed for low-income households if your household brings in less than 45 000 a year cash back

[5:58] respectfully is going to be your best option because you could do with some extra cash air miles are incredibly misleading they are not designed for the average american they are designed mathematically for business travelers and for those people that are doing the same routes week in week out on the same airline to see a loved one and credit card points are designed generically for everybody the other 85 90 percent of you and the reason for that is they are a transferable currency they can act as credit card

[6:33] points they can act as air miles and they can act as cash back as in when you see fit and the value of these three benefits are all different as well one percent cash back on a dollar that you spend is just one cent one air mile for a dollar that you spend can be worth as little as naught point six cents or as much as one point five cents depending on the airline or the hotel group that you're getting it with and one credit card point used badly is

[7:08] worth one cent but use the way that i teach people can be as much as seven cents that is right credit card points used efficiently and effectively are worth seven times the value of cashback wow there's there's a brief introduction of who what why and when wow i mean my mind is racing as to like how do i know which one to take part in and how do i when do i need to make a decision what i'm doing with my credit cards you know walk us through a typical client of yours okay and how i mean you're welcome to use me

[7:44] if you remember my situation but you know there are other people i'm sure you've helped since then it's been a long time walk me through a typical client from a to z and how you guide them to do whichever is you know the smartest way for them absolutely so i kind of break it down into two different categories either you're somebody who spends six thousand dollars a month or less or you spend more if you spend less you can just go ahead on my website watch my online course and there is hours of content there that will tell you what to do if you're somebody who spends six thousand dollars a month or more you're

[8:19] going to likely have business spending there and therefore there's a lot more detail to it and i need to get involved so what does that look like well the first thing i'll say is send me your real credit score and i'll explain why i said real there in a second and send me your last month's credit card statements as a pdf download for me to look at now real credit score if you are looking at your credit score online for free at creditkarma.com credit sesame credit wise credit journey inside your bank or credit card company that is not your

[8:54] real credit score that is what's called a vantage three that is not what any of the underwriters of any credit cards look at what they look at is a fico system so the first thing i'll do is probably send you a link so that you can go to either my fico or my score iq and download your real credit profile for me to look at when you apply for a credit card they don't look at your credit score that is right they don't look at your credit score your credit score is meant for us for humans to walk around and talk to each other about how trustworthy we are to lend money to when when you apply for credit they look at your credit profile which is the detail

[9:31] behind that okay and i'll explain the difference between score and profile in an analogy if you stand outside my house and you guess what type of furniture i've got in my living room that's my credit score okay if a creighton barrel specialist comes into my house with a magnifying glass and tells you what my couch is made of that is your credit profile it is the detail behind your lending behaviors okay is that that's what they look at so your score is irrelevant you can have an 850 credit score and still get denied for a credit card if you

[10:06] don't understand your profile i don't yeah i've never heard of this this is really cool yeah you guys are all paying attention to this and if we have time i'll dip into the five factors of credit and how that works and explain to you that the easy mistakes that a lot of people make i am renowned for having um you know high highbrow uh clientele that come to me and say i don't understand why my credit score is not perfect i pay my bill on time every month because your payment history only represents a third of your credit score okay it's your utilization which most people don't even

[10:41] understand that is the important part and we'll dabble into that a bit later on so somebody sends me their credit card statements what do i do i print them all out and i sit here with a calculator and i break down their day-to-day spend into categories and i'm specifically looking for these categories food drink gas marketing travel and office supplies those six places are opportunities where i can get them lots of points multiples for every dollar that they spend either two three

[11:17] four five six seven eight nine or ten times the amount of points in those places so once i've broken that down i can then start to pair credit cards with their spend that is going to get them the maximum amount of benefit for it now by the time i've done that i've got 25 credit cards that they need obviously that's not appropriate so then i'll pare them down under one roof so i'll bring them all under the american express blanket or under the capital one blanket or under the citibank blanket and try and make it work then i do what's called sequencing now this is something that

[11:52] all of you don't need to know but i do sequencing is the order of applications in order to not trigger any red flags with the banks the credit card companies or all the institutions i then have to pair that with meeting the sign up bonuses when you get a new credit card you spend a certain amount you get a big chunk of points i need to make sure that their organic spend is going to be able to hit all those bonuses and if they can't i have to build a schedule for when they apply for it in order to truly mathematically maximize all of the above wow once i've done that i then create a summary and i'll send it back to the

[12:28] client that says you're when you came to me you were getting for example 1.2 back in benefits of your spend i can change that to for example 5.2 and that equates to x amount of points per year and those points per year equates to x amount of free traveling dollars okay and assuming that you want to execute on the plan that i've laid out for you book a hour and a half zoom call with me and we are going to take you through those motions and those motions are broken down into three stages the first section is incoming points which

[13:03] is all about your credit profiles your credit scores credit cards going over your existing wallet how do i get rid of this credit card that's of no use to me how do i bring in the new one where do i go to get it what buttons do i click how do i link it what if it's personal spend business spend i don't want to mix the two up for my taxes all of that stuff incoming points how you gain these points the second section is outgoing points what to do with all these yummy points once you've got them and this is the real juice this is the magic sauce because if you don't understand how to use these points you are throwing them away okay and we'll come back to that in

[13:39] just a second and the last section i do is what i call home efficiency and optimization and what that is is a very fancy way of saying here's a bunch of other stuff i can help you with having looked at your credit card statement here here are other loyalty schemes uh apps for your phone websites to join that will that will bring you benefit either money points air miles that have nothing to do with your credit card spend right so that's the structure of of the sessions that i do um and i want to try and kind of focus in here

[14:15] on that second section the outgoing side anyone can go to my website and mess around with credit cards and get better get a better credit card for them than they've got now right will it be mathematically optimized the way that i do it probably not but it's good enough but it's the outgoing side where you're going to really struggle to do that without either watching my course or seeing me privately you know i've got 25 years of experience of studying this stuff and you can see all the gray hair that it's got me that's a lot of information that i had to consolidate over the years so i want to give an example um of what the

[14:50] difference makes right um excuse my british accent but i'm american i live here in los angeles let's pretend that i want to take a trip let's say i want to go to paris for the weekend okay and i want to go business class on a six foot lay flat bed if i want to buy that ticket it's gonna cost me about seven thousand dollars if i do it as a pay with points when you use your points within the travel section of any credit card company they are going to charge me 100 times the cost of said travel but in points so that seven thousand dollars

[15:26] will become seven hundred thousand points the third way of doing it is you can transfer your points out of the credit card company and into a frequent flyer program of any of the airlines or hotel groups and in the best case scenario that same flight that same bed on that same plane same company would cost me a hundred thousand points the difference there is seven fold and that's making the assumption that there isn't a bonus on right now there's a bonus from american express

[16:02] into british airways for forty percent so that hundred thousand would now be sixty thousand so you can see by by learning the skill set of how to connect these things move them at the right time and understand what it is that you're looking for right you can dramatically increase the value of your benefits now on the incoming side where you gain points if you can get the right credit cards you could be getting three four five times the amount of points i just gave you an example the outgoing side where we're going to get seven times points put those two together you're now

[16:38] getting 10 to 12 times the amount of free travel that you're getting now and that is probably the easiest way to explain who i am and what i do wow well i am just like swimming with with thoughts right now because i haven't used my points for anything yet now i did connect so i'm almost i guess a good case to to kind of share this with everyone when i met with owen you know he went through my my things my all my personal spending and my business spending and he said you know you're anyway having to buy all this stuff why

[17:14] don't you put on the credit card and here was my number one reason why i didn't want to use a credit card i was you know years ago in debt i had a lot of credit card debt 10 years ago and my number one fear is like i never want to be in that situation again so i never used credit cards well now that i was learning well it can actually benefit you as long as you're paying it down every month you're anyway spending it why not spend it there right i was one of those more than 6 000 a month but coming out of my bank account for what reason there was zero benefit for doing it the way i was doing it so i have all

[17:49] these points now sitting with american express i connected it you know when when owen talked about you're just gonna partner up with all these airlines i did all the due diligence right i now have everything connected but i've never made the transfer and i'm thinking well does that mean i need to be this traveler what if i'm not the traveler what if i don't have a plan to go somewhere right so what happens to all these points or should i just book a trip so i don't lose them right so what happens okay great great question so the first thing is you're not going to lose them credit card points as long as you have an account with that credit card company do not expire it is air miles

[18:26] that expire right so you you there's no rush to use these points bankum it's as good as your 401k right which is not good by the way but that's for another bad example bad example though it's as good as your it's as good as your crypto account right um so um yeah so that you you have no fear of using them okay so what's the best use of these points the reason that you always hear people talk about credit cards credit and travel is because travel is the best use of your points right you can get up to seven eight cents out of each point if you use it for international business class

[19:01] travel after that using it for domestic or coach travel you can still get three four cents out of each point hotels two to four at best and then cash back or money off your bill one so when you start to understand what you can use your points for and the values you can derive for them it really pushes you in a direction of travel every single time now i do know people that own large businesses that have millions of points they're never going to use that for travel because they have so many so they take cash back or they buy

[19:37] gift cards or they connect it to their amazon account and spend that way or can or use it in rite aid or walgreens cvs there's a thousand you can use your points for anything you want there is a way to do it the real question is what value are you getting for it when you do so um and i wanted to backtrack to something else you said a couple of minutes ago about the fear of using credit cards right you had you had some credit card debt a few years ago so the first thing i would say is unless you have the intention of paying off your credit card bill in full every single month please do not go to my website do not buy my course do not book

[20:14] me for a session do not phone me do not collect do not pass go to do not this is a game for financially responsible financially literate adults only um if you if you yeah if you if you do not pay your bill in full every month please don't get a credit card okay stick with your debit card thank you owen very important and well said yeah but for those people that are financially responsible and can pay it off on time in full there is a whole world of benefits out there and i want to pause for a second on travel because that's

[20:50] the big one but there's one other one that doesn't get discussed enough which is purchase protection when leah is spending money in the apple store on her debit card and she walks out of the store and drops the laptop on the floor she's she needs to go back in and buy that laptop again if you put it on a credit card you have purchase protection you make a phone call they put the money back on your card and you go get another laptop um so there's there's tremendous benefits outside of just points and air miles and cashback there is purchase protection insurances status right

[21:28] sometimes the the benefits of credit cards are intangible they are things that money can't buy right and that's where it starts to get interesting you always hear about these big gamblers in vegas that have the mgm jet that fly them out to go to vegas money can't buy you the mgm jet right it's status that gets you that and and you're a part of when you're when you have a credit card you're a part of essentially a corporate private members club okay and there are advantages and there are uh access to people and places that money can't buy you and that's a

[22:04] huge part of this and and the best example is the travel because yes yes you may be able to save seven thousand dollars on a business class ticket we weren't gonna pay seven thousand dollars to begin with who's paying that it's not it's not lea and it's not me right we would go and coach we wouldn't we wouldn't spend seven thousand dollars but having these points being able to transfer them gives us access to something that we would never get access to right and that's the that's the the untangible benefit of this stuff you get to do things that money can't buy you or if you had the money you wouldn't pay for it and that is like for me the

[22:41] the the shiny garnish or or the very nice you know asian soy marinade of this whole game i love that and i know kevin and i were talking and i know he has something that he'd love to ask you i'm going to ask kevin would you like to ask your question i would i think it ties into what you were just talking about owen so um as a member as an as an active duty member of the military i found out when i was on my last overseas posting to germany that i could get an american express platinum card

[23:16] and they will weigh the annual fee because under the service members something or other act they interpret that as not being able to charge that so i'm wondering if that works into your and if that works into your calculations and if does does that apply to other credit card companies as well or what can you tell tell us about that absolutely um you're poking a very small area of this world but you're absolutely correct uh active service members do not have to pay annual fees not just with american express but all major credit card companies um uh banks and

[23:53] institutions now there are some um unique um rules surrounding it so for example it doesn't apply for business credit cards only for personal credit cards um and you have to understand that just because it's free doesn't mean you should get it right so it still needs to be a part of a sequence where you can meet the sign up bonus and that it's bringing you day-to-day value right and also don't forget some of these credit card companies are giving you a hard pull inquiry every time you apply for a credit card now in the case of american express that's not the case american

[24:29] express is the only one that once you've had a true american express card and i'll explain what that means for one month one billing cycle there will be no more hardcore inquiries with american express so as i like to say you're free to roam around the cabin with american express because if you're active military and you've already got an amex card you can go get all the amex cards you want uh and go crazy have some fun um so that there are different slight differences as you move around i said real amex card let me explain what that means um if you have an amex card

[25:05] that is co-branded so it's perhaps with uh navy federal macy's hilton marriott bonvoy delta so on and so forth that is not a true amex card that is a hilton card that is backed by american express and therefore those rules might not necessarily apply to you and the easiest way to understand this is if you can log in on americanexpress.com you have a straight amex card if you can't you have a co-branded card and that rule about hardpool softball does not apply but as far as active military is concerned you're absolutely correct it

[25:41] does not apply to veterans active military only wow yeah that makes sense you know i'm thinking about you know talking about getting your visa your a lot of your atm cards are going to have a visa or a mastercard on them but it's really the bank um like bank of america that's issuing it you're not gonna you can't really log into visa and see your bank of america account there here's here's a couple of fun ones as you as you brought up uh visa mastercard and american express so first of all all american express cards start with a three all visa cards start with a four

[26:16] and all mastercards start with a five that's always a fun one that people like the second thing you need to know is visa is the most generic right so you can go anywhere in the world with a visa card and they will accept it uh mastercard close closely follows behind them amex is the most challenging of all of them it's great here in america but once you leave america it's very challenging um to use it and i want to explain to you why that's a good thing right you're thinking why is that a good thing i can't use my credit card the reason that it's not used everywhere is because they charge the merchant more

[26:51] which they then pass that on to you in points right so for example the american express rose gold card gives you four times points on all of your food and drink no one else is offering you that but that's because they're charging the merchant more and then hooking us up it's corporate mafia we're a part of their call they're called mafia so we get hooked up and that's kind of the easiest way to understand it so although ironically the benefit of having american express points is for your free travel and then when you travel you can't use it as much so you'll want to have a no foreign transaction fee

[27:26] visa in your wallet as well for when you actually go travel wow so so important to know and i remember asking you the same question regarding american express but even here in the u.s that a lot of people will say we don't take american express and i'm thinking to myself you do you just don't want to because it's too expensive for you and no matter how many times i say this is the only card i have they will not take it so you know i had understanding how to have my backup card you know speaking of the backup card i tend to use that for all my amazon purchases and is there an airline that that also can be linked to or is that strictly the

[28:02] american express so you you have the amazon prime visa signature reward card in gray okay it is the worst named credit card in the history of credit cards the worst what you said amazon the worst named credit card in history amazon prime visa signature reward card in gray no that is uh you get you only get amazon rewards which is amazing in itself fyi because it is listen five percent back on your amazon spend is really good for cashback but a single credit card point used correctly is worth seven percent

[28:38] remember right and there are cards that you can get two and there are cards that you can get three credit card points on amazon with so even now to use that card on amazon there is an argument that it's not mathematically efficient now the other place that that card gets you five percent is in whole foods because amazon owns wholesale that's right do not ever use that card in whole foods because there is other credit cards that gives you four times points in in whole foods because it's a supermarket so this listen i don't i don't want to overwhelm anyone that's what i how do you remember all this oh and i

[29:13] yeah it's my job i you know i get up i say i get up in the morning i don't get up in the morning i'm already up researching the latest and greatest benefits for all of you so that you don't have to stress with it right true true but here's my thought things are always changing so it feels like you know when i met with you these were the best and and then since then there's more and more and more it it can be like wait at what point do i have to stop applying for credit cards and when do i take these ones out of my wallet to only use these and these are already in my auto pay and these are already in my computer

[29:48] i love i love love love the question right nobody wants to be like me you don't want to spend all day long dealing with this stuff you want to get in watch my course or talk to me for a couple of hours get out and get to travel for free right so the short answer is listen if you want to be mathematically efficient then yes every three four months you should look at what's going on but you don't need to do that the important part is that right now here today that you can change your credit cards to the ones that are going to get you the most and more importantly than that learn how to use your points i'll say that again learn how to use your points because if you use it in their

[30:24] system you're throwing it away so either watch my online course or contact me privately and i'll teach you once you know that skill set you've you've taken care of 70 of what's important that won't change that's 70 percent leah you've got that now you know what you're doing and that works forever right yeah and i feel really good about that because the truth is i don't i hardly use my banking except for things that don't take credit perfect listen there is some good uses of debit cards right and i'll give you there's one obvious one and people always say like oh you must never use your debit card um

[31:00] i do i have one debit card and i do use them i'll tell you how i use it if i stay in a hotel and i go down to the bar and i have a couple of drinks and i get drunk and i go upstairs to my room and i forgot my room key at the bar you can use a debit card to jimmy the side of the door to open the door that is the only use of a debit card that i can think of uh well the only card that works yeah yeah um i was getting ready to listen to this amazing thing you can't do it with an amex card they're too thick because they're metal now yeah they are by the way they're

[31:36] heavy too yeah um i know uh kevin has another question oh god um so what about these i think they're actually called charge cards things like diners club and i mean i'm i'm i think i'm the oldest guy here right now and you know when i was a kid everybody wanted to have diners club it seemed like it was the thing to have right do those have any place in in our finances now what what do you think about those yeah so i want there's two separate things here one is diners club and the short answer is no it's defunct it's old um you know

[32:11] it's like saying uh elvis has left the building and now we've got justin bieber and beyonce um so now very much it's uh the big blue bank uh american express citibank and capital one like that's it and the reason that those four are the most important ones they're the ones that allow you to transfer the points out and create that extra value all the rest of them bank of america wells fargo all the rest of them don't allow you to do that and therefore the value is capped at one percent and it's it's it's mathematically wildly inefficient the other thing that you

[32:47] said there which i love that you mentioned this is charge card i get this all the time what's the difference between a charge card and a credit card okay really really important stuff here a credit card is you get a specific limit uh an amount an available credit that you can spend each month and it is designed that if you need to you can carry a balance and pay a relatively low interest for doing so it's always a bad idea to do that but in relative terms that's what they're designed for a charge card is the

[33:23] opposite there is no limit that does not mean you can go and buy houses and cars it means they don't tell you the limit it changes dynamically at midnight every night but you can check your spending power online to see if you need to buy something large and it is designed to be paid off in full every month and assuming that you do that you are rewarded with more points more air miles and more cash back for doing so okay if you do not do that you get punished horrifically with the worst interest you've ever seen in your life tell me how bad because i've had 29

[34:00] what are you talking about okay so you see what my face looks like now and i pay all my bills on time i'm going to show you what my face would look like if i didn't pay my charge cards on time that's all you need to know that's all you need to know oh my god owen you packed me up you know until i got into the industry that i'm in now i had no clue what i was doing wrong and and i thought the credit card companies love me they trust me well of course they did because here's what i was doing i was paying the minimum every month but i had this massive

[34:35] balance with a massive interest rate and i was like i'm fine i pay my bill on time and until i realized you know how they get out of that crazy stuff yeah yeah it's it listen once you go down that road it's it's a horrible path um i want to explain how credit card companies make money because i think that there's a huge misconception here people always assume that they want you to not pay your bill on time and you pay interest they actually make a relatively small amount of money uh from from interest because there are other people that just don't pay at all and that kind of

[35:10] counteracts it where they make their money is charging the merchant for every dollar that you swipe with them right and we'll use american express as the example if i go into rite aid and i buy some beauty products for leia not that she needs them and i and i swipe my credit card american express is going to charge her approximately sorry not her charge right aid approximately three percent okay that's where they make their money so that's why you see these sign up bonuses they want to get you to spend lots of money not borrow and not pay back or pay

[35:48] interest they want you to pay it on time then they can just keep going and make money when you screw up that path and you don't pay on time they now don't have the money to lend to someone else right if they're not giving it to you they're giving it to someone else to go use and that's how the process works so people always assume like these big banks are evil and they're predatory and that's not the case is that people aren't educated or responsible or financially literate to know how to use these products and that's really where i step in is that we weren't taught this in school how did we all grow up in in

[36:24] and i was taught latin and french but nobody taught me about credit how do i not how does how does every person in america not understand the difference between their credit profile their credit score or the five factors that make up your credit and what that means and what it looks like to borrow money and is that a good idea or a bad idea do you follow dave ramsey and you should never have have any debt whatsoever or do you follow the points partner and put everything on credit cards where is the financial literacy explaining to people the difference the pros the cons what you can do with it what you can't do with it um it's if there's any like one

[37:00] thing that i would wish for is for the government to step in and teach in schools taxes and credit like where's the education why is it that people need to go sorry i'm going off on a rant now you know no this is probably going i don't even know how perfect this is keep going because i have a lot to add okay it's financial literacy month and i am not going to shut up until the 31st um so you know i yes i specialize my business is very much credit cards points traveling for free but i do i actually have a course coming out um in about three or four months from now it's

[37:35] in editing um about all types of financial literacy right it is not just a case of credit and credit card points it's a case of taxes it's a case of 401ks cryptocurrencies uh insurance policies that you need to understand all of these things to better your life and i want to just quickly run through what the chronological order of the perfect student of mine does okay it starts with understanding financial literacy understanding your credit your credit score your credit profile and then restoring it back to a

[38:10] good shape right 700 and above as as the as most people would say at that point we then get you the right personal credit cards ones that are going to serve you on a day-to-day basis give you lots of points for your life and lots of yummy points cash back ear miles then you get non-bonus category spend cards so remember those six places food drink gas everything else there isn't those right so bills doctors lawyers dentists clothing everything else we're gonna get you credit cards just for those they're called non-bonus category spend cards then we get premium credit cards those

[38:46] are the flashy ones that come with free global entry pre-check lounges at airports upgraded statuses concierges on the phone all that stuff then you move to business credit now for anyone who's listening you do not need a business to have business credit cards i'll say that again you do not need to own a business you do not need to have an llc s corp or c corp to get business credit cards most of them you can apply for as a sole proprietor just as you with american express you will need a tax ein

[39:21] number but you do not need to open a business to get that you can go to irs.gov and in three minutes you can open up uh for free an ein number and get business credit cards now why am i talking about business credit cards business credit cards do not report your utilization back to the credit bureaus so that means that you are protecting your personal credit by using business credit cards okay it is absolutely imperative that people understand that so you build your credit up you move across the business credit you're protected for life you'll get the best rates on mortgages helocs

[39:56] auto loans whatever it is you want to do with your life and you're going to have tons of available credit and for every new entity every new tax ein number that you get you can get the same credit cards again and get even more points even more cash back even more air miles and even more available credit that you can invest into your business and leverage that credit okay leverage very important work so exactly leverage let's talk about it what does leverage mean it means you're going to borrow money and do something smart with it and make money now before you say but it's credit cards high interest all of these business credit cards give

[40:31] you 12 months interest free that means if you're smart and you've built up your personal credit you've moved across the business credit you're going to get massive credit lines we're talking 20 30 40 50 000 that you don't have to pay back for a year you can take that 50 000 and invest in your dreams and your future i don't care whether you want to rent houses on airbnb you want to buy and sell cars you want to do trucking it makes no difference what business you do it in but you can invest pretend you bought a new place you want to turn it around and you want to rent it out but it needs a new hvac system that's 30

[41:06] grand boom we can put that in this week rent it out pay the money back before the end of the year another great tip i'm getting i'm getting me fired up now i love that you're so excited yes so huge tip i'm going to drop a mad gem for all of you right now here it comes because you can move your available credit on your personal credit card across to a business credit card in one phone call so if you if you follow the path that i just gave you by the time you get to business credit cards you're gonna have two three hundred thousand dollars of available credit and you can move it all across the one credit card that doesn't report

[41:42] your utilization and invest in your future and your life get passive income and then use those points and go fly around the world on a bed on a plane laughing about it if i had a mic i would drop it i don't mic drop right here yeah and you know this is so valuable and i know it takes time to think okay so how much time do i need to dedicate to make all this happen every time is important right okay absolutely absolutely you do not need to dedicate your life to this to have to to live that life it starts with getting your personal credit in good

[42:17] shape if you if you're above 700 you're already in good shape if you're between 600 and 700 contact me there's options on my website for a 10-minute call talk to me for 10 minutes i'll tell you what you need to do buy yourself that won't cost you any money to get your score from six to seven hundred if you're below 600 you need a credit restorationist a credit specialist i can put you in touch with one i know how to do it but that's not what i want to spend my days doing right um so start by getting your credit in good shape then you can you know if you're somebody who spends up to five grand a month go on my website watch my

[42:52] course right by this time tomorrow night you'll be nodding your head with everything i'm saying right now because you'll understand it all okay if you're somebody who has a lot of business spend you're spending more than six grand a month you're spending 10 20 30 40 50 grand a month come see me privately and i'll i'll work it out for you it's gonna be gonna be a hot mess trying to do that math on your own i get the right get the right get the right credit cards and that's it right and then by the end of within six months you've got enough points you're flying for free and then later on you can come back and we can do business credit and we can do other things that that you want you want to push yourself

[43:27] forward for but the fundamental starting point is make sure you've got a good credit score and learn from me how to use your points those are the two kind of key pillars amazing i mean i i have a couple questions here um you know just the the credit score is important because you're you're basically going to be asking new institutions to to lend you credit line and you need that in pristine shape and i'll speaking from someone who who did not always have a good credit score and i remember getting my first car my and i needed to they called it a tier four car loan and i was like what's tier four

[44:03] basically ma'am you're paying a lot more money than someone else who would come in with good credit right so i built my way up and now my credit score is in the high age and it it took time but understanding maximization utilization um you know you want to be using a card not just having the card you know because you could have multiple cards you're not using them in fact um one thing you taught me oh and don't close any credit cards because that affects your credit negatively if you just go ahead and close the card because you're not using it that you want to just keep it open even if you're not

[44:38] using it that was a tip i remember you taught me um and that goes for lines of credit too let's say my husband he loves guitars and he has a collection of all types he stopped using his guitar center card and he just closed it he didn't realize and then i'm like wait you did what he's like oh no i didn't realize and yeah it affected him so when we bought our house recently we closed and and he was like i wonder why i'm like he said it was the guitar center i closed the card you know it's not a big deal but these are little things right so so there's probably people listening to this thinking wow this is interesting there's

[45:14] a lot here my first starting point is don't be overwhelmed right go go follow me on tick tock or instagram at the points partner everywhere and start listening to me in the back in the background when you flick when you flick through your friends right and you'll you'll catch a few of these gems right leah just dropped a huge one right which is don't ever ever close a credit card okay when you close a credit card it's gonna ding your credit pretty badly um if you'll have an annual fee on that credit card you can downgrade that card to one with no annual fee so it's not costing you

[45:49] anything and then later on when you get a new credit card that you do want you can move that available balance uh or available credit across and which will be of use to you right so these are just all little gems to make up what is going to be a beautiful necklace for you one day you don't you don't need you don't need to do it all at once right you don't need to right now go across to my website watch my course book a call with me like take it slow come and hang out with me i do a lot of public speaking follow me around um i do a lot of clubhouse rooms for those of you who are on clubhouse um you can you know every

[46:24] day i religiously every day put a reel on instagram with tips um so you know start to start to marinade your your life in with some of this information and slowly it starts to connect um i do want to cover one other thing that we let slip before i was going to talk about utilization right so when we talk about your credit uh the big one is your payment history obviously pay your bills on time but closely followed is your credit utilization and most people don't understand what that means what that is is the percentage of your available

[47:01] credit on your credit card that you use each month regardless of whether you paid it on time or not so if you have a credit card that has a thousand dollar limit and you spend 500 bucks a month you are at 50 percent utilization and the credit agencies really want to see you use less than 30 and if you can under 10 so if you're somebody who only has personal credit cards because you never bothered to get business credit cards and you spend a lot of money every month but you pay it off on time i guarantee you now your credit score is between 710

[47:37] and 742 you'll never get above that because your utilization is shot right so you need to get business credit cards or you need to get credit limit increases more likely business credit cards that don't report that utilization regardless of whether you're spending that money for business or personal and another massive misconception is you do not need to use personal credit cards for your personal life you can use them for business and the same the other way around and when it comes tax time i have some great tips inside my course on ways that you can separate it for example

[48:13] you can get additional cards authorized user cards which are which are totally free and you can use one for personal one for business that's what you taught me to do and we do it all the time now yeah you're one of my clients that's why i love it because came time to file my taxes for the past two years oh it was a breeze because i just showed my cpa my business stuff my personal stuff i knew that's not going to be the tax deduction stuff and it was just in one place as opposed to going through my bank statements with highlighters and oh thank you you really really helped me

[48:49] um just before we get back to your next question we've we've gone off on a tangent here on credit right which yeah because that's not what we met about exactly so i just want to tell you one quick thing travel wise that happened for me this week i just booked a trip for myself curiously enough to bogota in colombia and on the way home i've managed to find myself a bed on a plane from bogota back to los angeles in business class six foot lay flat bed caviar champagne lounge access the whole nine yards and it cost me 24 000 miles now i wanna that's about three thousand

[49:25] dollar flight right you use miles you mentioned miles not points well i move the points to become miles okay right so we talked remember the pyramid no one else who knows that they're going to i know they're very i have it drawn out in my notebook too right good so i use the pyramid and move my points from the credit card companies into an airline to create more value so i booked that for 24 000 air miles now just to give you an idea if you go on my website and get any credit card the sign up bonus on average is at least 60 000 points so you'd be able to get almost three of those that's almost in the way

[50:01] that i used it that's almost nine thousand dollars worth of free travel for some of those credit cards are free they don't even have annual fees so understanding this stuff you can really squeeze all the value out of it if you know what you're doing sorry continue with yeah we have some other questions from the audience but i i just i'm curious because i don't know if you have trained other people to do what you do and they work with you or for you or are you doing this on your own how do you have time to help so many people yeah so the scalability aspect of what i do is the vast majority of people take

[50:36] my online course it's the best at the risk of sounding salesy it's the best and cheapest online course out there this will change your life um and with a you know there's a discount discount i'll give a discount code for everyone which is fly f-l-y sounds easy to remember uh it's 299 bucks there's a money-back guarantee you don't like it you don't like my british mug click a button you can have your money back no problem um it's it's currently 86 videos and counting now i know that sounds overwhelming they're short videos so

[51:11] that you can find what you're looking for when you're doing it so if you want to say how do i connect to my how do i connect my airlines to my credit cards you can go straight to that and it's a two minute video uh there's about five six hours of solid content there some people get through it and binge watch it over a weekend other people take a couple of weeks to get through it i guarantee you this much two things one there is a money-back guarantee so if you don't like it you can have your money back i guarantee you a second thing which is it will change your life that much i guarantee you but you've got to watch it right so the majority of people just watch my online course now and i do um you know meeting people zoom

[51:48] calls tv work uh i'm flying to new york a lot for good morning america um podcasts and all that type of stuff and then the high-end clients for those people that spend a lot of money on their business in particular people that are buying uh merchandise or for people that are spending on marketing of their business um i in an hour and a half will get them hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free travel for the rest of their life so i i charge a lot of money for that if you just go on my website i'll charge you 1500 bucks for a session with me but for those people that i once i see their statements i end up telling

[52:24] them it's gonna cost them five ten fifteen grand to see me so for the average american that's not affordable so i created the course which is and that's kind of how my time is split i was kind of i'd say three quarters of my time is spent um doing outreach and marketing and educating and then a quarter of my time is actually seeing high-end clients amazing i'm also i'm also available to everyone with inside the course so within the course you can actually ask questions under each video and i normally get back to you within a couple of hours with you know a short form

[52:59] answer wow and oh and you know we're so much aligned with the financial literacy piece you know the reason i'm in this industry is because it's so broken only 21 states in the united states require a financial course before you graduate high school you have college students and the first thing that they see when they hit campus for the first time are tables with little you know umbrellas on top offering what credit cards and these are 18 year old kids going into debt they think oh i have money no you have a line of credit that you it's not your 40 000

[53:34] or 20 000 or 2000 right and and it's a disaster what's going on in america they don't teach you how to you know apply for a home loan they're not teaching you anything that's valuable that's like what you're teaching people i really think we need to talk about doing some classes together to teach about compound interest versus simple interest talking about the value of a credit score the value of understanding what happens when you put your money in the bank how do banks make money there's so much here that we have in connection you didn't even realize how passionate you are about the financial piece the literacy piece and that's really what i like to to share with

[54:09] people i know our time is limited kevin had a question and we're going to do a wrap up sure just real quickly when you were talking about credit utilization how does that work for a for an american express card where there's no stated credit limit right so yeah the short answer is they still report whether um they still report a percentage of what they gave you you just don't know what that is uh i must work as a general rule of thumb um when it comes to utilization is you you want to you don't want to bang

[54:44] the hell out of your personal cards that's all you need to know if you're somebody who's still building your credit getting under that 10 is going to be really important um if you're between kind of six and 700. once you're at 700 you can spend whatever you want on your personal credit cards but if you're spending if you're a high spender it's going to restrict your credit score and your profile and that's the perfect time to move into business credit wow i definitely want to learn more about that profile you mentioned but for the sake of time i want to thank everyone for coming and watching this rewatching this sending this to your friends and loved ones and thank you owen for your

[55:20] time this is so valuable we're all living in a time in which we need to make things easy quick fast right we're in that generation the microwave generation right everything now and so instant gratification so we're all using credit cards in fact you know on my watch i can i can literally do everything because you know apple pay is now on the watch on the phone so what cards are you carrying around with you get in front of owen you're gonna thank me you're gonna thank him and i want to thank you all stay tuned because next week we're taking a little hiatus but

[55:56] the week after on the 21st you get to sit with me and a very close friend of mine that i've known probably since we're both 10 years old and she is someone who changed my life on many levels and you're going to get to sit in and hear from her her name is java tomboski and i'm excited to share our story her story mainly is really really impactful have a phenomenal rest of your thursday take care