GO SOMEWHERE - Colin Stroud

0:00 Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner, and senior vice president and financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome, everybody. I'm Chris Boyd. I'm here with a full team of people. We're all excited for our next guest.

0:40 I'm joined, of course, with Jeff Perry, our regular co-host here, as well as Ross Ball is with us, and Kristen Boyd, all of us from Wealth Enhancement, the AMR team. Thanks all of you for being here. Kristen is a rarity on our show, but she loves to travel, and who doesn't love to travel? And that's what our topic is about, go somewhere, as our guest has coined the phrase. And so our guest is Colin Strout. Colin, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk travel, everyone's favorite subject. Everyone's favorite. Well, Kristen's especially, which is why I asked her to join us. Kristen, start us off talking about why is this the topic of choice?

1:25 Hi, Colin. Really excited to hear what you have to say. When I turned 50, I declared it my decade of travel. I am very much interested in going somewhere, quote your website, so I would love to hear any tricks and tips that you could offer to get me to all the places. And who doesn't love to go? You're all about Europe. I do believe Europe is magical for sure, but I am certainly open. My life goal is to hit the seven continents. So any guidance to get me there at a lesser cost would be fabulous. Yeah, let's do it. So Colin, tell us a little bit about your services, your website, your tips and tricks.

2:10 Yeah, all the tips and tricks. Yeah, for sure. Well, just to start, kind of general, I mean, I got into credit card points the same way that a lot of people do, which is like, travel just feels kind of expensive. I don't quite know how to afford that. And I was recently graduated from college, didn't have much money, new baby. I was like, oh, this, I don't know how I'm going to go anywhere. And so it just kind of went down that rabbit hole. And then I realized as I kind of started optimizing myself, so many people don't get this at all, or think they get it. And there's a whole nother level. There's a whole deeper layer of how this credit card points and travel rewards stuff works. And so I just kind of started sharing about it online on LinkedIn.

2:50 And some people liked it. And, and then I was like, I wonder, you know, I'm helping people save so much money here, maybe I could charge them to help. And that's kind of how my business GoSomeWhere started. And so it's really just an education business. It's a consulting business. So people pay my consulting fee to get on a call with me and for me to talk to them for me to teach them how this stuff works, help them build a credit card strategy. And then I also do trip planning. So someone might come to me with 500 ,000 American Express points, you'd be shocked how many people have way more than that. Just this morning, I had three people message me with over a million points. So that may not be any of our listeners. But there are people all over the place, who are just sitting on these points.

3:32 They might be business owners, or what I see a lot there. They're literally just points hoarders. They've been had they had the card since 2005. And they haven't touched it. And it's kind of funny that people just don't use them because they don't understand them. So that's my goal is like, hey, let me help people understand how this point stuff works. It's confusing. Intentionally, you know, these banks do not do not make it easy to figure this stuff out. But I think for most people, just in a little bit of time, I can, I can, I can really make it easy for them. And like I said, I do the trip planning. So I'll just kind of do all the work for someone and I'll, they'll get on a call and I'll say, click this, click this, click this and, and help them book something get real easy. There's a million things we could talk about.

4:13 But that's kind of like the general, how I'm here, why I'm here, how I got started in this. And I really, really enjoy I've got some really unlocked some crazy trips for people, which is super gratifying for me. Well, we're financial planners. And of course, people love to travel as one of their big life objectives. So this is I think, right on plan, you wanted to say something. I was going to ask, do you recommend having being dedicated to one particular card, spreading it around? Like, for example, we have, you know, our Amex, which is connected to Delta, we have a JetBlue card, we have a Hilton card. And when we go to pay for something, we go, well, which one should we use? Well, we haven't used the Hilton in a while. And you got that other one.

4:54 The Chase one, the Sapphire one. So do you recommend being loyal to one card or, or spreading it out? You know? Yeah, that's, it's so case by case, that can be really hard. Like, what I think I've realized that some of these programs or cards are just really not that good. You kind of have to look into it and study it to see which ones are. But what I've noticed is that if you're trying to hyper optimize any of these programs, whether it's Hilton, JetBlue, fill in the blank, you can like, you know, there's, there's an opportunity with Hilton, for example, when you get their Aspire card, that really expensive one they have, you can earn, you can be earning 34 points per dollar at Hilton properties, because you get this diamond status bonus plus the 14 points per dollar you get, you just having the card.

5:39 So there's all kinds of ways like that's just a fun example of like, 34 points per dollar spent is very good for someone who travels at Hilton a lot. But for some people like me, I'm not traveling for business. So having that card focusing on Hilton is pretty irrelevant, because I don't have a good way of earning. For most people. And I think this is a, I get this is a, this is like one of my biggest messages. For most people, I think these flexible currency cards make the most sense. When I say that, I mean, like you guys mentioned that Chase Sapphire preferred, you're not earning Hilton points with that card, you're not earning JetBlue miles or whatever they call them, you're earning Chase ultimate rewards points. Or for example, the Amex gold card, you're earning Amex membership rewards points or Capital One, you're earning Capital One venture miles.

6:27 These are the proprietary currencies of the banks. And it sounds like why would I want? Like, what do I do with the Chase points that's not tied to the airline or hotel I want? Well, there's two ways to use them. One, there's a travel portal that looks just like Expedia or hotels.com or any kind of these any one of these third party agencies. And you can book travel through there, the value is okay. But where things get really crazy, and if anyone's, you know, dove into some points and miles blogs and YouTube videos, and you know, you see stuff on Instagram or whatever, or people like me talking about this stuff, the really crazy unlock is going to be having a bunch of bank points, like again, flexible bank points like that Chase card you guys have, or lots of people have that car Chase points, and then transferring them to one of maybe 15 to 18 different airline or hotel programs they have.

7:20 And what happens sometimes not every time is there's this, there's this arbitrage opportunity, where the cash price of the product, a flight or hotel could be, let's say $1,000. But for whatever reason, the points price could be 20 or 30,000 points. So when you hear those numbers, think 200 or 300 bucks worth of points for a $1,000 product. I'll just say this, like, there's a lot of that can get complicated to understand. But like, all you all people should know is that is possible. And people like me and my clients are getting deals like that every single day. So that's possible, then we really would not want to settle for, let's say, Delta SkyMiles, where you'll never get something like that with Delta SkyMiles, unless there's kind of a, I guess you shouldn't say never there's there's chances, but very rarely, with Delta, for example, you'll get that.

8:13 Why? Because the points, Delta SkyMiles are dynamically priced. So as the cash price goes up, the points price goes up. We want to try and find opportunities, programs, things where the cash price can go all over the place up down, but the points price might stay the same. For example, programs that price based on distance, not on the cash price. So if we if we find stuff like that, there's these arbitrage opportunities where the points priced, I mean, the cash price can be way, way crazy high, like $5,000 for a business class flight. But the points price, I'm not kidding, could be 70,000.700 bucks worth of points for a $5,000 flight.

8:54 That is 100% a real thing that people get. And I think when I realized I was like, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. So the easiest way to unlock all that is going to be is going to be to start building up flexible bank points. It works great. Amex, Capital One, Chase would probably be my favorite. Citi and Wells Fargo also have programs. I just don't find them as compelling. But yeah, I mean, you can, you know, you can go spend hours talking about like, okay, which car, you know, Amex has these, Chase has these, which one makes more sense for me, you'd have to kind of, you know, assess what are your travel interests? How do you spend your money? Do you spend a bunch of money on dining? No, you don't spend any money on dining. Do you have seven kids and spend a bunch of money on groceries, other cards might, you know, make sense for different things.

9:38 That's something to look into. And I can share with you guys to put in the show notes. I do have a choosing a travel credit card free guide that I kind of have seven questions to ask before choosing your next travel credit card. So hopefully that can help. Hopefully that answers the question there. It's a, there's a lot there, but it's, it's really hard to go wrong earning these flexible points. Cause if you're stuck with JetBlue and JetBlue is awesome, but like, that's all you have. That's not ideal. Chase transfers at a one-to-one ratio to JetBlue. So why would I only get JetBlue miles? If I could earn chase points, maybe I could literally be earning more points per dollar spent with my chase car than with JetBlue.

10:19 And if I want to fly JetBlue, I'll just send it over to JetBlue, but I can also send those points to United. I can also send them to Southwest. I can also send them to Marriott and IHG and Hyatt and all these different brands. It's really, really nice to have those flexible currency. Very interesting. How do you suggest maxing? You talk about people having million, a million points. How do you suggest maximizing? I mean, I, I, I pay my credit cards every month, but I do, I have started just charging everything, you know, putting everything through my chase card, my groceries, my clothing, whatever I buy. So how else could I maximize my points? On the earning side, you're saying?

11:00 Yes. Yeah. So there's, well, I guess I could say two things. There's the maximizing on the earning side and on the redemption side. For normal people, I'll say normal, all normal people, but I'd say non-normal people are people who spend $200,000 a month on their business credit card. I'm now trying to talk to those people. That's part of my business model is kind of going after those people, but also part of my business model is just helping the masses learn. And so that's, so I won't talk to the people who spend $200,000 a month. If that's you, we should talk individually. You're in a whole different category and world there. For a normal person, let's say you have a monthly credit card budget and you spend on the credit card, maybe four to 8 ,000 a month. You're just kind of a normal middle-class person.

11:43 So with, with that, there's going to be a bunch of things you can do. So one, if you want to get, to get a little complicated, you can get a bunch of different credit cards for different things. For example, your Chase card earns three points per dollar on dining. Awesome. But it earns one point per dollar on pretty much everything else. So if you picked up, for example, the Amex gold card, that earns 4X on groceries. So you just seriously, you know, four times how much you're earning on groceries, because if you're spending that Chase card, you're getting one point per dollar. So you can do that game and have like five credit cards for the different categories you're spending. I'll say for a lot of people, that just becomes too much in their head and they don't like it.

12:24 But if you want to hyper optimize, then yes, that would be a way to do it. There's other things that a lot of people aren't aware of inside of your bank. So if you log into Chase right now and look at your bank, there's these different offers in their shopping portals. So sometimes you'll see stuff like, excuse me, earn 7X points per dollar at Home Depot. And it just shows up in the shopping portal. And you guys are about to go buy a new fridge and dishwasher for your kitchen. So instead of earning one point per dollar, because you activated the shopping portal code or whatever it is, you might earn seven points per dollar on those $2,000 or maybe more. I don't even know how much fridge and dishwasher costs, but you might earn more, like seven times more points by using those shopping portals.

13:11 So that's really popular. Rakuten is a very, very popular shopping portal that actually allows you to earn Amex points instead of cash back. It doesn't work with Chase or any of the other banks, but Rakuten, if you want to Google something, look up earning Amex points with Rakuten. There's a whole world there that you can earn a ton of points because you basically just get these spending multipliers on stuff you're already buying, like your new dishwasher or whatever. So there's a lot there. Another great thing to earn more points would be referrals. So Chase lets you earn about, I think 100,000 points per year in referral bonuses to your friends and family. So if you are taking cool trips, it's really easy to say, hey, you guys, you should get this card like me and do this.

13:55 And so I've earned a lot of points that way. But I'll say for a lot of people, if you're just a normal person spending, I'll just say $70,000 a year, there is a limit. It's not you can earn. You can't earn a million points a year doing that. I'm not going to sugar coat it and say you can. So where the real magic comes is on the redemption side, not the earning side. By redemption side, I mean, how do I use these points? Most of the time, your points have a fixed value of one penny, one cent per point. So if you earn 100,000 points a year, awesome. That's $1,000 in travel. Great. There are ways, though, to get $5,000 in travel from those 100,000 points.

14:37 Most people are not getting that. So that's really the gap between you doing that is simply a little bit of education. And that's really what I try to help people with. And so what it is, is understanding how to transfer points to partners and finding these deals where you might get $5,000 worth of travel from 100,000 points. Again, most people are getting $1,000 of travel from 100,000 points. That's the potential. And it's out there. So just to give you one practical example, so people's heads aren't spending too much. I just went to the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point. It's a really beautiful hotel right outside of in Bonita Springs, Florida.

15:18 It's not on the beach, but they've got a little private boat that takes you there, which is kind of awesome. So that hotel, because it was spring break, I just got back like two weeks ago, was priced at $1,200 per night. Very expensive. Is that actually worth that much money? I don't know. People were paying it because it was sold out. So it's priced really high. I think typically it's priced more like $700, $900, $600. Anyway, but whatever the case, very nice hotel. I can't afford $700 a night anyway. A lot of people cannot. The points price with World of Hyatt for that $1,200 a night hotel was 21 ,000 points per night. Okay? So when you hear that number, think $210 worth of points for a $1,200 night hotel.

16:03 So if you stay five nights there, the math is really, really good. That's the spread. That's the arbitrage we're looking for. That was a little bit of an outlandish example, but it's one I've booked. I've got receipts. I've posted multiple things, like showing my exact receipts of this. It's a hundred percent real. I know people doing stuff like this and more every day. And so that's what we want. Okay. The question to a lot of people is, well, how did you earn World of Hyatt points? Do I have to have the World of Hyatt credit card? No, no, no, no. I have Chase points and Chase transfers in a one-to-one ratio to World of Hyatt. So had I tried to book that to the Chase travel portal, because it's $1,200 a night, it would be a hundred thousand points per night.

16:44 But I transferred the points over to World of Hyatt. And World of Hyatt just has a really, really good program. There are many good programs. World of Hyatt's one of my favorite. And they just happened for that night to be charging 21,000 points per night. So that's what the potential is. And that's where for the normal people, the money's going to be made on the redemption. The earning has diminishing returns because it takes a lot of time and it's confusing and it's annoying. You can optimize, but for most people, they're going to win easier on the redemption side. Hope that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. So for my Hilton card, every once in a while, I get an offer to buy points.

17:27 Oh yeah. Is that worth doing? That's a great question. That's super common. Yeah. The thing I tell, always tell people is you would only want to buy points when you have a redemption in mind and you can make a spread. So it's all about the math. So I mentioned cents per point. If anyone is confused about that, go ahead and Google right now as you're listening, cents per point calculator. What that is, there's all these online calculators. It's a way to measure the value of your points. So if I spend a hundred thousand points on a $1,000 flight, I'm getting one cent per point. Hopefully that makes sense. If I spend 50,000 points on a $1,000 flight, I'm getting two cents per point.

18:11 That's what we want is two cents or better or something like that. So let's say for Hilton, Hilton is running a promotion right now. You can buy points for about 0.5 cents per point. It's not exactly that. I think it's about that. So that's awesome. So you're buying at 0.5 cents per point. So the question is, is you get that email, should I buy points? Well, can I redeem my points for more than that? If I can't, then it would be crazy to buy points because I could just pay cash and get a better deal. But here's an example, Los Cabos. So the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos, they say it's one of the best resorts in Mexico. I haven't personally been. I know a ton of people who have. A cool thing about that resort is every single room, even the standard rooms have like a plunge pool, like one of those little private pools in your room.

18:57 So this is a very expensive place. You can easily though get about 1.5 cents per point from your Hilton points at that hotel. So if that's the case and I got one tab that has buy points for 0 .5 cents per point on my computer, the other tab, it's the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos where I can do the math and clearly see I'd be getting 1.5 cents per point. It's a no brainer. Of course, you should buy points and then use them at that hotel because that math is really, really good. There's a huge gap there. Other times though, you might buy points at 0.5 cents per point and then redeem them for, I don't know, the Hilton Garden Inn in Boston or whatever for 0.6 cents per point.

19:42 That's not that good. You're not getting a spread. So it's not really worth you spending that money. And I'd probably just pay cash for the hotel. So yeah. So the key there is only buy points with a redemption in mind. You should have the redemption pulled up on a tab, like looking at it, doing the math, making sure the math all works because otherwise you're probably making a mistake buying points and you're just giving them too much money. And that's probably more common. When they send that offer along, it's like, should I be doing that? Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is a limit on how many you can buy a year. I actually can't remember off the top of my head, but that's something else to keep in mind. You can't just buy 10 million points or something if you have the money for that. So there are limits.

20:24 What about, I have a quick question. What about tracking the different points that you get? I don't get a lot of points from all the different airlines I have memberships with or even hotels, but do you, like, I assume if you have multiple credit cards, it's like a lot to track everything and what do I exchange? How do I manage that? Do you have any tools that you use to keep track or you kind of keep it streamlined on one or two credit cards? Yeah, I try and keep my stuff pretty simple. But yeah, I know there are people out there, other people kind of like me who sell and or share like free tracking, like Excel sheets. Honestly, for me, I've just kept it kind of on in my head and in my different accounts.

21:04 I keep things pretty simple. I focus on Chase Points, Capital One Miles and American Airlines. I could explain that more if you guys wanted to, but I always know exactly how many I have because I also think about this every day. So I know I have it all in my head and I don't have that many credit cards. But for a lot of people, it would make a lot of sense. If you're above maybe four credit cards and you're starting to make this your hobby, get more complex here. Yes, you should have a spreadsheet. In fact, I should really do this. You should have a spreadsheet, you know, Google Sheets, keep it simple. It's just like what card, how many points, you know, when is the monthly payment due? You should have it on auto pay, but just to make sure. What's the annual fee? All of that. There are services. There's a website called Award Wallet, and it actually tracks all of that for you.

21:49 But I have to say I'm a little disappointed with software. It doesn't work with every card super well, and I saw some glitches. So I actually stopped using that, but there are services out there or different websites that kind of track it for you. And then remembering kind of, maybe this is a separate question. I thought you asked this, but like how do you use those points? What are the best deals with them? There's really not a great way to necessarily write that down or track, and it's more just the knowledge and education of, okay, chase points go to Hyatt. That's a really good deal. I should look at Hyatt stuff. American Airlines has great deals to get to the Caribbean. You know, I can remember that. You know, there's not necessarily a resource that has all of that written down in one place because there's just so much information.

22:36 But really, you know, if you Google just best uses of chase points or best uses of American Airlines miles, there are a ton of blogs. There's so many things right there that can jumpstart you on, okay, here's the points I have. What are even good uses of them? So I hope that kind of answers your question. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. And I think it kind of speaks to one of the concerns that as a financial planner I have is that we don't necessarily want to encourage people to have all these multitude of credit cards that sometimes can create debt, you know, create a challenge. And as you were talking about that, the difficulties of, you know, keep a track of when ones do, and then if you don't pay it on time, your interest rate changes, and it can really create some challenges.

23:21 So would you elaborate on why you picked those cards that you mentioned? You said we wanted to elaborate on why American Airlines or whatever it was, I'd be interested to hear. Yeah, I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is kind of a, I wish I lived in like New York City and had access to those airports, but I also don't want to live in New York City. It's a give and take. But so I'm kind of, you know, I can drive to Chicago, I can drive to Detroit. But as I looked at my travel, so this is what I did. And this is what I help clients do. I looked at my travel interests. And I look at my spending and I see what makes sense. So my travel interests are Europe and the Caribbean, and maybe some cool domestic stuff. I'm not trying to be fancy, I've got two little kids, I just I'm not going to go to Asia, it's too far.

24:03 South America, I just don't know very much about and don't I know it's not super comfortable, because I just don't know much about it. So like, those are my things. I want to go to the Caribbean, I want to go to Europe. So I optimize for that completely. Specifically, I want to take premium cabin flights, so either premium economy or business class to Europe, because it's a long way. So when I look at that, and I say, Okay, what do I want the best? You know, how can I earn as many points as possible, it's going to get me to those places. So I've got three strategies. Capital One is what I put all my personal spending on. Why? Because it's the only points and miles card out there that earns two points per dollar on every single purchase. It's got all the transfer partners I need to get really good deals to Europe.

24:48 Specifically, I'm not that far from Detroit, there's a direct flight on Air France from Detroit to Paris that you can connect anywhere else in Europe, you can get that for about 80,000 points round trip, excuse me, yeah, 80 to 90,000 points round trip and premium economy, that can easily be, you know, a $3,000 flight. So that's a good deal for premium economy, which is like larger recliner seats, not first class beds. And so that's what I'm optimizing, I'm spending capital one mile just I just just to get premium cabin flights to Europe. Then I'm earning chase points to for Hyatt hotels, I can use chase points for other stuff. But I find Hyatt so compelling, that that's really all I use chase points for.

25:29 I'm not spending any money though, on chase cards. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna say, what do you spend on that? Because you said you put everything personal expenses to the other. So with chase, my example is not the most relatable to people. But I've got 17,000 followers on LinkedIn, and I have a lot of people reach out. So I send people my referral links. So I've got a chase business card for me, a personal card for me, a chase business card for my wife. So with those I have the potential to earn three to 400,000 referral bonuses, and referral points per year. And I certainly have already like I earned 200,000 points in the last two months doing that because again, I have an audience. Does everyone else have an audience on LinkedIn that they can get a bunch of referral links to?

26:12 No. So that's an unrelatable thing. But I would say another thing people can do, and I would never, I would never publicly super advocate for credit card churning. But there is a healthy level of kind of, if you want to do this, if you want to make it your hobby, if you're going to be responsible, if you're going to pay it off weekly, if you're going to track it well, you can very easily get one, you know, one new chase business or personal card a year and earn a lot of points, like 90,000 points from an intro bonus doing that. Again, that's not for most people. If you want to make it your hobby, if you want to be responsible, there are lots of people who do that. I would call it maybe light credit card churning, which is totally allowed, totally good with the banks, because again, one new credit card a year is good with the banks.

26:56 Getting nine credit cards a year, which certain people do, is not cool with the banks, and people are finding ways to go around them and be savvy. I do not recommend it. Now there's got to be some consequence on your credit. You probably have some annual fees to be thinking about. There's some things to figure out. It gets very wild. So if you just do about one per year, I find that to be very manageable, very reasonable, and it's not a big deal. Again, for me, this is something I've spent time on. But yes, that's my strategy though, is earn chase points any way I can for Hyatt Hotels, earn Capital One miles to get these great deals, premium cabin flights to Europe, and then earn American Airlines miles, because they have by far the best pricing to get from specifically the Midwest, but really anywhere in America to the Caribbean.

27:43 Actually, the Northeast has some good deals to the Caribbean, so if you're there, but for someone in the Midwest, the best way to get to the Caribbean, no question, is going to be American Airlines miles. I can get to St. Kitts, which is like a very small island that just went there in January or February, 20,000 American Airlines miles round trip. Awesome. Now, if you remember from the beginning of the episode, I said, focus on flexible points. Why would I be earning JetBlue miles from my JetBlue credit card when I can just transfer from chase? That's what I said, right? So if you think I'm contradicting myself here, American Airlines happens to be the big asterisk in all this, is no bank transfers to American Airlines. So the only way to earn American Airlines miles is with either flying, on American, obviously, or American Airlines credit cards.

28:30 So that's been a premium for me, is trying to find ways to earn American miles, because they're so valuable, especially to get from the Midwest to the Caribbean. And that would extend to the South, like most of America, the South. West Coast, it gets a little different, because the times, the itineraries of the Caribbean are so bad from like California, because it is a long way. Well, it sounds like to your point, it's tailored to your preferences and interests, where you want to go and so forth. So tell a little bit more about some of your services. I know you have a Substack articles you post, you have your website, gosomewhere.world, interesting dot there, dot world.

29:12 They didn't have dot com available, and I saw that, and I was like, that's actually kind of topical. I like that, yes. I'm going to do that. It fits, yeah. And so, you know, and some of these things, and you're, some of the items you were mentioning, you have some resources. So maybe just share a little bit, and then perhaps how you work with people when you do a one-on-one. Sure, yeah, thanks. I love, yeah, I can happily share that. So yeah, and for any listeners, you know, I think this stuff can sound a little complicated, can give you a little bit of a headache. I think the one thing to take away from what I'm saying here is, there are ways to probably get two to 10x more value from your points than you're currently getting. The gap between you doing that is, where you are now and you're doing that, is a little bit of education.

29:58 All that information is available for free online somewhere. You can certainly find it, I certainly did. I did not pay anyone to learn the amount of things I know about points and miles. So I'll be the first to say, it's all free, it's all out there, but it's a lot of information. Yeah, exactly. So that's why I started this business though, really, is that I like to take it from 30 hours of random research on deep Reddit threads to a 60-minute call with me, where I can tell you not how to get to Sri Lanka in first class. That's probably not relevant to most people listening, but to do exactly what you want to do. Most people, they have like three places. For me, Europe, Caribbean, cool hotels in America.

30:40 Great, we can talk about that. Maybe your thing, I just talked to a guy, he's got family in Norway. That's the only place they want to go. They live in Atlanta, they want to go to Norway. Awesome. So let's figure out a strategy all about Norway. What are the airlines to go there? So that's what I'll do in my calls. So my two main products, if anyone's interested, would be my one-on-one consultations. What we do is we get on, so like you guys, we might get on and say, okay, you got Hilton, you got JetBlue, you got Chase. Why do you have these? How can we optimize? Should we switch credit cards? How can we get higher Hilton status? How can we get status with JetBlue if that's an airline that's important to you? Okay. We've found a strategy that makes sense. That's simple. That's repeatable. Now we've earned a bunch of points.

31:21 Let's talk about ways we can optimize the redemption of those points. Where do you guys want to go? You want to go to Florida. Okay. Here's the best times to go. Here's the best hotels. We'll get you the best deals in Florida, all that. So we talk through all that specific to you. On the trip planning side, it's very simple. If you have about 250 to 300,000 points or more, you're probably a fit. And what I do is you just reach out via a form. You pay a $40 deposit to me. And you say, okay, I've got 500,000 points. I want to go to Hawaii. I've got four people in my family. I don't want to figure this out. So you give me all your information in the form. And then if I can help, which I can't always help, I can help probably 80 % of the time, but sometimes stuff comes up where there's just no deals and it's just not possible.

32:10 Then I'll tell you how I can help. And then you pay the rest of my fee, which right now is $310. So it's a $350 total fee for the trip planning. And the goal would be I would save you minimum $1,000, but it's typically a lot more. Just yesterday, me and my, I've got a guy working for me that helps me with this. We just helped someone book like a $25 ,000 trip to the Maldives to one of those overwater bungalows. So he didn't do any work. He filled out our form. We used a bunch of points. It was like 800,000 points he had, but we got him this ridiculous trip. He's flying Qatar business class there. He's staying in the Hilton Conrad overwater bungalows.

32:52 So whether that's the kind of trip you want to do or something simpler, I just helped a family of three, you know, get a nice Caribbean vacation. They only did about 250,000 points out of pocket, you know, $0 out of pocket for cash, which is awesome. And they're staying at this nice hotel in St. Kitts, flying there direct from Florida. So it doesn't have to be something crazy. And both of these people, they're saving, you know, it was over $3,000 for one guy was like 20 plus. So those are my two offerings there, the trip planning services, and then the one-on -one consultations. That's really how I can help people. I also do have an online course that's helpful that I sell. Again, that's on my website, gosomewhere.world. And then I would have some free resources that I can share in the show notes.

33:38 The one is called how to 2-10x the value per point. So it's really a much deeper breakdown of what I've shared here. I've shared, you can get 2-10x more value for your points. That guide would be, here's some ways to do it. Again, there's hundreds of ways to do it. So you can't, everything can't be covered, but that guide shows you some of that. And then I also have one about choosing a travel credit card. So yeah, those are all the ways I can help. And again, if you never want to talk to me or pay me a dollar, there really is so many great resources out there. I can't recommend enough the Daily Drop. They're a really large company. They've got a newsletter, they've got a YouTube channel. Everything is free. You will never pay them for anything.

34:20 I love their stuff. I've learned so much from them. So again, the Daily Drop. Highly recommend you subscribe to them and support their stuff. I've met a few people from there and they're really good. So that's probably everything I can think to share. That is great. That is chock full of great information for everybody. Were you going to say something, Kristen? No, I was just going to say, before you go, what favorite trip that you've been on? That's a good question. I think just in February, I went to the Park Hyatt and St. Kitts. St. Kitts is, I didn't even know it was an island two years ago. It's this beautiful island in the Caribbean. Actually, it's St. Kitts and Nevis. And Nevis is actually where Alexander Hamilton was born.

35:02 So any fans of the musical, the line is like, dropped in the middle of forgotten spot in the Caribbean. Well, we were on a beach looking at that forgotten spot in the Caribbean, his little island. And they have tours of his family's house and stuff like that. So that's for any musical nerds out there, people like the show. That trip was amazing because the hotel was $1,500 a night for the base room and we even got upgraded. And so I was sitting there just like, it really was so mind blowing because I'm like, I in a million years would have not been able to afford this and would never have paid for this. And because I figured out how this point stuff works, I got my flights covered to the Caribbean. This again, this is my two little kids as well and my wife. I've got my flights covered.

35:43 I'm at this ridiculous resort that I have no business being here. I'm 25 years old. Everyone else there was at least 55 years old. Like there was no young people, probably because no one could afford it. You know what I mean? And people didn't know about the points thing. And so I just was felt so blessed and so like amazed that this stuff is possible. So yeah, that was a fun trip. Now I've been other places that are maybe more adventurous or cool, but I think it was like the level of luxury that I experienced there. I was just so mind blown. Like this stuff is possible when you understand points. So I just felt I'm still kind of in shock. That was possible. So that was an awesome trip and many more to come. I went crazy and I was able to find business class flights to Switzerland for the summer for me.

36:27 And I'm going to have a three-year -old and a six-month-old in a business class seat. So that'll be some funny pictures that hopefully go viral. So I'll have to share this with you guys and that's coming up here in August. So that might become the favorite trip once we get there. Well, I love that you're sharing all this great insight for our listeners and thank you so much for being with us today and all the great tips. We're going to add some great content from you in the show notes. Check out gosomewhere.world. In addition, share our episode with people you care about who you'll want to be able to travel with you perhaps along the way.

37:10 So Colin, thanks for being with us today. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciated it. All right, everybody. Until next time, keep striving for something more. Thank you for listening to Something More with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd .com or call us toll free at 866 -771-8901 or send us your questions to amr-info at wealthenhancement.com. You're listening to Something More with Chris Boyd Financial Talk Show.

37:53 Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services and Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients only. Proper advice depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances. The information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation. Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss. Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or conduct their own due diligence before making any financial decisions.