Title: Your Travel Hacks (What the Hack)

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In our last segment, we discussed all the amazing places we hope to travel to this year, but for all the meaningful experience travel provides, it's also expensive and requires a lot of planning. There are ways to save money or even fly free. Lots of big companies have loyalty plans where you can earn miles by shopping or flying or even booking ride shares, but it can be overwhelming to navigate.

For our second installment of What the Hack, where we crowdsource ideas that'll make different aspects of life a bit easier, we're going to get some tips from an expert. Clint Henderson is the managing editor for ThePointsGuy.com. He put together a list of some of his loyalty plan hacks from some of the best airlines to upgrade seats to the best card for lounge access. A whole bunch of stuff. Clint, Happy New Year, and welcome to All Of It.

Clint Henderson: Happy New Year.

Alison Stewart: Before we get into the hacks, who should consider enrolling in a loyalty program?

Clint Henderson: Everyone. You may or may not end up flying some of these airlines or hotels, but you really want to have the loyalty plan already in your account. I keep asking traveling companions, what is your American Airlines loyalty number, et cetera, et cetera, because that can get them not only miles or points for hotel stays but sometimes it gets you free wi-fi. It's how you'll get the entertainment on an airline like Delta. Things like that come as perks just for being a member of the loyalty program.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. How are ways you use or have used your miles or points? What's the best deal you've ever found? Do you have questions for how to start using miles for travel? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or maybe you have lots of miles and you're not really sure how to redeem them. Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call or text to us at that number. First hack on your list, what credit card to have. Why is it important to consider when enrolling in a credit card program?

Clint Henderson: The first thing I would say is if you are new to this, you want to start with a bank card that gives you transferable currency. These days with airlines constantly devaluing their programs, I always tell people who are just starting out, get a basic Chase card that has an ultimate rewards points ecosystem or even an American Express card that comes with transferable currency. You can send those points to various airlines and hotels, and you can score better deals that way.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to tell tales on you, but you told our producer that you have over 20 cards.

Clint Henderson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why do you have over 20 cards?

Clint Henderson: Here's the beauty of being into the points and miles universe. You get signup bonuses every time you open one of these cards. The cards also come with perks, and then every time you use those cards, you get more points or miles. It becomes a virtuous cycle where you're always earning more points. It also helps your credit score, which most people don't know. The more credit you have available that you're not using, the better credit risk you are. It's actually a really good thing for your credit score as long as you're paying off the cards every single month and not carrying a ballance.

Alison Stewart: What's the difference between redeeming miles and redeeming points on the Chase Sapphire card that you recommend?

Clint Henderson: It's just the name they use for the program. American Airlines, they're going to be miles, and with Chase, it's points. Then when they transfer to airlines or hotels, they become a different type of currency, but it's the same thing, basically.

Alison Stewart: I've got a question here. "I am wondering what is the simplest way to rotate credit cards without taking a hit to my credit? My most recent is a Capital One card that was recommended by a website. I received my bonus. How long do I need to keep this card before I can start up with another one?"

Clint Henderson: Part of my job is covering credit cards, so I keep mine open, but what I recommend to people is you want to have several credit cards because it helps your credit score, but then eventually you don't want to pay all these annual fees. What you do is downgrade to a no-annual-fee version. You just call the bank and say, "I don't want to pay the annual fee this year. Can you downgrade me to a no-annual-fee one?" Sometimes they'll give you another sign-up bonus just to keep the card open. There's all kinds of real fun perks that we explain more at The Points Guy if you need that information.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted, "I just became a diamond member at Delta and I really don't know how to take advantage of that."

Clint Henderson: Fly with Delta a lot. Your chances of getting upgraded are much higher, though they're much lower than they used to be. Still, there's a lot of perks. You get extra legroom seats at booking. You get on that upgrade list. You get an extra bag allowance. You get a bonus on the miles you earn for every flight. If you've got that lucrative diamond status, enjoy it.

Alison Stewart: Let's take Rita in Stamford, Connecticut. Rita, thanks for calling, All Of It.

Rita: Thank you. The most interesting thing we did is we used our American Airlines card to pay for our fertility treatments and got points and got two European trips out of it.

Clint Henderson: Amazing.

Alison Stewart: Wow. That's amazing. Truly amazing. Thanks, Rita. I wanted to point out that one of your favorite cards-- Is this for our high rollers?

Clint Henderson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: This is only for our high rollers, by the way.

Clint Henderson: People who are really good at maximizing every single perk.

Alison Stewart: Oh, this is true. It's the American Express Platinum card. Most of us, we can't afford it, but for those who can afford it, why is it good? Also, what are the cons?

Clint Henderson: This is my favorite card, I got to say, but it has an annual fee of $695, which is-

Alison Stewart: Come on, man.

Clint Henderson: -crazy. It's gone up and up and up over the years, but I still find it so worth it because they give you $200 in airline fee credits every year.

Alison Stewart: That's good.

Clint Henderson: They give you $200 in rideshare credits.

Alison Stewart: That's good. $400 already?

Clint Henderson: They give you streaming credits that equal $200.

Alison Stewart: That's $600.

Clint Henderson: That's $600 right there. That's before you even get the perks. It comes with Marriott Gold status, Hilton Gold status, rental car protections, and also top-tier status in several rental car programs. You get a $200 hotel credit every year, and it gives you access to their hotel booking platform, which gives you upgrades and things like that. There's all kinds of reasons, and there's even more perks I'm not going into. I have a spreadsheet, so I track this stuff, but I definitely squeeze every do out of American Express, trust me.

Alison Stewart: What should I not waste my miles on?

Clint Henderson: Don't buy a gas range with your points. Don't buy gift cards. You want to avoid shopping for products because you're going to get a very low percent value for those things.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting because you do get a lot of emails and flyers saying, "Oh, you can buy this with your points." Just no.

Clint Henderson: No, What you want to do is you want to be able to use your points for travel. That's where you're going to get the maximum value. The airlines and the hotels are getting better at preventing you from getting maximum value, but that's why sites like The Points Guy exist because we teach you how to hack it.

Alison Stewart: That is Clint Henderson. He's managing editor of ThePointsGuy.com. He's here to help us out with our series What the Hack, where we're going through and brainstorming tips for making your life a little bit easier, and we're taking your calls. What are ways that you use miles or points? What are some of the memorable ways you've used your miles? That woman with fertility did not see that coming. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's talk to John from Staten Island. Hi, John.

John: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi. You're on the air.

John: I'm on the frequent flyer program on Continental Airlines, which tells you how long ago that was and it has carried over to United. I have a card from Chase linked to that account. I use the card for everything and I've racked up over 120,000 miles. I don't do that much flying. I do pay the card off every month in full unless I have a really big item. There was a vet bill for $4,000 a few years back. That one I spread over two or three months, but beyond that, I tend to pay it off every month in full.

I am whirling away all of these frequent flyer miles in order to bring the man I want to marry up from Venezuela for a nice long visit. Hopefully, he and I will find in person that we get along as well as we do by messenger.

Alison Stewart: You know what? I'm going to dive in here for a second. That sounds great. Good luck on your love plan there. This is a cool text, "I have been lucky, four international trips, Japan, Morocco, Europe on miles since 2010. When I renovated my new apartment in 2021, I put everything I could on my Amex and then transferred the balance to my Capital One venture to get points on both from the same two cards." Can you do that?

Clint Henderson: Wait.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Clint Henderson: I got lost there for a minute.

Alison Stewart: She got all the points on Amex and she transferred the balance to Capital One and got points there.

Clint Henderson: No, that doesn't-

Alison Stewart: You think about that.

Clint Henderson: -sound quite right. I'm missing something there. There's a puzzle piece missing.

Alison Stewart: What are some of the things you need to know before you try and book with miles? Let's go back to the beginning.

Clint Henderson: One of the main things is it helps when you have transferable currencies because you can use those to book on multiple carriers. Some of the sweet spots that I've found over the years are actually Air France Flying Blue. That's the mileage program for Air France and KLM and you can transfer Amex points over there and you can book business class flights for as low as 50,000 points. That's a huge win. You just need to be aware of what your points can and can't do.

For most people, a transferable currency like from Chase or Amex is going to be a better bet than, like the previous caller, who was stockpiling United miles in the hopes of maybe redeeming at some point for United. He's locked into that program with United and its partners. You got to learn the ins and outs of some of these programs because most of us are going to be better off with the transferable currency.

Alison Stewart: We asked our team for some hacks that they could give and our senior producer Andrea, who you met, she used on American to fly a round trip to Tokyo and only paid $30 in fees. Now, that was pre-Covid. First of all, have things changed since COVID?

Clint Henderson: They've gotten more expensive but you can still find that is a sweet spot that's still around. You use American Airlines miles to fly on Japan Airlines in economy as low as 30,000 miles, business class as low as 60,000 miles and first class which does exist on some of these international flights for as low as 80,000 miles. Those deals are the unicorn redemptions but they are out there.

Alison Stewart: Where have you been? What have you used your miles for?

Clint Henderson: Oh my gosh. I just used American Airlines miles to book first class on American Airlines from Sydney to LA. I found Delta the unicorn redemption from Mexico City to Brisbane, Australia for 70,000 delta miles. These deals do exist.

Alison Stewart: I understand that some places are good for using your miles, but then some places aren't. I've heard that London is difficult.

Clint Henderson: The reason London is difficult, it's not that you can't find redemptions because you can. There are so many flights but they add taxes and fees that almost always make it ridiculous to use your miles.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Clint Henderson: You're better off finding a location that doesn't use excessive taxes and fees. Those London landing taxes are over the top.

Alison Stewart: This is a text, "I have 1.6 million Amex points and I'm looking for the best award flights to Auckland, New Zealand. Any suggestions?"

Clint Henderson: Here's where you want to use a third-party search engine and find award availability. There's new websites like seats.arrow and point.me and some of these sites, they'll search all the programs, they'll tell you which programs might have business class availability and where you should transfer those miles to book those tickets.

Alison Stewart: This says, "I like using miles for last-minute travel because the cost for a flight the next day goes sky high, but the cost in miles is usually the same as it would be further in the future.

Clint Henderson: True.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Clint Henderson: Your miles are usually going to be the most valuable when cash prices are the highest. This is true of hotels too. During the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, people were traveling to these hotels, cost $1,000 and they booked with points because they were only paying 30,000 points or whatever. Same idea applies if you're booking a last-minute trip home for Christmas and your flight's going to be $1,000. If the points cost is only 40,000 points, you're going to get a much better deal with those points.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Cassandra from Milburn, New Jersey. Hi Cassandra, you're on the air.

Cassandra: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing well.

Cassandra: Recently I was able to do a lot of maneuvering thanks to sites like the Points Guy. Tomorrow we fly out to Zermatt, Switzerland by way of Zurich. We took Chase Sapphire reserve points, we transferred them to Aeroplan which gave us a huge bonus for a limited time and then we were able to book via Air Canada, who has a partnership with Air Swiss and a partner share with United. The three of us, my husband, my four-year-old daughter, and myself are flying business class round trip-

Clint Henderson: Amazing.

Cassandra: -for my husband's 40th birthday.

Clint Henderson: Amazing. This is the kind of story that warms my heart. The whole point of websites like the Points Guy is to teach people enough to do these kind of trips. For those of you listening, Aeroplan is Air Canada's loyalty program, but they have lots of sweet spots. Oftentimes you can find even last-minute business class seats to Europe for decent amounts of miles.

Alison Stewart: Our own senior producer Kate Hines right there, she used miles to upgrade to first class to Australia. She bought a regular economy class ticket and then upgraded through points. Is that the best way to get to first class?

Clint Henderson: Genius. Yes. A lot of times, Air France is a good example, if you buy premium economy and then call the airline and say, "I'd like to upgrade with miles," it's 30,000 points is all it costs to upgrade to business class and they don't charge you taxes and fees. That's another little hack. That trip from New York to Australia, for example, that's one of the most expensive flights you can take. If you're able to upgrade with only 30,000 points and a small cash copay, you're way ahead of the game.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted us a question, "What are unicorn redemptions?"

Clint Henderson: Unicorn redemption is like it's so over-the-top great that it's like a unicorn. They're very hard to find, but when you find them, it's like hitting gold. I've been able to find a few of those. Japan Airlines first class for 80,000 American Airlines miles. That trip I just mentioned from Sydney to LA in first class on American Airlines with just 100,000 miles. Those unicorn redemptions are out there.

Alison Stewart: This one says, "When I was renting. I was allowed to charge my rent to Amex card and racked up a lot of miles." This one says, "The father of someone I used to work with paid for her entire three years of law school with his Amex, and after the first year, she had a nice vacation to London paid for with points."

Clint Henderson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Can we talk about hotel miles?

Clint Henderson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Is it worth it for hotel miles?

Clint Henderson: Absolutely. Here is my favorite thing to do with my Chase points. I transfer them to Hyatt because you can oftentimes redeem for hotels like the famous Park Hyatt in Tokyo for as low as 40,000 Hyatt points. Even if you're only sitting on 100,000 Chase points, transferring those to Hyatt and then booking hotels that cost $1,200 a night, that's an amazing redemption. Highly recommend it. Just to go back to one of our previous comments, there's a Bilt card that you can pay your rent with. There's no charge.

They don't charge you a transaction fee and you earn points in Bilt. Bilt is a Wells Fargo credit card, also transferable currency. Transfers to airlines like Alaska. There's all kinds of tricks out there.

Alison Stewart: What mistakes do people usually make?

Clint Henderson: I think the biggest mistake people make is not paying off their card every month because no matter how many points you get, if you're paying interest, you're losing. That's mistake number one. Mistake number two, I would say is using a debit card that doesn't give you any reward at all. I always want people to use points earnings cards, but there's also cash-back cards. At least get 2% cash back for your purchases because otherwise, you're leaving money on the table.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Edward from Manhattan on line three. Hi, Edward, thanks for calling All Of It.

Edward: Hey, how are you doing? I'm good. One thing, I do a lot of hacking, so I churn and burn credit cards and it hasn't affected me too much since everything's paid off. One of the points I wanted to bring up about United, which used to be Continental, is their mileage plan has what we call open jaw. For instance, last year I flew with United and I went to Paris, Istanbul and then back to Paris, I flew out of back to New York, all for one mileage cost, which is a lot cheaper.

A lot of them are just, you have to do a round trip. I might want to add one other thing that I've done is I bought one-way tickets. Sometimes they're cheaper, and then you get to your location and buy another ticket on the way back.

Alison Stewart: Absolutely. Those are both great ideas. There's other programs that have free stopovers like Alaska Airlines and also Aeroplan has a program where you can stop over for just 5,000 extra miles. There's lots of those deals out there.

Clint Henderson: Let's talk to Cassandra from Greenwich Village. Hi, Cassandra, you are on the air.

Cassandra: Hi. Good afternoon everybody. Happy New Year. I was just wondering if you have any tips, Points Guy, about how to access airport lounges. I have an American Express Platinum card and it's always a little dicey when I show up at different airports or depending on the airline I'm flying on. Is there any kind of formula that I could try to figure out how to use my platinum card because it's a big fee? You're right. Any tips?

Clint Henderson: My first tip is anytime that there's a Centurion Lounge, you're going to be able to access that with that card. Also, if you're flying Delta on the same day, you should be able to use that card to get into Delta lounges as well. Finally, Priority Pass lounges are a bit hit or miss because they're so crowded these days that sometimes they'll restrict passengers with Priority Pass Lounge, which comes as a benefit of the Platinum card as well, the Priority Pass lounge network.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask about that. Every time I've tried that it's been like, "I'm sorry, we're full."

Clint Henderson: Especially in London. London is notorious for that. We have lots of resources at The Points Guy. If you just do a quick Google search, The Points Guy lounge access, Platinum card, that information will pop up for you.

Alison Stewart: Some loyalty programs ask you to maintain your status on an airline. What does that mean to be a status member?

Clint Henderson: Status just means that you've flown enough with them or spent enough money these days to get elevated status. The status is great because it comes with things like free checked bags, priority boarding, better seat assignments, and even upgrades to first class. The problem is these days it's getting harder and harder and more and more expensive to get status.

Alison Stewart: Why is that?

Clint Henderson: Because the programs know that we're hooked and they keep raising the requirements every year. The number of people who want elite status is really-- the ranks have swollen and so the airlines are making it more exclusive again. They also make a lot more money the more we are spending in that company's sort of ecosystem.

Alison Stewart: Loyalty plans can be a little bit like insurance. You have them, but they're not always easy to use. What are some of the workarounds for this?

Clint Henderson: Websites like The Points Guy is going to be a great resource for you and you just have to do a little bit of investment of time and money, but the result is that you get free stuff. It's worth the investment. I didn't get into this stuff until I was in my 30s. I self-taught it. I wanted to travel like I'd seen some of my friends travel, and then I became completely unhinged and obsessed with it and self-taught. There are so many resources out there and it doesn't take that much time. What you learn, the payoff, the dividends are so high that it's absolutely worth it.

Alison Stewart: The name of the website is The Points Guy. We've been speaking with its managing editor, Clint Henderson. He joined us for our series What the Hack. Clint, it is so nice to see you.

Clint Henderson: It is nice to see you.

Alison Stewart: You're from my previous life, I think, from MSNBC. It was really good to see you. Anyway, coming up on tomorrow's show, we'll continue our centennial series devoted to the 100 pieces of art you should see. New Yorker art critic Jackson Arne joins us with his picks and we want to know yours. Plus, the Plant Doctor will be in. Christopher Satch joins us to field your calls about plant care. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

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