Mastering Credit Card Points for Agency Owners with Julia Menez

Drew McLellan [00:00:38]: 

Hey everybody, Drew Mclellan here from agency Management Institute. Guess what? I am back with another episode of Build a Better Agency. This one’s going to be a little different. I’m excited to bring this guest to you. We’re taking a bit of a twist on how we normally talk about the business of agency ownership, so I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a quick second. Before I do though, I want to remind you that one of the many free resources that we offer for anybody, for podcast listeners, for members, non members, anybody who’s an agency owner or leader is we have a very active Facebook group. There are over 2,000 agency owners and leaders in there talking and asking questions every single day. And it’s a great opportunity for you to connect with people who are just like you to ask for reviews of software before you buy them, to ask questions about how other agency owners are handling certain situations. It’s absolutely free. Just go to Facebook and search for Build a Better Agency podcast because it’s the Build a Better Agency Facebook group and you’re going to answer a couple questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. And the reason why we have the questions there is to make sure that only agency owners and leaders, so people who work at agencies now are allowed in the group. So there’s no vendors other than our preferred partners in the group at all. So answer a few questions, come join us and participate in the conversation. Both show up as both the student and the teacher, like we do at every AMI event. So come ask questions, come answer questions, and come learn from your peers. Okay. All right, so let me tell you a little bit about our guest. So our guest is a woman named Julia Menez. And Julia is an expert at helping business owners and high wealth individuals leverage and maximize how they use credit card points for travel. So again, not quite the spot on business topic that we normally have, but I know that many of you accumulate thousands and thousands and thousands, if not millions of credit card points. Whether you’re paying for media, whether you are using it for your Travel, but you’ve got a lot of points, or you would like to use points better when it comes to using those points to plan your family travel. And so Julia is an expert at this, so I’m going to pick her brain about all the different ways that we can maximize the way we squeeze value out of those points that we earn every day. So buckle up, get ready to take notes, and let’s welcome her to the show. Julia, welcome to the podcast. 

Julia Menez [00:03:08]: 

Hey, Drew. Excited to be here. 

Drew McLellan [00:03:10]: 

So tell everybody a little bit about your background before we dig in. 

Julia Menez [00:03:15]: 

Yeah, of course. Well, first off, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on. I listened to a few episodes to prep for this, and what you are building here is really special and I just wanted to acknowledge you for that because I host a podcast too, and I know the work is not easy. So you’re creating a lot of impact. I’m excited to be part of it. And for everyone listening, do us a huge favor, go leave a five star rating on whatever platform you’re tuning in on. I left mine on Podchaser because I don’t have Apple. I have. I’ve never owned any Apple products, funny enough. Yeah, I’m just. 

Drew McLellan [00:03:49]: 

We could, we could spend an hour on that alone. 

Julia Menez [00:03:52]: 

Yeah. But as far as my background, let’s see, I used to be an actuary, so deep math and statistical modeling. Did that for about a decade. And then now I do points and miles where we help business owners and high cash flow individuals allocate their expenses onto the best credit cards and redeem those points in the optimal way to get a lot of very, very discounted business class and first class flights? 

Drew McLellan [00:04:19]: 

I love it. Okay, so how does one go from being an actuary to spending their day helping people plan travel at a discount thanks to the currency that is credit card points. 

Julia Menez [00:04:32]: 

For me personally, once I was done with actuarial certification exams, which usually takes up your life for multiple years, sure. I was done with that at some point. And my husband was like, you need a hobby because you need. You have too much time and energy at this point. So he sent me some links to different personal finance blogs and he’s like, I think you’ll like these. He did not realize how much I would like these, how much I was going to. 

Drew McLellan [00:04:56]: 

What he had unleashed. Right? 

Julia Menez [00:04:58]: 

Yeah. Yeah. So diving deep into those. And a lot of them mention that you can travel for pretty much free using points and miles. And I thought in the beginning, this seems kind of like a scam. Like you’re opening up a whole bunch of credit cards, you get to travel for free. It didn’t seem legit, but I wanted to experiment. So in the name of science, we opened one or two cards. And then we got to take our first trip on points. Our first redemption was for a hotel in Morocco, which was unplanned. It was because our tour guide had to cancel on us last minute. But after that, I was completely hooked because we got upgraded. We got free cocktail hours. So many perks just from having a special credit card. And from there I was like, how do you get a lot of points? And the answer I found was, oh, you should have business credit cards. They earn a lot more points than personal credit cards. So I thought I needed to make a real business. Turns out you don’t actually need one. But I made a fake travel agency. I made like two bookings during the pandemic. I used that as an excuse to close down the agency because I didn’t like doing it and I had already filed all the business paperwork and everything. So I just kind of pivoted and said, well, we’ll just use this as like a media company. I’ll just make videos and start my own podcast about points and miles and talk with other people from there. And it was just supposed to be for fun in the beginning, maybe get some business credit cards, get some tax write offs off of it. But here we are, it has grown into a whole thing. 

Drew McLellan [00:06:32]: 

Love it, love it. So I believe points are like a currency unto themselves. It’s like, it’s a. It’s an amazing game. So I’m super excited to have this conversation. So let’s assume that everyone listening understands the concept of with every credit card, you earn perks when you spend money, whether it’s cash back or points or whatever. And so. And they’re probably dabbling in some aspect of it or what are they doing wrong? Our odds are, where are they not getting the most bang for their buck? 

Julia Menez [00:07:03]: 

So I’ll preface this by saying I focus on a US based audience. So might be a little bit different since I know you have an international audience, but a lot of what people are doing wrong, a lot of people obsess over specific airline credit cards. If you’re like, well, I fly Delta, I should get Delta credit cards. I have, I fly United, I should get United credit cards. Where really the best currency to have is the flexible currencies. So we’re talking Chase, Amex, Capital One, Bill City, the ones that can move to lots of different airline programs that’s mistake number one, Mistake number two, people try to apply the ways that they get discounted cash flights to points flights. Even though it’s two completely separate pricing charts, mostly different systems, most people will try to find a points flight the way that they search for a cash flight, which would be you go to Google flights, you’re like, hey, I need to get from Philadelphia over to Rome. What’s the best deal? And then just book through there, where with points, I would say it’s best to prioritize. Just the best way to get over the ocean in business class and then do what we call positioning flights. So for that example, with Philadelphia over to Rome, maybe the best deal is going to be New York to Milan where they have a really good business class deal. And then instead of just getting a ticket all the way from Philly to Rome, you take a train up to New York, fly over to Milan, take a train down to Rome, or do a couple of quick flights somewhere in there. But piecing together itineraries like that can help you save a ton of money and points and get way better flight deals. Because especially if you’re flying from a small home airport, a lot of the big, nice, luxurious carriers don’t service those airports. 

Drew McLellan [00:08:44]: 

Right. So it also sounds like even if you’re loyal to an airline for your business travel, you would want to be open to flying on different airlines depending on where you’re going and when. 

Julia Menez [00:08:58]: 

Yeah, I think it’s actually a point of pride for a lot of points people where you don’t always fly the same airline because if you’re flying on an award ticket, you’re probably not getting frequent flyer miles on those. And it doesn’t matter if you have status or not because if you’re flying business class or first class, you’re just treated like you have status anyway. 

Drew McLellan [00:09:16]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:09:16]: 

So I try to vary it up and fly all sorts of different airlines. All the nice ones like Singapore, Emirates, Qatar, Cathay Pacific, I’ve flown ana, but not the new planes. I’ve flown the old ones. The new ones are on my, my bucket list. Japan Airlines, business Class, Air France, all of those. There’s a running bucket list that all people who are deep into this hobby have. 

Drew McLellan [00:09:40]: 

And so if I’m going to go to a website to, to do what you suggested, I’m not going to the Emirates website or I’m not. Right. I’m. Where am I going to find these point specific flights? 

Julia Menez [00:09:56]: 

Great question. It’s another common mistake people make is they’ll just search directly on Chase’s website or amex’s website and cash out their points where they’re only getting $0.01 per point or so. But oftentimes what you want to do is just find the best deal through different aggregators. Lots of different tools for this. Some of the favorites that I use, we have free tutorials on all of these on my YouTube channel. Seats Aero is very popular. Roam Travel is very popular. There’s a free Chrome extension that you can plug into Google Flights called Points Path. It’ll tell you whether you should use points or cash for a particular deal. So I like to search on those different aggregators first. If you have flexible points, if you have specific currencies where you already have a bunch of American Airlines or a bunch of Alaska, a bunch of United miles, you will want to just search specifically with that website and then see if you can find any partner deals on the United website or on the American Airlines website. 

Drew McLellan [00:10:51]: 

Explain more of that. So let’s say I’m a. Let’s say I’m a United flyer, which we are. So we’ve got American Express points, but we also have a lot of United points. My wife and I sort of. If I were going to do that, I would go to united.com right. And I’m going to search, but I’m not going to just search United, I’m going to search United and their partners. So start alliance in this case. 

Julia Menez [00:11:13]: 

Yeah, so it’ll cover a lot of that anyway. I always recommend doing the flexible dates because then it can show you the entire calendar of when you can find different flights. United is fantastic for anybody looking to go on safaris because it’s only usually 80 or 88,000 points per person. One way to fly in business class, like all the way. I think I got a ticket from Las Vegas all the way down to Cape Town, South Africa, for only 80,000 United Points. It is going to be a long flight. 

Drew McLellan [00:11:41]: 

We just got back from Johannesburg like three days ago. 

Julia Menez [00:11:45]: 

Yeah, it’s a long flight. 

Drew McLellan [00:11:47]: 

United, yeah. 

Julia Menez [00:11:48]: 

United, Polaris or. Yeah, yeah, with points. 

Drew McLellan [00:11:51]: 

We bought an economy ticket and then I use the points plus thing that they have to upgrade us to business class. 

Julia Menez [00:11:59]: 

Yeah, I don’t have like a lot of status with United, so instead I moved some Chase points over to United. We booked Cape Town and then we’re going up through Ethiopia, refuel in Rome and then go through Chicago and Las Vegas. So it’s going to be a very long flight. But it’s all in business class. 

Drew McLellan [00:12:14]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:12:15]: 

And only 80,000 points per person. Otherwise would have been many, many thousands of dollars for that trip. 

Drew McLellan [00:12:21]: 

Oh, gosh, yeah. 

Julia Menez [00:12:22]: 

Oh, gosh, yeah. 

Drew McLellan [00:12:23]: 

Yeah. 

Julia Menez [00:12:23]: 

So those are the kinds of things that you can do with points, where I’m booking it with United points. But we’re not even flying United. Except for that last leg, which I think there was a short flight from Chicago back to Las Vegas. Most of it’s in Ethiopian Airlines, which it’s not the most luxurious business class, but it’s a lay flat seat. And that’s the more important thing if you’re flying that far, is just to be able to stretch out for sure. 

Drew McLellan [00:12:45]: 

Okay, what other mistakes do we make? 

Julia Menez [00:12:47]: 

Let’s see. A lot of people are very, very specific on I need to fly to this specific airport on this specific date and they might not even know there’s not a good route for that specific thing they’re looking for. Like I mentioned, if you can focus on just the best way to get over the ocean in business class, you can oftentimes find yourself on adventures that you didn’t even realize, like, oh, there’s this great deal over to Germany or this, this deal over to Hong Kong. It wasn’t on my list, but there’s a great flight deal. Let’s explore this city. I always tell people, try to pick when you want to travel instead of where you want to travel and then just see what are the best flight deals. If you’re like, well, we have kids, there’s a school schedule, we can only travel in July. I would just search best deals from close to my home airport. So I’m in Las Vegas, so maybe west coast airports over to Europe in July next year and then that will show me what cities to go to. So like this year, in a few weeks we are going to Serbia, which wasn’t on anybody’s list, but there was a really good deal again with United Miles. We’re in Las Vegas, but flying up to Seattle. And then there’s a Turkish Airlines flight. So it goes Seattle over to Istanbul into Belgrade, Serbia, I think. Yeah, 80,000 points again. And Turkish Airlines is fantastic, one of my favorite airlines for catering. So if you can be flexible on where you end up traveling and instead just pick a general continent or region of the world that’s going to have nice weather during the month or so that you want to fly. If you can have that kind of flexibility, you will find so many more good flight deals. 

Drew McLellan [00:14:23]: 

And it’s not points can be used for other things besides flight. So do you recommend you do the flight first? So now I Know my destination and then you’re starting to look for hotels and things like that also with points, or do you think points should be saved just for airlines? 

Julia Menez [00:14:40]: 

For flights, I definitely use points for hotels as well. If I’m crossing an ocean, I’m prioritizing the flights. If it’s a really nice US Resort or maybe like Caribbean resort, I will deal with the resort first and get that booked because the flights are going to be relatively cheap and easy to book from there. Let’s see, for points hotels. My favorite program is Hyatt, which you can transfer Chase points or built points into Hyatt. And the nice thing is when you book with points, they, they’ll just waive all the resort fees and everything for you. So you can sometimes get resorts that would be two or $3,000 per night for 40,000 points, which is pretty good cents per point redemption. I’ve stayed at the Alila Ventana in Big Sur, California, which is an all inclusive and they only have 50 cottages or something on the property. Great use of Hyatt points. I’ve used it at a lot of the bucket list properties like Park Hyatt in Paris. So yeah, I’ve. I use my points on hotels quite a bit as well. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:41]: 

And you like Hyatt over some of the other brands because you can feed other points into the Hyatt points, is that what you’re saying? 

Julia Menez [00:15:49]: 

Not necessarily. So the Chase points you can also transfer into Marriott or ihg, which is like Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, all of those, but the value isn’t as high. 40,000 points from Chase transferred into Hyatt will go so much further than 40,000 points transferred into Marriott, which will maybe get you a Courtyard Marriott, maybe. 

Drew McLellan [00:16:08]: 

Okay, okay. So if somebody’s like, all right, I am a novice at this and I have a credit card, whatever it is. Are there cards that you think are a card that every business owner should have in their wallet? 

Julia Menez [00:16:24]: 

Kind of. So if you need help with credit cards, I do free credit card consultations. Geobreze travel.com consultations. Just fill out your stuff there and I will personally email you some recommendations. Because everyone’s situation’s a little bit different. 

Drew McLellan [00:16:38]: 

What are the factors that would make something different in terms of what credit card makes sense? Is it volume of spend? 

Julia Menez [00:16:45]: 

Yeah, a little bit of spend, A little bit of what points you have already, what you’re trying to do with these points. So, so let’s say that you’ve just started your business, you’ve got a few tens of thousand dollars expenses each year. But not a lot. Amex Blue Business plus is great because it’s no annual fee. You get two points per dollar on American Express with any purchase, up to $50,000 on the card per year. With American Express, you can also sign up for the shopping portal Rakuten. And instead of just getting cash back with Rakuten, you can convert those points into American Express as well, which makes it go much, much further. So that’s great for small business owners, especially if you just want one card. Small business, no annual fee, you’re just getting started. Blue Business plus is great if you have a lot of expenses then. And just on miscellaneous expenses, Capital One Venture X for Business is great because it gets two points per dollar everywhere you get lounge access. You get a lot of other perks with the card, but the minimum spend on it. To get a big signup bonus, you have to put $30,000 on the card in the first three months after opening it. So that one would be more so for large spenders. If you have a business that runs a lot of ads, which I know a lot of agencies do, right, Amex Business Gold is really good because it gets 4 points per dollar on ads up to $150,000 per year. So by targeting different cards that have bonus points for your expense categories, you can get a lot that way. Another popular thing with business owners is those tax payments, those estimated quarterly tax payments, right, which you can put on credit cards, there’s probably a fee, 2%. And so if you’re opening a new card to get a big signup bonus, the math does shake out in your favor. As long as you can redeem your points for more than the 2% back then I do a lot of tax payments on credit cards as well. If you want to earn status through your cards, World of Hyatt Business Credit Card is great for this. If you put $120,000 on that card per year, worst case, then you get automatic top tier status with the American Airlines business credit card. If you put $200,000 on that card, worst case scenario, there’s ways to shortcut it. But worst case, $200,000 a year on that card. You get top tier status with American Airlines without ever setting foot on a plane. So it, it really depends what your goals are. Do you want more hotel points, more flight points, status with a particular thing? Do you want to just earn as many points as possible? Because most of your business expenses are for a particular category, like ad expenses. So that’s what we will do for you for free in the credit card consultation@geobreze travel.com consultations okay, so when we. 

Drew McLellan [00:19:34]: 

Are thinking about the way that we have credit cards, are you recommending that you sort of have this rotating number of cards? So are you constantly opening new cards to get the bonuses closing cards or are you saying look, there’s three or four cards everybody should have in their wallet and once you have them, you’re set. So is your strategy more of a rotation to get the big sign up bonuses or have them and hold them model? 

Julia Menez [00:20:03]: 

I think in the beginning the signup bonuses are more important because like you don’t have any points. So it’s going to be a huge lift especially if you have some flights you need to get booked soon. But as you grow your business. I like to fight for simplicity in my business. So I don’t want to be switching out what cards I’m using to pay every single quarter or whatever. So I like to focus on. Okay, probably something like a Venture X for business where I’m getting two points per dollar on miscellaneous expenses. I spend a bit on ads. Let’s get an Amex Business Gold in there. I spend a bit on flight, so let’s get an Amex Business Platinum in there. I would like some hotel points as well as airline points. So maybe using a Chase Inc. Business Unlimited in there would be good as well. So the strategies are very personalized. There’s not a broad sweeping. This is what these are the three cards everybody should have. It’s really important to instead of just getting shiny card syndrome, work backwards from. What is it you’re trying to do with your points? Is there a specific trip you want to go on? What kind of points do you need? How many people are going? So how many points are you going to need? Work backwards from there and let that drive your card decisions rather than just googling best cards for me because right. You’re just going to get hit with whoever’s paying the most commissions to whoever wrote that blog article. 

Drew McLellan [00:21:22]: 

Okay. All right, let’s, let’s take a quick break and then when we come back I want to talk more about the idea of airlines and how I start to decide which airlines are best for which kind of trips. And we’ll go from there. So let’s take a quick break and we’ll come on back. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops and you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation, head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account Execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody, no matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check them out and come join us. All right, let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back and we are talking about what for many of you is sort of a hobby. Some people garden, some people play tennis or racquetball and other people love to collect points and use those for their family travel, using business expenses to earn those points. And so that’s what we’re talking with Julia about today. So when I’m getting ready to plan my travel, it sounds like there are a variety of experiences and I know we’ve experienced this in our travels. Not all airlines are the same and certainly the business class experience is not the same in all of them. So how do you recommend we learn more about so if I, if I go to one of these aggregators that you’re talking about, how do I decide or how do I learn which airline is the one to lean into for the long haul flights where I’m flying for, you know, 8, 10, 12, 15 hours. 

Julia Menez [00:23:21]: 

Oftentimes I say you don’t get to choose a flight, the flight chooses you. So if I need to be somewhere across the ocean on a specific date or if I just want to go to a specific continent, you’re not going to have like full pick of. Well, I specifically want to do Emirates first class, the one with the shower on this date. They might not even fly the route that you’re trying to fly. So I try to be very broad where I’m just like I just need to get over the ocean in a lay flat seat around these dates, kind of over to this airport. And then like let’s say I land in Hong Kong or Singapore, but I really want to go to Thailand. It’s probably like a $200 flight at most to to do those positioning flights into Asia. But yeah, I would say the flight chooses you in a lot of situations and to not be too specific, maybe have like two or three non negotiables of mine are I really need a lay flat seat. I don’t want to take more than two connections including positioning flights on either side because that’s just A lot of inconvenient flying times. 

Drew McLellan [00:24:25]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:24:26]: 

And then there’s certain points prices that I am willing to pay. The threshold that I usually recommend to people is 10,000 points per hour in lay flat business class. So let’s say it’s eight hours to fly from Chicago to Germany. I wouldn’t pay more than 80,000 points to fly that per person one way. And don’t include layover times in that. It’s just time in the air. 10,000 points per hour. Oftentimes you can find a lot better deals than that. That’s just the ceiling for what you should be willing to pay. 

Drew McLellan [00:24:57]: 

Okay, this sounds like it takes a lot of time. 

Julia Menez [00:25:00]: 

We are here to help with that because I have seen that a lot of business owners and professionals do get lost in the maze of all of this. There’s so many blogs, some articles sometimes get outdated. Like people are just doing trending audios on Instagram, being like point, point, point, book flights like this. And yeah, people are just like Googling, okay, what’s the best cards? I can’t follow whatever these people are doing on Instagram. So that is why we have our business where we help Disney professionals to navigate all of this, where they’ll just send in their search parameters, whether they have to be in Australia for a cruise on a specific date. Or they’re just like, I have Amex points and I have literally no idea what to do. Just plan something for me. Whatever parameters our clients want, we are here to help them with that. We put together a business class blueprint based off of their particular search parameters. And so that way they can enjoy business class travel on points, save 80 or 90% off of these, and then they’re just using the expenses that they already have in their business in order to generate these points and in order to redeem for these flights. Because yes, it can definitely take a lot of time. 

Drew McLellan [00:26:11]: 

Are there some continents or places that are easier or harder to get great point deals? Like, I would assume that, you know, flying to the smaller continents are harder the fewer cities. Like you mentioned Australia, that to me is there’s only how many big airports in Australia. So is that a tougher one than, for example, you know, if I want to go to Europe, to your point, I can probably get to a city in a country relatively close to where I want to go and get there with a hop, skip and a jump. 

Julia Menez [00:26:43]: 

Exactly. Yeah. Europe is very easy if someone’s trying to do their first international trip. Especially if you’re on the eastern half of the United States, Europe is going to be much, much easier because there’s so many airports that you could potentially land in Asia. If you’re on the western half of the us, it’s not too bad. But usually if we say found you a flight deal to Asia, it is. I found you a flight deal to Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore. It’s probably going to land in one of those five and then it can connect from there into something else. But there’s tons of deals into those five major hub airports in Asia. Australia is a bit tougher. It can be done. A lot of people who need to be in Australia on certain dates, we do actually route them through Asia. There’s a lot of Singapore Airlines deals that go from the United States through Singapore into Australia, if people are willing to do that. Africa and South America, there’s not a ton of hub airports. With Africa, we get a lot of clients who want safaris. Your flights are probably either going to be Ethiopian Air or one of the Middle Eastern carriers, which is going to cost more points. With Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, nicer experience, more points. Or another strategy is to book two separate flights, one that just gets you to Europe and then one that gets you from Europe into Africa. So you have to just add together those two points prices. It might be on two completely different airlines. Ideally, you’re flying in and out of the same city in Europe, but maybe you find a great flight deal from the US over to Berlin when you need to go. And then the flight down to Europe is from France. Then you just kind of have to connect a few different pieces. Yeah, Africa with the safaris is a bit tough. South America, the northern half of South America is easier. So Lima and then Bogota, lots of flights into there. Everybody wants to go to Buenos Aires. And it is a bit tougher to find those. When I went, we flew into Santiago, Chile, and then connected in because I think that’s probably the most popular one that people request for South America, especially when it is winter in the us, Summer in Argentina, and there’s just. It’s not a very. While it is a major hub and like probably the largest airport in that region, there’s not a lot that flies into there. We flew through Sao Paulo on the way back up because there’s quite a few flights into there. But otherwise, yeah, I would say start with Europe. Asia’s not too bad. The other three are a bit harder. And Antarctica, good luck. You’re flying into the tip of Argentina and then taking a boat from there. 

Drew McLellan [00:29:20]: 

Yeah. When we went to Antarctica, we flew into Chile and then down to the tip of Chile and then into Antarctica. So yeah, it was a travel adventure for sure. Yeah. So are there times of year like because it sounds like a lot of this requires to maximize the value, it requires a fair amount of flexibility. And to your point, for a lot of people, they may or may not have that flexibility in terms of dates or times of the year they fly. So are there better times of year to maximize the value of your points than others? 

Julia Menez [00:29:53]: 

The best time to fly, the best time to book your flights is either as soon as the calendar opens up, which is 10 to 11 months before you’re actually taking the trip, or last minute. And if you are booking flights for more than two people, I don’t really recommend last minute flights unless you’re very flexible on destination where you’re like, let’s just go to Europe next week, I don’t care where. If you’re super flexible on destination, then you can do it. But yeah, as far as best times to book flights, most normal people, this is another common mistake, are searching for flights three to eight months before they’re traveling. That’s just what a normal person would do. But if you want really, really good points deals, especially if you have a large family, I would start searching 10 to 11 months prior to when you are looking to actually take the trip. 

Drew McLellan [00:30:38]: 

Okay, and is there a time of year like May is a great time or November is a terrible time? Is there seasonality to the value of or is it pretty much year round depending on where you want to go? 

Julia Menez [00:30:52]: 

It kind of depends where you want to go. And also like the airline that you’re searching. So everyone wants to go to Japan during cherry blossom season. There is not a ton of award space. Somehow magically I ended up there during golden week and we found a great flight deal back. I actually had planned to go to Singapore that week. But something that also happens in the world of points and miles is I will oftentimes like book a flight deal to get home and I’m just like, eh, I don’t love this. It goes from Singapore all the way through Turkey, all the way back home. But like that’s all I got. And then the week of I’ll end up changing the flight last minute to be like, we can’t get home from Singapore, we’re going to Japan instead. Something opened up there. So that type of flexibility. Also, if you’re willing to just flip all of your plans and then explore a different destination than maybe what you were planning, but you’re like, I have this week off of work, and I thought we were doing Singapore this week, but we are actually doing Tokyo. That kind of flexibility can open up a lot of fun adventures and points deals as well. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:50]: 

So if somebody is not in that position, they’ve got two kids, they’re doing it over spring break. It is what it is. If I have a lot, if I’ve accumulated a lot of points, which I think a lot of our listeners probably have, between amex and maybe hotel and airline points, what’s the best spend of the points? Is it airlines? Is it plane tickets? Is that the best way to spend those points, do you think, in terms of getting the most bang for your buck? 

Julia Menez [00:32:12]: 

Depends. If by most bang you mean most value out of your points or most total retail value of savings, I would say probably airlines, especially if in this example, you have a family of four. Because those plane tickets get really expensive. 

Drew McLellan [00:32:25]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:32:26]: 

A lot of our clients will typically save them at least $30,000 in the first six months of working with us. And with that, it’s because most of them have multiple people. It’s just easier to say, I saved $30,000 if you had to book five tickets in the first place. 

Drew McLellan [00:32:42]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:32:43]: 

So if you have a large family and you’re like, what do I do? How do I maximize points? Yeah, the answer is probably going to be flights rather than hotels. The answer is probably business class flights, depending on where it is that you want to go. If you can be a little bit flexible. I know a lot of people are tied to the school schedule, but if you can just say, I want a really good trip in June of next year, where do you recommend we go? That’s where we can really help. You can also send in a [email protected] request and we produce one free tutorial every week on the YouTube and through our newsletter as well, where people just write in being like, plan me something here. Or if you have a specific trip in mind, geobreacetravel.com request and it’s free. You can submit a request through there. 

Drew McLellan [00:33:28]: 

Okay. If somebody’s listening and they’re like this, this is overwhelming, but they want to do it themselves. Give me a step by step. Here’s what I think a lot of people do. They accumulate a lot of points and then they. Let’s say they use American Express, whichever card it may be, and they then will just go on the American Express travel site, book their travel with points, and be done. If they are like, okay, I get that that’s not the best. I’m not getting the best value by doing that. Give me a step by step. If you’re going to do it yourself, but you’re going to keep it simple. Let’s say they have, I don’t know, half a million points in American Express. What would you do with a half a million points of the American Express to maximize that value? Would you convert them into something else? 

Julia Menez [00:34:16]: 

I’d recommend they go to YouTube, Search Geo Breeze Travel Blueprint, because we have the step by step there in that video. So what I would do is like first inventory your points. So in this sense you have 500,000AmEx points. I would pick when you want to go before where you want to go. So let’s say they want to just go somewhere in July. I would figure out where is their nice weather in July. So let’s say Europe is good. I would then go into a search aggregator and say, okay, from my general vicinity in the U.S. or even just from anywhere in the U.S. what are the good flights over to Europe where there are at least how many seats they need? Let’s say four in this case. So in the search aggregators, you can set up your filters to say I need to get from the United States over to Europe. In business class, I have four people. So that means like per person, I’m working with like 120,000 points. I need to get there and back. 60,000 points per person each way. That would be within budget. So that’s how I would do it. Step by step is inventory your points. Pick a timeframe. Like if you have a month of when you could like take this trip and like a couple weeks flexibility on either end, that’d be great. And then type those into a search aggregator. All of that also just sounds like a lot. We have people with this too. Geobreachetravel.com intro call. You can just book a free call with our team and then we can direct you into next steps based off of what you’re trying to do. 

Drew McLellan [00:35:43]: 

All right, so let’s say I do all of that. I go to one of the aggregators and I find a trip to. I find a flight to Paris that makes sense on an airline that I don’t have status, I might not even have a frequent flyer number with. Maybe I’ve never flown it. And I have these Amex points. How do I buy the plane ticket? Do I buy it through AMEX Travel? Do I buy it through the aggregator? Do I convert it to points to that airline? 

Julia Menez [00:36:10]: 

Great question. So the answer is no and no. You don’t book it through Amex. You don’t book it through the aggregator. The aggregator will tell you, hey, there’s a great deal with Air France. On the days that you’re trying to fly at 60,000 points per person one way in business class, what you want to do then make a frequent flyer account number with Air France. It’s free to sign up for them because you’re going to need that number. Then you’re going to log into your Amex account and link up Amex to your Air France frequent flyer. So Amex knows where to send the points. Then let’s say it’s a family of four. You’re going to tell American Express, hey, I need to transfer over 240,000 points, because 60,000 times 4. I need you to move it to this Air France frequent flyer number. Make sure your name matches between whatever name is on your Amex credit card and whatever name you put on the Amex or on the Air France frequent flyer account. Because we have clients who mess this up all the time, where maybe you go by Rob, and so you put that on one of your accounts, but then it’s Robert on the other one. It messes up people all the time. So make sure that you’ve taken care of that. 

Drew McLellan [00:37:15]: 

In other words, your credit card should all be in your full name, since you have to use that with your frequent flyer account. Right? 

Julia Menez [00:37:21]: 

Or no, I would just make sure they match. Yeah, I just standardly use whatever’s on my passport across everything to lower the probability that something goes wrong. 

Drew McLellan [00:37:31]: 

Okay. All right. So anyway, so I go to American Express. I say, hey, I’ve got. Here’s my frequent flyer number for Air France. Move the points over. Then I go to the Air France website once the points are moved over and buy the tickets through that. 

Julia Menez [00:37:48]: 

Yeah. So once your points have moved over to Air France, then you would buy the ticket through Air France. Okay, important caveat. Before moving any points, always search Air France first to make sure that the tickets actually exist there. Sometimes the aggregators mess up. They’re out of date by, like, a couple hours. They found something a couple hours ago, but then somebody else bought that plane ticket already. Make sure before moving any points over. In this example with Air France, check Air France first. Like, make your frequent flyer account, search for the flights. Make sure you. There are four tickets left that you can buy with points for the price that you want. Then move your points over, then go buy them through Air France. 

Drew McLellan [00:38:27]: 

So how long does it take to move the points? Is that instantaneous? 

Julia Menez [00:38:31]: 

Very good question. Depends on the airline. So with this Air France example, yes, you just move the points over from Amex, log out of Air France, log back in. The points are probably there. Not every airline is like that. There’s ana, which is only Fun Airways. It’s a Japanese airline, and that one notoriously takes three days to transfer from Amex to ana. So let’s say you found a great flight deal on ANA over to Japan. It’s in their amazing business class or first class. You move over your Amex points, however many you need, and then you just pray for three days. And then three days later you log into your ANA account and the points are probably there. And then the seats that you found three days ago may or may not be there anymore. So, yeah, it depends on the airline. There’s a website I like for this. It’s the upgraded points transfer partner tool. It’ll tell you, like, what credit card company are you trying to move points to? What airline? Here’s how fast it goes. Usually like. And they’ll say, like, takes a day. It’s instantaneous. It takes an hour. Yeah, most of them are pretty fast or should transfer within a day or two. Sometimes anomalies happen, usually transferring points to Air Canada super fast. But we have. I’ve been caught in situations where it took three days and thankfully my flights were still there, but I was freaking out for three days. 

Drew McLellan [00:39:47]: 

And there’s no way to, in essence hold the plane tickets. Like, so, for example, when I buy plane tickets on united.com it’ll always ask me, do you want to buy the tickets or do you want to hold the tickets for three days for $20 or something? Can you do that and then buy. Use them. Use points to buy the tickets or. 

Julia Menez [00:40:07]: 

No, depends on the airline. American Airlines does let you do this. So I one time needed to move some points over. I put the flights that I wanted on hold. I think that they would do that for 24 hours. A lot of airlines will not. There’s lots of blog articles out there that’ll say, like, these airlines will put stuff on hold for you. These ones won’t. Hotels are better about this. So if there’s a really exclusive Hyatt property, I have access to something called Points advance because I have top tier status with Hyatt. So any globalists out there, you have access to this too, where you just call up your globalist line and you’re like, hey, I need to put five nights at the Hyatt Regency in Nice on hold because I don’t have the points yet, but I think this is going to sell out. So just hold five nights of rooms for me while I get the points. And then you have to give them points. Probably, I think, depends on the hotel. But 30 days before you actually check in. 

Drew McLellan [00:41:03]: 

Okay, so if somebody already has an American Express card, they’re spending, let’s just say 25 grand a month on credit card fees, whatever it may be. And maybe it’s a. Maybe it’s a mixed spend. So maybe it’s not on ads, but it’s on some travel, it’s on office supplies, it’s on dinners out, it’s meetings, it’s business expenses. And they want to add to their Amex card. Is it better to have an Amex and some sort of Visa like a Chase or a Citi or something like that? Is it better to mix and match sort of the family of cards that you have? Or is it better, do you think, to stay in the family? Like you have three different American Express cards or whatever it may be. 

Julia Menez [00:41:48]: 

And it depends on if you want to maximize more for earning or for when it’s time to redeem. I personally like having multiple families of cards because let’s say that I have a whole bunch of Amex points, but then I really, really want to book this deal on Turkish Airlines or something. Amex doesn’t transfer over there. Same with United. Maybe there’s a great deal with United. Amex points can’t transfer directly to United States. So I like to do a little bit of diversification for that. I also like using Amex and Capital One more so for airline redemptions. I tend to use most of my Chase points for Hyatt Hotel redemption, so you’re kind of covered there. But if you’re like, I just want to earn like a ton of Amex points, I’m good with just Amex. You can get an Amex Platinum for flights, to get 5x Amex Business Gold for Forex on ads. So it kind of depends on do you want to optimize more for earning or for redemptions or like a little bit of hybrid of both. And we can help with that in the free credit card consult as well. 

Drew McLellan [00:42:48]: 

Okay. What haven’t I asked you that I should have asked you to figure out how to maximize this? What am I missing? 

Julia Menez [00:42:55]: 

You’ve asked a lot of really good questions today. Some of the other common things that people ask are like, how do you know the airlines that are worth booking versus the Ones that aren’t worth booking. How do you know if something is a good deal? How do you know if, like there’s this thing called phantom availability, which is a nightmare situation, which is where you move your points out from Amex to an airline and that flight’s not actually there. 

Drew McLellan [00:43:17]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:43:17]: 

Which is. Yeah, that’s a very sad situation. It happens with partner airlines where maybe Alaska said that they had something available on Condor Air, which is a German airline, but it actually wasn’t there. So lots of different ways to check for that. Always, always, always check on the actual airline where you’re going to be transferring your points. So if the aggregators and other tools are saying, oh, you can book this through Alaska Airlines, physically check Alaska Airlines before you move anything over. Yeah. As far as what airlines are the best ones to fly and how you know which ones are good, I prefer YouTube videos versus blog articles to do all of the reviews on everything, just so you can see everything that’s going on. But also there is a website, it’s free, it’s called Aero Lopa and it gives you the full seat configurations so you can see which ones. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:08]: 

Spell that again. 

Julia Menez [00:44:09]: 

Aerolopa A E R O L O P A dot com. And then you just look up the airline and then the, the plane model, which if you’re like, how do I find the plane model of what plane it’s going to be? Look on Google flights and find the specific flight they’re going to be on and it tells you what kind of plane it’s going to be. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:26]: 

Right. 

Julia Menez [00:44:27]: 

Plane switches do happen. So sometimes you think you’re going to be on the A380, but then it turns into the A350 because they had to switch out the plane, like that’ll happen. But if you really, really want to optimize for your experience and get the greatest thing that you can out of your points and if you’re super flexible, at some point you’ll probably want to start researching what planes are the nicest. Because with Emirates is one of the classic examples. Everybody wants the first class one that has the shower, which is the A380, whereas the B777 does not have the shower. 

Drew McLellan [00:45:01]: 

I’m sorry, it has a shower on the plane. Or I have my own shower. 

Julia Menez [00:45:05]: 

You have a shower on the plane and then you can sign up for a five minute time slot to shower while flying. Yeah, okay, everyone wants that one. And so some people end up booking an Emirates first class flight and being like, where’s the shower? But it’s not the right plane. 

Drew McLellan [00:45:20]: 

Right. They’re like. It’s on the ground. Thank you very much. Right. 

Julia Menez [00:45:23]: 

Yeah, yeah. So it’s kind of a next level thing once you’re deeper into points and miles, but doing research on the different aircraft and the different features of each aircraft. Kind of a next level thing as well. 

Drew McLellan [00:45:34]: 

All right, this is a great question to end our conversation. So what’s the most amazing thing that you can get on a plane? If you were going to book a specific seat on a plane to have the most amazing plane experience, what is that experience? Because for most people, just being able to lay down is pretty amazing. 

Julia Menez [00:45:54]: 

The most amazing thing that I’ve been able to book is called Singapore Suites because they’ll take down the wall, and so you have, like a separate chair in bed. Not. Don’t. Not only does your chair, like, it doesn’t lay down, it’s a separate bed versus the chair. And then they can take down the wall. So you can have a double bed in the sky. So you have, like, this bedroom. So I flew that once. That was amazing. The most amazing one I haven’t flown yet. It’s called the Residence with Eddie Hot. There’s the Eddie Hot Apartments, which is similar to, like, the suites where you have a bed and a chair. And. 

Drew McLellan [00:46:21]: 

And what airline is this? 

Julia Menez [00:46:23]: 

This is with Etihad. They’re based in Abu Dhabi. Okay, and what do you get with the Residence? I think it’s three bedrooms. It’s like three rooms, one bedroom. They also have a shower, but it’s small. There’s like a little small shower. 

Drew McLellan [00:46:38]: 

Yeah, that’d be. 

Julia Menez [00:46:38]: 

Yeah, the Emirates one’s quite large in the bathroom. So. 

Drew McLellan [00:46:43]: 

All right, so I’m sorry, it’s a three bedroom suite. 

Julia Menez [00:46:46]: 

Yeah. On the. In the front of the plane. 

Drew McLellan [00:46:48]: 

And that’s with one person, or is that like there are more people in the suite? 

Julia Menez [00:46:54]: 

You can bring a second person. It costs more points. I think it’s like a million points or something. Ridiculous. I don’t know anybody who’s flown it on points. I’ve heard of people who, like, have found a really good cash deal to book it or something by. Probably a cash deal. It’s probably like $10,000. 

Drew McLellan [00:47:09]: 

But I was gonna say. What did. I was just gonna say, what is a really good cash deal? 

Julia Menez [00:47:13]: 

Yeah, yeah. Probably like anything under 10,000 was, like, amazing for them. But that is, as far as I know, the. The craziest thing that you can book on a commercial airline in the sky is the Etihad residence. 

Drew McLellan [00:47:25]: 

Okay. And again, I think for most listeners, just not having to be sit, sitting back in coach with 90,000 other people eating a box lunch for a 18 hour flight sounds pretty good. Just being able to lay down. So again, what you’re saying is that’s well within the means of probably most people listening with the kind of spend they have on a credit card if they know how to do it. 

Julia Menez [00:47:47]: 

Oh yeah. A lot of people don’t realize there’s a big difference between business class and first class. And when people are like, I want to fly first class to wherever, business class is usually what they’re thinking about. Where it’s just a lay flat seat that’s usually good enough where you just, you get to lay down, you get food that’s served on real plates with real forks, you get access to the lounge beforehand. It very much optimizes for business travelers where you need to land and be a functional human because you got a nice night of sleep on the plane. 

Drew McLellan [00:48:13]: 

Right, right. 

Julia Menez [00:48:14]: 

First class. A lot of airlines don’t even have first class. Like KLM doesn’t have first class on a lot of their planes. But if you do fly first class with Cathay or Emirates or any of those, that’s where it gets very, very fancy. Very bougie. They give you like a full Bulgari perfume thing, nice designer pajamas. What do you get? Oh, the lounges, instead of just free food at the buffet, there’s table service. So there’s waiters and things for you as well. So that’s the difference between business and first class. And it is exponentially more difficult to find first class availability than business class. Business class, I think it’s a sweet spot because you get lay flat seats. There’s generally pretty good availability and there’s a lot more routes that are serviced and you can easily do that with just a couple of credit card points. 

Drew McLellan [00:49:05]: 

Okay, this has been fascinating, Julia, if people want to get a hold of you, I know you’ve given the website a couple times, but give it again and then they can. And then also where they can learn from you because I know you produce a lot of content. So share, share that information as well. 

Julia Menez [00:49:19]: 

Yeah. So for any business owners or high cash flow individuals who feel like they are leaving a bunch of money on the table when it comes to points and miles, there’s actually a couple freebies I’d like to give out. So the first one is a script that when used correctly, has gotten thousands of my followers free upgrades and amenities at hotels all over the world. There’s directions for how to use this directly in the script. You don’t need any status or anything. And then the second one is something that’s not even publicly available. We just use it internally to figure out how much you’re leaving on the table with your points. So it’s a personal spreadsheet that I built because I was. I was an actuary back in the day. So I was going to say because. 

Drew McLellan [00:49:55]: 

You’Re a numbers geek, right? 

Julia Menez [00:49:57]: 

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So if you want both of these absolutely free, just as my way of saying thank you for having me on this podcast, just go to my Instagram geo breezetravel DM me the word podcast 2025, all one word. And then I’ll just send you the link to download both of those and from there you can chat me up and ask any other questions you have about points and miles on Instagram at Geobreze Travel. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:19]: 

Awesome. So I guess I do want to ask you one more question. So when somebody’s not taking advantage of your free services, how do you get paid? 

Julia Menez [00:50:28]: 

We have a variety of different products as well. Very customizable to the client if they want done for you. Where it’s just fully white glove service, we have client consultations for that. Where it’s. We’re just paid directly by the client. We have course material that people can buy as well. I used to have affiliate links from the credit cards, but they got really, really picky with what I could and couldn’t tell people and they wanted me to take down all my juicy tips. So I don’t really play with affiliate links that much anymore. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:58]: 

Okay, awesome. This has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. This has been a really fun conversation and I, you know, normally our shows are very business focused and, and I know that my listeners are going to forgive this little dalliance into something that’s a little more fun and a little more personal because it’s one of the perks of owning a business that I think people don’t take full advantage of. So super grateful that you spent the time with us today. Thank you. 

Julia Menez [00:51:23]: 

For sure. Thanks, Drew. 

Drew McLellan [00:51:24]: 

You bet. All right, guys, so here’s your homework. First of all, go find Julia on Instagram and get the free tools and learn from that. But also time to get smarter about how you’re using your points. I’m guessing many of you are using sort of the standard way of just using your credit card travel service to book airlines. And what we’re learn, what we learned today is that there’s more to be squeezed out of that value if you do it a little differently. So make sure that you’re thinking about that before you plan the next family vacation. All right, Many thanks to our friends at White Label iq. As you know, they are the presenting sponsor of the podcast Podcast. So White Label was created by some folks who were in an AMI peer group and the way they started was they had a huge client that wanted like 10 websites all turned around very quickly and they didn’t have the staff for it and they couldn’t find an outsourced partner that would help them fast enough. And finally they did find an outsourced partner and from that relationship they built their sister company, White Label iq. And so they realized that lots of agencies have this challenge that they need extra help to build websites, landing pages today, apps, other things like that. So digital assets or they need help with their PPC work or design work. And they just needed an extension of their team. And so White Label IQ was born out of that need from an AMI agency. And we’ve known them for many years. They’re good, good people and they serve. I know a lot of you listening. So head over to whitelabeliq.com ami and check them out. Learn a little bit more. They’ve got some free hours. If you’ve never worked with them before and like I always ask you to do, please take the time to just through the contact us, send them a note and say, hey, thanks for sponsoring the podcast. Really appreciate it because that means they’ll stay with us and I get to keep doing this with you. All right, I will be back next week with another guest and I hope you’ll join me. Talk to you then. Thanks for listening.