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How One Man Earned 10 Million Credit Card Points - YouTube
Channel: CNBC Make It
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Hi I'm Chris Hutchins.
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I'm the founder and CEO of Grove
and I'm a pretty crazy credit
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card points optimizer.
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Right now I'm at like 9.97
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million points
across everything.
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I started getting crazy about
credit card points in college.
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I got my first credit card,
I think with the United credit
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card, and I was like, "Man every time
I spend a dollar I get a
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mile. And if I get enough
credit card points I could fly
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somewhere for free."
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And I've loved traveling
my whole life.
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And so I think travel, like
love for travel is what drove
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this. I spent a lot of
time just paying for everything for
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everyone. If there was a bachelor
party I'd buy like all the
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tickets for all five people and I
put them all on a card that
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got you know 5X points on flights
and then I'd book with all
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the hotels for everyone and I'd put
them on a card that earns
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like 3X points on travel.
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So I'd earn all these points.
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For a while, I would buy all
of my groceries by going to
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OfficeMax and buying Whole Foods
gift cards at Office Max
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because I had an office supply
store credit card that earned
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5X points and so I'd go buy
my Whole Foods gift cards, then
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I'd go to Whole Foods
and pay with gift cards.
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And it got to the point that
you're like Best Buy is across
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the street from OfficeMax
in San Francisco.
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So it was like, oh if you
wanted to buy something Best Buy
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you're better off going to OfficeMax
first, buy a Best Buy
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gift card, get 5X points and
then go back across the other
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side street and then go
buy something at Best Buy.
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Yeah I think our honeymoon
and our wedding videographer were
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probably the best use of points
we've ever had in our lives.
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When we were getting married,
we thought about our honeymoon
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and we were like, "We want
to take the most amazing
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honeymoon and we wanna
spend no money."
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We had decided we wanted
to go to the Seychelles.
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I think Prince William went there
for his honeymoon and so
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like all of a sudden it
like became like the hot place.
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We found that you know, the best
way to get there was on Air
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France but not actually using Air
France miles but using Delta
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miles. So we managed to get
all of our AmEx points transferred
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over to Delta and we noticed
that you know there was a
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promotion at the time where it's
like transfer Delta miles to
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someone else and they double.
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So we transfer them to her,
my wife, and then transferred them
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back to me.
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And then all of a sudden
we had enough to go there.
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We told our videographer we were
going to the Seychelles and
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she had said, "Man.
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There's nothing I want more than
go there with my husband."
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So not only did we end
up buying ourselves tickets to the
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Seychelles for our honeymoon, but
we actually bought our
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videographer tickets to the Seychelles
for her and her husband
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and then got our
videography for free.
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There's this whole world called
churning where people are like,
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"How can I maximize the
spend on my credit cards?"
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And there been people that
have gone to crazy lengths.
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There was a promotion a long
time ago where you could earn
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points by buying pudding and there's
this one guy who bought
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pudding cups and bought like
millions of pudding cups because
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you could earn more points
than the pudding cups cost.
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There's a Reddit community for
churning where people talk you
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know in really deep levels of like
what are crazy ways to earn
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points. The deeper you go down
this rabbit hole of credit card
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points, the more time
it ends up taking.
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Now I probably have about
16 total credit cards.
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Surprisingly, I carry one and usually
use all the other ones,
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I like plan my day.
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I'm like how I'm gonna
go to the grocery store.
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I wanna make sure
I grab that card.
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When I'm traveling I usually
probably bring like seven.
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Personally, I don't spend
that much money.
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I'm like kind of a frugal
person but I take every opportunity
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to maximize points and try to
make sure that I'm spending
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everything I can that I could put
on a credit card on a credit
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card. I like try never to
use cash because it's like free
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money. I think the upside of
owning a business is that you
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have a lot of business expenses
and the downside is you have
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no time to take vacation.
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So one trip I really want to
take is to Australia and New
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Zealand, primarily because I went to
Australia on a free trip
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without my wife and so I've
been getting flak for that ever
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since it happened and she's
really wanted to go.
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It's like a great place to
go with points because it's super
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far away and you need
a lot of time.
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As soon as you start to
realize what can happen, it just
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becomes somewhat crazy of an obsession
because no one likes to
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spend money.
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Not when you can
get it for free.
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