068: A Simple Guide to Travel Hacking with Julian Fung

00:00 - 00:47 | Julian Fung: I have 200,000 points. I just want to go somewhere, right? And so you're looking at basically, okay, where in my scenario, where are some Hyatt places that I can stay for reasonable prices that I can just get it for free? And basically Sofia, Bulgaria, and also Cape Town, South Africa were two of those places. And I had amazing, amazing experience in both places because I was able to stay at these four or five star hotels in a suite that's bigger than my apartment right now. for entirely free for a month, right? Free breakfast, free hors d'oeuvres in the evening, free flowing alcohol. And it's just like the lounge, the pool, the spa, all that stuff. And then I got to make some really good lifelong friends that I connected with just in those two places.
00:49 - 01:32 | Christopher Nelson: Welcome to this episode of Tech Equity and Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson, and I'm excited to be here with my good friend, Julian Fung. Julian Fung, like most of us, is a technology employee, and he's also the owner of an education business called MoneyOrLife.co, which asks the question, your money, your life, Why not both? And he is also a travel hacking guru. And I know I'm going to just throw out the vanity stat. It may have changed since then, but I know in the last, I think five or six years, you've traveled hacked $250,000 worth of value for free, essentially, or leveraging, you know, these techniques. And so welcome. I'm excited to share with everybody a little bit about travel hacking, Julian.

01:33 - 01:44 | Julian Fung: Yeah. Thank you. This is a long time coming. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast and just really enjoyed watching your content as well on your podcast and happy to be here. Talk about all things travel.

01:44 - 02:19 | Christopher Nelson: All things travel. Yes. And I know, I think it didn't happen sooner because I have been studying travel hacking for the last Gosh, I think it'd be nine months with Julian participating in some of his courses and cohorts. Because part of, I think many people, when they imagine financial independence, there's a geographic independence that comes with it. There's the ability to then travel where you want to go. And the term that is heard out there today is travel hacking. So help us understand, Julian, what does travel hacking really mean?

02:19 - 02:33 | Julian Fung: Yeah, travel hacking or, you know, the points and miles game, whatever you want to call it, it's really the act and process of optimizing your credit card spending and rewards to get free travel. That's the basic essence of it.

02:34 - 02:58 | Christopher Nelson: It is as simple as that, right, is there are credit card companies that offer points when you spend with them. And if done correctly, you can not incur interest expenses and you can get this exhaust of all of these points that then you can put towards your travel. So tell us a little bit of how you got exposed to this and what was your learning curve like getting into travel hacking?

02:59 - 04:12 | Julian Fung: Yeah, that was a long journey. But essentially, I got started in this during my college days, actually, I was a very thrifty, frugal college student, just like probably most of you are, if you've been to college, you've been there, you're still in college, right? And so one day, I just overheard some friends talking about getting free flights, getting free hotels, traveling everywhere for free. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably too good to be true. And then I actually was having lunch with a mutual friend and I took out my card. It was a Discover card at the time because that was the only card I could get. And at the restaurant, I took out the Discover card and I paid for my food with it. And the friend sitting across the table was like, a Discover card? Man, you got to level up. I took that and I just ran with it, you know, feel the flames of passion there. So once that happened, I started reading blogs and just going online, looking for all the resources that I could find on travel hacking. And I just basically booked my first trip after self-education, but I made so many mistakes along the way. But yeah, here we are. And here we are today. We haven't looked back since then.

04:12 - 04:44 | Christopher Nelson: Right. And so give us, I think it is important that while some may consider it a vanity stat, I really think that it's truly the value that you can get out of developing a skill like this, because like other things, just like investing, I believe travel hacking is a skill where it's a game to be played. You understand the rules, you understand the incentives and where you want to stay inside the safe box, and then you can win. And so help us understand what are some wins that you've been able to get out of this, having done this for a number of years.

04:44 - 05:47 | Julian Fung: Yeah, honestly, you know, the basic goals that I have with travel hacking and most people who do it have is really to get free travel and unlock experiences that you wouldn't otherwise have access to, or at least you wouldn't otherwise have access to without breaking the bank. So I can't tell you how many times I've done things that I wouldn't have paid anything out of pocket. I just wouldn't have been able to afford it without, you know, digging into my savings or my retirement accounts. The first memorable trip, probably the most memorable trip would be my honeymoon with my wife. We went to Hawaii. It was like a five, $6,000 honeymoon trip. And mind you, that's not a lot of money to some people, but to us at the time, I was a new graduate, you know, broke out of college and we were both early careers. And that was a huge win in our books. And since then, you know, it's, it's been that it's been hundreds of flights, hundreds of hotels. And it's just experience after experience. I just never thought that I would get this early into my journey.

05:47 - 07:17 | Christopher Nelson: Well, and this is, I think this is something important for people to understand is that, you know, when you think about travel hacking, depending on where you are financially, travel hacking is reducing travel costs and creating experiences you normally wouldn't have. So for example, I know that you can also leverage these points to say, I'm going to, it's within my budget to purchase some economy tickets, but I'm going to use the points to then get myself to business class, or I am going to get a basic hotel room, but I'm going to use this to now get a suite or get an additional add on because I want to bring my family. So this is where, you know, and I want to sort of. round out this concept as we move to sort of the next phase of the conversation, but it's truly, if you're able to optimize your credit card spend, and I know for myself and my family, we have been leveraging a airline's credit card for the last, gosh, 10 or 15 years, we do all of our spending on it every month. We pay it off at the end of the month. Religiously, it's just set up automatic. We don't even think about it. And then we've been stockpiling those points. With travel hacking, there's a way that every year you take some additional steps to then swap out, get some new bonuses on credit cards and to accelerate that. But ultimately, then you can use those points to level up or to actually purchase and get these different travel experiences. Did I get that all right?

07:17 - 07:40 | Julian Fung: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to also add that, you know, it's not just getting the free upgrade or getting a luxury trip. Maybe you could think about it as instead of you doing just one trip a year, maybe it's now two trips a year, right? And so there's so many different ways to think about it where you get the extra bonus of doing this, in my opinion, a limited amount of investment time to learn it.

07:40 - 08:49 | Christopher Nelson: Well, and thank you for bringing that up because I think in all honesty, I mean, this is the use case that I brought to you is I said, look, my wife and I, you know, in financial independence, we're growing our portfolio, but we are on a fixed budget. Now it's a nice budget. You know, I'm not sitting here, you know, crying about my budget, but what I'm trying to say is we had then said we have dollars for know, one and a half, two trips a year. So one domestic, one international trip. I want to expand that to do one domestic, three international trips a year. That was ultimately the goal. And this is actually what is coming out as the fruit. I mean, this is what we're able to realize is we did a Bay Area trip in March. We're going to go to Europe this summer, Dominican Republic in October timeframe, and then in winter is when we want to then go to Montreal and Quebec city. And so those are sort of our targets for the year that we're trying to fit into the same budget that we had for travel before. We're trying to just extend that with travel hacking. So I think that's, I love being able to bring people real substantial use cases because this is, these live fire exercises allow us to understand how this would work and feel.

08:49 - 10:12 | Julian Fung: Yeah, absolutely. And there are actually two more use cases that I think are nice concepts for people to think about just depending on your stages of life. Number one is it's just insurance for travel is how I think about it. And an example that I have would be during the pandemic season, there was all this lockdowns and things are happening. Nobody was traveling. And then once we got the vaccines and then restrictions started lifting, people had this pent up demand for travel. And so what happened? prices skyrocketed, right? Domestic flights were going for $800 to $1,000, and it was almost the same price as going to Europe, for example, so why wouldn't you just go there? But, oh, it's Christmas, I gotta go see family, right? And so during that period of time, everybody around me were talking and complaining about how crazy flight prices were. But for us, we were thankful that we had points in the bank. And it was just, yeah, I didn't feel it at all because the four to five flights that we booked within that period of time, or even more, I think, were all on points. We did pay for some of it in cash, but it was mostly points. So it's kind of insurance as well, even if you're not going on trips very frequently or every year or a specific cadence. It's just nice to have there as a backup.

10:12 - 10:16 | Christopher Nelson: It truly is. And then what's, did you mention there was one other use case? Yeah.

10:16 - 11:27 | Julian Fung: The other one is really, I mean, it's kind of a similar vein, but it's more from a point of savings and retirement. So I had a client who came to me and he said, Hey, my wife and I are not traveling much right now in our season and phase of life. But our daughter is in college right now, or in high school. She's going to graduate soon and go off to college, right? And so once that happens, we'll be empty nesters. And I'll slow down on my career. And we want to just travel the world. And that's probably two years out, three years out. And he said, I have my 401ks all set up, my IRAs, they're all set up. I want to build my travel 401k now. And so it's really two years is a great timeline in order to get started thinking about this. And it's really, you lay out the foundations, you spend five to 10 hours optimizing a portfolio. That's a one-time investment. And once that's set up, you just do your daily spending. Like you don't need to spend much time thinking about this or effort. And then once you're ready to go on trips, you have all this points just saved up. And now you just got to figure out what are the best ways to redeem my 3 million chase points, right?

11:27 - 12:28 | Christopher Nelson: You're right. And I actually really like that idea. And we're actually seeing, I mean, I think for many skills, right? And this is so important for people to understand because I think there is a barrier to entry to many things, but let's talk about travel hacking in general. People balk at, well, I got to set this up or I have to do this. And they overthink the complexity when the reality is it's like any other skill. Yes. There's going to be a period of time to ramp up. This isn't rocket science. It's really not. It's really some, some basic addition, subtraction, and some tracking. And then once you actually get into it, the skills compound, number one, so you're actually able to do more in less time. You're able to continue to aggregate more points quickly. And then ultimately that payoff over, you know, the next two or three years with the volume of points and then your knowledge of how to redeem them. is super valuable because then you're able to go and pinpoint and target trips, destinations, and be able to do what you want to do.

12:28 - 13:35 | Julian Fung: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the time investment is absolutely worth it, in my opinion. And I actually was thinking about it the other day. There are so many people that come to me and say, hey, like, I can spend X amount of dollars every year. And if I just get cash back, I can get $5,000 of cash back every year or $10,000 of cash back every year without thinking about it. But the flip side to that is, well, these guys are business owners. A lot of people that are coming to me now, they're spending 30, 50K, 100K a month so they can rack up all these points. And he said, well, yes, I can get $5,000 to $10,000 cash back, but that's not super exciting. Even if it's not the most optimal way, what would you prefer? Spending $30,000, $50,000 to $100,000 every month on the business And then at the end of the day, you get five to $10,000 in cash back, or you could get an all expenses paid, like all inclusive trip, five star hotel at a luxury beach resort somewhere in the Caribbean. Right. And that's like a lot more exciting. There's that emotional experience there. You're not going to get with just, you know, cash back and things like that.

13:35 - 15:01 | Christopher Nelson: Well, you're right. And there's also, I think when you look at the trade value, I think that you're right. You can get more, I think you just get more, more upside, right? I don't think that there is, you know, especially as you've shown me how to do the analysis of, you know, what the points percents value. I think there's a lot more opportunity to trade up when you have the points. So let's break it down for people. So as one of your students, I'm going to lay this out for you and hopefully I don't screw this up, but I think that the main components of travel hacking are, you want to have a process and a procedure for how do you actually accumulate points through spending. You leverage that on credit cards and you're either going to have airline credit cards or hotel-specific credit cards, or you have credit cards that are flex, where you can basically acquire points and you can point them in a different direction. Then there is redemption. There are techniques, tools, strategies for how do you strategically redeem the points. And then I would say that the third factor is sort of this, what I would call the management and operations. So how do you actually track your points? And then how do you look annually to say, how am I going to change my credit card profile to then maximize my influx of points annually? Is that pretty much the fundamentals? Because I want to talk about the science of travel hacking. How does it work from a tactical perspective?

15:02 - 15:25 | Julian Fung: Yeah, I think you broke it down into the three perfectly. Basically, the three high-level things is earnings, optimizing them, and then optimizing your redemptions, making sure you get the best value for the points you've earned, the heart points that you've earned, and then how to keep it going. That's the third step is sustainably doing this over and over again so you get free travel every year.

15:25 - 16:53 | Christopher Nelson: Right. You know, the, the things that I would say, you know, if I were to call out, cause this isn't the intention isn't for this to be a course, but to be a fly over and be educational. But I think the key things that I would call out to people that I didn't understand that's really important is number one is looking at where you live and thinking about, you know, what airlines or hotels that you want to leverage and it's where you live and where you want to go. And I'll tell you this because I know one of the key education points for myself is. Living and working for many years as an Accenture employee in the Bay Area, a lot of travel. I was a United guy, had a ton of United points. We're now living in Austin, Texas. Now we've shifted over and we're building some points in and around American Airlines because American Airlines and that network flies more out of this particular area. So that was a optimization shift that was a little painful emotionally to get my head around. but also opened up the ability to create better opportunities and optimizations. I think the other concept that around the points that I think is important for people to understand is, is just the concept of flex points, right? That you can actually look at the credit cards that you have and think of what comes to mind is Chase and Capital One where you're accumulating points and then you could push them to your different, you know, the different airlines that they're partnered with instead of just having to do a single airline. What else around some of those two things would you call out?

16:53 - 18:43 | Julian Fung: I think that that's really the main thing if you want to get started is to figure out your home base, your frequent destinations. I'll break it out into two subsections. So your frequent destinations and your aspirational target destinations. So what I mean by frequent destinations is business travel is a great example. You have properties in some other state, you got to fly there every single time, you know, monthly, quarterly, whatever, or it's for work, it's for consulting. And the second piece of that is you have family in a different part of town, different part of the country. Well, you got to go there every year, like twice a year, three times a year. Those are your frequent destinations. And it could even be frequent travel, like vacation destinations. Like I had a couple who always took their kids to Destin. It's an annual tradition. So if it's an annual tradition, it's easy to hack because it's so predictable. You just Oh, I know that the American Airlines points will get me there. And then once I'm there, there's this like really nice hotel that I could stay at. And then I could just optimize that. I figure out which cards earn me those points for those two things. And then boom, every year you get, you know, probably thousands of dollars of free travel. So that's frequent destinations. But then also, sometimes people have target aspirational destinations like, oh, in a year or two, I really want to go to Japan. Like, I can't tell you how many times people have told me that Japan's super popular destination. Everybody wants to go there and preferably on business class. Right. So then, okay. From your city or some other city in the U S where it's, we call them a positioning flight to get to a different city where you're, you're better equipped to get the best bang for your buck. Right. So maybe it's a larger city. Somewhere in the US to get to Japan, your dream destination, what kinds of points do you need? And then you just plan around that, apply for a card or two that gets you there.

18:43 - 19:44 | Christopher Nelson: Right. And so that's on the points acquisition side. I think on the redemption side, what's important for people to understand is that there are some tools, and this was the eye-opening thing, and the one that comes to mind is seats.arrow has been a game changer where now leveraging those tools to be able to find the destinations you want to go, the routes, analyze it and find the points. I mean, this is what allowed me for the summer to find flights from Austin to Europe, where regularly I think standard would be 50,000 per person. We found it for 18,000 per person each way. I think one way was actually a little bit less, but I mean, this to me is how travel hacking works, right? You accumulate the points enough that you need, but then you leverage this tool. You find this time where there is an actually discounted route. Then you're actually, you know, I mean, literally, you know, next to nothing out of pocket. And then you're actually using less points, which means that then you can use those on stays. You can use those on, on whatever else in the future.

19:44 - 21:01 | Julian Fung: Yeah, I think it's amazing how much you can do with these tools. Seeds.Aero, I think I spend probably like in my top three sites that I use these days is Seeds.Aero because like ever, right? Seeds.Aero is one of the most visited sites in my probably browser history if I go look and it's just looking at different pricing for different flight options, and then it's such a robust tool that you can play around with. But yeah, I think generally, just to recap the components, right, for travel hacking, it's you have two buckets basically. And when people start travel hacking, they typically have two leaky buckets. The first one is around the earnings and acquisitions of points. How do you determine what kinds of points to earn, earning the right points, and then maximizing optimizing your spending so you earn the most point, the most right type of points. The second leaky bucket then, you know, first part, that's half the game. The second part of the game is the redemptions. How do you then use your points and maximize them, stretch them to the farthest possible value, and then get the best experience you can get? And that once you have those two leaky buckets fixed, it will inform the third part of it, which is just the, like you called it, the operations and management or the sustainability of it, repeating it every single year.

21:02 - 21:41 | Christopher Nelson: Well, that's one of the things I think most people don't understand is that you can actually take a credit card and you don't need to cancel it. You can essentially put it to the side and you can then pick up another one and get those pure bonus points. That was a huge learning for me is that every year I can look across my personal, my business, and I can refresh my credit cards that bring in a glut of points that allow me to then plan for that current year. to me is one of the superpowers of travel hacking is that, and it goes back to incentives are aligned, right? The banks and everything are encouraging people to do this. It's not discouraged, right?

21:42 - 23:08 | Julian Fung: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say that because I serve two very different clienteles as well. People, obviously, if you're watching this and you have like 40k to 100k to even a million bucks, which I've had before, it's come to me. And if you're spending that much money, $40,000 a month, $50,000 a month, $100,000 a month on cards, you don't need to do this. There's not one way to travel hack or optimize points. You're already spending so much money. you just basically automate your spending to pay for all these expenses that you have on the right kinds of credit cards. And you just accumulate points that way. And that's your sustainable, your operational strategy to keep it going every year. Now, for those who don't have much spending, you know, you spending three K a month, five K a month, that kind of a thing. And you want to boost your travel rewards even faster than the downgrade of the cards and the applying for new cards every so often that strategy is really helpful for you to kind of supercharge your points back. But even if you don't want to do that and you only have a low amount of spend, you're frugal, you're thrifty with your spending and you don't own a business, you can still just set it up where your $3,000 or $5,000 a month just goes to the right kinds of spend or credit cards, and then you just don't think about it, right? Maybe it takes longer for you to accumulate those points. Maybe instead of a free trip every year, it's a free trip every two years. But a free trip is still a free trip, in my opinion.

23:09 - 24:07 | Christopher Nelson: Well, it is, especially when you put stuff up on automatic. And I think this is, to me, and why I enjoy this so much, as you know, is we're also both real estate investors. We enjoy investing. We enjoy maximizing our finances around travel hacking. What you put into it is what you're going to get out of it. Right. The more I drive this as a business and like anything I'm doing in my business, the one thing I'm doing, you know, here's my tip is I'm training my oldest son to be the travel hacker for the family so that I'm, I'm already thinking about outsourcing this. So he loves now he'll tell you, I love going online. I like checking the points. Where's our balance. Where can we now, as we're planning out trips, he'll go on seats.arrow and he'll be my Julian for hours going, okay, Hey, here's the flights. Here's the ways he's got a very strategic mind. Because this, to me, is part of where I believe that travel, finances, family, it all goes together. We should all be doing this stuff in front of each other, with each other. Very, very important.

24:07 - 25:27 | Julian Fung: Yeah. And I also wanted to mention that there is another twist of it. Well, my company, Money or Life, is asking the broader question of Well, why not both, right? I believe we can really can have our cake and eat it too. You can, you know, have a rich, wealthy life while being able to still be financially independent, right? Often you think about those dichotomously, like just mutually exclusive, but they really aren't. And this concept of travel hacking helped me think through some of these things as well. And so the vanity stat that we threw out earlier was $250,000 in free travel, right? Now, if I were paying cash, would I have spent that much? Probably not, but let's cut it in half. Let's say, you know, $100,000, $125,000 that I've been able to realistically save during these travel experiences, that's opportunity costs, right? Like, a dollar that I'm not spending in travel, I'm investing in things like real estate in the market. And even at a 5% return, that's, you know, almost a four-figure, you know, monthly, like, some sort of passive income that you can get. just from this. And so my stat is, well, $250K, even at a 5% return, you're getting a five-figure passive income. That's over $10,000, right? And so that's the beauty of learning a strategy like this.

25:27 - 26:11 | Christopher Nelson: It does, because I agree with you. And this is one of my concepts too, is I want to be running my portfolio as a business and I want to be optimizing everything around it. It started with taxes and then my expenses and now my spending that I can funnel to travel so that the family can reach our goals. And I agree with you. And when you leverage these things, you can build a sustainable growing portfolio. Your financial independence isn't based on how much can I cut my expenses, but how much can I save dollars on travel hacking and other things so I can maximize the growth of my portfolio. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk real quick about what are some things that people get wrong when they get started doing this?

26:11 - 28:45 | Julian Fung: Some things people get wrong. Oh yeah, there's a lot of things I suppose. Well, we kind of talked about this, so I'll cover it real quick, but either you're not earning points or you're earning the wrong types of points, right? So a lot of times people are spending their expenses or putting their expenses on debit cards, ACH, so they're not even getting that. actually happens a lot, pretty often with like business owners as well, because they just set it automated on a debit card or ACH, and they don't think about it. And then when I get on a discovery call with them, you know, if you look at their accounts payables for Ledger, for example, you're like, well, you can find actually another $50,000 spent every single month for no extra cost. That's money you're leaving on the table, right? So not earning points, or even if you are earning points, you're earning the wrong types of points. I had a client come to me and he is based in Oklahoma and DFW, somewhere in that region where all the carriers are American Airlines. So very similar to your experience or your example, but all he had were Delta cards, Delta and Amex cards, which are Delta partner. And I was like, why do you have Delta cards? Oh, that was from 20 years ago. You know, I was living somewhere else and, and it's just automated now. He's busy making money and growing the business, which is, which is all fine. But this is a one time change, small adjustment that you may, and it just fixes, you know, one huge leaky bucket that you have going on there. So it's not earning points or earning the wrong types of points. The other thing that I think people do wrong a lot is they, on the redemption side, they're not optimizing redemptions, right? So they're either getting cash back or they're using it for gift cards, Amazon gift cards, statement credits, or even using the travel portal. So if you have a flexible point card like Capital One or Amex or Chase and you can redeem those points for a lot more than just like one single reward program, there are typically travel portals like Capital One travel portal or the Chase travel portal that you can get on to and redeem your points that way. Now it's not like a terrible way to do it but Probably nine out of 10 times, you're not getting the most value out of your points by doing that. And it's one of the things that I teach in my course and that you've learned is to, you know, transfer those points to a travel partner like American Airlines or United or Hyatt or Marriott, and then redeem those points directly with that travel partner instead of the portal. A lot, most times you're, you're going to get better bang for your buck or for your point.

28:46 - 29:16 | Christopher Nelson: It's true. And many people don't understand like how fast that can happen. Like I did that the first time booking these European flights where I was taking points from a chase card to Flying Blue, which is French Airways. And literally, I saw the flights on seats.aero. I went to the Air France website. I went to chase. I transferred the points. The points showed up probably 60 seconds, 90 seconds later. Boom. I got the flights. I mean, it was, it literally is so efficient. It's crazy.

29:16 - 31:15 | Julian Fung: Yeah. Now I will say that depending on where you are in the world, like the different cards, different issuers, different programs within those cards have different transfer speeds and durations. So you gotta be careful. A lot of them, like Christopher, you had mentioned a lot of my experiences too have been instant, but. A lot of those other programs are actually sometimes it's within two hours, sometimes it's within two days or even four days, right? Like that's the SLA. And the good thing about it is you can actually look that up. There's a really nice tool, maybe put it in the show notes or something, but it's upgradedpoints.com. and they have this transfer partner tool on upgradedpoints.com where you can figure out for a specific flex program, all of their different transfer partners and every transfer partner, what their transfer ratios are at, and then also what the transfer speeds are. That way ANA, for example, I think you could transfer it from Chase or Amex points. Well, if you find a good flight on ANA.com, Well, if you look up upgrade at points.com and you see the transfer speeds, it actually tells you like something between two to four business days. If you find a really good deal that might be snagged up in the next two to four days, you want to be very careful about transferring, right? You want to make sure that your transfer is going to make it in time to get that. And sometimes those airlines, you can actually hold it for a fee or even without a fee. Like just hold that reservation so that you have enough time to transfer those points. Because the worst thing you can do is you transfer those points and then the flight goes away. You don't get your flight and your points are stuck at ANA at this point. You can't reverse the transfer anymore. So it's just stuck there. You've got to use it at some point. And I think ANA points, worst of all, I think they expire in three years. Yeah. So just make sure that, yeah, exactly. You're going somewhere. That's right. Maybe that's, maybe that's better for some people though, because some people love to wait and they just wait and wait and wait and they never booked the flight. They just never take off, you know?

31:15 - 31:52 | Christopher Nelson: They don't. And that's where I think, so for walking us through what I call the science of travel hacking, right? The method, right? There is a playing field, there's a set of rules and there's a game to be played that It's apparent and you understand when you're winning because you're spending, there's less dollars out of pocket. You're using these points exhaust over your normal spending to get tremendous travel benefits. But let's talk about the art. There's an art to travel hacking as well that I think is so important. And so what are some of the things that you look at as far as destinations, as far as time of year to travel where you're able to reap more benefit?

31:52 - 32:57 | Julian Fung: Yeah, so for the points and miles gain, in general, as a rule of thumb, the more flexible you are with dates and destinations, the higher the likelihood you're going to reap more value, more rewards. And flexibility can come in the form of dates, in the form of destinations, in the form of obviously number of people traveling, the more people you're traveling, with the harder it is to find deals. I'm sure you know, trying to plan this trip, you know, all your trips with five people is very tough. But I will say the same thing. Like people always say, well, it's so hard to find deals, this and that. Well, it's the same with cash. The complexity goes up if you have less flexible dates, less flexible destinations, and more people you're traveling with. The only difference is that you're just, I guess, paying that premium with cash. Like it can be soft with money. But for points, you got to be sometimes there are no redemptions available for that specific date, that specific destination. So that's the main difference. But complexity is the same, you're just either paying for it in cash, or you are trying to figure it out with points.

32:57 - 35:21 | Christopher Nelson: It's some of this, I think, you know, that I was thinking about in prepping for the show has to also do with, you know, thinking a little differently about travel as well. So case in point, one of the things that became apparent to me earlier in my travel, so I've been a traveler since I left home. I've been engaged in a lot of different international travel, had the privilege to live overseas in Asia. But I remember when I took a trip to Australia, and Fiji right after I graduated from college in 2001, that instead of going to the number one destinations, I would go to the number two destinations. I'd always look because I'm not a huge fan of crowds. I am not what I call a checklist traveler where Oh, I've seen the Mona Lisa. Check. I've seen the Eiffel Tower. Check. I'm more of an experiential traveler where I want to understand what it's like to eat the food, sit with the locals, understand those customs. And even as a family, we do a lot of these things. I love to hike in the nature. I love to cycle or do any type of water sports. And so With that in mind, I think part of it is I always try and understand where are uncovered gems where we could go travel. So this summer, instead of going, everybody's going to be in the South of Spain, we're going to be on the Northwest coast in a little beach town that is a town of 3,000 people. Not a lot of people go there. And then we're going to go to the Pyrenees. We're not going to be in Paris for all that you know, Olympics hot mess. And I'm not saying that we wouldn't go to some of those larger events either, but I'm saying like, when we plan our travel, we look at smaller destinations, which again, provides more flexibility for travel. And then I think the other thing is we also look for opportunities to travel hack by just building and cultivating relationships, right? Having the opportunity to stay with friends, you know, that like nothing will reduce your travel costs, like not having to pay for lodging. you know, or the lodging is compensated because you're preparing meals and you're really delighting the host family that you're staying with instead of, you know, paying for a hotel or an Airbnb. But what are some of those things like in the art of travel? Cause I mean, come on, man, I study you, I study people, you know, Sofia, Bulgaria, you know, going down to, to South Africa. I mean, you've gone, have you spent months in some of these places, but there's an art to the way that you travel as well too, that I think it's important for people to see, know, and understand.

35:21 - 39:05 | Julian Fung: Yeah, I think the direction I'm going to go with this, maybe it's not what you would expect, maybe. I will say this, is that travel is, to me, is really what you make of it. Sure, you can go to these awesome, awesome destinations that are widely touted, you know, Japan, like, or Paris, or, you know, like some of these really, really well-known places that are just littered with tourists and things like that. And you can, you can see, I mean, they're not bad locations, they're crowded, but you can see amazing things there, right? And get amazing experiences. But at the same time, the intentionality, I found is what differentiates a good experience from a bad one when it comes to travel. And so I often for me, I didn't grow up traveling that much. It just, you know, growing up in Asia, like my parents were doing well, we were like, white collar, you know, middle class, just your very run of the mill kind of family interests, you know, buying power, but like, Because we grew up in Asia, one, the culture wasn't that, at the time, traveling a lot. It wasn't really ingrained in the culture. And our buying power coming from Asia was also a lot less than some European countries or in America. Like if you were to fly to America or Europe, anywhere in the Americas or even Africa, right? Like less accessible, it's going to be super expensive and your dollars are like a quarter, you know, a fraction of what, what they would be worth. So all that to say, there are basically many places that are, I haven't experienced, unvisited places that points can take me. And so I often get the question, well, do the points dictate where you go or is it vice versa? Do you pick a place and then look for ways at how points can get you there? And my answer is always well a little bit of both because there are some times where there are specific destinations that I need to get to or want to get to and then I will pick the destination first and then try and figure out how to use points to get there. The honeymoon was a great example. We couldn't leave the country at that point or we could but there was like paperwork that we needed to do because we had a visa application going on. So we said, okay, honeymoon, we want an exotic place. What are the two most exotic places in the US? Well, Alaska or Hawaii. So we picked Hawaii. And then it was Hawaii. Okay, now how do we get or use points to get there? And we were able to book, you know, five, $6,000 worth of travel there. Now, the other example on the flip side is I just want to go somewhere for a month, anywhere in the world, that would give me a good experience, solo traveling for a month. And so I have this amount of points. I have 200,000 points. I just want to go somewhere right and so you're looking at basically okay where in my scenario where are some high places that I can stay for reasonable prices that I can just get it for free and basically Sofia Bulgaria and also like Cape Town South Africa were two of those places and I had amazing amazing experience in both places because I was able to stay at these four five-star hotels in a suite that's bigger than my apartment right now for entirely free for a month Right. Free breakfast, free hors d'oeuvres in the evening, free flowing alcohol. And it's just like the lounge, the pool, the spa, all that stuff. And then I got to make some really good lifelong friends that I connected with just in those two places. And when I told people that I was going to Bulgaria for a month, everybody was, even people from Bulgaria were like, why, why are you going there? Like what? You know? And I'm just like, I just want to go somewhere, get some novel experiences and experience the culture and just make connections, you know? That's why I say travel is what you make of it, in my opinion. And it's like the intentionality of that really shapes that experience.

39:05 - 40:00 | Christopher Nelson: Wow. And, you know, you mentioned some things, right? When you travel, right? Here's something that I learned before. And I think I'm curious what your thoughts on this is that when you change your location, and then you also change your pace. You change up your pace. Those two components together equal a change of perspective, right? Give you the opportunity to really get a different perspective on what your life is and what you're doing. And I think for people who really want to live intentionally, you need that change of perspective so that you can truly introspect and ask yourself questions on why you're doing things. Otherwise, I believe it's too easy to then get into the rat race scenario and just continue to iterate on the hamster wheel versus getting that perspective. What is that? Because I know some of you are riding, you've mentioned a lot of the reflection that you get the opportunity to do when you're taking some of those big timeouts. What are some of the things that you think through?

40:01 - 42:31 | Julian Fung: Yeah, I think, first of all, I feel like travel, obviously I'm biased, but travel to me, especially solo travel, if it's done, you know, intentionally is really express lane for your personal growth and development. It's one of the fastest ways that you can grow and develop. achieve self-actualization and all those good things. And so it's like you said, when you put yourself in different scenarios and experience novel things, you create space. And that space for me allows me the space for creativity, for innovation, for inspiration, for ideas that can really shape you as a person. And then you're able to use those learnings to craft your ideal rich and wealthy life that you want to live. And so my time in South Africa, like just learning or hearing different things from different people who have wildly different backgrounds from me, I've learned so much and that it actually made me design and I'm like putting together and crafting a lifestyle design that I truly value and believe in. And there are certain conversations that I've had with people, certain perspectives that I've learned just from that one month being in Bulgaria and meeting all these people who are living so different lives, but you can take that you can draw upon their experiences and then inform your own. I think that's really the true hidden gem, one of the true hidden gems in this travel that you can get in a lot of different places. I think someone also said, it was Mark. I'm not sure if you know Mark Cabrera on LinkedIn, but he and I, we go back and forth in the comments and we have good conversations, but he mentioned something about, well, your routines may be holding you back. Was that the hook? You know, it was a great hook. It was a great post. And the short of it is that I love routines. You know, we all love routines. And it really informs your life and gives you discipline that creates freedom. But at the same time, Those routines may be, if you're just doing the routines in rigidness, it may be holding you back from greatness, from doing something else, from growing. If you're only going to run a 5k twice a week, that's your routine. Well, maybe you're not going faster or you were able to do a 5 miler instead of a 5k. You're not pushing yourself. Changing up the space, changing up the location, like you said, it really does give opportunity for space to think and grow.

42:31 - 43:00 | Christopher Nelson: I think that's so important and I think one of the things that you said resonates with me so much is that traveling is the fast lane to self-awareness and self-actualization. It truly is because you get the opportunity to change your perspective and then you also get a mirror of yourself. You get to find out who you are in different situations. Yeah, it's so good. Well, I know we could keep talking about travel all day. I love this stuff, but where can people find out more about you and what you have going on?

43:00 - 43:47 | Julian Fung: Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can find me at LinkedIn, just the name Julian Fong. I'll pop up as the travel guy on LinkedIn. And I also have a website, so it's moneyorlife.co.co, not .com, so moneyorlife.co. So you can find me there. I have courses there. I have a free guide on how I actually hacked the European trip, the 30 days in luxury Europe for under $300 out of pocket. It's crazy. I have courses on there. And also, if you are a business owner spending more than $40,000 a month, you can schedule a call, a discovery call with me and we'll get your points game taken care of. So you're going to be well on your way to have $10,000 experiences every single year. That's amazing.

43:47 - 43:52 | Christopher Nelson: Well, thank you so much for the time, Julian. I know everybody got an opportunity to learn something today. I know that I did.

43:53 - 43:59 | Julian Fung: Absolutely. Really appreciate you having me on the podcast and really enjoyed this conversation too. Looking forward to the next one.

43:59 - 44:02 | Christopher Nelson: Yeah, I do too. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.