YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Hutchins

lines on the record: 169
first: 2025-06-10
most recent: 2025-06-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I hope people that are listening can just earn more and make good value out of it and live happier lives. Thanks for having me.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a podcast. We talk about all these things. Every topic that I probably brushed on, I've probably gone deep on. And it's called All the Hacks. You can find it anywhere, wherever you're listening to this. Everything I do is at Chris Hutchins.com or all the hacks.com. It's the same URL. And every week I send a newsletter on Saturday morning that's just all the stuff I'm finding. Where are points on sale? What routes on certain airlines are going on promos right now? What's changing? So if you don't want to go so far down the rabbit hole, but you kind of want to stay on tune of where the deals are, you can sign up at allthecks.com.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And someone's trying to convince him to go build a bigger and bigger fish company. And then he's like, and at the end, what do I do once I've done that? He's like, well, now you can hang out with your friends and fish and go drink beers. And he's like, that's what I'm doing already. I don't think I have a thing that's compelling me to be the business person in that story right now. And until there is, I don't like forced entrepreneurship, like forcing myself to build a thing because it's what I should do. And I would probably spend a bunch of time playing around with tools and data until I found a thing that pulled me in that direction. And until then, I'd happily go find a company working on a problem space that I'm interested in as a product person and just building products in that space.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea that this guy's a happy fisherman living his life, fishing all day, hanging out with his friends, spending time with his family.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel very much like the Mexican fisherman a little bit, where it's like. There was a time in my life, and for anyone who doesn't know this parable, which I'm guessing you've referenced in the past.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Build a future travel agency. Yeah, well, we kind of do that on the side. Like, I don't know what that would be. Everyone always tells me, Chris, you should go launch a credit card because like you have all these opinions. But I think at the end of the day, the economics to make it work and be competitive just require an immense amount of scale that I don't know if I have it in me to go do that thing, like give up 10 years of your life to go build this crazy thing.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I don't have the kind of ego of I have to work for myself, I need to go do my own thing. I think I just like building stuff. And so I'd be building something. I don't know what that is. And a couple of the ideas I've had in the recent past are all kind of tangential to what I'm doing. So they feel like a cop out if I told you, oh, I just started a blog reviewing financial products. It's like, well, it's kind of like similar to what I'm already doing.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I couldn't do this right now. But interestingly, when I ended up at Wealth Front as a product manager, I told people, I was like, I think I could do this job for 40 years. Like the idea that my job is to go talk to people, consumers, understand their perspectives in a space I care about and just build products to make their lives easier. That was awesome. The idea that we're just going to build products that simplify something that is complicated for other people so that they can just get on with their day and focus on their life and not get caught up on it. I think if the podcast never happened, I would still happily be in that job.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think some people think the more you talk about and know about money, the more you think about it. And I'm like, nope, I'm very much the passive index investor. It's like, let's put the money in, let it grow. And like we started talking about stuff, like let's focus on either making it or enjoying life and all this stuff. So I try to set most of my finances on pretty autopilot so that I don't have to think about the money on a day-to-day basis. And that's not to say it's not important to know how much you're spending and what you're saving, all those things, but it's not something where I'm like logging into a brokerage account every day and doing all that kind of stuff.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To save more money than you make and you've built up a nest egg and now you can start to think whether the amount of money you're saving is enough to change what your behavior. It wouldn't have been that relevant to me 25 years ago.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, one of the biggest criticisms that he gets is he has so much money, you know? So like it's easy to be like, let's spend all my money. I have it. And so. I think if there's one thing that it might be missing, it's how do you bridge the gap to the stage in your life where Die was zero is not an option? You know, like you don't have a plan yet to get to that point. And so there's this book that comes out in a couple months called The Wealth Ladder. And it's like these different stages of wealth and what life looks like at each stage and what the priority at that stage is. And I think the criticism I might give is that you can't write a book for every stage. And so someone who's at like that first stage of wealth is like, they just need to get out of it. They need to have any amount of savings to cushion them from their car breaking down, from some medical emergency. And Dai Zero is not a relevant conversation. And so I think Dai Wazero is a relevant conversation if you are in a financial situation.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You might not need to chase. And that chasing is like so toxic. It's such a challenge for everyone when you're in that rat race. And I think this isn't a book. But go dig into the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Go like look at how people actually spend their money because I think what you see on Instagram isn't reality. And so if you base all your assumptions on how people spend their money on data that is not true, you might think you're not in a good place. And then if you go actually look at like, what does a household with my amount of wealth or income typically spend on based on actual data that the U.S. government publishes and gives you for free? He'd be like, oh, wow, not everyone in my situation is spending $100,000 on a vacation and chartering jets and all this crazy stuff that I see on the internet.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think if you think too much about money, you just lose sight of the fact that money is a tool to help you achieve things. And if you don't have any, it's a really important tool. But as you have more, sometimes it just becomes a thing that you focus on way too much. And if you can learn to be happy with whatever you have.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I like happy money, which is a really short read. It's the science of smarter spending. It's just like five ways you can spend money that actually lead to happiness based on some research. I like Sahel Bloom's book, The Five Types of Wealth, because it just reminds you that wealth isn't just about money. So often we get caught up in this world of Is wealth, and there's a lot of things that go into being happy and wealthy and all this stuff that just aren't money. Morgan House has got a new book, The Art of Spending Money, which I think is going to be interesting based on his past book. Before you mention specific money, I was like, a lot of the books that I really like thinking about are from strength to strength, which is an Arthur Brooks book about happiness.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is this idea that I haven't saved up enough that I could stop working today, but I've saved up enough money that I don't need to contribute to my savings. If you're 35 and you have a million dollars in the bank and you want to work till you're 60, if you don't touch that million dollars, it's probably going to be more than enough for you to retire. So you probably don't need to keep contributing to your savings. So you can adjust your life so that you can coast into retirement. And maybe that means... Stop doing the really hard job that pays a ton of money and do the easier job because you don't need the extra money to contribute to your savings. Or maybe it means stop saving and spend more.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, we took a trip at the end of the interview. He challenged me to do something and we literally planned a trip right after the interview. We're like, let's just spend the money. Let's go on the thing. And everything kind of changed. And I was like, why save more? Obviously, if you don't have any savings, it's good to save. But if you do have savings, what's the upside of having more money when it could be using that money now and not looking at the scoreboard? And so I think we started thinking if we've put aside enough that our savings can grow to what we will need whenever we stop working. And there's this concept of Coast Fi or Coast Fire, which is, you know, you could go search and dig into that, then we should really be spending our money instead of saving.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the biggest principle is we're all saving money and we usually have this attitude of like, I'm going to save it and spend it in retirement. Most people end up not spending as much as they think they will because their bodies can't do all the things that they once wanted to spend their money on. And lots of people end up with more money than they wanted. And we should use that money. And we should ideally use it at times of our lives when we can get the most out of it. And there's a bunch of concepts in there like the concept of memory dividends where it's like you actually benefit from doing this thing earlier because you can relive the moment, retell the story, share it with the people you went on, you know, look at the pictures forever. And it was a very light bulb moment for me because I had always been like tracking net worth, grow net worth, have more, have more. And at the end, I was like, oh, I left the interview. And I was like, why am I doing that?”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or get the best deal for it. So at the end of the day, I still operate on the principle. I want to do the thing I want to do. I don't want to sacrifice the quality of life, the quality of the experience. Sometimes you can do it. Sometimes you can't.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we could probably have another two hour conversation about that topic. I think I've slowly learned how to spend money at levels that are probably still behind the average for someone in my situation. And I think it's easier to do when the experience is something that I just know there's not an alternative. It'd be really hard for me to spend $10,000 a person on a flight to Japan in business class because I just know how to get that exact flight, maybe with more constraints, but I know how to get that exact same thing. But restaurants is a good example. I have no issue going to a restaurant and spending, you know, a lot of money on a meal. There's not a way to do it more optimally. Am I using the right card to get the most points? For sure. I'm optimizing where I can, but I'm not choosing to only go to the restaurant that I could buy a gift card on sale for. If you go all the way back to the beginning, my goal wasn't to save money because I could just not eat the pizza. My goal.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a way, we kind of paid for it at the beginning. And so once we got there, most of the expense was covered. There's this book Happy Money. And in it, one of the five kind of scientific ways to spend money that make you happier is to prepay for things. It's like when you pay for this hotel in advance and a lot of the stuff's included, you don't even really think about it. And so that was really nice. Do I want every vacation to be as expensive as that vacation? No. Do I want every vacation to be that great? Yes. And so it's a balance. Like I know that staying at Caprocot was a similar experience. If anything, it was maybe even nicer, but we didn't have the kids. It was a different vacation. And we did do that one with points. So like it's a balance. You kind of alternate between the two. But I think it's given us permission to spend learning the art of spending, like learning how to spend money as a frugal person.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, honestly, the takeaway, my wife was like, we should do that again. Like, that was great. Like, we just didn't think about it. And I will say. One of the nicest things about that experience that makes it even better is that hotel, during the time we went there, were doing some construction. So they were like, oh, activities are included. And you'd be surprised at how many higher end properties don't nickel and dime everything. It's like, oh, we include free breakfast. And like you could just eat whatever you want. It's not the Marriott Free Breakfast where you get a $15 certificate off the meal and you go to the pool and like sunscreen and aloe or just like free flowing like you don't have to buy them at the gift shop and stuff like that. Your room has bottles of water”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hotel program to make sure we got certain extra bonuses included, sure. Did we get a hundred dollar property credit? Yeah. But when we went to, they have a nobo there, like, did we not order what we wanted to eat because we had to pay for it? No, like we just spent all the money we wanted. Like we just decided that this three night stay at this hotel, we are just going to not worry about the cost and we're going to do what we want to do.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was talking to someone and he was like, We recently went to the four seasons in Lanai. And he's like, it was everything I ever wanted a hotel experience to be. The hotel was perfect. And he took his kids. We have two kids. And I was like, that sounds magical. I was like, we don't have any plans for spring break. I was like, I want to go to the four seasons in Lanai. There's no points deal for the four seasons. They don't have a loyalty program. There are ways we have this hotel program on our site where you can get some perks like you can get free breakfast. But there's no way to get the price of the hotel covered other than just cashing your points out and spending money. Like there's just no trick. But something stuck with me, which like, this is the best experience. It's everything you ever want to host. I was like, I want to feel that. And so we just paid cash. Like we just went to the hotel. We paid cash when we ate meals. We paid cash. Like, did we use a luxury?”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I did an episode with Bill Perkins who wrote a book called Die With Zero. And so this comes to me very strongly. It was one of my favorite episodes. And I think that. If there were an experience that I thought was going to really be magical, I would be willing to spend that number of dollars. In this case, it was like, do you want to go on a two-hour drive or take the helicopter for $9,000? And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't been to Costa Rica in 20 years. My wife's never been to Costa Rica. I'm sure it's also interesting from above, but sometimes driving two hours in another country is also interesting. Stop at a random restaurant on the way. So it didn't feel like the experience was so much better. It almost seemed more like, well, if you just don't want to spend two hours exploring this country. So in that case, I don't think it would have made sense. But in other cases, if that's just what it costs to do a thing that I really want to do, I'm okay spending it.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rooms were free. We used six Hilton free knights certificates. The flights were free. We use United and American Points. So if we're going to spend like what is probably an overpriced amount of money on food, so be it. You know, like everything else was free. So in some ways, it helps me enjoy the trip even more. Now, I did decline. They were like, do you want to go on this tour of the rainforest? You could do it by helicopter, and it's only an extra $9,000. We declined it. Like, I wasn't so in the moment that I was willing to spend anything.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the bulk of the trip is the cost of the lodging and the cost of the flights. And so once we're there, I'm not thinking about it that much. I'm just trying to enjoy the place we're at. And in some ways, like we're about to go to the new Waldorf Astoria in Costa Rica. And in some ways, I'm like, look.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say this is a fun game in that One Plus One often equals more than two. So when you sign up for a card, you get a bonus. Sometimes you can refer someone. They get the bonus and then you get the bonus for referring them. So I know lots of couples who will like both open a card, but one will refer them and they'll end up with like two and a half times as many points because the referral plus the signup. And if there's a great 100,000 point bonus, two people can have it. They're completely separate on your credit report because they're separate people. So playing the game with a partner can be fun. I will advise you something that I have learned the hard way-ish. Just keep your spouse as informed as they want to be. Sometimes I've had fun conversations with my wife and she's like, is this the credit card that you opened without talking to me? You know, like, you know, I was like, no, no, I talked to you about it. Like, I would say, keep them as informed as they want to be.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got some flack from someone in a podcast review because they got mad that I referred to my wife as a player too. They're like, we're not living in a simulation. This is not a video game. And in the points and miles world, the player terminology is just like standard nomenclature. But it is very common for people to have one person who's like the primary and another person who's kind of like, just tell me which card to use.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So don't cancel your oldest cards. Open new cards if you see an awesome bonus. For me, 75,000 plus points is a pretty lucrative bonus. So I like that. And you can product change cards. So if you have a card and you don't really care about earning a new bonus, but you just want to have something different, you can change it around.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What a person would do with their credit report is just does everything on here look good? Is there any credit I don't recognize? Are there cards open? I didn't know were there. But practically, there's not a lot you do with your credit report”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, your credit report is literally just a list of all the accounts, their status, you know, recent balance, all that kind of stuff on there. And so I would encourage people to freeze their credit report because it prevents other people from opening up credit in their name. I would remind you that if you're going to apply for a credit card, you should unfreeze it while you do that, or you will most certainly not get approved because they need to access your credit report. But the report is the thing. What happens is there's a company called the Fair Isaac Corporation, which is FICO. And then like have an algorithm that creates a score that makes it easier for lenders to make decisions off of. So the lender doesn't have to analyze this multi-page document.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is annual credit report.com. You can get a free credit report every week from annual credit report. It's authorized by the government. You can see what cards are on there. You won't get your credit score. Most credit cards give you a free credit score. Credit karma gives you free credit scores. There is a difference between the FICO score, which is a private company that looks at your credit report and comes up with a score, and then the vantage score, which is an alternative. You can go down my credit report score episode if you want to go down there. But yeah, I would say you could go look, but business cards won't have an impact when you cancel them because they usually don't show up on there.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I only use my personal platinum card for booking flights. And so you could downgrade it to a gold card and not have it drop off your credit. Another important thing, most business cards don't show up on your credit report. So if you've had a business card for 20 years that you don't use and it doesn't show up on your credit report, which by the way, annualcreditort.com, it sounds like a scammy website like a government sanctioned website that lets you just check your credit report, I think every week.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the question would be like, do I spend enough on flights that holding this card to get elevated points on flights is worth it? On the business side, I think you should absolutely keep it because redeeming your points is going to be worth 1.54 cents if you have the business platinum versus one cent if you don't. Just booking flights, no hassle, no searching for availability, just booking it with Ammex travel using your points. On the personal side.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that Concierges have been less lucrative in recent past than before. And on the personal side, the personal platinum, the primary benefit of it is you'll get a priority pass membership or you can go to Amex Centurion lounges. Priority pass is like a lounge network at airport lounges. I only use my Amax Platinum card for flights. My wife and I each have one. Obviously, we could put all our flights on one of them. So I believe that I am able to take the coupon book of perks that the Amex Platinum gives you and get more value than the annual fee. But I would say knowing you and how many hoops I don't think you want to jump through, you probably wouldn't.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or if the annual fee is what's holding you back, you can call the bank and say, hey, it's a high annual fee. I'll keep the card open, but what are you going to do for me? And sometimes they might say nothing. Sometimes they might say, well, this year we'll give you, we'll waive the annual fee. You don't have to pay it this year. You're kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit, but there have been some great retention offers just asking if there are anything that they could do for you.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My ritual, I would give you two options. One, put one recurring charge that's small on it and set it to autopay. Put your Spotify subscription. That way they never close it for inactivity. I have this ritual where around the holidays I just kind of like go through all the old cards and I just make sure I put a charge on each of them. My oldest card was a United card that I got in college and I didn't use it for four years and they just closed it and I was pretty bummed. I could have avoided that. Or if that charge has an annual fee You can usually product change it down. Let's say you open the Chase Sapphire preferred card. You don't use it anymore, but it's your oldest card. You could downgrade it to the Freedom or the Freedom Flex card, no annual fee, not going to cost you anything.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, the counter to that is if you wanted to get that 75,000, 100,000 point signup bonus on a card, you won't get it when you change cards. So you could be better off just opening that other card up and leaving the capital one card there. So if it has no annual fee, you could just leave it there.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before you close a credit card, I think there's kind of three choices you can make. One, if there's no annual fee, you just leave it open. Like there's not a lot of risk. Like, just leave it open. In the capital one case, you can product change it to another card more often than not. So you could call capital one and say, what are my options for this card? And they might say, oh, you can move it over to a venture card and earn two points per dollar on everything. Would you rather have that card? And you could just change it to another card that you do want.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you've had a card for 20 years and you just realized in this episode that it's the worst card you've ever had and it earns nothing, I wouldn't go out and cancel it because one of the components of your credit score is the average length of credit history. What you don't want to do is close the card that you've had for 20 years that's like the anchor in that average. What you could do is just leave it open.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's this great tweet because I haven't seen someone put this visually, and I will send you a link to it. I don't know this person, Chad Janice. He's on Twitter. He opened up this card. He's like, my wife and I opened up 26 cards in 2017. We earned 2 million points and traveled to 40 countries for free. That year of traveling changed our lives. Most people ask, what happened to your credit score? What do you want to know? And he showed this chart where his wife, Hannah, her credit score went from 670 to 798. And his went from 794 to 805. So, I just want to dispel this myth of opening up a handful of cards”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10x, maybe in this case 20x more lucrative than your regular spending. And so when I tell people that, their first question is like, okay, but am I just going to ruin my credit if I open up two or three cards a year?”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could go through a long list of people who are like, I'm three months in and I just took my wife on this amazing thing that we never got to do our honeymoon, et cetera. One of the ways that people accelerate the game is whenever you open up a new card, there might be some kind of offer. Oh, 100,000 points, 75,000 points. And so while I often say two X points is a great return on your spend, I will say that if you look at the top, and this I did a couple months ago, but if you look at the top 15 signup bonuses or welcome bonuses right now, you know, earn 75,000 points for spending $5,000, that kind of thing, the average return on spend, valuing the points at just a penny. We're not even giving the outside is about 17%. So like if you open up a new card and they offer you 100,000 points for spending $5,000, right? That's 20x return on that spend. And so those new card offers.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. You spend some money, but you don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So, how do you even end up with this many points if you're not running a business? And I would say one thing is one of the ways most people I know rack up points. And I've got so many stories from listeners who are like, hey, I just got into this thing and I've already been able to take this amazing vacation, this amazing everything. So like I've got.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I realize someone might be listening to this thinking, okay, Tim's got millions of points. Chris has millions of points. I actually want to take these vacations. Like, I want to go on these trips. I don't have millions of points.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing to do, bottle of champagne, free drinks at the restaurant. Like at the end of the day, the hotel game is still a hospitality game. And if you give people a channel by which to build the relationship, I've been amazed at the payoffs of doing that. So if you can't find the email, ask chatGPT if they can't find it, call the front desk and say, hey, is there an email for someone at the hotel and just say, hey, I'm coming. I'm excited to stay with you guys. We haven't been to Italy ever. And, you know, we're celebrating my son's birthday. You don't need to ask for anything. Just let them know you're coming and I would be surprised if at least every other time you do that, something doesn't surprise you and the hotel doesn't find a way to do something nice.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple tricks that I think for people who like to travel that don't require any amount of points arbitrage, credit card, anything is one of my favorites is if you book your hotel directly with the hotel, which outside of getting a deal or cashing out points, I would encourage you to book directly with the hotel because they see your profile, they see your name, they see that you have some loyalty, they want to build relationships. Email the hotel after you book and then maybe follow up three or four days before you arrive and just tell them you're coming. Tell them you're excited to stay with them. Ask them a question. I have seen, I don't know what the percentage, but like at least 100 people have sent me photos of something that's happened, whether it's an upgrade, whether they did something really nice in the room for their kids' birthday, someone had their initials monogrammed in their pillow, which was kind of a weird.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got a couple things. One, there's some people who are like, I'm into it. I want to play this game and I want to get the most out of it. Or I've been playing it and I want to level up. And there are people who are like, I don't want to. There's still got to be something I can do. And I would say.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is incredible. Plan my 10 day vacation in Japan. Yeah, the AI tools for planning trips are just out of this world. So I would use it for inspiration.”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, get to the airport and the flight was wrong. It was on the wrong day. I'm not going to let an AI book my travel, but I might let it do some exploration. I do think when it comes to itinerary planning, if anyone is planning a trip anywhere and is not using AI to think about where to go, what to do”
2025-06-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #815: Chris Hutchins, Deal Master — Helping Tim Burn 15M+ Miles and Points, Flipping Costco Gold Into Five-Star Trips, Flying to Japan for $222, Tech Tools and Tricks, and Avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT