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