- You know, back before there was a global pandemic,
my hobby was travel.
Every three to four weeks I'd be hopping on a flight
and leaving the shores of New Zealand
to go explore the world.
But I didn't just travel the world.
No, I traveled in style.
Most of my flights are in business class or first class.
And so many people would say to me,
wow, Sarah, how can you afford to travel so much?
And each time, I'd be like,
wow, then, let me introduce you to my best friends,
my credit cards.
Yep, I've pretty much thrown my debit cards and cash away
and now I exclusively pay for things
with my credit cards.
Responsibly, of course.
I treat my credit cards similar to debit cards.
With a debit card, you can only spend money
that you actually have to spend.
And so that is how I treat my credit cards, too.
And I get lots of people who ask me about how I do this,
especially with my business.
So in this video, not only am I gonna to show you
how I've leveraged credit cards
to earn cash and travel around the world,
in first class and business class,
but I'm also gonna show you
how anyone can earn cash and rewards using credit cards
even if you don't have a business like me.
Nope.
I'm gonna show you how anyone can do this
just by living their normal everyday life.
By buying normal everyday things,
like groceries or bus tickets, or a coffee at Starbucks.
And if you stick around, I'm even gonna show you
how you can use credit cards that have zero fees
but earn you bonus cash rewards.
And if you are interested
in checking out credit cards for yourself,
I'll have a link to how you can do so
in the video description below.
But for now, let's take a look
at my favorite credit card company.
And it is this, Amex.
They are my favorite credit card company for two reasons.
So firstly, Amex cards are available worldwide.
That means then that for most of you watching this video,
you will have your own versions of these credit cards here
for you to sign up to.
So these cards here, they are the ones that people
in the USA can sign up for,
but it doesn't matter if you live elsewhere.
Like if you live in the UK,
because they have cards available for you, too.
Same with India, Amex have cards available in India.
And obviously, they also have cards available
in New Zealand.
So that's one reason I love it
because Wholesale Ted is a global community.
But the second reason is that I love Amex
because they have some amazing rewards.
You see, every time you spend money
on these cards like I do,
Amex will reward you for spending money on the card
by giving you Amex membership reward points.
You can then cash these out for lots of ways
inside of their membership portal.
So for example, you can spend these on travel,
which later in the video, I'll show you how I do this
to not only fly first class instead of economy,
but save hundreds of dollars per flight
by flying first class instead of economy.
But that's not all.
You can exchange your points for a huge range of gift cards.
There are some really good values in here.
For example, in the USA,
you can exchange a thousand points for a $10 Nike voucher,
which is neat.
But if you don't like gift cards,
you also have the flexibility to exchange the points as cash
to buy whatever you want by using points to pay for products
you buy online instead of cash.
So for example, Amex have teamed up with Amazon with PayPal.
So if you were to say, buy something with PayPal,
instead of paying with your own cash,
you could just pay with your points instead
that you've been earning just by buying things
that you'd be buying with a debit card or cash anyway.
Something else that you can do
is exchange your points directly
to pay off charges on your card.
So for example, the Amex Green Card currently
has a welcome bonus of 30,000 points
if you spend $2,000 on it within the first three months.
Now these do change.
So if you're watching this video later,
the welcome bonus might be different,
but for now, this is the offer.
Wow, when you pay for charges on your credit card
using Amex points, you get $6 for every 1,000 points
that you spend.
So when you do the maths,
30,000 points would let you pay off $180
worth of charges on your card.
And while the Amex Green Card has an annual fee of $150,
so what you can do is you can use these
to pay off the fee and spend the rest of the points
that you earned from just paying for daily expenses
however you want.
But I can imagine that some of you are thinking,
but Sarah, what if I don't wanna have
to pay any fees, period?
Well, you know what I'd say?
I'd say, fair enough.
So, you know what has no fee?
The 100% free act of clicking the Like button
and subscribing to this channel.
But seriously, for anybody who takes a moment out
of your very busy day to give this video a Like,
I really appreciate it because it helps a lot.
So thank you.
But something else that currently has no annual fees
is this, the Citibank Cash Back credit card.
Now, this is a USA card and I'm just gonna use this one
for the sake of the video as an example,
since, well, the USA is easily the biggest single chunk
of my audience.
Sadly, I can't go through specific examples
of cards available for each of the 200 plus countries
around the world.
But if you go to Google and do a bit of research,
you'll find that a lot of countries
have their own no annual fee cash back credit cards.
So this one here is available in the UK.
And this one here, it's available in Canada.
But yes, the Citi Double Cash Back card,
it's probably the best all arounder card
because every time you buy something, you get 1% cash back.
And then if you pay your bill on time, like me,
and you only buy things that you would have bought
with a debit card or cash anyway,
you'll get an additional 1%,
making it a total of 2% cash back.
But what you could do is
if you want to truly maximize your cash back bonuses
is sign up for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card,
which currently has a zero annual fee.
And this currently gives you 5% cash back
when you buy groceries.
So when you buy your bus ticket to go to the grocery store,
you can use your zero annual fee Citi Double Cash Back card.
And then when you're actually buying your groceries,
you can then switch to the $0 annual fee
Chase Freedom Unlimited card.
And considering that the average American household
spends $4,049 on groceries,
a 5% cashback on that would mean an extra $200
in your pocket each year at no extra cost to you.
But as my subscribers will know
through my Instagram travel pictures,
it isn't cash I spend my reward points on usually.
Nope, it's my business class and first class flights.
Travel rewards are definitely the best way
to maximize value for your points.
But since world travel is a little bit awkward right now,
I haven't actually taken any trips.
I'm currently saving up all of my points
so that when things settle down,
I will be able to take myself and my parents
around the world in style.
See, here's the deal, right?
Have you ever walked onto a plane
and walked past the business class and first class seats
and went to yourself?
Huh, these seats are literally five, 10, 20 times
the cost of my economy seat,
who on earth has the money to pay for these?
Well, the reality is,
for many people sitting in those fancy seats,
thanks to credit cards, they probably paid a fraction
of the cost of what you paid for your economy seat.
So for me, my favorite credit card is the Amex Platinum
because here in New Zealand,
it earns me the most rewards for each dollar that I spend.
Now it's true that it definitely has quite the annual fee,
but as you'll see shortly, I don't mind this
because I only spend necessary expenses,
I never just buy things because I can,
because I have a credit card.
I treat my credit card like a debit card.
I only spend money that I can actually afford to spend.
And as I spend this, I earn rewards,
which I can cash out for miles on airlines like Emirates.
And right now I am saving these rewards up
because when it's safe to travel again,
I'm planning on visiting my friends in Sydney, Australia.
Wow, an economy flight to get there would cost me $345.50
in New Zealand dollars if I booked it with cash.
But of course, I won't be doing that.
Instead, when the time comes, I'll transfer over some
of my Amex points into Emirates miles
and book a first class flight
and pay just over a hundred New Zealand dollars
with taxes and fuel surcharges.
So by flying first class instead of economy,
I'll be saving over $240.
And the super cool thing
is that Emirates fly their biggest airplane,
the Emirates A380, between Christchurch and New Zealand
and the first class cabin
of the Emirates A380 has a shower suite
that you can book for a 30-minute slot.
Being able to shower before you land is super nice.
It leaves you feeling super refreshed.
But that's not all.
I've also got a bunch of friends in Singapore
that I really wanna go see as well.
Well, when I do, I'll have two choices.
I could fly Air Zealand or Singapore Airlines.
And honestly, I'm probably gonna pick Singapore Airlines
since, well, this is a pretty long flight,
just under 11 hours.
Wow, if I booked economy for 11 hours,
it would cost me $771.75.
But since it's an almost 11-hour flight,
I'd much rather fly first class
using the miles that I have passively earned,
which means my flight will cost me grand total of $36.75.
Now let me ask you a question.
$771 for economy
or $35.75 for first class?
I know which I'd rather pay,
especially since Singapore Airlines has one
of the best first-class cabins in the sky.
My favorite is their A380,
which they used to fly between Auckland and Singapore.
It's pretty cool
because while it sadly does not have a shower suite,
instead you get your own bedroom in the sky
that even has its own fold down bed.
And that's pretty neat.
Plus the food's incredible.
Yes, I will take my $35.75 fancy seven-course meal,
featuring caviar as the starter, please.
I mean seriously, here in New Zealand,
$35.75 won't even get you a T-bone steak dinner
with mushroom sauce at Denny's.
Nope.
For me to maximize the amount of points I earn,
I use the Amex Platinum.
This definitely has the highest earning rate here
in New Zealand, but it also has the highest annual fee.
So this is the annual fee for the USA currently.
A lot of people see this
and their eyes pop out of their heads
because, well, you do the maths.
$550 divided by $6 is 91.6.
And if we then times that by a thousand points,
you'll see that we need to earn 91,667 points
to pay off this charge
which is a lot more than the current welcome bonus.
Ouch, right?
But here's the thing.
For me, earning 91,667 points.
That's easy because I use my credit card
to pay for my business expenses.
For example, as my viewers know,
I run an online e-commerce business
that sells clothing featuring cool, unique art.
Well, this business is what you would call
a print on demand business
and just by spending money to make money with it,
I earn tons of free credit card rewards.
Here's how it works.
There are print on demand services like this one here
that I use, called Printful.
Printful is a service that will create products for you
on demand as customers order them.
So let's say I wanted to create and sell my own t-shirt
in an online store.
I would select which of the t-shirts I wanted to sell
and then upload whatever artwork or slogan
that I wanted to print onto the t-shirt.
Printful will then store a digital copy
of the t-shirt that you created.
You can then list that t-shirt for sale in your store.
I personally sell my t-shirts for $29.95 plus shipping.
And then when someone buys a t-shirt from me,
Printful will see that the customer ordered the t-shirt
and go, yep, we're gonna make that for you.
Printful will then charge me the base price of the t-shirt
to make and ship it.
And to do this, they will charge the credit card
I have on file with them,
which is currently my Amex Platinum,
although I do switch it up,
depending on what credit card rewards I want to earn.
Right now, I want Amex points,
so I'm using my Amex Platinum.
So this credit card is just filled currently
with lots of Printful transactions.
And once Printful has charged my card,
they will then print the design onto the t-shirt,
package the t-shirt up, and then ship it out to the customer
automatically without me having to do anything
while I keep the difference as profit.
So essentially, you can see I've spent money to make money
while being rewarded with super cheap first class air fares
along the way.
And so this is how people rack up tons of points
to spend on flights,
because when you're spending tens of thousands of dollars
a month to make money, these points, they add up quick.
And it's not just flights and cash rewards
that I get to take advantage of as well.
Nope.
Credit cards often have additional perks
on top of these rewards.
So for example, whenever I buy a smartphone
with my Amex Platinum, I get free screen insurance.
And if I book travel with it, I get free travel insurance.
And each year, I get Gold membership with Hilton Honors
for free, even if I haven't stayed a single night
in a Hilton hotel.
So in my opinion, if you are running a business
that has business expenses,
getting a good credit card like this is a no brainer.
And to me, this is yet another really interesting example
of how, even if you had a job that earned the same amount
of money as a business, the amount of money
that you earn in a business is kind of worth more
because of all the hidden benefits that you get.
For example, Jack works a job to earn $100,000 a year
and each day he takes the train to work.
In most jurisdictions, that's an expense
that Jack has to pay 100% by himself.
However, let's now compare that to Zach
who also owns a business that earns him $100,000 a year.
When Zach takes a train to go meet a client
for his business, because he's running a business,
he's allowed to write that ticket off as an expense.
Both Jack and Zach have to take the train
to earn the exact same amount of money each year,
but only one of them gets to have a smaller tax bill
because of it.
So did this video help you?
If it did, please subscribe to Wholesale Ted
for more great videos about earning money
and growing money online.
And if you'd like to learn even more
about how I use credit cards in my business,
then you should watch my video,
my five income sources that I made in my twenties
that earns me over $1,000 a day.
So go ahead and watch my next video
and I'll see you over there.