This video is gonna be the most valuable YouTube video you're gonna watch in the entire year.
So far it saved me over $20,000.
Sound good?
Stay tuned!
What's going on guys?
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.
I'm out here in New York, in this beautiful hotel, rocking my all-new medical insider's
merch.
You can get your own down below this video.
Now in this video, we're gonna be talking about credit card churning.
I've opened about 30 credit cards, most of which are still open.
And it is because of this hobby called credit card churning that I was able to fly to all
20 of my residency interviews all at different cities for free.
That's also allowed me to fly out here to New York, London, New York again, back home
to the West Coast also for free.
In fact, I've done hotels for the last four weeks all for free.
If you guys follow me on Instagram, that's @KevinJubbalMD, then you'll also know I love
traveling.
I did Asia for six weeks earlier this year and all those flights were again for free.
I flew to Capetown before that for free, I went to Berlin for free, I went to and from
Seattle, to and from Northern and Southern California, all this for free.
So essentially, credit card churning can offer tremendous value.
Now, at this point you're probably thinking "Dr. Jubbal is gone crazy!", maybe but not
because of credit card churning.
Credit card churning actually makes a lot of financial sense.
You probably think I have a terrible credit score, it's actually over 800.
I'm gonna be going over all the factors that go into a credit score in a future video because
there's so much misinformation, so many misconceptions out there about it.
You may be thinking this is a scam, there has to be some catch.
There is kind of a catch, the catch is it takes a lot of time to get up to speed to
do this.
No one's gonna spoon-feed you, I myself have put in over 100 hours over the last six years
of which I've been doing this.
And I'm not saying you need to put it over 100 hours of research et cetera, I'm gonna
help you, but you should be putting in at least a couple hours every week for at least
a couple of months to be proficient and actually doing things correctly.
You may be thinking that you can lose money and that this is dangerous.
I would actually argue that if you are not stupid with money, if you have some level
of financial discipline and some financial fundamentals down, it's actually relatively
safe.
That being said, I am not your doctor, I am not your financial adviser, this is for informational
purposes only, proceed at your own risk!
Now, with that said, how I got into this, I was a third-year medical student and one
of my friends told me about this hobby that could save us thousands of dollars during
residency interviews.
For residency, you need to fly to multiple different cities and stay in hotels and they
don't pay for that, that's out of your own pocket.
Now, I paid for my own college, my own medical school, I didn't get help from my parents.
So being in debt, I couldn't really afford to fly to 20 different cities.
So that's where credit card churning really saved me.
Now, why would companies do this?
Well, here's the thing, credit card companies make a lot of money off of you and that's
in two primary ways; first, anytime you make a purchase with a credit card, let's say you
go to medschoolinsiders.com, you buy some personal statement editing, Med School Insiders
needs to pay the credit card companies a percentage of that sale, for every single sale.
That's one way they make a lot of money.
Number two and more importantly, they make a lot of money off of your debt.
For some reason, people rack up credit card debt, and the average American depending on
the state that you reside has anywhere between 4,000 and $ 8,000 of credit card debt and
that debt accumulates interest at somewhere around 20%, which is absurd.
But, if you're able to open up the new credit cards, take advantage of that signup bonus,
not rack up like thousands of dollars of credit card debt and do things properly which I'm
gonna explain how, then you have a lot to gain and not much downside.
Now, who should do this?
Again, informational purposes only, I am not saying whether you should or should not do
this.
I think that most premed and medical students have a lot to gain especially because they're
gonna be doing other medical school or residency interviews where they to fly to a lot of different
cities or if you just like traveling, and you like hotels, you like free stuff, then
you have a lot to gain.
Now, I'm making this video because as I've talked about on the Med School Insiders channel,
the one thing that bothers me so much is when people give bad advice.
I remember when I was a medical student, there was all these articles and even upperclassmen
would tell me "oh you know, only stick with the same airline you'll get points and loyalty
with them, stick with the same hotel".
That is such bad advice, do not do that.
Some other YouTubers have also started talking credit card churning and there is somethings
that I don't necessarily agree with.
So, that's why making these video, I wanna provide you guys with what I believe is the
most effective, proper and effective way of doing this hobby right.
Now, who should not do this?
And this is actually even more important than who should do this.
First of all, if you don't have financial literacy down, I don't mean that you need
to have a positive net worth.
I was a medical student with debt, I had a negative net worth, but if you don't understand
like credit cards are not free money, if you don't understand... if you're stupid with
money, you should not do this.
If you carry any statement on your credit cards, do not do this, if you see credit cards
as free money that you for some reason forget that you need to pay back, then do not do
this.
If you lack discipline, do not do this and go and watch my video on self-discipline on
the Med School Insiders channel.
If you are an impulsive shopper, do not do this.
In short, if you are stupid with money, do not do this, please.
For churning, there's a couple rules you need to know; first of all, never spend money that
you wouldn't normally spend.
So, anytime you have a credit card bonus, you will get you know, 50,000, 100,000 points
after you meet the minimum spend requirement or MSR.
That's something like $4,000 over three months.
Now, as a medical student, I definitely wasn't spending over $1,000 every single month.
So, the answer is not to go buy expensive watches and things that you don't need, that's
idiotic.
So, what I did is, my mom who was living hundreds of miles away, I said "hey, let me pay your
utilities, you pay me cash and that way I can rack up some spend on this credit card".
There's also paying your rent with a credit card, you have to pay a small fee, around
2 to 3% and usually that makes sense if you're working towards a minimum spend requirement.
Anyways, we'll go into more details about that in a future video.
In fact, this is gonna be, again, the most high yield concise effective advice about
credit card churning and rewards.
So, if you wanna follow along, make sure you're subscribed, and make sure you press that 'Like'
button because it really helps this Youtube channel and follow along with our Credit Card
Churning playlist which I will be updating in the future weeks.
Now, going back to meeting the MSR, You can also do manufacturing spending, that's where
you essentially buy money orders or gift cards, pay yourself and then use that to pay the
balance.
It's a little more advanced, it's a little more risky, I don't advise it for most people,
but anyways, for completeness sake, that's there.
Rule number two; never carry a statement balance.
If you do this, you are doing it so wrong, you should never pay any interest.
I don't know why people believe that carrying a balance is good for your credit score, it's
not.
Pay off your balance, don't pay interest, simple!
Number three, don't do this before you need to take out a large loan, whether that's a
mortgage, or a car loan or anything like that because opening up a lot of credit cards will
temporarily ding your credit score even though in the long term it has the potential to increase
it.
And rule number four, avoid canceling credit cards.
Ideally, you want to downgrade a credit card that you don't actually want anymore.
A lot of the credit cards I've opened, a lot of them are still open and I pay an annual
fee for those cards that are worth it, but a lot of them aren't.
And for those you - I wanna avoid canceling, sometimes it's inevitable but you wanna downgrade
when possible, after one year, don't do it before one year.
Now, the final point is what kind of credit card enthusiast or "churner" do you want to
be?
So, first of all, don't be a champ.
So again that means paying your full statement balance every single month.
I do automatic payments.
What I recommend is actually using both Mint and Personal Capital and those track my expenses
because if you have 25 credit cards, it's hard to check each one every single month,
that's just absurd, right?
So, Personal Capital, what I love about them is every single morning, they send me an e-mail
that has all of my credit card transactions across all my credit card accounts from the
previous day.
And I can then look at that to make sure there's no fraudulent activity, no fees, no - no things
like that.
I also use Mint and that does a very similar thing.
So I use both Personal Capital is my favorite and you can sign up using the link I have
down in the description below.
You also have to be very organized to do this properly, so you need to keep a spreadsheet.
Now, I use Google Sheets, I have one that's for my credit cards, I have one for bank accounts
and bank account churning that I do.
That's a topic for another video and in there, I'll actually leave a template down in the
description below so you can click it, make your own.
It'll save you some time but you're gonna put in essentially any credit cards you open,
what the minimum spend requirement is, the date you opened it, the bonus, the bank, all
that stuff.
And that just helps you long term maximize the bonuses and essentially maximize your
gains from this hobby.
Okay, now, there's three levels of doing this; Number one, basic.
So let's say you don't really want to put in two hours a week for several weeks, then
the bare minimum, this is very low-risk, low reward, is essentially just opening up cards
and maximizing their bonus spend.
So each credit card has a different bonus, like the Citi Double Cash has 2% on everything,
which is not bad, it's decent.
If you do Chase Freedom, there's a 5% rotating category, same with Discover It.
So any time you make a purchase you're getting 5% back.
It's not bad, a lot of people get very excited about 5%.
Again, in the grand scheme of things in this hobby is actually not very good.
It's better than nothing, but it's essentially like the most basic.
I wouldn't even call it churning, it's like being - being decent with credit cards.
Now the next level up, let's say you're moderate or intermediate, now, what you're gonna be
doing is opening up multiple credit cards every single year and you're gonna be focusing
on hitting the minimum spend requirement.
So, it's less important now, the 1%, the 2%, the 3% because if you hit the minimum spend
requirement, you spend $2,000 you get $60,000+ points, you're getting an order of magnitude
more on your spend.
So, now you're not getting 5%, now you're getting like 50% back essentially on the spend
that you've done.
So this is much higher value and requires again, a little more work because you gonna
be constantly opening up new credit cards, you need to stay organized, you need to constantly
educate yourself about the new offerings, the new rules, they're always changing, things
like that.
Now, advanced, so this is the final level, this is where I currently operate.
You are opening up both personal and business credit cards several every single year, sometimes
several every single month.
And now you really don't care about the percentage points on each category because at almost
any moment, you're working towards a minimum spend requirement.
So you should always have a new credit card in your wallet that you're working towards
and you just keep rotating, keep rotating.
Now, at this level, you may also get into manufacturing spend, again it's higher risk.
I don't advise it for most people, I personally don't do it.
Anyway, that's the fundamentals of credit card churning.
Now, beyond credit card churning, and I've been talking about you know, free flights,
free hotels things like that, there's so much more value.
So, you get extended warranty if you make a purchase of let's say a laptop or a camera
on the right credit card.
And that can extend your warranty by sometimes a couple of years, right?
So that's huge.
If there's any fraudulent activity on a credit card, you can reverse that and that's almost
never an issue with any of these major credit card issuers.
If you travel a lot, you can get lounge access and that lounge access can give you free food
and like pretty good free food and free alcohol.
So there's a lot of things beyond just the actual hotels and flights but you get so much
value from these free flights and hotels.
That's why I'm emphasizing that.
So again, if you found this video helpful, again, make sure you're subscribed.
Please press that Like button because that helps us with the algorithm and stay tuned!
I'm gonna be updating this playlist in future parts on which credit cards you should open,
more advanced theory, getting into bank account churning, all those things.
So thank you again so much for watching and I will see you guys in that next one!