Monica Froese [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast where strategy meets action. I’m Monica Froese, and I’m here to help you create, sell, and scale digital products the smart way using AI and proven strategies to build a sustainable, profitable business. If you’re ready to turn your expertise into digital products that sell and eventually grow into a thriving digital shop, you’re in the right place. Each week, I break down real world tactics, unfiltered insights, and bold business moves. Because building a digital product business should be sustainable, scalable, and designed for long term success. Let’s ditch the fluff, leverage AI to work smarter, and turn your expertise into a thriving digital empire on your terms. Let’s get started. Hello, and welcome back to the Empowered Business podcast.

Monica Froese [00:00:50]:
Today, I have a very special guest on. Her name is Megan Lanford, and she is a true expert in helping people turn their dream vacations into reality without breaking the bank. Megan is a travel points coach and the host of the Points to Paradise podcast, where she teaches you how to leverage credit card points for nearly free travel. Once struggling to afford even one vacation a year, she now takes up to six trips annually, saving an incredible $20,000 a year, and she’s now on a mission to help others do the same. And let me say, as someone who has traveled extensively in her life, and I have used both my business spending and my personal spending to do some really awesome things like get lounge access and fly first class. And my daughter is my Southwest companion for all of 2025. So anywhere I fly, she can fly for free. So I am not new to this topic, and I learned a lot from Megan.

Monica Froese [00:01:47]:
So if you’re someone who is not utilizing the money you’re spending to get free stuff, this is a great podcast for you. And especially if you have a business that you’re spending money in, if you’re not leveraging your business spending for getting you free stuff like travel, you have to tune into this because she has some amazing pointers. So let’s jump into the episode. Megan, welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast. I’m so excited to be talking to you today.

Megan Lanford [00:02:15]:
Yeah. I’m so excited, and I can’t wait for this conversation. It’s gonna be so good.

Monica Froese [00:02:18]:
It is. It’s a topic I am very interested in and, it’s gonna benefit a lot of the audience. And fun fact before we dive in, you are the only cold pitch I think I’ve ever received for the podcast that I have. Come on. Now this is not to tell everyone to start doing this, but she cold pitched me in Instagram, and I believe you sent me a voice memo, didn’t you? Yes, I did. Yes. And here she is. So it worked.

Monica Froese [00:02:41]:
I always like to kick this off by asking our guests to tell us about themselves and of course their entrepreneur journey and how they started their business.

Megan Lanford [00:02:49]:
Yeah. We were the typical family that like could barely afford one vacation a year. And we were always saving up money, staying at the holiday Inn and booking the cheapest flight, and we just really wanted something different. My husband actually didn’t fly for the first time till he was 18, and it was to go into the marine corps, and I was pregnant with our first daughter. And we just wanted something totally different for her life, so I stumbled upon credit card points and just dove all in and learned everything that I could. And the next year, we were able to take six trips that saved us over $20,000. So my daughter has been on multiple vacations now, and it’s just changed our lives. And in the process of doing that, all of our friends kept asking, like, how are you doing this? Like, what the heck? Teach me your ways.

Megan Lanford [00:03:33]:
And I was a stay at home mom. I had left my job to be at home with her and kinda was looking for something to do. And my husband goes, I think you should start a business doing this and teach people how to travel on credit card. Right? So that’s kinda how the business came about. Okay. I always like to

Monica Froese [00:03:47]:
get time length. What year was it when you discovered the the

Megan Lanford [00:03:51]:
first Yeah. So we opened up our first credit card towards, like, the end of twenty twenty one, and then my daughter was born in August of twenty two. In that year, we had taken one trip before she was born, and it was actually paid through by work at the time. And then in 2023 before she turned one is when we took those six trips.

Monica Froese [00:04:10]:
Wow. Okay. And when did you start the business?

Megan Lanford [00:04:13]:
I started the business that summer of twenty twenty three.

Monica Froese [00:04:16]:
And are you working full time in your business?

Megan Lanford [00:04:19]:
Yes.

Monica Froese [00:04:20]:
Okay. Alright. Interesting. And then tell us what you sell in your business.

Megan Lanford [00:04:25]:
Yeah. My main offer is an online academy. It’s the travel points academy. It walks you through absolutely everything so that you never have to pay for a vacation again. Most students start their first trip within three months of taking the academy. And then for people who have a very specific trip like Italy or a honeymoon, I will work with you one on one to help you plan and actually book that vacation while I’m teaching you how to do it. So then you can go on to take more vacations and do it for the rest of your life.

Monica Froese [00:04:54]:
Alright. That’s awesome. Okay. Do you teach people both how to spend personal credit cards and business credit cards, or most of the people you’re teaching, they have a business, or most people you teach don’t have a business?

Megan Lanford [00:05:06]:
Yeah. So I teach personal and business credit cards. Some of my students do have their own small business, so they have credit cards. But I really teach people even if you don’t have a business, like, if you sell something on Facebook marketplace or you coach your kids’ soccer team, like, you have some sort of side hustle, NLM, you are eligible to open those business credit cards, and it can open up, like, a whole other world of points for you.

Monica Froese [00:05:29]:
It sure

Megan Lanford [00:05:30]:
can. Yeah. Okay. So I encourage everyone to do business also.

Monica Froese [00:05:34]:
And my my very first question then is going to be because I feel like this is the question. I explained to Megan before we start recording, I’m pretty well versed in using credit cards for free travel. I’ve been doing it for years, but I mean, you don’t know what you don’t know. So this is why I’m very intrigued by this conversation. In my early twenties, I guess you can just say irresponsible with credit cards. And I learned the hard way. In knowing fanatical about my credit and have been for the last two decades. So I have good credit.

Monica Froese [00:06:00]:
So this makes it relatively easy for me to play this game, but I’m sure there are people who are gonna say, I don’t have that grade of credit. Can I still do this?

Megan Lanford [00:06:09]:
Yep. Definitely. So if you are in a place where you’re not having a great credit score, like 715, Mid 7 Hundreds, there are lots of credit cards that you could start out with that are categorized as cashback. So, like, the Chase Freedom, those are really great cards for someone to start with who doesn’t have a great credit score, and it is labeled as cashback. But as you’re earning those points, you’re you’re actually being able to earn points for them later on. So once you open up the next Chase card, you can convert that cashback into points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. So as you’re building your credit, you’re really earning points for later on.

Monica Froese [00:06:45]:
Okay. That’s good to know. Okay. So let’s go to, like, step zero getting started on this. Because this, I know when I first was like, I’m spending so much money in the business. And at that time I had a great cash back card, but I was like, I probably could maximize this more. And that’s when I started researching, but I felt very overwhelmed. There are so many options and so many opinions.

Monica Froese [00:07:05]:
So where do you start?

Megan Lanford [00:07:06]:
Yeah, there are tons of options. So there’s four major banks, Citi, Capital One, American Express, and Chase. Honestly, whatever card you picked, if it’s a Southwest Airlines card or a Delta, you’re really not gonna make, like, a huge decision that was, like, the worst thing ever. Like, even if you got one card, my thing is as long as you stop using your debit card and you switch to a strategic travel points credit card, you’re gonna be in a good spot. Because every time you swipe that debit card, you’re literally losing out on money that you could be put towards travel. But for someone who really wants to start doing this, I always recommend starting with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That’s the easy beginner level card. It’s only a $95 annual fee.

Megan Lanford [00:07:48]:
You get a 60,000 points when you spend $4,000 in the first three months. So it’s pretty attainable for the average American, and they have great transfer partners that you can use. You can use Hyatt Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Southwest Airlines, United. Like, there’s a bunch of partners. And so I really like starting with that card.

Monica Froese [00:08:06]:
Okay. Now what if you were someone like me? I don’t use Chase currently. I’m really big on co branded cards with Amex. Like, I have Delta. I have Hilton. I’ve maxed those, like, my benefits there pretty much. I have the Amex Platinum card, which is flexible with points, and I also have the Southwest business card, and I got the companion pass for that. So I’m at this point where I’ve earned on all these co branded cards.

Monica Froese [00:08:30]:
And as the Amex Platinum, I use more for the benefits that come with it. Like, I get, like, my Disney pluses for yeah. Disney plus brand. I maximize all that. I my clear at the airport, TSA precheck, all of that stuff. But now if I wanted to get it being more advanced, so I’m not a beginner, what card would I move into now that’s, like, the general pool of points that converts well?

Megan Lanford [00:08:54]:
Yeah. So I actually really like the flexible point cards. So, like, Chase American Express versus those co branded cards because you’re so tied to the one specific brand versus those flexible points. You could book a whole vacation on just one card because you can transfer them to the airline and the hotel. So for, like, someone like you, I would really recommend diving into the Chase Inc. Business cards. There’s three of them, and you can have all three through multiple businesses. So I have the same credit card for three different businesses.

Megan Lanford [00:09:24]:
And those pulling all of those Chase points personal and business together can really maximize on that flexible travel.

Monica Froese [00:09:32]:
Oh, I have more questions. This is a good conversation. Okay. So you have three businesses. Explain that.

Megan Lanford [00:09:39]:
Yeah. So, we are cattle ranchers in New Mexico. So we have a ranching business family. My husband owns a construction business, and then I have points to paradise, my travel business.

Monica Froese [00:09:51]:
Okay. I love that. And you know what’s really funny is I actually do have two LLCs, but one of them, I created my main one that I’ve operated under for a decade as, like, the Parish LLC. And then as I was starting to build off sub brands, I got another LLC on that owned by the main LLC, so we can share resources, but that LLC can open up credit cards. What if and I feel like this is gonna be a question that people will benefit from too. That LLC currently doesn’t make any standalone money. It has the EIN, but it’s a new LLC, essentially. Can that open a business card? It’s been so long since I’ve had an LLC.

Megan Lanford [00:10:28]:
A %. Then you can be, like, I’ve seen people get approved for business cards with an operating income of a hundred dollars. Once you’re approved, as long as you have that EIN and even if you don’t have an LLC, maybe you’re running as, like, a sole proprietor, you can still apply for those business credit cards under your Social Security number as well.

Monica Froese [00:10:46]:
I did know that. Okay. And that’s good for people to know too because I know once we get into legal structures, it can overwhelm people. And one of the things I’ve told people out the gate before I was really even making money, I did file for my LLC because I knew the impact. I wanted to gather the habits of keeping everything separate

Megan Lanford [00:11:02]:
right away.

Monica Froese [00:11:02]:
I didn’t wanna commingle finances or anything like that. So I went out the gate, hit my LLC, and I’m really glad I did. And how does

Megan Lanford [00:11:08]:
credit cards help keep that separate too? Because all of your statements are on your business, and then you’ll have, like, your personal chase, but you can combine the points from the two of them together.

Monica Froese [00:11:18]:
Okay. But now let’s talk about the personal card. So, like, in the business side, you said to move to the ink business, but now what would I do on the personal side? My personal side right now, I have the Amex platinum and the Amex Hilton card. Both I’m utilizing all the benefits from now.

Megan Lanford [00:11:34]:
Yeah. Since I’m kind of sending you down the Chase rabbit hole, if you would have the inks, I would recommend opening up that Chase Sapphire Preferred card, a great starter card, because then you can pull all of your ink points onto that preferred card and then use it from there to transfer everything out. And then if someone’s listening that already has the Chase card, my second starter card for a personal card is the Capital One Venture card. I really like that one as well because they’re flexible as well.

Monica Froese [00:12:01]:
Flexible points, but they don’t convert as well as the Chase ones?

Megan Lanford [00:12:05]:
No. They convert really great. They just have different transfer partners. And then Capital One also has a really cool tool. It’s called the travel eraser. And so if you buy, like, Disney tickets, an Airbnb, cruise ships, like, things that are outside of the box and travel, you can actually use your Capital One points to purchase those things.

Monica Froese [00:12:26]:
Okay. Okay. This is

Megan Lanford [00:12:27]:
And you’re getting excited. I see it.

Monica Froese [00:12:29]:
Yeah. I am because I just so I think for me, I found the co branded card easier. Yeah. The way I travel, I do pretty much stick to the same brand. So, like, I do pretty much only stay in Hiltons. I only fly Delta or Southwest out of Buffalo. So it was easy. It was a easy way for me to understand it.

Monica Froese [00:12:47]:
I think the pooling of points felt overwhelming in the sense of how do I know I’m getting the best conversion when I’m cashing it in? And, like, I think I thought it was gonna be overwhelming. So can you walk us through the process of you have all these points now, what do you do with them?

Megan Lanford [00:13:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. So the banks, they try to make it difficult for you to use your points because they don’t they’re planning on you not using them. Right? So I think 60% of Americans have points that they’re not using. And it’s really not that hard. So if you were to log in to Chase or American Express, they’re gonna direct you to their travel portal. And so it’s gonna say, hey. You have a thousand dollars worth of points.

Megan Lanford [00:13:24]:
Go book a flight or something. It’ll say click here. But what you wanna do is click the drop down that says, like, ways to use points. And under there, there’ll be a transfer partner tab, and that’s where you will see the list of all of the partners, hotels, and airlines that you transfer your points at, and then you just connect it to, like, your Hilton account or your Marriott account. And you’ll transfer the points directly to that hotel account and then book it directly with the hotel like you normally would.

Monica Froese [00:13:52]:
So it’s really not difficult?

Megan Lanford [00:13:54]:
No. It’s really not that difficult. They just hide the tab for you to transfer your points and don’t tell you how to go about doing that because they want you to use the travel portal, but you’re losing money when you do that. Because let’s say you had a thousand dollars worth of points in the travel portal. If I transferred those points out to, like, Hyatt, especially Hyatt because they’re a really kind of a sweet spot, I can turn that thousand dollars almost every time into at least 2 to $3,000 worth of travel points. So I’m Wow. Almost always doubling or tripling my value when I transfer.

Monica Froese [00:14:27]:
Okay. That that blew my mind a little bit.

Megan Lanford [00:14:30]:
Yep. That’s the best hack I have for anybody.

Monica Froese [00:14:34]:
So I personally hate booking through third party sites anyways because Yeah.

Megan Lanford [00:14:37]:
Me too.

Monica Froese [00:14:38]:
I’ve mentioned to you before we started recording. I have been an avid traveler since I was 18 years old, and I’m 40 now. So needless to say, I’ve been hopping on planes by myself. I’ve been in multiple different countries. I’ve done a lot in my life, and I Yeah. Realized that that I’ve come to realize that that is an exceptional thing. And Yes. When people haven’t traveled a lot, I noticed they default to, like, Expedia.

Monica Froese [00:14:59]:
And I won’t do that because then you really lose control over, like, your airline Yeah. Ticket. And, like, if something happens, because we’re booking direct. So this is and not only are you doubling, tripling the value of your points, but Yeah. And you have so much more control over your reservation. Yes. So in terms of traveling outside of getting the airline ticket or the hotel, what are your favorite ways to use your travel points?

Megan Lanford [00:15:24]:
So definitely the hotel and the airline is gonna be where you get the most value out of them by, like, double and trouble exiting it. But one of my favorite hacks is, like, Disney tickets because so many families wanna take their kids to Disney. And even if you got the hotel and the airline, you’re still paying $2,000 for Disney tickets plus the food when you’re inside. And so if you can use the Capital One points to pay for your tickets, there’s even a little hack that I teach in the academy on how to get all of your food for free inside the Disney parks. You can literally go to Disney for free. Another one of my favorite hacks is using your points at hotels, but an all inclusive resort. So you can stay at some very nice, like, $2,000 room a night hotels where you get all of your food, all of your drinks for free. And so if your kid wants five smoothies that day, like, you can say yes because it’s all free.

Megan Lanford [00:16:16]:
And so you’re like, you can go to Mexico to an all inclusive resort for less than $16 a person.

Monica Froese [00:16:22]:
Well okay. So what which all inclusives are covered under these cards typically?

Megan Lanford [00:16:29]:
Yeah. So it’s gonna be the mostly the name brands. So, like, Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, the all inclusives that follow under them, but they have so many different brands under them that there’s a lot of options to choose from.

Monica Froese [00:16:41]:
Have you done these all inclusives on your points?

Megan Lanford [00:16:44]:
Yes. I have.

Monica Froese [00:16:45]:
Okay. So I feel like the next thing people are gonna be thinking is, oh, okay. That sounds great. But how much did you actually spend to get the amount of points you need to go on this all inclusive?

Megan Lanford [00:16:54]:
Yeah. So that’s the biggest misconception is people think you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. And what I do is I really maximize on what’s called sign up bonuses. So when you get a new card, you only have to spend, like I said, like, 4 or $3,000 in the first three months to get a really large chunk of points. So because I am traveling often, I open a new credit card every three months, and so does my husband, and that’s how we accumulate our large points. So we’re not spending $10,000 to get 10,000 points. I’m spending $3,000 to get a hundred thousand points. And that one $3,000 spend pays for my entire all inclusive.

Monica Froese [00:17:33]:
Okay. That makes sense. I mean, that’s essentially how I got the companion pass this year Yeah. For Southwest because it was a sign it was a sign on bonus. It was a

Megan Lanford [00:17:40]:
sign on bonus.

Monica Froese [00:17:41]:
Yeah. And in the business, it was like, I just spent, like, $8,000. I’m like, okay. Well, we spend that in, like, a week. It’s that’s Oh,

Megan Lanford [00:17:46]:
yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And the price of groceries, I mean, it’s really easy to hit some of these sign up bonuses pretty quickly. And then, like, two months, you already have enough points to go on a full vacation.

Monica Froese [00:17:58]:
Okay. Let’s talk about the impact, though, of your credit when you were getting these cards. So I guess I I’m very well versed in credit too, so I feel like I have very detailed questions here. The first is I feel like a lot of people don’t know this. Most business cards will not report to your personal credit. You’re personally guaranteeing it, and it will ding your credit in terms of pulling a hard inquiry to get the card. However, the Capital One is an exception, though. I learned that the hard way.

Monica Froese [00:18:26]:
Capital One does report to your credit, your personal credit report, which stinks because it counts against like, my business cards are constantly revolving. I put so much on them. We pay them down

Megan Lanford [00:18:35]:
and then we pay them.

Monica Froese [00:18:36]:
And so when it when the monthly statement comes out, it could be any it could be several thousands of dollars, and then it goes to my personal credit. And I’m like, but I don’t have that debt. It depends on I’m cautious. I always want people to know that because if it’s gonna be a card you’re using in the long term in your business, you should go for one that’s reporting to your personal credit unless you’re default, and then you’re gonna get dinged. Yeah. I feel like knowing this, when you say you’re applying every three months, is it on the business side or the personal side or

Megan Lanford [00:19:04]:
a mix? It’s a mix. So I usually alternate. So one personal card, then three months business card, then personal, and I kinda go back and forth. But I always, like, very hammer it to my clients. Like, you need to pay these cards off in full every single month. We’re not accruing any debt, any interest, no late fees because that’s actually gonna boost your credit score. So me and my husband will have an 800 plus credit score because we’re always paying up our cards, and we’re only putting the spend on the most recent card that we opened up. So once we hit the sign up bonus, that card goes away, like, in a drawer or in the back of our wallet, and then we start working on the next cards.

Megan Lanford [00:19:42]:
I have over 14 credit cards in my wallet, but I’m only spending on one at a time. So it keeps it very organized, so you’re not, like, making multiple payments as well.

Monica Froese [00:19:50]:
And these dings are the dings of pulling your credit have not really hurt your score?

Megan Lanford [00:19:55]:
No. So as soon as you apply for a card, it pulls that hard credit, like you said, and you will get a ding. It’s usually five to 10 points. Your credit score will go down. As soon as you make that first payment, your credit score goes right back up, then it will continue to climb. Like, my husband, when he when we first started this, his credit score was so bad. I couldn’t even get him approved for a credit card. So we started with that beginner card I talked about and built his credit up, and now he has an 800 plus credit score because he has 13 credit cards in his wallet.

Megan Lanford [00:20:25]:
So it actually really helps your credit score.

Monica Froese [00:20:27]:
Will you get to a point where you start closing the cards? Because I know there are rules. I’ve heard, I believe it’s, like, twenty four months with the Southwest card, for example, that I can’t have the card and to qualify. So are you gonna start closing?

Megan Lanford [00:20:39]:
Yeah. So at some point, we will start closing to then reopen that same card to get the signup bonus again. There’s a few cards, and it’s very few that we just don’t justify the annual fee. We don’t use the card enough, so we will close it. You just never wanna close a card within the first year of opening it because that will negatively hurt your credit score, and it will, like, kinda look bad on the banks to open up cards next time. So you always wanna have them open at least a year. But after a year, you can close anything you want. But for the most part, we keep most of our cards open.

Monica Froese [00:21:12]:
What’s the highest annual fee card you have?

Megan Lanford [00:21:15]:
The highest one we have is the Capital One Venture x. This one’s for, like, lounge access and stuff, and it’s $3.95, I believe.

Monica Froese [00:21:21]:
Oh, wow. Because my Amex Platinum’s, I believe, $6.95.

Megan Lanford [00:21:25]:
And Yes. The Amex Platinum is the highest one, and, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of it. I see a lot of people with it, but it’s not one that I have in my wallet.

Monica Froese [00:21:34]:
Well, that’s interesting to know because I’m like I said, I’m at the point where I’m ready for the next one, and I I think I might end up axing the Amex Platinum Yeah.

Megan Lanford [00:21:42]:
After I talk to you. I like the VentureX because it’s a lower annual fee, and you still get all that lounge access that you get with the American Express, which is what I really want it for.

Monica Froese [00:21:51]:
Is priority pass part of that? Mhmm. Okay. Because that’s my big that’s the lounge in Buffalo. I live in Buffalo. So

Megan Lanford [00:21:58]:
Those are my priority pass.

Monica Froese [00:22:00]:
Yes. I love my priority pass. Okay. I have, for years, followed, like, the points guy. And one of the things he talks about a lot is the chase rule with how many you how many cards. Can you explain that rule? Because I feel like you’re important to know if you’re gonna dive

Megan Lanford [00:22:16]:
into this. Yeah. If you’re gonna dive into this, I teach this in the academy. It’s the five twenty four rule. And, basically, Chase has this rule that if you have five cards open, and that doesn’t matter what bank, even if it’s a Costco card or a Kohl’s card, if you have five within twenty four months that you’ve opened up, they will not approve you for another Chase card. So for my students who I like to favor Chase, you wanna know this rule. There’s a free app you can download. It’s called the travel freely app.

Megan Lanford [00:22:43]:
I recommend if you’re gonna get into this to have it. It’s on your phone free. You put in all the cards that you open, and it doesn’t connect to your bank account, which I love, and it keeps everything organized. It tells you when your annual fees are due. It tells you what your sign up bonus is, and it keeps track of your five twenty four status for you so you don’t even have to think about it.

Monica Froese [00:23:03]:
Oh, I am getting that app. Yeah. I believe

Megan Lanford [00:23:06]:
it’s worth it. Too because if you don’t know a card to open up next, like, if you’re way down the road, it will actually give you recommendations of what it thinks

Monica Froese [00:23:12]:
you should open up next. Interesting. Okay. So which bank would you say you have the most cards for between you and your husband?

Megan Lanford [00:23:19]:
Chase, definitely.

Monica Froese [00:23:20]:
Okay. So you would favor Chase over Capital One in terms of their program?

Megan Lanford [00:23:24]:
Yeah. I would favor Chase. Chase is just great for pretty much any kind of vacation. And then when you get more into, like, Italy or Australia or, like, some of those bigger trips, that’s when you would start diving into American Express or Capital One for those more, like, specific destinations.

Monica Froese [00:23:39]:
And if you’re the a mom listening who’s like, I wanna take my kids to Disney, that’s the that’s you have to use Capital One to do that?

Megan Lanford [00:23:46]:
Capital One is the one for the Disney tickets. Yes. And then you could use your Chase points for your hotel and your airline.

Monica Froese [00:23:52]:
Now have you have you taken your kids to Disney with the Capital One?

Megan Lanford [00:23:56]:
No. So she is two and a half.

Monica Froese [00:23:58]:
So we

Megan Lanford [00:23:58]:
have been waiting for her to get a little bit older, but I’m pretty certain we’re taking her this December for Christmas.

Monica Froese [00:24:04]:
Oh, that’s exciting. We’re a big Disney family. With the Disney vacation club, my ex actually still has it. My oldest, we’ve lost track how many times she’s been to Disney, but I’m thinking, when you were talking about how expensive Disney is, it is no joke. And I kind of wish I knew a little about these hacks when we’re at the height of taking her because she’s 12 now. Okay. So what are we missing here? So, we’re brand new to this and you told us where to start. If you add credit, you’re building your credit or if you’re someone like me and you’re further along where we should go.

Monica Froese [00:24:35]:
Do you teach everyone to follow like the same three month rule every three months open or what’s the general rule that you give people?

Megan Lanford [00:24:41]:
No. So it’s very individualized depending on what your travel goals are. If you’re just a family that wants to take one really great trip every year, you only need to open two cards a year. You don’t need to be opening up every three months. So depending on how often you wanna travel or if you’re, like, someone wants to travel first class and stay at the Ritz Carlton, like, you might obviously need more points for that. So it’s very dependent on everybody’s travel goals. And within the academy, we have a membership, so I can help tailor everybody’s, like, credit card strategy for what they’re trying to achieve.

Monica Froese [00:25:13]:
Nice. Okay. Is there anything else other than travel you recommend points be spent on ever?

Megan Lanford [00:25:19]:
The only thing that I would say is if you’re on a vacation and you’re wanting to do some like tours or like excursions and things like that, you can use points, rental cars. If you truly want your whole vacation planned and booked on points, you can pretty much do every aspect of it. But some people are like, oh, I’m fine paying for, like, a $200 Rachel Carson since the whole other trip’s free. But you can get all of that, but that’s, I mean, still a part of travel. The rest of the stuff, I really don’t recommend because you’re not getting very good value on it for, like, the cashback price.

Monica Froese [00:25:52]:
Okay. So you don’t you don’t do cashback or claim gift cards or anything like that?

Megan Lanford [00:25:59]:
Nope. None of that stuff.

Monica Froese [00:26:00]:
Interesting. So the one Capital One card I have in the business that irks me that I report some of my personal credit, it is a cash back. And early on in the business, I used to take the cash back, and then my accountant’s like, you realize you’re now paying income tax on the cash back. And I was like,

Megan Lanford [00:26:15]:
what Capital One card is that? Is it the spark? Is it green?

Monica Froese [00:26:19]:
Yep. Yep. It’s the spark.

Megan Lanford [00:26:20]:
So it’s cash back, but I have a way that you can turn that into travel points.

Monica Froese [00:26:25]:
Oh, do tell. So if

Megan Lanford [00:26:29]:
you get the Capital One Venture cards, it’s just like Chase. You can transfer that cash back to your Capital One Venture and turn it into points.

Monica Froese [00:26:37]:
Okay. So if I get the venture now for someone like me who gets a little irritated with the business card reporting to my personal credit, should I do it personally with the venture card then? Yeah. Not

Megan Lanford [00:26:50]:
a business card. Mhmm.

Monica Froese [00:26:52]:
Oh, it is a personal card. It’s not

Megan Lanford [00:26:53]:
It is a personal card. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Mhmm.

Monica Froese [00:26:57]:
Okay. Because I’ve been sitting on a whole ton of cash back. I’ve been using that Capital One card because I maxed out my benefits for Southwest and Delta. So I’ve been Yeah. Just using the cash back. And this is why this is so timely for me because I’m like, I know I’m not utilizing

Megan Lanford [00:27:10]:
my

Monica Froese [00:27:10]:
spending very well right now, but I kinda felt like I didn’t know what to do next. So it sounded like I have two distinct avenues. Like, one, I should get the venture card personally, move over the spark, Capital One from the business, cash back to points. And then business, I should start with the Chase Inc, start my Chase family of cards, essentially. Yeah. As long as I I’d also have to pay attention to the five twenty four rules. I’ll have to first see what I’ve applied for. At.

Monica Froese [00:27:37]:
And the big message with that is basically prioritize applying for Chase first.

Megan Lanford [00:27:42]:
Yeah. Get Chase cards first, and then you really don’t have to worry about the rules so much.

Monica Froese [00:27:47]:
Because, I mean, with you, you’re up to thirteen, fourteen cards each. I’m guessing you’re you’re outside the bounds of getting a I’m still under five twenty four. You are?

Megan Lanford [00:27:57]:
I am.

Monica Froese [00:27:58]:
Okay. Yeah. That’s impressive. Okay. Wow.

Megan Lanford [00:28:03]:
Well, there is a little caveat to the five twenty four rule also. A lot of the business cards don’t count for the five twenty five. So most it’s all almost always personal cards. So there’s a few exceptions in there, but for the most part, all business cards don’t count towards the five twenty five.

Monica Froese [00:28:20]:
So it’s what’s reporting to your credit report? Yeah. Another reason that it’s to understand what business cards do and

Megan Lanford [00:28:27]:
do not report is important.

Monica Froese [00:28:29]:
Okay. Well, lucky for me, I opened that Capital One card, like, years and years ago, so it wouldn’t even count towards me.

Megan Lanford [00:28:33]:
Yeah. It doesn’t matter then.

Monica Froese [00:28:35]:
Okay. So what kind of fun, like what’s like some of the funnest outside the box things you’ve seen your clients do with appointments?

Megan Lanford [00:28:42]:
Yeah. Like I said, it’s so dependent on what your travel goals are. I had a client just a couple of weeks ago, go on a whole week long cruise with her family and was able to pay for the cruise ship. One takes a little bit longer, but my favorite one was a couple wanted to go to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and they wanted to go in, like, three months of starting to work with me, which isn’t very quick. I usually recommend, like, a year out, and they were able to rack up a bunch of chase points pretty quick with their businesses. And they were able to fly first class, lay flat seats, like champagne brought to them for literally $16. Would have cost $10,000 if they paid cash.

Monica Froese [00:29:20]:
Which cards were they using to get that so fast?

Megan Lanford [00:29:24]:
The Chase Ink cards.

Monica Froese [00:29:26]:
The Chase Ink cards?

Megan Lanford [00:29:28]:
Yep. So they had some personal Chase cards and some business Chase cards, and they pulled them all together. And we were able to book them on United over to Italy.

Monica Froese [00:29:38]:
Okay. If someone doesn’t have a high spend business, you know, because I totally realize that I have a high spend business. So it does Yeah. Be in a good position to be able to utilize these things. How if let’s just say I’m listening to this, and I’m like, okay. I wanna take my kids to Disney, and they’re they don’t have a high spend business. Maybe they don’t even have business at all of us being part of business podcast. So they probably have a business, but it might not be up to spend.

Monica Froese [00:30:05]:
Like, the average person, if they’re gonna pay for an entire Disney trip for four people, how long would you say it’s gonna take them to earn enough points for that?

Megan Lanford [00:30:13]:
I would say you’re gonna need probably one to two Capital One cards, which is $6,000 to get the two sign up bonuses, and then, like, a Chase card to get your flights in your hotel. So for a family of four, you’re probably looking at three to four cards depending on, like, the hotel and airline you wanna stay at. You could stay at, like, a Hyatt place for your family and get free breakfast and fly Southwest for really, really cheap. You can almost get all of that on one car maybe even. So you’re looking at probably six months to nine months to plan that kind of a big trip.

Monica Froese [00:30:48]:
Okay. When you said that when the first thing you did, you went on six trips in one year, and it was $20,000 you saved? 20,000. Yeah. What were the six trips?

Megan Lanford [00:30:58]:
Oh, I have to think now. How we did, let’s see, Clearwater, Florida, which is just outside of Tampa, and that was a really nice ocean view resort. We did Phoenix, Arizona. We did San Diego, California. Where else did we go that year? Yuma, Arizona, and Charleston, South Carolina. And there was one other. I can’t remember. Wow.

Megan Lanford [00:31:25]:
And these were So it was all very it was domestic travel, Mhmm. Daughter was one at a time. We did, like, theme parks and zoos and went and visited my sister in Charleston and did some, like, museums and stuff. And then once she hit two, we started doing, like, all inclusives in Mexico and Hawaii and all of those bigger ones. And now she’s gonna be three this year. So now we’re looking at, like, Europe, Disney, like, some bigger ones.

Monica Froese [00:31:51]:
Love it. Yep. Okay. I always said, when you pay for business travel, you write it off. It’s a tax rate. Right? So I always was of the school of thought. And this is probably from my corporate days. When you would travel, you would often use your personal credit card and then you would- Yes.

Monica Froese [00:32:08]:
You would expense it. And so one of the perks of corporate travel was works paying for your trip, and then you’re using your points to go on your personal trips. And so when I got the business and it got high enough spending, my personal philosophy was, well, this is a tax write off. If I’m flying to a mastermind event, I’m writing off the flight, I’m writing off the hotel. So I am going to accumulate the points in the business, but I’m gonna use it to travel for free personally. And you had a different school of thought on that that I feel like I mean, it’s a good well rounded approach, I think.

Megan Lanford [00:32:37]:
Yeah. And it’s totally dependent on everybody. I actually was just at a mastermind two weeks ago, and two of my students were there also. So one of them hadn’t used all of her points to pay for her hotel. She had brought her husband, so they stayed in a really nice luxury resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then another one had flown out from Michigan, and she had paid for her flights with points round trips. So her flight cost her, I think, it was, like, $12. And so you can use those points for your business travel so that you could attend more masterminds, conferences, speaking engagements,

Monica Froese [00:33:08]:
and

Megan Lanford [00:33:09]:
so that you can, like, automatically say yes to those opportunities without even having to think about, well, what’s it actually gonna cost me to go? What’s my ROI? So it really depends on if you’re wanting to cover it completely or if you wanna use that as a tax write off.

Monica Froese [00:33:22]:
Yeah. So I think both are valid, especially because I never really opened my mind up to that. But, like, last year we took a pretty big revenue hit, and I really did seize traveling in the business because of it. And now I’m thinking, okay, well, I always saw it that way, but I never really opened my mind to the possibility that I have a ton of points I’ve been sitting on because I have been Yeah. This. So these business events can, I’ve always said business is done in the room with other business owners. Like, it’s who you know, and that’s how you grow your business. So traveling is a really important thing I find.

Monica Froese [00:33:51]:
Yeah. So I’m thinking, well, okay. I was gonna kinda sideline business travel a little bit longer, but maybe I will entertain the idea of using some of these points I’m sitting on with these co branded cards to go on, you know, business travel. I think both are valid points for sure.

Megan Lanford [00:34:05]:
Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:34:05]:
Okay. How can people connect with you?

Megan Lanford [00:34:09]:
Yeah. So you can find me over on Instagram, Points to Paradise. It’s two o t o o. And I also have a podcast, Points to Paradise, where I give all kinds of travel, credit card tips, destination reviews, all kinds of fun stuff. So definitely join me over on those two platforms.

Monica Froese [00:34:25]:
And the two ways they can work with you are either they can be a client and you teach them while booking their first trip, or you have basically a self study course. What’s that called?

Megan Lanford [00:34:33]:
Yep. Yeah. Charter Points Academy, and then it also comes with three months free in the membership. So as you’re going through it self paced, you can ask me questions as you’re going through it and help you get planned your first trip.

Monica Froese [00:34:45]:
Perfect. So we’ll link to all of that in the show notes. Is there any, like, final pointer you wanna give people?

Megan Lanford [00:34:51]:
Stop using your debit card is all I can say. I see so many people all the time who pull it out. I’m like, oh, what are you doing? So just get a travel credit card, stop using the debit card. You’re losing out on money, and you can figure out the

Monica Froese [00:35:03]:
points thing later on. Honestly, mic drop. Because also debit cards aren’t they don’t protect you as much as credit cards.

Megan Lanford [00:35:09]:
No. So many protections on credit cards.

Monica Froese [00:35:11]:
When I was married, I called it our mainline checking where basically all of our money went in personally. Constantly, because we had a debit card attached to it, was getting hacked. And so Mhmm. Yeah. We eventually got a sec checking account and that was the only one that had a debit card linked to it. So we could move money, if we had to get money out of the bank. Because it’s actually really risky to have a debit card that you’re actively using at all these different points of charge, you know, whatever terminals they call it. Because you’re opening your actual livelihood, and you don’t have the same consumer protections with the debit cards.

Monica Froese [00:35:44]:
I’ve always found it, like, why are people using their debit card? Like, you still have to be disciplined that you’re spending the money and you’re gonna, you know, you don’t wanna rack up a bunch of interest when you’re trying to use these points because that kinda defeats the purpose. But Yes. Yeah. Okay. Mic drop. I agree. Stop using that debit card and get these points cards and start traveling. Yeah.

Monica Froese [00:36:04]:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciated talking to you. It was a very insightful conversation.

Megan Lanford [00:36:10]:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

Monica Froese [00:36:12]:
That’s a wrap on today’s episode, but your next step starts right now. If you’re serious about selling digital products and want the AI powered tools, expert strategy, and real human support to make it happen, then you need to check out the Empowered Business Society. Inside, you’ll get AI driven trainings to create and sell digital products faster, a private community for expert feedback and real time support, exclusive access to the Monica Memo podcast. And if you go pro, you’ll get monthly marketing shortcuts, live q and a’s, and 20% off of the empowered shop perpetually. Because smart business owners sell smarter, they don’t work harder. And the best part, you can get started for as little as $9. The best business growth happens when AI and real humans work together. Ready to make your next move? Join us inside of the Empowered Business Society.

Monica Froese [00:37:01]:
You can check us out at empoweredbusiness.co/society. See you in the next episode.