Luxury Trips, Tiny Price | Brandon Okamoto | Growing Money Podcast

In this episode of Growing Money with Sean Trace, I sit down with credit card points consultant and travel concierge Brandon Okamoto to uncover how everyday spending can unlock unforgettable travel experiences. Brandon began studying credit cards and travel rewards at just 15 years old, eventually learning how to book international flights and luxury vacations for a fraction of their normal cost.

We discuss why earning points should never mean spending more money, how business owners may be leaving thousands of dollars in travel value unused, and why choosing the most popular premium credit card is not always the smartest strategy. Brandon also explains the difference between redeeming points through travel portals and transferring them directly to airline or hotel partners.

Beyond credit card points, we explore the value of time, freedom, meaningful experiences, and building a business around work you genuinely enjoy. 

This conversation proves that smart financial planning is not only about saving more, it is also about using what you already spend to experience more of life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What did your experience teach you about chasing money versus building something you actually enjoy? Yeah, 100%. With with the marketing agency, it was a mainly a re like mainly a reason to get in the door with more of uh online sales, more and making money that way. So I was able to scale it to a good amount, but again, it's it's more of like a means to an end, just like give me some little bit of capital to learn also building sales when I was running ads for my business and doing face-to-face calls like this to sell my b to sell my product to essentially move that to the next business that I was kind of working on. The issue with the sales marketing agency I see from there was that it didn't give me the freedom that I was kind of building myself on the other side, where like the travel travel hacking was a hobby on the side, which allowed me the options to go do these experiences while I'm still young, be able to afford like a business class flight from my parents uh for their retirement, right? That's that's honestly the probably the best um redemption I've ever done. But with having the marketing agency, it kind of just it wasn't aligned with kind of what that current phase of my life was, and that's kind of why I wanted to shut that down and and start turning into my own new business that I'm already love what I'm doing, and there's so much value that I can pull out for the customers that I have.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I've got a really cool guest with me today that is uh kind of getting going with his podcasting journey. Uh, we are happy to say that we are kind of home to this first experience. Excited to have you. Can you introduce yours introduce yourself to people, let them know who you are and kind of what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Hey guys, my name is Brandon Nokamoto. Um, I essentially work as a credit card points consultant and travel concierge. So I help business owners and uh just like regular high-income earners optimize their spend for credit card points and use that to book luxury vacations for basically pennies on the dollar.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Which is awesome. You know, it's like one of the things that I think in the personal finance industry, there are two camps. There's the camp that love credit cards, and there's the camp that hates credit cards. And if you go to your Dave Ramsey, he's so hardcore against everything. You know, if you're going to burn, you know, it's like, wow, man. But yet you have the other side that really are understanding it's a tool. Like, and one of the things that gets me when people rail against a product, right? Whether it be, let's imagine, a knife. I love using knives because knives are powerful tools. You can make a great meal with a knife. But if you don't know how to use a knife, obviously you can cut yourself. I remember seeing this kid. Uh, I went to this restaurant and I looked over, and this kid was cutting garlic, and she couldn't have been more than like six. And I was like, why is that child cutting garlic over there? And she's like the daughter of the restaurant owner just cutting garlic. And I was like, that kid is gonna cut her finger open. She had this big old knife, and the mom's like, it's okay. And I'm like, are you sure about that? Two seconds later, she just cuts herself. There's blood everywhere. And I was like, I could have seen that coming as a parent, man. But the problem is, it's not the knife, it wasn't the knife that did that. What did that were parents who didn't understand a tool. Don't worry, any any audio in the background. I can cut stuff out, so it's all good. So I'll keep running. Don't worry about it. But like the knife is it's a tool, you know, it's something that we can use, it's something that we have the ability to shape and kind of build with, but it can also cut you badly if you're not ready for it. So I want to ask you this because, you know, as someone who's working with tools and cards and such, you started studying credit card points at 15 years old. What made a teenager become obsessed with something most adults barely understand?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Uh, I think that around that age, I don't know, around that age, I was kind of learning about a lot of different things. Actually, around like 14 is when I first started trading stocks. So I think with this new effort as like being able to access the internet, there's so much access to all these different things. I was also looking into real estate, and that's kind of what kind of got me into credit cards, is because you need to have a good credit score to get into real estate. So a lot of different things. I bought some courses here and there, and one of the, funny enough, um, it was a Ty Lopez course. Nice. So there may be something, some good things coming out from him, uh, if anything, but they're basically credit cards. I realized there's so much opportunity for you to actually be able to travel with that. Give me so much. Um like being 15 and seeing that you can travel around the world luxurally with like out spending barely any money was just like eye-opening. And from there, I I uh from my LinkedIn posts, I actually write down, I count down how many weeks I've taken, like how many weeks it took to get to me to get to 18. I tallied how many weeks and planned out like the whole year, two years in advance of once I turn 18, what I can actually do with credit cards to get me to traveling for free.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

That's wild. And I mean, and I don't think people realize my wife and I were looking at credit cards, and I actually upgraded to a better credit card so that I could use all of these lounges while we travel. We travel a lot. And so I wanted to upgrade my card to the point of something so that we could use all these lounges. And what was wild is she's like, are you sure that's like a lot of money, seemingly more than before? But the last time we flew, we flew for almost like we uh let me slow that back down. We didn't have to pay for any food the entire like flight. In we we went all the lounges, we stayed in the lounges, we had a 12-hour layover. If we had to buy food at all of the different places throughout the airport, you know, it would have been insane. And we did it. We flew through Qatar once before I got the car, you know, my my hire card, and it was really, really painful. Uh we had like $300 in food bills, just like on a on a 12-hour layover. You know, we're like, oh my God, you know? But then the last couple of times we've flown, paid for nothing. Like it was all free food and all the lounges. And I looked at my wife and I said, we're not even scratching the surface with what people can do. We are not even scratching the surface. And she was like, wow. And I think that a lot of people just aren't aware of what you can start doing with this. And if if someone who didn't have any understanding about credit card points asked you, how can a credit card buy you a trip to Japan? How would you explain points in like simple terms?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Simple terms, I guess, is like the credit card, the credit card company, when you use their card, they earn money and they want to reward you for using their card and they give you points, kind of like just giving you like a star, right? And the airlines or hotels, they don't care whether you spend like $3,000 or like 60,000 stars. And it's just a matter of showing the loyalty for that brand, that hotel. And that's just kind of like the the key, the key thing there is you don't inflate your spend to earn all these stars, you don't know all these points, instead of just using the same amount of money, like using the set spend that you already put in either into your personal spend or your business to earn those points, earn those stars.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

That's what I was talking to my wife about wife about. And this is what I was talking to other people about, because people are like, oh, I need to spend as much as I can to get more points. I said, No, no, no. What you do, like with my business, I make sure everything on my business is going through one like premium card. And the the fact is, it's like every time we fly, every time we go travel for work, every every spend that we're doing, everything that I spend for my company goes through that card. And it's stuff that I'm already budgeting for. It's not like, let's go buy, you know, all this extra stuff. It's just like, if we don't do that, I'm losing money. So it's stuff that I'm already spending for my company. But if I didn't have the card set up, I wouldn't be getting all of this reward for doing what I have to do for my company. And I think this is what I want to play because you talk a lot about business owners wasting money by using the wrong cards or booking through portals. Like, why do you think so many smart entrepreneurs completely miss this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I think there's two sides of the coin where there's some of the entrepreneurs that do understand the point side of things, but not only are like, but it's such a rabbit hole, if you really want to dig deep into it, that they're spending too much time trying to figure it out themselves instead of putting it off to somebody else. Or there's just so much information out there that that they can go so many different ways that again, they're just kind of wasting their time there as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

It's tricky because like I think a lot of people don't know what they don't know. And like I didn't realize that there was this way to kind of maximize things. And I I follow one guy on on LinkedIn, and my God, he's making a ton of like, he's getting so many points, and he's traveling all these places, and he always like he's sharing about it. He's like, This is what this is how much we spent. Like, everyone's like, Why are you going to you know uh Santorini or whatever, like the Maldives, and like you're living up this latterist lifestyle. You're talking about being frugal with money, and he's like, But I only spent a thousand dollars for this whole trip. Like, you might see something that looks like 25 grand, but he's like, I spent a thousand and we budgeted for that spend. But it's just because he has all of his business expenses going through this that it works for him. I wanted to ask you something because I I one thing I found interesting is that you treat points almost like an asset class. At what point does uh travel optimization stop being a hobby and start becoming like an actual financial strategy? Because, like, for me, if I wasn't using my card, I would have like we've already in just this one year of or just the last six months, I've already earned two, three free flights for my daughter. Like from the my wife and I traveling for work, we've already earned multiple free flights for our family. So this fall, when I'm booking tickets for us to go back and visit family in the States, it's paid for. Like it's paid for, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, there's there's a lot of the company owners I talk to, there's routinely like around $30,000 to $50,000 of value, travel value that they're missing out on every single year.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Just because the way that their cards are set up or just because they're the way that they redeem the points to actually book travel. So and that that honestly opens the door for so much more experiences and so much because even if you have the money, even people that have gone so successful, they've in order to become that successful, they've had these habits like, oh, don't spend more than you than you make. Don't like all these saving habits. Where when they see that it's a $10,000, even just like a regular round trip flight now to Japan is like $3,000.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Instead of just only paying, like, oh, that's only a hundred dollar round trip flight, that just opens the door so much more to normal experiences, not only for yourself, but also for your family and for your friends. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

And I think that's the thing too. All of this financial advice, financial planning is about becoming aware and becoming aware of like the best practices. And I mean, and we're not talking, and I think that there's one thing that you talked about, and I I love that people who are talking about credit card points are not talking about spending like crazy to get points. We're talking about the spend that you're already doing, like what you are putting out right now. Like, I do every single small daily purchase that I know I have to have goes straight onto my personal card for points. And it's stuff that I am going to spend 100% no matter what. And then same thing for the business. And like, I'm not like, oh yeah, baby, let's get those points. There was a time that they they did have me in the beginning where it's like, oh, if I spend this much, I get this many points. But then I've I suddenly realized that I know myself well enough and I have to pace myself and just recognize what's in it for me. But I I want to talk to you about this because you've built a marketing agency and still walked away from it because you hated the work. Like, what did your experience teach you about chasing money versus building something you actually enjoy?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, 100%. With with the marketing agency, it was a mainly a like mainly a reason to get in the door with more of uh online sales, more and making money that way. So I was able to scale it to a good amount, but again, it's it's more of like a means to an end, just like give me some little bit of capital to learn also building sales when I was running ads for my business and doing face-to-face calls like this to sell my to sell my product to essentially move that to the next business that I was kind of working on. It the the the issue with the sales marketing agency I see from there was that it didn't give me the freedom that I was kind of building myself on the other side, where like the travel, travel hacking was a hobby on the side, which allowed me the options to go do these experiences while I'm still young, be able to afford like a business class flight from my parents uh for their retirement, right? That's that's honestly the probably the best um redemption I've ever done. But I love that. With having the marketing agency, it kind of just it wasn't aligned with kind of what that current phase of my life was. And that's kind of why I wanted to shut that down and and start turning into my own new business that I'm already love what I'm doing, and there's so much value that I can pull out for the customers that I have.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

I love that, man. And I love it because it's about creating value, but also about finding what brings you joy, you know, and and I I think that, you know, teaching people how to empower themselves financially so they they can enjoy more of life is a truly beautiful thing. Like what I talk to all these financial advisors and you know, financial professionals, and a couple of things they tell me is like most of the financial game is a mindset game. It's about getting things right up here. And you know, some people spend too much, some people save too much. But the reality is it's not about just that, it's about knowing how to be smarter with everything you're doing. Like, you know, let's I I recently bought a piano for my daughter, and we had this giant debate about the value of one thing versus another. First of all, my daughter's been practicing piano for five years, and she was using a 25-year-old digital piano that was my wife's that her parents had given her, and it was good. It was a good old, you know, digital piano, full size with the nice keys. Um, but it started dying after a lot of love and use. And so my wife and I started looking at things, and we found that we could find an old wooden upright that had been like remodeled. It was beautiful condition, 45-year-old piano, but it's in great condition, and it was about $700. And for a brand new digital piano, it's about $700 as well, you know. And we looked at each other and I said, you know what's gonna happen though? I said, in fifth 40 years, that wood piano is still gonna be great. It's gonna still have, it's gonna still be going, like it's gonna last forever. She won't need another piano for a long time. But we get, you know, we get another digital piano. It's like, you you know what happened? Like, imagine like in 10 years, you'd be like, hey, this is a 10-year-old computer. It's the same thing, man. Like, like I don't know how we were using a 25-year-old electric piano. It had a floppy disk drive in it. It had a floppy disk, like, like a floppy disk. And I was just like, I looked at my wife and I was like, you do know this has a floppy disk drive in it. She was like, but it was new when I got it. I said, I know it was new, it ain't new now. But we had to sit there and crunch numbers about what was more valuable. And I think that like it's not about spending versus not spending. Our daughter practiced for five years on an old beat up one. We prioritized that, and then we had to look at what was the smartest thing and the smartest choice for us. And for us, I mean, my daughter's playing Bach now. And I think that it's worthwhile investing in something that she can continue to grow on and and it helps her development, you know, even if it just makes her a little bit more artistic. But we had to sit there and break things down. And one of the problems is I think that a lot of people are not thinking critically like that. And if you're already spending money, you know, figuring out how to use points to just help you is a smart thing, you know, it is a smart move. And it's not about, you know, behavior, it's about being informed and being smart. 100%. You a lot of your content and and what you talk about with with um with you know, your your what I see you posting online talks about, you know, story-driven stuff. And, you know, you talk a lot about experiences and optionality matter more to people than just luxury. And for me, on growing money, that's something that I find so interesting when I talk to people about that, because that's my family as well. Like, we are all about experiences. That's why we got our my daughter a new piano instead of just like something that's just gonna be down in her room. She wants like, can I have this? And we're like, no, but you know, this is gives her an experience. And we love to travel. We are a big travel family. You know, we will will budget for that simply because we think it's really valuable to be able to get out and see the world and experience all this beautiful stuff. But I want to hear about you because why do you think experience is an optionality more than just luxury to people?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

I think once you get to the luxury side of things of like traveling, of course, there's the time and place, like whether it's a honeymoon, like a big vacation, and just have to relax. But even like because I'm living in Japan at the moment, I went to Thailand before last year. If you're traveling luxury in all these different places, you don't really see the actual culture or like the actual being of like the actual country, right? There's so much more that you can learn from that and kind of living the life that you see in other countries because if you do the luxury side, it's got all tailored, it's all tailored to like Americanized, it's all um towards like all these rich, whether it's Asian, Asian people or primarily Americanized, because that's America's like the biggest country. You're just living the same life that you would in a different country, just with different food, basically. Yeah. You're there's there's so much more than traveling luxurally. But of course, there is the time and place for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

That's awesome. Well, I want to ask you about this too. Um, because one of the things that I thought about was this that there was um you talk, you you talk about that, you got me thinking today. Because I noticed that too. All the expats here in Vietnam like have they it's just like the US in the expat neighborhood. But the reality is it's like me and my wife, we live deep in the heart of like like the western side of Ho Chun City. It is like straight up, but we have the best food outside our house, man. It might not all be the fancy stuff, but like I wanted to live in Vietnam. I wanted to, you know, be in Vietnam. And one of the things that I think is really interesting is that there is so much that you can do once you put your feet in the ground there. And like, what is luxury? You know, certainly I respect well-made things, and I'm not gonna hate on any brand, but I recently went to a party where they had all this brand name stuff everywhere, and it was like framed, it looked like a museum. And I was like, you know, I've got a um what I've got some really nice brand name stuff, but I beat it to hell. Like, I've got a great motorcycle, and I ride that motorcycle. And it's like I keep it, you know, semi-nice, but like if it's perfect, it means it's not being ridden, you know? And I think that's the type of thing for me is like I don't want perfect luxury, I want enjoy experience. And you know, like that was the thing. I want to end this life kicking and screaming and going, man, I got everything out of it that I could, you know. And I think that's one of the things that to me is wealth. Wealth is this, I want to look back knowing what a sunrise looked like off of the coast of Japan. I wanna, I've I've seen the sun set while flying over Qatar, the sun setting and to the, you know, into the distance over the sands of Saudi Arabia. Like I've seen that. I have seen all of these things that are just absolutely wild that I'm like, everyone should experience more. And I like, and that's where you talking about points, man, if you can think. Find ways to make travel more affordable, more doable. Do it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

100%. Yeah. The again, just the opportunity to like what I saw when I my eyes got like wide open when I started looking at my credit cards is the same face that I see with the customers I talk to, like saying that, oh, you can travel to these countries, travel with your entire family for just this small amount of money, isn't like it's the same face that I had when I was 15. Right. And that that's kind of why I love just having these calls because it's instead of instead of more of like a sales call like sales call that I have with my customers, it's more so, hey, imagine this trip that you either want to go with your entire family or already have planning. I can just save this amount of money and you can just go without all the financial stress in your head. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I love that. Because it's like I think one of the things that people pay an expert for more than anything is to take some of the weight off. Like, it's not that you can't do anything. I I run a video production company. I'm my team, we're exceptionally good at what we do. We make great video, but you know, there are so many tools out there that people can do it themselves. But sometimes, if you want it better, if you want it done well, if you want it done optimized, and you want to just not have to worry about it, hey, come talk to me. We'll have we'll handle it for you, man. We'll knock it out of the ballpark, we'll make you look good. And I think that's one of the things that I think that, you know, working with someone who knows what they're doing is so powerful because, you know, whether it be a financial planner, whether it be a, you know, personal trainer at the gym. I go to the gym and I work out. I'm like, why am I not getting big? Well, maybe I need to work with someone who knows how to help me get big. Maybe I'm operating in the same, you know, circle, which leads to my next question because you've said some founders spend 20 hours a week obsessing over points instead of running their business. Why do smart people sometimes optimize the wrong things? And where should they turn to for help?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Yeah, don't don't get me wrong. It's fun to turn like a $10,000 flight into like only spending, say, a couple hundred dollars, right? They they see that and it's fun for them, so they just get locked into it, but then they don't even realize the calendar, they they don't even use the time that passes. 10, 20 hours passes, and they're already, if they actually work that same amount of hours in their business, they're getting paid like $50,000 or whatever it is, right? So they're this they're they're they're so locked into trying to save this amount of money that it instead of using that time to actually push their business forward, right? I love that. I think I that that's the big, big, big difference between for the business owners that I talk to.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

I just hired a new executive assistant, and she is a rock star in saving my ass. Why? Because I was getting bogged down with trying to find guests, with trying to book people, with trying to do all these things, and I still am in like definitely involved in the situation. I still like let's let's target these people, let's go for this list, let's find this. But then she's helping me go at it, and she's smarter than me in ways. She's finding ways to go after people and try to connect with them that I didn't think about. And I was like, God damn, this is awesome. And like sometimes you need people who can help you see ways to do things that you might not know. And like for credit card appointments, man, I'm still flying blind. I am like, I am happy that I'm starting to become aware. But I think one of the things that for me is like even learning that I was just wasting money. I heard about one guy who had uh his company was doing a 401k match and he didn't know. And so he didn't know that they were matching like uh it was like a hundred percent match for a certain number of years. And so it was wild because uh people told him, Yeah, you can't get that. Don't worry about it, you don't have that. And then one day he went and talked to HR with his financial advisor, and financial advisor found out guys got this match, and he's like, You had a year that you didn't do that. Let's stop wasting that. And they they calculated if he stayed with this company for a certain amount of time, it was like $400,000 that he would get put in. And that's wild to me, like because it was just like he didn't know. And that was that's not even with interest, that's just the pure base money amount. And I think that when people don't know, it's a dangerous place to be because you could be losing a lot that could be helping you in a big way, you know. 400,000, like that's a lot of extra whatever that you can invest in or or save, you know, or trips or money for grandkids, you know, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Yeah. One one of the one of my clients, I broke down his spend and he was using like people always talk about the Amex plat, Amex Business Plat. Like it's just the the top-tier card. Yeah, that's not even the one you actually get the most earnings for. And just seeing his credit card portfolio and breaking down and seeing, hey, these are the cards that you should get. I was able to turn his monthly spend into about 2.2 million points his first year.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Which on conservatively it's like $44,000, $46,000. That's amazing. Right. And that's every single year that comes into his and his portfolio, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

That's amazing. So there's just so many money.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

There's so many different yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

That's a lot of money. You know, and then you can optimize that for your your like whatever, and then take more of what you're earning is and putting it into retirement, putting it as savings and letting it go and build for you, you know? So that's that's amazing, man. That's absolutely amazing. And it's interesting too. Like you said, people assume this, but maybe this one is a better fit for you. Like you gotta start looking at things and figuring out what is gonna actually get you ahead the most, which is something that I think that people go, oh, I just need it because that's where I was at. Like, I just need this thing, but you don't realize maybe there's a better one. I want to ask you this, though, too, because you're part of a younger generation of entrepreneurs building location-independent businesses, which to me is fascinating. Do you think younger entrepreneurs value freedom and experiences differently than older generations did?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Compared to older generations, I feel like I mean, it's just the time that we're in, like the way that we're able to access, use the internet, and kind of be able to reach so many people all at once just from like our computer, it gives us so much more opportunity to have that location freedom, right? And yeah, that's I love that, man. Internet, AI, everything, it's it's the time that we're in.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Yeah. I I mean, I feel like there's a lot of doors opening that are really powerful if people can learn to utilize different tools. And I mean, you know, I I think about what my business model is. I wouldn't have been able to do this 10, 15 years ago. Like the increase in technology is helping that. And I think that if you can embrace stuff, it's gonna certainly other some things will become less lucrative, but other doors will open. You just have to be open to that. But I wanna I want to ask you this. Well, a lot of people assume luxury travel is only for rich people. What's something the average person completely misunderstands about travel rewards, uh uh how travel rewards actually work?

SPEAKER_01 29:13

I mean, to put in context, my the first time I was able to utilize the points for me was when I did my first solo trip to Japan. And I only spent $65 round trip on those flights. My first business class flight across from US to from US to Japan usually costs around like $9,000 for that specific trip. I only spent $12 on that trip this last year.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

What?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

That's awesome. So you realize I I was um when I first did my first business class trip um overseas, I was 21 at the time and sitting across these other people that are either older, a lot older than me, so or even like the same age as me. And I imagine they're also doing something similar, or even their parents are also doing something similar for them. There's there's so much opportunity that you can do with not only with credit cards that a lot of people just don't understand. And then I that's kind of just what my whole goal is to help people understand, not only at a base level, but especially if for higher income earners like business owners and stuff, where they can still get those same experiences.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

I love that, man. If you were to pick a card that you think everyone should look at, are uh do you have a favorite card, or do you is it really individual for each person?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

I feel like it really is individual. Um if you're yeah, it kind of it kind of depends on there's a lot of things that kind of goes on.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Well, what if instead of pitching a card, what are some of the things that matter when picking a card, maybe?

SPEAKER_01 30:52

How it ties into your life, right? So there's different cards that give you access to different airlines or like different credits that it gives you. Because, like, for example, the Amex Platinum has a huge annual fee, but it has a lot of credits inside of it. But if you don't spend the money in those credits anyways, you're spending more money to get credit, like to get value back that you wouldn't have spent in the first place. Right. And if you do Amex Platinum want to fly a specific airline, but then Amex doesn't have that transfer partner, then you're better off looking for a different credit card, like through like Chaser, for example. So just seeing how it fits into your life instead of seeing how somebody seeing how it fits in somebody else's life, because if someone travels luxurally, they may be able to use all those things, all those points, all those credits with that credit card that it offers. But if you're kind of bare bones, you can definitely get about get by using different cards. That's awesome, man. Well, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do? They can find me on LinkedIn. Um should be just brand and Okamoto, or they can, I think one of the main things that I kind of I trying to point toward people towards is a points gap calculator that I have. Is they can just input either their business expenses and their personal expenses and kind of put in the categories and figure out how much they could be earning with those expenses already and just kind of giving them an idea of like maybe the value that they're already earning, maybe they're doing pretty good, maybe they're pretty optimized, or maybe how much value they should be earning every single year. I can send you the link after put that in the link below or something. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

We can definitely include that. Um what um if there's one thing people can do with their points today to start getting better points, what would you recommend?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

To get better value from the points, a lot of people are kind of stuck with the travel porters that people give you, like Amex Travel Portal or Chase Travel Portal. There's so much more value when you actually transfer those points to the individual airlines or to them into a hotel. I'd say that'd be your very first car.