The Credit Card Strategy That Changed This Investor's Life

Welcome back to the Roots Podcast. I'm Max Moore, joined by my co-host Tyler Lingal. And today we are joined with Ryan Boyd. He's an Indianapolis real estate operator who's built multiple businesses and now lives an incredible lifestyle of travel, flexibility, and freedom. Ryan didn't get here overnight. He delayed gratification early, reinvesting, living below his means, and going deep on credit card hacking. Today, Ryan's breaking down the secrets on how to travel, live below his means, and genuinely just break in to the game. So, Ryan, uh, let's get into the juicy nitty-gritty. What's the craziest thing you've been able to hack with your money? So, we were just talking about this earlier. I ended up booking a flight to Japan, two flights actually, for my girlfriend and I, and we were able to get $30,000 first class tickets for the total of $400 and credit card points. Holy crap. How do you do that? How far do you want me to go? I mean, I think a lot of times, let me think. Uh, most people when you use your credit card points, you might redeem it for cash or you might put it on Amazon, something like that. The real way to get value out of your credit card points is that there's a way to transfer them to airline partners and to miles. So, if you transfer, say you have AMX, you have MX points, and you want to transfer them over to, say, uh, the carrier that you want to book with. For me, it was Japan Airlines. So, I transferred a whole bunch of points over to Japan Airlines. Then, I booked a reward seat ticket is what they're called. And that's kind of like a really cool way to travel hack. Uh get a really expensive flight for something that I would actually pay for. How did you start generating the points? Well, through my business spend, I open up credit cards. I close credit cards. Um I'm a nerd. I'm a total nerd to be honest. It's so much business credit cards and personal and personal. Both. Yeah. Cuz uh Okay. One way that accumulate points, and this isn't good for everybody, but you can open up business credit cards. they'll have, you know, a minimum spend that you need to make. And then sometimes I'll, if I'm doing a flip, I'll use appliances to meet the minimum spend. Or sometimes as an agent, you can actually pay your taxes with your credit card. And you can get crazy signup bonuses by paying taxes with your credit card. You incur some fees, but sometimes, depending on who you are, it might be worth it. Yeah, I was just looking last week. There's a a new Chase Sapphire business. It's like they're bringing that into the business world. I think they tried with the premiere. It flopped. It was cashback only. And the new Sapphire has like I think you spend maybe 10 grand or it's not very high and it's like 200,000 points. It's a Yeah, it's a substantial amount. Yeah. And you can keep opening cards over time. You know, Chase uh has a really good one with Chase uh Inc. They're usually zero fee cards. You can open up a decent amount of them, earn their welcome bonuses. So, yeah, there's a lot of ways to make points. If I was just trying to get in and I was Tyler and I'm like, "Ah, debt scary. Dave Ramsey is God. Which card should I get first? I mean, full disclosure, if you're getting any credit cards, make sure that you can pay down the balance in full. Full stop. Period. Interest is never worth it. Ever. Never getting into credit card debt. So, if you have the ability to do that, then I recommend considering it. Pause. A quick break from the episode. The lender you choose will make or break your experience. That's why our team at Roots consistently works with Rnado Lima from Approved Mortgage. He communicates clearly, moves quickly, and understands both retail and investment loans at a high level. When my guy Renado's on the deal, things move steady. when you get serious about buying, click the link in the description and contact Renado today. Your question was uh what card? Which card? Um I would say if you're a travel junkie and you want a card that basically pays for itself every single year, the Capital One um Venture X is probably the best card in the market. You get TSA PreCheck, you get credits for Global Entry, you get access to the Capital One Lounge Network, Priority Lounges. So, those people that are staying in the fancy lounges in the airports, a lot of times they might have a Capital 1 card or an MX card that gets them access into those lounges. Yeah. Shout out Aunt Kelly. She got me uh into credit cards. I actually went on my honeymoon completely for free to Italy. We were there for 3 weeks completely free. And she goes down the she goes to Vegas once a month or whenever she wants to go on a cruise. She'll go to Vegas, stay at the Venetian, has to gamble for like a day or so. And however that works, she'll get an offer to go on whatever cruise line and then she'll use points to get there. It's she goes for free and she travels. She like traveled I think six times across the the pond last year. That's wild. I've never heard that. Guys, I'm sitting here like you guys are speaking Spanish. I I am so lost on how how to even do this. It seems like a a whole another business you have to run. Just like all these random accounts and it's a full on hobby. This, you know, $700 spend then you get here. How do you keep track of it all and maintain your sanity? The desire to travel, it drives me. You know, it's something that I really value, I find important, and something that I grew up doing. And so, that's that's kind of the main drive for me. How many countries have you visited? Um, you know, off the top of my head, I don't know if I can count, but it's probably 25 or somewhere around there. And it's been all fueled through credit points. A lot of it. Yeah. A lot of times. Um, how do you You run You're a realtor. You have offers coming in on properties. You have buyers that need to see homes. You're a contractor. You have deadlines. How do you run those businesses when you're traveling every so often? Well, what I call it is a change of office environment. I'm still working. I'll take calls at 1 in the morning. I I took a call when I was on my last trip at 3:00 in the morning. You know, it's just it's still a business to run at the end of the day. And so, it's kind of fun for me because I can still do my work um but enjoy it in a different scenery, different environment. How does your um partner feel about you? doing that. Yeah. I mean, it's not it's not over it's not overwhelming, but yeah, sometimes it can be annoying. I mean, it's sales, you know, what can you say? Right. Right. And I think if the expectations are there, it can it can work. Setting expectations is you're probably happy you're even able to go, you know, I would hope so. Let's hope. Let's hope. Um, what are some other creative ways that you've been able to just like maximize money? What are some other secrets? In general, are we still talking about credit card points? Just in general. Um, in general, I think a high yield savings account is a really big value ad. I think if you're an investor and you want to have money set aside for different rental properties, I call it like an escrow account, you know, a rainy day fund, if you will, throw it in like a accessible high yield savings account that earns 3 and a half or 4%. I think that's a great way to just park your money that needs to be available to you quickly rather than tying it up in a stock or, you know, not financial advice, just whatever you want. But that's one that I like. I will totally give financial advice. SoFi is a great partner to uh it's so easy. It's if you like the infrastructure of uh the big banks and being able to have the platform because I think the platform of logging into the app and accessing money very quickly is important and a lot of the banks that have high yield savings account become like clanky. I think Capital One has a pretty good one but SoFi for me has been just as easy as transferring from my you know one Chase checking account to the other Chase. It's like just an extension. Yeah. So, in the description below, I'll have a affiliate link that you can sign up. Uh, no, this guy put me on SoFi and our whole team's on SoFi. I don't sign up with a business, but if you're a single escorp, you can use it as your business account. Interesting. So, all of my commission funds and and revenue from our real estate business goes into the checking and then I oftentimes transfer it into the savings. And yeah, it was like 5% for a while. Now, it's at 3. 75. Uh, it's a great platform, right? I mean, it's just a daily rate which is at 3. 4 currently. Yeah, cuz when I trans when I transfer mine, it's like a two, three business day lead time typically before I get the funds into my account. So, I might as long as it's a banking day, it's pretty quick. Well, what is the besides high yield savings, what does the average person need to be doing with their money, personal finance that you would suggest? Well, we've kind of hit this nail on the head a couple of times. I think um delayed gratification is huge. I think living below your means is extraordinarily important and one of the most powerful tools. If you can't increase your income, decrease your expenses, right? How else are you going to be able to buy a house with no money? Um, so I think it's really important to find yourselves a good way to have a savings spread in any way possible. Whether it's house hacking, whether it's having roommates, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can save on funds. You know, if you can live with your parents, if you have the ability to do that, highly recommend, you know, set yourself up now for what you want your life to be in the next 20 years. you know, and if you start those steps from, you know, day one, it's going to be a lot faster the sooner you start. And I think you have to just take the risk, right? At some point, you got to just jump in the deep end. Absolutely. And fall off the cliff. If you're sitting on the cliff, just jump. I remember I caught a lot of flack from my friends uh that I like still live with my parents at the time. And you know, for me, it was just it was still the long-term goal, like the long-term plan. And so, I just took advantage of what was available to me at the time. And that's how I got my help got myself started. H do you have any side hustles? Oh man. Uh so I was in the music industry and I started the DJ business for weddings and uh that was the worst business I've ever done. Never again. It was uh some of the craziest experiences. I don't know if you want to talk about this. So the very first the very first wedding that I did was at Laurel Hall which is extremely nice. Amazing. They had Wolf Gang Puck catered. It was like a fancy ritzy wedding and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is my first wedding." And anyways, I get a call two days before the wedding happens and it's the bride and she's crying and she says, "The groom's um the groomsman's best man died at the bachelor party." What? This is two days before the wedding. That's horrible. Two days before the wedding. And I was like, "Do you need me to cancel? Do you need me to change up the whole like whatever? What do you want me to do?" And none of the caterers would cancel anything. And so they just went forward with the wedding. And that was my first wedding I ever did. Talk about a raincloud. Dramatizing over the whole wedding. Imagine having to MC that. Like I hate to ask for how he die. Well, they were It's just unbelievable. They were go-karting and he had a heart attack. Wow. Yeah. That is awful. I'm I should not be laughing. I'm sorry. Wait, let me do it back to you. Why are you laughing? No cut. No cut. Oh, good. That is not funny at all. I just go-karting heart attack is insane. You're just having fun with your buds and then boom. Single-handedly the most awkward, traumatizing wedding. How in the world do you MC a wedding? Is it your first one? You have no playbook. How did you approach that? Uh, I I fibbed it in every way possible. Um, you know, I just kind of matched the vibe and the vibe was very awkward. So, I was very awkward. What am I supposed to do? Welcome the bride and groom. Like, yeah, there's like this big elephant in the room. Are you guys ready for the funeral? The wedding's today. The funeral's in on Wednesday. That's so rough. Was that really how it was going? I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's just playing around. Crazy crazy stuff. I I think you should still be in the DJ business. be dominating it. Uh, forget all your flips. No, I'm totally kidding. I'm glad you're in the real estate industry. But, uh, to kind of cap this off, what is a trip coming up that's exciting you? Um, well, I have a trip coming up to Costa Rica, uh, next month. So, I'm really excited to get out of the cold weather. It should be a really fun time. Booked up with credit card points, of course. So, yeah, staying in a probably a $20,000 stay for about $2,000 out of pocket, bro. I studied abroad there. You It looks amazing. Yeah, you're going in the dry, sunny season is the other half of the year. Yeah, I heard it's pretty good that time of year. Yeah, you'll love it volcano Einel. It's a cool area. A lot of ziplining. Well, shout out to ChachiBT because that helped me figure out when the dry season was. But to kind of wrap this all up, I mean, the reason I've not been able to do this for much of much of my life, I spent years and years delaying gratification. You know, I saved every single dime that I possibly could. I lived at my mom's house for a while. Um, all of that kind of led up to me to be in a place where I can do that, you know, and that's maybe not for everybody, but I guess that that's an example of where you can get to if that's something that you're aspiring aspiring to do. Dave Ramsey always says, "If you want an abnormal life, you have to do abnormal things." Exactly. You've proven that. And the boats will rise all tides. This has been another Roots podcast. Make sure to like and subscribe.