The Sunday Read: ‘The Man Who Turned Credit Card Points Into an Empire’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In recent years, travel — cheap travel, specifically — has boomed. Like all booms it has its winners (including influencers and home-sharing platforms like Airbnb) and its losers (namely locals and the environment). Somewhere in that mix is The Points Guy, Brian Kelly, who runs a blog that helps visitors navigate the sprawling, knotty and complex world of travel and credit card rewards. Today on The Sunday Read, a look at the life and business of Mr. Kelly, a man who goes on vacation for a living.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you use a credit card, you open your statement every month, and of course you see the things
0:04.6	that you spent money on, but then you see this other number in the corner that tells you
0:08.8	how many points you've earned.
0:11.0	And you can spend these points on things like vacations and hotel stays and dinners, and
0:15.6	it's kind of like free money.
0:17.1	But then if you stop and think about it, it makes absolutely no sense.
0:22.1	Why should spending money earn money?
0:26.4	My name is Jamie Lauren Kaelis, and I'm a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine.
0:31.0	I wrote a story about the world of credit card rewards and airline miles.
0:35.2	AKA points.
0:37.8	I first got into points when I opened a credit card, racked up some rewards, and was able
0:41.7	to take a free vacation to Vietnam.
0:44.4	So then a couple of months later, I opened another card and got another rewards bonus and
0:48.1	took a trip down to DC to see some national parks.
0:51.1	I thought to myself, if I could do this once or twice, are there people out there who
0:54.6	are doing this at an extreme level?
0:57.2	I was able to open maybe seven credit cards for the points, but I found guys out there
1:01.4	who had opened 75.
1:04.3	Most of these guys, and they are mostly guys, we're just doing this as a hobby.
1:08.7	But then I was able to talk to the guy who had built it into a career.
1:12.4	Brian Kelly is the points guy.
1:15.7	He was able to turn his knowledge of points into a business and a lifestyle brand.
	...

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