Sam mentions his friend Moe who runs a points consulting service called Moe Points. Shaan explains how credit card points work — he earns 300,000 to 400,000 points a month and translates that to roughly $100,000 in tax-free cash back annually. They discuss how business owners can maximize this by putting company expenses on personal cards, and the story of a friend who negotiated to put his company’s AWS bill on his personal Amex.
Speakers: Sam Parr (co-host), Shaan Puri (co-host)
Moe Points: Professional Travel Hacking [00:00:00]
Sam: Oh, my friend Moe — he just launched it. Yeah, Moe Points. My friend Moe. So I was like, what the heck, I didn’t even remember the name. My friend Moe helps people with points.
Shaan: He’ll love that we’re talking about this.
Sam: So Moe — him and Ramon grew up together. Moe’s from Afghanistan, Ramon’s from the Netherlands. They used to have a business together that’s shut down now, and Moe became an expert on how to maximize points. He would teach me how to do it myself, and I was like, whoa, just listening to a course on this is worth it.
Shaan: Let’s dig in though. Is it mopoints.com?
Sam: Moepoints.com. Yeah, I checked it out because I was pretty interested in this — same way that you want a tax guy to help you save money on the back end. If you own your own business, you rack up a lot of spending on credit cards. I hate going and figuring this stuff out myself. I feel like it’s a waste of my brain and my time. I’d rather have someone help me optimize my spending and buying points so I can travel for free. I think it’s valuable but I also think it’s complicated enough that if you’re an expert, fantastic. So I signed up.
The Math: Tax-Free Cash Back [00:01:30]
Shaan: You know, points are interesting. I just got into this recently. I earn maybe 300,000 to 400,000 points a month, and that translates to roughly 1% of that in cash value. So if I spent a million dollars a year through my credit card — which sounds like a lot if you’re just an individual, and it is a lot if you’re an individual, but for a business that’s nothing — I get $100,000 cash back.
And here’s the cool thing: that cash back in most cases is tax-free. So if you live in San Francisco, that’s the equivalent of getting a salary of about $180,000.
I’ve actually met some entrepreneurs who — I think you can get up to $360,000 in cash back, but it’s controversial. I know this one lady who has a flower company and she gets $350,000 in cash back income a year.
The AWS Bill Story [00:02:30]
Shaan: I have a friend who basically negotiated with his investors. He said, “I’d like to pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card.” Because they were spending like $3 million a month on AWS or something crazy. So he earned — whatever the highest tier of Amex is, like double black platinum gold — he earned lifetime status because during his company’s run he just asked, “Can I just put this on this card and keep it tied to my name?” And they said yes. So now he’s like, “Oh, if I ever want to fly, I fly first class. I get three free Equinox memberships. I get free this, I get free that.” Because he’s the highest tier of Amex for life.
Sam: That’s what most people are trying to do now — just either a course or hand-to-hand consultation, helping people figure this out. But imagine if there were technology that just logged into your portal and did it for you automatically. That is incredibly interesting. And your transaction fee is either an upfront fee or you skim a little off the top. That is a fascinating business.