“If You Hate Women and Children, Do This”

[Music] brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today today's question comes from Meg in Maine I've been an avid follower for 20 years and I'm debt-free however I'm facing a bit of a challenge and would love to get your advice I travel quite a bit now that I'm semi-retired and I've been considering getting a travel points credit card my plan is to charge my travel expenses and large purchases then pay them off immediately I feel disciplined enough to handle this without carrying any debt plus the idea of earning points and not carrying so much cash is appealing but here's the kicker despite having a credit score of 833 I've been turned down for several credit cards since I haven't used one in many years do you have any suggestions on how to approach the situation or any alternatives I should consider I think you should get a credit card for points if you hate widows orphans and those who are struggling to pay their bills oh John shots fired hot what's going on here so I remember I was um not for Ramy I was moving across I was moving I was taking a long move and the pl the business I was moving was would pay reimburse my move there a whole family one like big old monster trucks but I had to front it so I thought oh man I'm going to open up a credit card and with points on it and I'll make just free points because I'm just going to turn around and this new company that I'm working for is going to reimburse me for the move so I did that and I remember getting a whole bunch of free points for open opening the card and then I got a whole bunch more points for this massive amount of money I spent right out of the gate to move my whole family and then I was literally driving down the road and I remember thinking wait a minute the credit card company's not my friend and the airline company's not my friend like they're not hooking me up like bro you spent money with us we're going to hook you up somebody's paying for this flight and somebody's paying for these hotel stays and when I dug into it that's when to my horror I realized oh it's not the companies it's not the credit card company it's not the airline it's not the hotels that are paying for these rooms it's the single mom with three kids who just left an abusive relationship who is struggling to feed her kids who puts this credit card in and then her boss cuts her hours and she gets a $50 late fee or a $39 late fee or her APR goes from 13 to 29% in one month she's paying for offly or the single dad whose wife just passed away and like they're scrambling scrambling he opens up a credit card at a desperation and then he misses a payment and it balloons on that guy's paying for my flights and it it all of a sudden got very gross for me like I don't want to be a part of this system I travel you and I travel a lot I travel all the time all the time I'd rather pay for my own flights or work out a business arrangement with a company that's paying me to come speak for him then ever think I have some single mom who can't put food on her table pay my bills and it just got gross for me real fast yeah I mean there's a you did some research on this right there's a moral argument to be made yeah my book Breaking Free from broke here's the the quote from from the book A 2023 study by the Federal Reserve they set out to determine who pays for these credit card Awards and the results though expected are alarming in the report the FED said we estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated from the poorer to richer and from high to low minority areas widening existing disparities simple and here's it gets worse John as I dug into it families with household incomes below 40 Grand are less likely to even qualify for these rewards but they're more likely to pay late fees in additional interest the family's making 100 Grand or more obviously more likely to have access to these reward cards and less likely to pay late fees and interest so it's not saying you're a bad person if you use the the rewards this is not a moral argument to take John is a better person than you I mean s joh sleeps better at night because of it I I I yeah and can you play the game sure is it worth the 2% let's say you spend 25 Grand I mean is it really worth that well they put in huge font cash back right cash back well and they go well it's points now John it's not cash oh it's points what's 100,000 points I don't know it's like Chuck-E-Cheese you spend a hundred $100 at Chuck-E-Cheese to get a thing that's actually worth $7 right so you get like a like a cool monogrammed Bluetooth speaker like cuz I got a 100,000 Point name brand you get some you know one of those sticky hands and a pack of gum and you're like I spent 20 bucks for this refurbished like New Balances right so can it be done can you be super disciplined and beat the CST sure I don't think it's worth the brain calories and the energy and the money spent to try to do it personally and if if you I mean geez I don't want to make it a moral issue but I I want to call these programs to task um um if you like the idea of somebody's of wealth being red distributed from the least of these in our communities to pay for your flights and hotels knock your lights out for me George it just got gross and again we could line up the things that that I need to work on I'm not a better person than anybody but in this one particular thing this is just a hot button issue with me y um the the banks aren't your friends the credit card companies aren't your friends the airline companies are not your friends they're running businesses they would not be giving you these flights if it was if they weren't making that money up somewhere else right um there's um there's an old saying in the internet world if you get online and you log in and you have to put your uh your email address in for free and you get a product for free you're the you're you're you're the product right they're you they want you right so it's similarly asking that next layer question who's paying for these flights actually who's paying pay for the advantage I just think I got cuz they're not hooking you up like your friend or your neighbor well when you think about this let's say you do spend 25,000 a year on travel I think we'd all agreed that's a lot that's a that's a someone's traveling a lot with 25 Grand a year and 2% it's 500 bucks you could put 40 bucks in a savings account every month and give yourself the rewards yeah absolutely so you're never going to convince me because of humans being emotional creatures that psychologically you're not going to spend $500 more on that card over the course of a year because because you're going well I'll get some points might as well get the nicer flight well and if you if you fly like like if you fly Southwest or America you fly these companies all the time you get flight points for participating I'm okay with that right because they're marking up that your ticket and they're going to give you pie that's fine if I fly 25 times of Southwest I'll get a free flight that's fantastic that's awesome it's that next level of hey my gasoline my Snickers bar my whatever your haircuts which is a I mean that's a lot of money I get some serious cash back and but instead here's what I do with my haircuts John I pay cash and I get a discount I know cuz we used to say Barber he gives a cash discount exactly so I'm like well I'm making more by paying cash than by swiping my card which by the way hurts the small business owner because they've got to now pay the 3% fee or pass it on to you right all to get my 2% cash back so either way you are not the one winning it's the card processing companies it's Visa it's MasterCard it's AMX it's discover it's Southwest it's Delta and these are not evil companies this is theys and you need to understand how they marketing to you there's a reason they're always offering you hey John you're so wonderful here's more line of credit we're going to give you an extra $5,000 in credit that you can spend you're telling me psychologically I don't get the dopamine hit that tells me I am winning the banks love me yeah they love you so I I I I don't know as for me and my house we solve for peace and if I can opt out of a system I like that I like that this is truly how we love people think well they just have to say that on air Dave secretly no you can check his wallet you can check any of our wallets there is not a single credit card to be found and it's not because we're scared of Dave finding out it's because we truly have no need for this popped out of the system once we started following the Ramsey plan we're like oh we can just use our own money and have freedom and control over our life great sign me up screw the rewards it's just t-shirt screw your Awards I like the one that says go fund yourself that one I'm still trying to as part of Ramsey merch that's fantastic yeah I don't know that Dave's going to go for it yet he could I like that though he's not here a lot on the show imagine if America said go fund yourself go fund your own retirement go fund Your Own Credit Card Rewards and America would be a better place instead of making Banks and lenders richer if you made a shirt that said go fund yourself and I made one that said that gives me hemorrhoids you and I would both we'd be billionaires America would buy those t-shirts create your free every dollar budget today the simplest way to budget for your life