Summary 

In this episode I am joined by my good friend, Dr. Devon Gimbel, to discuss the fascinating world of leveraging personal spending. Dr. Gimbel, a former physician turned points expert, shares her journey from diagnosing skin diseases to mastering the art of earning and using credit card points for remarkable travel experiences. This episode has valuable insights for professional women and working moms on how to make the most of their everyday expenses.

Devon is a double-board certified physician and founder and owner of Point Me To First Class, a business that helps employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners with high personal and/or business expenses earn tons of credit card points to travel the world in luxury. She believes that your expenses are your greatest asset - if you know how to leverage them. Devon is on a mission to change the face of first class travel and help thousands of women travel more, travel better, and travel often using credit card points.

Dr. Devon Gimbel's Links:

Website: https://www.pointmetofirstclass.com/ 

Points Made Easy Course: https://www.pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy 

Point Me to First Class Podcast: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/podcast 

Be sure to check out my new private podcast and discover the steps to burn stress + fat for lasting weight loss here: https://www.theunstoppablemombrain.com/bodyreset

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Dr. Devon Gimbel’s journey from physician to points expert
• How to leverage personal spending for travel and other benefits
• Breaking cultural taboos about discussing money and spending
• The concept of everyday expenses as financial assets
• Practical tips for professional women to maximize the value of their spending

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Want to work with me? There are only 2 spots left in the July group! Learn about The Unstoppable Group by clicking here.
• Get access to my new private podcast by clicking here. 
• Dr. Devon Gimbel's Website: https://www.pointmetofirstclass.com/ 
• Points Made Easy Course: https://www.pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy 
• Point Me to First Class Podcast: https://pointmetofirstclass.com/podcast

Download the full transcript here.

• Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal and you're listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast, leveraging your money spend with Dr. Devon Gimbel. I am so excited to bring you today's podcast guest. Dr. Devon Gimbel is a personal friend of mine. I have known her now for, I think about four years. We met in a coaching business mastermind together, and she literally opened my eyes to the world of leveraging my spend. All of us, all professional women, all professional working moms have regular personal expenses. We're spending money on groceries, on our homes, on cars, on travel, just on living our life. And I have always been someone, and this is the way that I was raised was to really be very conservative with how I spend and utilize credit cards versus cash. So Devon, Really opened my eyes to the world of how I can leverage the spend that I was already having. She helped to really just open my eyes to information that I was not aware of. And also she helped me really kind of bridge the gap between things that I was nervous about as it pertained to credit cards. And she broke it down with me so simply, she literally helped me take a first class trip to India last year with me and my family of four. And I really have been wanting to have her on the podcast for months now, simply to talk about number one, sharing her story, how she went from being a physician to becoming a points expert.

  Now, this is what she does full time and also sharing really tangible strategic tips with all of you, because I know as professional women, we have real life spends and we are sometimes not leveraging. The spends that we already have my mission, which I also share on this podcast is really for all of us to take the decisions that we are already making, we are all already making many decisions as it pertains to spending money. We are already making many decisions as it pertains to how we eat, but when we have some very clear spending, specific strategic information, we can leverage some of these decisions that we're already making to live a bigger life and to really get a lot more value out of the decisions that we're making. And before we get into today's podcast episode, I want to make sure that you have already grabbed your free access to the body reset podcast. This is a six episode, I think of it as a tiny but mighty roadmap for how you can really learn how to burn stress and burn fat so that you can learn how to lose weight in a way that sustainable to last a lifetime. I break down the science of fat loss, why mindset is absolutely necessary for you to lose weight and keep it off and how to tackle urges and cravings in a way that is not going to fill you with deprivation or overwhelm. You can go and grab your free access to the private podcast over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/bodyreset. Okay. Without further ado, let's get into today's podcast episode. If you want to reach your ideal weight and create lightness for your body, you need to have simplicity,  joy, and strategic decisions infused into your life. I'm a physician turned life and weight loss coach for ambitious working moms. I've lost over 60 pounds without counting points, calories, or crazy exercise plans. Most importantly, I feel calm and light on the scale and in my life. There's some delicious magic when you learn this work and the skills I'm going to be teaching you. Ready? Let's get to it. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast. I am beyond excited and thrilled to have Dr. Devon Gimbel, who is my good personal friend and points. Connoisseur? Expert? I don't know what word we have to use. I, like, want to think of what is the most expert thing in this topic. That is what Devon is. On the podcast today, we're taking a detour from talking about stress and weight loss, but I promise you this is going to circle back around for how high achieving women can leverage decisions that you're already making, decision points, of your life to have a better and bigger experience of this life you have worked so hard for. So I've already introduced Devon a little bit before starting this podcast in the intro, but Devon, I'm going to have you introduce yourself. Tell us about you. How did you get into going from being a physician to a points expert? 

   

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah, you know, completely expected typical career trajectory, right? I think all of us go who are in medicine, you know, we go into medicine to not practice it for our whole lives and then do something totally different and bizarre. So I fully acknowledge that this is a little bit of a not traditional path. So a little bit about me. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. It is always a pleasure for me to speak with you and it's an honor to be here with your audience. So like you said, my name is Devon and I am a double board certified physician. So I'm boarded in anatomic pathology and then I fellowship trained in dermatopath pathology. So basically I just spent all my time diagnosing skin diseases. And I was one of those kids who only ever wanted to be a doctor. Like I can't remember ever wanting to be something else or do something else. And I was your, you know, very typical high strung type, a perfectionist child, the eighties and nineties, you know, I was like stressing out about my grades. I remember stressing out about like a geography grade in, in fifth grade because I was convinced, right. If I didn't get an a on this geography class, then obviously I was going to fail out of junior high and high school and not get into the best college and not get into the best medical school. So that gives you kind of a window into, you know, as a kid growing up and I had a, I would say really a pretty traditional educational and career path. And that, like I said, you know, I went through my educational process really with my eyes set on medical school. And so, you know, I finished high school, I went to undergrad, knew I wanted to go to medical school. So did all the typical, you know, kind of pre med stuff ended up taking a little bit of a detour, which can be kind of relevant to our conversation today, where even though I knew I wanted to go to medical school, I did not want to go straight through from undergrad to med school because I knew that you know, medicine is pretty rigorous and there's not, at least at the time, I didn't see a lot of examples of people in medicine who were also taking a lot of time off, who were also spending a lot of time traveling the world, which is something that I really, really wanted to do and so I ended up taking about two years off in between graduating from undergrad and going to med school. And I was a nomad. I lived in a lot of different places. I did infectious disease research in the Amazon forest for about four months. I spent about six months wandering around Southeast Asia. And it was amazing and it was one of truly the best, most, I think, transformative experiences of my life. And then, you know, went right back into the educational pipeline, went to medical school, did the very traditional, you know, four year track, went straight into residency and fellowship and came out of all of my training in around 2012. And at that time, I joined a really small physician owned private practice in the Chicago suburbs, which is where I still live now. And started practicing DermPath full time. 

  So, you know, in that sense, it, like I said, was a traditional path. And that, that was all I'd ever wanted to do. Obviously studied really, really hard for a really long time to do it. Joined a private practice. And at that time, I thought, Okay. Okay. Like here we are. Right. Like this was the whole point. I found this great job. I'm going to be here my whole career. I'm going to practice, you know, full time, whatever that is in your definition, like 50, 60 hours a week, you know, until I'm 65, then I'm going to retire. I was like, the plan was set, right. And as sometimes happens in life, things did not go according to plan. And ultimately what happened was that I was in that practice for about seven years and towards the end of 2019 made the decision to step away from it. It just. progressively had become not a good fit for me. And so I left that practice. And then of course, lo and behold, you know, the beginning of 2020, everybody's world gets turned upside down because of this pandemic. I was in this all of a sudden really weird, strange, somewhat fortuitous position where then I could just be home. I had two young kids at the time, had never worked, you know, inside of the home. And it worked out that one of us, I'm married, I have a spouse, you know, one of us needed to take care of the kids cause there was no childcare. There were no schools, you know, so I stayed home with my kids, which is really lovely. But then on the back end of that, you know, I'd been out of medicine for a few years, still hadn't found something in medicine. I felt like, felt like a good fit and I was starting to get antsy. You know, I think a lot of us who spend a lot of time in education or spend a lot of time in a really rigorous profession, it's, partly because we love to be intellectually challenged and stimulated and that was the piece that for me, I felt like was kind of left behind when I decided to stop practicing in the traditional way, you know, that I had been in my medical practice and was really kind of just looking for something right to challenge my brain. And this is where kind of the segway of where something that I had been doing for many years, it's just a personal hobby for fun for myself, I started thinking, well, maybe there's like three or four other people out there who would want to learn about this, right? So for years, I had been learning about how to use credit card points to travel and to travel in a way that I personally would never be able to travel just using cash. And it was fun. And it wasn't super hard. And one of the things that I realized, again, the years that I was just traveling on credit card points for myself was, you know, a lot of my community are physicians. I think when you go through medical school, those are the people you tend to be around. And so, you know, I knew a lot of other doctors and when I was learning how to do this for myself, one of the things I kept thinking was, Wow, we, us, our community, the professional community, in a larger sense, is in such an amazing position to take advantage of this. And I don't think anyone knows about it because this is not the type of thing that we tend to talk about a lot, you know, in between like your biochemistry lessons, you know, or when you're rounding or doing whatever it is that you're doing in your day. And so, yeah, really it was towards the end of 2021 that I just started thinking, wow, here's this thing that I think so many people would love, so many people would benefit from, you are in an amazing position to really take advantage of, and I don't think any of them know about it. And I wonder if, again, there's just a handful of people who might want to talk about this. And that's really where it started for me. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. I, you know, what you're kind of touching on also kind of, it's a question I was going to ask you later, but I think it's really relevant now is we don't talk very often about spending money. So it's also like, it's interesting. Of course, we don't know about how to leverage our normal spend in our personal life. Maybe if you are a small business owner. Just like the spend that you have in your life. Number one, I think that people think that spending money, there's some, there's like some guilt associated with it. There's some privilege at the idea of being able to have money to spend on nice things. So I think that there's like so many layers to why we are not talking about spending money. And of course, because we're not talking about that, we don't open up conversations with, wait a second. There's a way to really leverage the spend that we are having. So what do you think about what's been in the way? And this is especially true with women. I feel like this is not something I see very much with men. Maybe it is a little bit, but with women, really, there's this almost like a, like an adult, like it's indulgent or it's frivolous, or there's some guilt associated with spending money for some people. Again, this is not across the board, but it's just a barrier that I see that gets in the way of us understanding. So what do you think about that? 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Oh my gosh, I agree with you completely. You know, I think that If you are someone who was either born, raised, kind of socialized, or spent a lot of your time sort of living in North America, I think this is very, a very cultural specific thing to us. I think depending on, again, where you are, where you're from, where your background is, maybe there's other things that you've learned, you know, about money, but I feel like in this country, like the two most taboo things that you can talk about are money and sex. And so if you don't have someone, In your life who taught you about these things or educated you about these things, then you don't talk about them, which means you also don't know about them. And I think it is so true that there's so much messaging around money, around our choices of what do we spend? What do we save when we do spend? What are the things we're spending on? And are those quote unquote, good or bad, right? I think there's all of this stuff. And I think it's so important to acknowledge that and to recognize it. And I do think it's important because when we When we don't have these conversations, or when we don't even have these reflections for ourselves, then I think we really rob ourselves of opportunities to make deliberate decisions. Not that we all have to do the same thing, but I think so many of us, again, we're doing things a certain way. Because either that's all we've ever seen modeled around us, or we've never realized that, oh, wait a minute, maybe if I wanted to, could make a different decision for myself. And I want to touch on this specifically because you did mention this idea about, you know, spending money. And I had this really kind of Interesting experience. So growing up, I was raised by a single mother. I had one older sibling. So it was really just the three of us. We were not a financially resourced family. So, you know, we didn't take really vacations. We didn't do anything extravagant. No one taught me about money cause we had no money. Right. Like I think that it's really difficult to have conversations around like financial security or financial choices when your reality is you're just trying to make ends meet. Right. And that was kind of my experience growing up. So. I knew nothing about money other than that sometimes there just wasn't any of it around. And so when I came out of all my training and I Went, you know, through medical school at a private school, funded completely on student loans. So I came out of training with, you know, a really, really good chunk of student loans knowing, okay, like this is part of my job, you know, is to pay this off. And I want to learn how to do that. And when I became, you know, in attending, it was the first time in my life, literally the first time in my whole life, I was in my early thirties where I finally had some disposable income. And I had this experience of, Okay, I'm probably gonna have more financial options available to me as an adult than maybe my mom had when I was growing up, and I have no clue. How to do this responsibly. I have no clue how to make decisions about money because my only decision I would ever have to made was how many student loans should I take out to pay for, you know, my tuition and my living expenses. And so for me in the beginning, I was really just trying to expand my own education around personal finance. Like, you know, how do I pay off student loans? How do I save, what am I supposed to save? Where am I supposed to save it? I mean, I didn't know how to do. Anything. And one of the things that I thought was really fascinating sort of in tandem, I'm learning about personal finance and that's actually was my entryway into learning about using credit cards to earn points and travel on points because, you know, it's kind of finance adjacent. And, you know, when you're on the internet and you're Googling stuff, you go down all these rabbit holes. And so I'd read some personal finance and then there'd be some link, you know, to someone who traveled business class somewhere using points. And I was like, well, that sounds interesting. Right. So I'm learning about these things in tandem. And one of the things I thought was so fascinating is that. You know, in the personal finance space, I think it is such common knowledge and such common conversation to talk about your money or your income as a huge asset, right? And it's all over the place about how do we leverage our money really intelligently and responsibly so that it can work for us, right? 

  This is why a lot of us, if we have access to them, take advantage of 401k or retirement accounts, right? There's all these different vehicles where we can invest money, save money, right? It's like this whole ladder of things that you can max out for different reasons. And I think all of that is rooted in this understanding that your money can do a lot of work for you if you don't just leave it, you know, like in a safe place in your house, or if you don't just leave it in a savings account that if you do invest, you know, in a retirement account, if you do invest in, you know, low cost index funds in the stock market, what you take out, you know, 30, 40 years from now is going to be huge compared to what you put in. So I felt like in the world of personal finance, it was just this like common knowledge, right? That your money itself was an asset. If you did certain things with it and that it could grow. And at the same exact time I'm learning about, you know, using credit card points where again, you very responsibly put your expenses on credit cards. One of the by products is that you get to earn points. And then those points themselves are like a form of currency. You can turn in. For really, really valuable travel experiences. And so, at the same time I'm learning about personal finance, I'm learning about points, and I'm looking all of a sudden at my expenses equally as assets because all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute. I've always looked again at the money that I have to spend as, okay, well, that's just what you have to spend to run your life, right? Like I got to spend money on groceries. I have to spend money on rent or whatever the case may be, but it's almost like, Oh, it's this lost cause. Right. And everybody's paying attention. to the money that's left over and how do we make that grow? And obviously I think that's amazing and important, but I was sitting there trying to do both at the same time and saying, wait a minute, my expenses can actually go to work for me too. Why is no one talking about this piece of it? And it was so fundamentally shifting for me because again, you know, the way that I grew up, money was not something that felt light or easy or fun. It always felt like there was none of it. It felt really scary. It felt really hard. And so all of a sudden, you know, I was starting to have this experience in this relationship with my expenses where I was thinking, okay, well, first of all, they're doing that fundamental job of just getting me some of the things I just need in my life, which is great, but they can do so much more than that. And it totally changed the way that I looked at spending money and not that I now go out and spend money that I wouldn't otherwise just to earn points. I didn't never advocate for that, but it is really fun for me when I do have to pay for an expense to know, Oh, I'm also going to get something on the back end of this in the form of points. And those points might be sending me to Paris for a week, right? Or those points might be helping my family go somewhere on spring break when my kids are out of school. And so. That all of that is a very long winded way of saying, I agree with you. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, so I think that this is also really helpful because we kind of just get to touch on a little bit of why is it that we don't talk about money? Why is it that we're not having this conversation? Number one, I think we just didn't know like what you just said to me. It actually, even though I've been talking with you offline about like all kinds of credit card questions that I always have, this idea that there is, And I think that there's actually two ways of thinking about money. One is the money that we're spending so that we have like a certain amount of cash may be sitting in an account and we use it to spend on groceries, on our homes, on our cars, on just like living our life. And then there's this other way of getting value. I think that's what I'm understanding. And what I've kind of learned from you is that there's not just value sitting in an account. There's actually value. Every time I spend there's this back end value that I had not actually been leveraging because I just didn't know about it. And I think that this. You know, this also touches a little bit on this idea, we've talked about this before so many times, where why is it that we don't know one is we just didn't know, but the other one is I, for me, I would get overwhelmed with information. And I see this happening. This happens for me. Even I see this happening with weight loss. Like my clients, they're like, there's so much information. And it's almost like decision, not decision paralysis, but decision overwhelmed. There's so much information that I don't even know where to start. Like what's 0.1. I like a step by step I'm a step by step kind of person. What's step one, what's step two, what's step three? And if I don't understand that, where are the buttons? How do I do this? How do I navigate this? I think because as high achieving women, we have so many other decisions that we're making. And we're so, we're living such a busy lives with our families and our work and our homes and our, and our children that I'm like, you know what? I'll figure this out tomorrow. I'll maybe I'll figure this out. By myself next week and then of course weeks and weeks and weeks and years pass and I'm like, Oh, spring break is coming up and I haven't booked anything. Devon, what do I do? So can you talk a little bit about this idea around being a smart person who is very good at learning things and also getting into this kind of overwhelm around information?

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah, you know, I think that this is such a double edged sword of kind of the age that we're living in now, especially in terms of digital information, right? The internet. I mean, as probably everyone knows, I mean, you can go online. And I mean, you could not surface for months, right? Because there's just so much information that you can learn, even if it's something that you're genuinely interested and passionate about. And I think on the one hand, that's amazing. I love that information now is so much more easily accessible than it was. And I'm speaking specifically about like this specific hobby of using points, you know, for, for travel information is so much more accessible now than it was. 10, 15, certainly 20 years ago. But the potential downside of that is that it can be overwhelming, right? Like there have never been more blogs, more Instagram accounts, like more podcasts, more, more, more information available than ever before. And so I think that that is really, really common. And I think the other thing that I see too, because I work, you know, with a lot of folks, again, who Either, you know, by background or education are highly educated or, you know, they own and run businesses. So people who are really incredibly, you know, highly functioning. And so it's never a question of, Oh, wow. Are you smart enough to understand this stuff? Everybody is just way, way smarter, you know, than is necessary to understand a lot of these things. But I think part of it too, is a lot of us have personalities where if we don't understand everything about a topic immediately, right away, or we're in our eyes, not amazing at something right away, we can get very easily discouraged. And I say that as someone who feels that way about almost everything.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I feel like you're talking about me and like maybe all the conversations we've had because there have been so many times I'm like, Devon, I don't even, I feel so terrible. I feel like you've told me this, you've taught me this before. I feel like I should know this. And I don't know this. I feel like I almost come into this, this kind of question with you. Like I feel stupid. Yeah. And that's terrible for me to say that. It's like, yeah. And I'm like, you know what? Let me just not even ask or let me just not even bother because this idea of not having that, you know, smart put together knows all the answers, person, personality that I think high achievers love to have. Yeah. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: And I think that there's this huge, huge fallacy to also, and I think these things are all kind of. Layered upon one another. I think that there's a tendency to believe, especially when you get into a hobby like this, where again, you can be just, you know, whatever, like riding around on the internet, you're going to see examples and stories of what other people are doing either. Oh, how is somebody else Earning credit card points or, Oh, wow. This person says they have 27 credit cards. That seems crazy, you know, or that seems like so much compared to what I would be comfortable with. Or again, you know, you see a story about someone who took a certain trip and I think it's really natural for us as human beings to kind of try to anchor ourselves or compare ourselves against what we see out there. And I think that it's a really, really common thing for people to see examples of how other people are doing, you know, a hobby or doing a skill and automatically measure themselves against that and decide one, they don't measure up to, they're never going to measure up. And there, so therefore three, it's not worth it at all. Right. And so one of the things that I really want to say, especially when it comes to, again, like this specific hobby is that, you can get so much value out of it without ever being a quote unquote expert, without ever being, you know, one of those examples of the person with the most amount of credit cards or the most amount of points are taking the quote unquote fanciest trips. Like if that's not the piece of it, that sounds fun to you. You don't ever need to get there. Right. And so I think one of the things that's really important to understand is that you can get so much out of this hobby, taking steps as slowly or as quickly as you want, because like we were kind of talking about in the beginning, there are so many people who can benefit so much from this who've never even heard of this before. So literally doing anything. Anything at all, getting one single credit card. That's going to earn points, taking one single trip, using your points to help defray the cost of that. That should be the benchmark, right? Like what is possible for me compared to where I am starting right now? Not, Oh, how do I stack up against other people who are doing this? Because this is their full time job or because this is their full time hobby. You know, I think we should compare ourselves to where are we starting? Because then we can take these little steps and even those little steps are huge improvements. Like I said, I mean, I've been doing this for 10 years. I think I'm an outlier in the sense that I now do this full time professionally. Most people are never going to want to do that, right? And even before I did this professionally, this is what I thought was fun, right? So like, I would be the person after my kids go to bed at night where I'm like, Oh gee, I wonder if there's any, you know, great points flights to Japan. I'm just going to look around for fun. Most people are never going to do that. I'm not doing that. You don't need to do that. Right. Exactly. And you've taken a trip on points with your family. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. Oh, can we talk, first of all, I like we, you and I met, I think it's been almost four or five years now we met. And I remember I was a brand new to entrepreneurship. I had, you know, I was just transitioning out of clinical practice in medicine and doing entrepreneurship. And you were one of the very few examples. And one of the very first people that I met who was a physician That had become an entrepreneur. And I remember we like immediately gravitated towards each other. You were so kind. I almost felt like I thought of you almost like a mentor for me. Like, Oh, this is possible. And like, listen, like you're going to figure this out. I just, first of all, thank you for that. And I remember when I started my business, I had, you know, there was I need it. Find a business credit card and you're like, can we talk about this? You, you pulled me aside. Can we listen? I have a lot of thoughts. If it's okay with you or so you ask permission, but can I just talk to you about which credit card might be really good for you? I have a couple of questions and you really helped me find my first business credit card that would help me leverage points. I didn't even know about how to have that conversation for myself. I would have. Needed to Google it just like you were talking about, but that was really helpful. And I think that, you know, the other thing that I want to share on this is I did take a trip to India for my whole family of four, me, my husband, and my two kids. We went first class to my friends. I am 40. How old am I now? 41. I'm 41 years old. I had never in my life traveled anything other than economy or even basic economy, because again, it's very similar to you growing up. My parents came from India in the early eighties. It wasn't just money thrown, like thrown around. It was very conservative. I remember like we would think three times before going to pizza hut, you know, like for as a family of four. So it was one of those things where we were very conservative with spending. And it just, Translated into how I grew up and how I spent money also. So the idea of, you know, you walk into the airplane and you turn left was just not a part of my visual. And I think after talking to you, you started to drip in this idea like Priyanka, you're already having real life spend. What if you could leverage that and actually have this experience? And we did it. It was amazing. My husband, I think I had to tell you all the things because my husband was like, Wait, what? We can do what? Even he didn't know. So I just, I love that. I think, first of all, the story and you sharing your story is super helpful because we just get to know that it's possible if we want it. Number one. Number two, I love that you break this down. Number one, on your podcast, you also have a course, which we're going to get into how to leverage points, how to leverage your life in a way to have these experiences. But I think I had to overcome this idea that I haven't learned this yet, so I'm never going to be able to figure it out. And I really. Thank you for that. Because I felt like I don't know how to do this. It feels overwhelming. I needed somebody to kind of walk me step by step to have that experience. Yeah. And I mean, it was an amazing experience that we got to do that, which is awesome. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah, and I think this idea, this experience of yours is so common that, you know, I've never done this before. No one's ever taught me about this before. I didn't even, I've never heard of this. And I just want to validate and say, of course. And that's to me, you know. I think maybe because this is part of my background in medicine where, you know, I've always loved learning, I've always loved teaching, it used to look like, you know, teaching residents, you know, or teaching other folks in other specialties about like, how do you look through a microscope, what are you looking at, you know, what is this big pink blob here, you know, and I've always really loved that kind of interplay of learning and teaching and I think that it is so common for people to have that experience of how come I don't know about this or how come I can't figure this out either just really easily on my own and I just say like why should anyone know about this right like this is such a in some ways and I say this like very lovingly it's such a bizarre thing to know about you know it's like of course you're not gonna have learned this you know in school or maybe even from any of your friends or your colleagues so there's no reason that this entire world or any piece of this world about credit cards and using them to earn points and traveling with them. None of us should automatically know any of that. And I actually think, you know, it, it really is quite the opposite for so many of us because of the way that we were raised or the way that we were taught is that there are, like we said, there are not conversations being had about money or if they are conversations, there are conversations that are couched more in scarcity and fear. Like I remember, I remember so distinctly again, my mom growing up. Never explicitly taught me anything about money. Only time that we ever actually had a conversation about  money was when she was driving me to school when I was high school. So I skipped a grade. So I was really weird, younger than everyone all the time in high school. I was like 15 and still getting driven. You know, I was like a junior in high school and my mom was still driving me there and we're on the way to high school one morning and we're like at a stoplight and like kind of out of nowhere. My mom was like, listen, there's just like something that I want to talk to you about. And I'm like, okay. And she basically told me like her experience that when she became a single mother, so I have one older sister, she became a single mother shortly after I was born. So my whole life, you know, my, at that point for 15 years, you know, she'd been on her own. And she was talking about how, you know, it was really challenging financially and all she ever really wanted was to be able to give me and my sister experiences because we grew up in Orange County, which if a lot of people are not familiar with Orange County in Southern California, it's a very, very weird place where there is extreme, extreme wealth. And a lot of folks who don't have a ton of financial resources. And this was also, again, in the 80s and 90s where I just felt like the conspicuous consumption, especially in Southern California, it was just so obvious, right? So it's like we live in this very weird place at this very weird time. And, you know, my mom is sitting over here trying to make ends meet and she's like, all I ever wanted was for you and your sister to have some experiences, right? We lived 15 minutes drive from Disneyland, you know, she's like, I just want to take you guys to Disneyland, right? I just wanted you guys to be able to do some things. And of course, I didn't know this this whole time that, you know, she had gone through a period where she had gotten into a lot of credit card debt, basically just trying to make ends meet. And it took her years. And so this is what she was finally telling me. And what I remember from that conversation was she said, So, basically, don't ever, don't ever get a credit card. Don't ever use a credit card, right? They are dangerous. You will get into debt. You don't want to have to dig yourself out, you know, like I have. So basically don't do what I did. Like that was my financial education. So I go off to college, you know, when I'm 17 went to, luckily, because I was a California resident had amazing, you know, public undergrad schools to go to that did not cost a million dollars a year. So I'm, you know, away from home in college at an amazing public school. Very, very low, you know, out of pocket cost. And I just remember, even then I had, you know, no money. I worked, you know, as much as I could for a little bit of money, but I remember carrying that with me. That idea of don't you ever get a credit card. Like it was better to not have money to eat than to have to put anything, you know, on a credit card. And that, that was my financial education. I mean, literally that carried me through, like, the next 15, 20 years. And I did not have a credit card in my name until I was a fellow. I was 31 years old before I had a credit card because I was so terrified of them. And the only reason that I got a credit card when I was 31 is because my husband was like, You're an adult. Like, I really think you should at least have a credit card in case you have an emergency, right? And I think he actually submitted the application for that credit card, with my consent, of course, right? Like, I had to tell him my social security number and all of that, but he was really the one who said, you know, I think it's important that you at least have access to this, even if you never, ever, ever use it. And so, again, you know, I think that it is very common, especially You know, if you're someone where, again, you were raised in a family that didn't talk a lot about money or didn't have a lot of access to money, especially if you happen to be in a. The position through, you know, hard work or luck or privilege where maybe your experience now as an adult is a little bit better or different, you know, than what it was as a kid, there's absolutely no reason that any of us should automatically know how to do this.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I think that's I mean, this is it my dad was the same. He was always like, use cash. We're like, you know, the the same kind of idea around the credit cards are dangerous. And I get it because if they have had their kind of financial experience and they've been so conservative with them and they're like supporting their family, they're in charge of taking care of, you know, kids and a home and a family. Like I get where that kind of scarcity and fear comes from. But I also love that we're just getting to have a conversation around what holes might we want to poke in that whole story and how can we be. savvy. I think that that is what my goal is even in having this conversation. How can we be savvy in kind of leveraging information, leveraging the spend that we are already having to have kind of bigger experiences for ourselves? And I, and I'm curious for you, what do you think? For people that have like a personal spend, you're just spending on groceries, on your home, on like little things just to kind of have your day to day, what do you think is the biggest misconception that women, working moms, professional women are having right now that might be something worth them knowing about when it just comes to personal credit cards? It's not even business credit cards, just like a personal credit card, the spend that they're having and how they could leverage leverage that. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah. And I don't even know if this is so much as a misconception as just even that first piece of understanding what's out there, what's possible, what's available is, I think that when it comes to again, the money that you're spending just to run your life, because all of us have those expenses is that those expenses can be doing something for you. So I think baseline, what I would love people to understand is. If right now you are someone who still functionally is using cash for your expenses. So like, you know, you use a debit card or you pay expenses, you know, straight out of your bank account. Obviously I don't think that's bad. Please pay your expenses. That's wonderful. But what I would love for people to understand is It is possible to get something out of paying those expenses. And for some people that might actually look like a cashback credit card where it's, if all you ever have is one single cashback credit card, that's earning you, you know, one or 2 percent cashback on all your expenses, that is still better than earning nothing on your expenses. Right? So I just want to offer this idea that. If you are spending money and chances are you are because most of us have to in order for our lives to function that you can use those expenses to get you something and it doesn't have to be credit card points because I'm sure there are some people who maybe have looked into this or they tried it and they've said, Hey, I just don't think this is for me. I don't think every single person walking around should or has to have a points earning credit card. Again, I think there's so many people for whom it could be enormously advantageous and I want those people to learn as much as they want about it. But more than anything, I really want women to understand that your expenses can be earning you something. And so let's just start there. Let's just start with the piece of, wow, if I could earn anything for these expenses, like what might that look like? 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Okay, so if someone, let's say like, and I feel like there's different ranges of people that are listening to this episode. Some people that are like brand new beginners that maybe have only used cash for things. But I'm also thinking that professional women might have one or two credit cards at this point. They know that they can get some cash back. They have some points. Like where I was at, I remember when I first was looking at my, I didn't even know how many points I had. I just knew that I have a credit card. I always pay my credit card bills like on time. But I, so I had a lot of points, but I had never really utilized them. So for someone like that, who does have credit card, a couple of credit cards, and they are, they're spending and they're earning either points for cash back. How can they start to just open up, like leverage those, like that information better for them to have some of these experiences?

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yes, I'm going to just start with two very simple things, because chances are everyone can benefit from either one of these or both. And one of them, like you said, let's say there's someone who's got two or three credit cards. Maybe one of them is actually earning them some points, right? One of the first things is that you want to make sure that you're going to be using, if you want to earn, use a points earning credit card, that you want to make sure that you're using credit cards that are going to give you increased amount of points for the things that you tend to spend money on. Okay. And here's what I mean by that is that. Here's a really common scenario. Maybe someone has like an airline credit card from you know when they were in their 20s or 30s and you know they were doing a lot of traveling and they were always flying United because they lived right by United hub right so it made sense let me get a United credit card. I'll get like a 200 flight credit and free checked bags, right? So maybe that is their kind of standard credit card that they put all of their expenses on. Great. That's a starting point. But what a lot of people don't realize is that if you have a credit card like that, it is rewarding you for putting expenses on it. You want to understand, Oh, what is the rate that I'm earning those rewards? And so in the example of like a United credit card. Unless you're using it to buy United flights, anytime you're using it on anything else, again, groceries, gas, online shopping, Amazon, all of that, it's gonna reward you most times with like one United mile for every dollar you spend. This is why people have that experience of like, Wait a minute. I've been using this card for three and a half years and I've got enough miles on it to fly like one way domestic economy. Like this doesn't really seem worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. The reason is the rate at which you're earning points is very, very low. And what's beautiful is that if you are based in the United States and you have access to us issued points earning credit cards, there are so many credit cards. They're going to offer you the opportunity. to earn points at a much faster rate. So, for example, one of my favorite credit cards is the American Express Gold Card, and that's because it earns four points for every dollar you spend on groceries and dining out and restaurant spend. And for a lot of us, Getting groceries and or dining out or getting, you know, grocery or excuse me, restaurant delivery, you know, Grubhub, those types of things. A lot of us are spending money on that, right? So when you imagine, wait a minute, for those expenses, I can be earning points four times as fast. Oh. Okay, that's going to start adding up a lot quicker, right?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: So as opposed to using the United credit card to spend on groceries, if you're using a credit card that's giving you 4x the number of points, you're just leveraging the spend that you're already doing anyway. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yes. Yes. You're going to earn so much more again for the same exact amount of spend. We're not talking about going out and buying a bunch of groceries that you don't want just to earn points. We're talking about earning smarter. So one of the initial things that people can do is Get really familiar with a, what credit cards do you even have right now? If you have any and B, if they are these types of cards that can earn you, you know, rewards in the form of points or miles, do you know how fast they're allowing you to earn points? So even just that sort of like introductory phase of getting to know the credit cards you have and what they can do for you and understanding, Oh, wow, there are actually a lot of options out there that are probably going to allow you to earn points at a much faster rate. And they are targeted towards main areas of spend that a lot of consumers have. So it's not shocking that there are credit cards that offer you increased points earning for groceries or gas or dining out. There is a specific credit card that allows you to earn points for paying your rent. These are the types of things that a lot of us are spending money on, right? So that's kind of the first piece of it. And then the second piece of it is when it comes to using points, I already mentioned one reason why I think a lot of people who've maybe kind of dabbled in points might have the experience that it's like. Wow. This just doesn't seem worth it. Like I'm going to have to spend money for seven years to get enough points to not have really anything worthwhile to show for it. You know, like why, why would I spend time and attention doing this? So one of sort of the things is, Oh, do you know, if you're earning points, you know, as fast as you could for the expenses that you have. And then the other piece of it is using the points. And this was my experience. I've totally made this mistake. I think every single person who is ever ever, ever, ever had points has made this mistake. And that is, you know, an interesting thing about credit card companies is they want you to use their cards. They absolutely want you to carry a balance on them because that's how they make a ton, a ton, a ton of money. But they don't really care if you understand how you can use their products to your advantage. So that's why people like me exist. And when it comes to using your points, again, most credit card companies are not going to teach you or tell you how much value you can actually get out of these points. This is what they're going to do. You're going to log into your credit card account. Let's just take Chase. I actually love Chase, so this is not at all, you know, to say anything bad about them whatsoever. All of the credit card companies are like this. You log into your account, and let's say you've got 100,000 points, right? Because you've been using your one card for all of your expenses for however long. What Chase will say is, great, your 100,000 points are worth 1,000 in travel. Right. So you can go through chases is called a travel portal. It's like their travel website. You can book a rental car, you could book some flights or hotel and your hundred thousand points can be traded in for a thousand dollars in travel. And most of us are thinking, wow, that's great because a thousand dollars saved is way better than zero saved. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Right. That's exactly how I used to think. I was like, that sounds good to me. Let's do it. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: It's exactly, it's exactly what I thought too. Cause remember that card my husband had me sign up for when I was 31 years old, you know, as a fellow. That is the card that I still wasn't using exclusively. I was still paying a lot of my expenses, you know, with debit card or, you know, in a cash equivalent, but I did use that card as my only credit card. And, and I started coming around. I started putting most of my expenses on it for like purchase protection and you know, those types of things. So at the end of three years, I've had this card for three years. And we have 250,000 points on it, which was a lot. And we were like, Oh my gosh, you know, we're gonna do something amazing with these 250, 000 points. I knew nothing, nothing like what I know now about points. And this is what I did. They were chase points. I logged into chase my husband and I, this is before we had kids, you know, we wanted to take a vacation. I'd convinced him to go to Morocco. He was like, I don't know about this. I'm much more. of a traveler than he is, but he was game. And I was like, okay, great. And he said, you know, I'll figure out how to book the travel. And I said, fine, you know, and so he logs onto our chase account. Our 250,000 chase points are worth 2,500. And for me, again, you know, at this point I was out of training. 2,500 is a huge amount of money to me. You know, so I was like, Oh my gosh, this is a freaking goldmine. So he goes on a chase and he books us our round trip economy flights, you know, from Chicago to Morocco, we had an amazing time. And this is, this is what's funny about this because, but you know, again, at the time I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, like again, this is a gold mine and we had a beautiful time, right? Don't regret it one little bit, but yes, in hindsight, in retrospect, That's what Chase or all of these credit card companies, they're telling you, okay, here's how you can use the points. You can use them through your credit card account. You can trade them in for gift cards. You can trade them in for a statement credit. You can trade them in for travel. But what's common among all these options is chase or American express or whoever. They're going to give you very, very low value for your points. So your a hundred thousand points are going to be worth a thousand dollars or 1,500, which again, compared to zero is amazing.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: What is that called again? There's an acronym for what that redemption value. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah. So that's called the redemption value. So what, you know, what are your points worth? And what none of these credit card companies tell you about, even though this is what they offer is that. If you want to, you can take your credit card points and say, okay, I want to transfer them out of my credit card account. And I actually want to send them to a specific airline. Like I want to send them to Air France. I want to send them to Southwest. I want to send them to United airlines. And then you can go to those specific airlines. And book travel, but instead of getting, again, like, 1, 000 worth of travel for 100,000 points, you could get 2,500 worth of travel, 4,000 worth of travel, 5,000 worth of travel. And I think this is the piece that so many people When they start to understand, this is what really changes everything for them, because again, none of us wants to do a thing or a hobby where we put in time and energy for years and years and years, and then the payoff is like a subway gift card, right? Like, I'm sorry, I'm not getting super excited about that personally, but if you tell me that I could save points for a year or two years, And then I could turn that into, like you said, you know, first class flights for my family of four to India. Okay. Like that value proposition is very, very, very different. And so the two things that again, for folks who are old, maybe have one foot into this hobby or a little bit of experience, the two most important things that I always want people to know is that chances are you could be earning even more points for the same amount of spend that you're already doing. So just get to know the credit cards you currently have. Exactly. Right. And. Don't believe your credit card company when they tell you that your points are worth a certain amount. You can almost always get significantly more value from those points when you don't use them to book travel or again, to trade them in for gift cards or statement credits through your credit card account.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: This is, I think, I like how you broke this up because I think that for me, when I came in, I knew the first part a little bit. Like I understood that certain credit cards would be more valuable for me to have compared to others, but I didn't know which ones. So I think that that's again like I was trying to figure this out by myself, kind of speaking to what we were talking about earlier, and it just felt so overwhelming that I was like, okay, let me just keep my one, I think I had like a visa, I had an Amazon visa card because of the cashback. I remember I told you this, I'm like so proud of myself because I have a cashback card, I'm like, I have so many Amazon spends, I have boxes coming every day and I'm like, I'm getting a check. I'm getting a check from Amazon, Devon. And you're like, yeah, yeah, that's nice. And also, did you know that you're spending a lot on groceries? And also, look, you just educated me. So, I think the first piece is, I knew it a little bit, but I didn't understand, I think, the robustness and the versatility of how My spend could have gotten me more. And the second part, and this is where I would always get the most overwhelmed, I would go in, I would be that person that would say, Ooh, 1,000 sounds amazing for a hundred thousand points. Because I didn't know like how to go in. And I always tell you, where are the buttons? Like what buttons do I go to? What website do I go to? So that is also where I would, I think get overwhelmed and I would just not take any action. So I love how you broke this down into two, two places. So if you could kind of summarize in your experience now doing this, this is like what you were doing now professionally. Why do you think that this is a topic that's really worth paying attention to and putting in again, like, I love how you shared that there's a spectrum you can go all in and spend like, you know, a lot of your time on this, but like even just spending a little bit of your time and energy to figure this out. Why does this matter for the professional working mom? 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Yeah, I think that's such a great question. You know, and I think all of this, the context of all of this is, this is for people who love to travel. If you're not someone who travels frequently, or that's just not that interesting to you, that's totally fine. You're the type of person that I would say, get a great cash back credit card. Again, still get something for your expenses, but for folks who love to travel, again, Yeah, I think that's a great question. Earning credit card points is something that I think is going to fundamentally change the way that you experience travel. So it's going to open up possibilities for you, either in terms of the frequency that you can travel. If you're used to taking one family trip a year, if you could actually take two family trips a year. Because points are now defraying the cost of that travel. What would that do just for your life or your experience? If you're someone like me who, you know, had only ever traveled economy, I mean, I cannot tell you the number of times I have flown long, long, long haul flights in the most economy of economy seats. Like, I have been in all of them, right? If you are someone who's, again, ever, only ever paid for basic economy because that's what's made sense for you, And you have any interest in flying a premium cabin, so business class, first class, especially long haul, you know, international flights. I seriously think that points make this so accessible to so many people. This type of travel that maybe you never thought. you would do. Even if you had a bunch of disposable income, maybe your preference is to put that money in your kids 529 plan, right? Or to pay down your mortgage or to pay off your student loans. Maybe you don't actually want to use those funds for travel, even if you love travel. Yeah. Points makes it so that you don't actually have to use it. You don't have to do that trade off, right? Like you can use your money to the things that are the most important to you in terms of your financial priorities. And then you can use your points to have experiences that you really never thought were going to be possible. And that to me is what is so beautiful about points. Because I don't think I would have ever flown business class or first class without them. I know for sure. I would not have taken my kids on 90 percent of the vacations that we've gone on because it's just really expensive. We travel during school breaks when everybody else is too. So I can use my points so that my kids get to have those experiences. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: And even like hotel rooms, it's not even just flights, but like some of the hotel rooms that we've talked about are amazing on points. I have saved tens and tens of thousands of dollars on hotel rooms. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: And that is one of the areas where points can be so useful. And this isn't just for people who do the majority of their travel domestically. So if that is what you do, that's great. You can use points for flights and hotels domestically. You can use them internationally. It's just that this can really, really elevate your travel experience for so many people. And I think there are so many of us where. Sometimes travel is just about like a fun trip for a weekend, but I think for so many people, travel is that and it's so much more. It's about, you know, maybe your family doesn't live in the same country as you and you want to be able to fly your parents to come visit you where they're not stuck, you know, traveling 18 hours in economy and you want to use your points to make them more comfortable, right? Or it's the, you want to surprise one of your kids with a graduation gift. You know, I mean, there's so many things that travel can do for us. And so that's why I think again, for folks who are sitting in a position where you're already spending money. You're in such a great position to earn a ton of points for the spend that you're already doing. And when you learn, again, you don't have to get the PhD level education in earning and using points. When you have kind of a fundamental knowledge of how these things work, the impact of them can be so incredibly significant.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. I, you know, I think that that's, that's really kind of my mission. My mission really for this podcast even is how can we leverage the decisions that we're already making. with strategic information. So I think about like what we're talking about here is how do you strategically utilize certain information with the spend you're already having or with the work I do. You people are already making food choices. All of us are eating already, right? So how can we use strategic information to become a fat burner to lose the weight that we want? Sometimes I think that we are under this impression where because it's been so hard or it's felt so overwhelming in the past that it has to stay that way. And I have not, I cannot tell you time and time again, the number one thing that is missing is strategic information and constrained decision making. It's, I think it's true here in what you're sharing and definitely true with, you know, with weight loss. So I just love that we are getting to have this conversation. I just love it. I think we all need to understand how it can be leveraged information. How can we be more savvy because we're making spends anyway, we're making these decisions anyway. How can we be more savvy? to have these experiences. I have one last question, then we can wrap it up. What does your mom think when, when you got that first credit card and you like went down all the credit card rabbit holes that you did? Like, did she get on board? I just like, or is she like, Oh my gosh, Damn it. I can't believe you did that. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: That is such a fascinating question. So part of it is actually don't know what happened. What she thinks in terms of, you know, when I got that card, you know, like I said, I was 31 years old. I was, you know, in fellowship at that point, my husband and I had been married, you know, for four years, we've been together for eight years. So I think as far as she was concerned, I was an adult, you know, like basically once I went off to college, I was an adult. And so she was the type of parent who wasn't ever really involved in any of my decisions. So I don't even think, I think what's likely is that. She probably never even knew when I ended up getting, you know, my own first credit card. So she certainly doesn't know that now that I have like 27 of them. But that was a personal example of the 27 credit card. You know, I think what, I think what she sees and truly, I think what she only ever wanted for me and my sister, was And I think this is true of a lot of parents, like, she just wanted us to be in a better position than her, right? And I think what she saw for me was that, you know, I pursued my educational dreams, that, you know, I was in a position where I was able to make more decisions, you know, than she was able to when she was a similar age. And I think the thing that she really likes now is that, I think she, I think she has no clue what I'm doing with credit card points, which is fine. Right? Like I don't think she understands any part of the world. You know, when I'm like, Oh, we're going to go here, we're going to go there. And I think more than anything, I think that she's just really excited. I think especially for, you know, her grandkids because we are able to do things, you know, my husband and I, for our children, that I think if she could have done for me and my sister, she would have loved to. And so I think more than anything, she's just really thrilled that we are having these experiences, you know, as adults, as parents, and that we're having these experiences with our kids. And she loves it too. When, you know, I use points to fly her out for visits in Idaho, you know, and again, you know, Domestic economy flights, you would think that like, you know, three or four hour flight from Idaho to Chicago wouldn't be that crazy to book and they're outrageously expensive. So very practically, you know, I use my points to fly my mom in for visits, you know, and so she definitely gets to see the benefit of that piece of it. So she does not understand, you know, the nooks and crannies of points, but I think that she's just really thrilled, you know, for the experiences that we're able to have.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: It's so good to also just, I love that you're sharing that because sometimes. We don't need to actually convince or, or teach our parents, or maybe like your partner is the one that's like, holding you back like that does happen. Right? Like I know with a sheet, she was like a little bit like, Oh, I don't know. And I was like, listen, listen, I want to handle it top to bottom. I'm going to educate myself. I'm going to empower myself with information. I'm going to leverage information to become savvy on this. And I think, you know, sometimes we feel this need to convince everyone around us that what we're doing makes sense. And this is just kind of an opportunity to. Like let, we can shut ourselves at that and just give ourselves permission to lean in, try it in a small way, give it, give it a little bit, go on an experiment, see how you like it. So I love that. Thank you so much for sharing everything today on the podcast. Tell us about how we can find you, your podcast, your Points Made Easy course. Because listen, friends, if you're listening to this and you just are getting bit by the credit card bug and this information bug, Devon is for you. Full of amazing, insightful information on this. So tell us how we can find you.

   

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: So you can find me online just at my website, which is just www.pointmetofirstclass.com/. So that's kind of my home on the internet, where if you just kind of want to learn a little bit more about this, you can go there. I also have a podcast called point me to first class. And this is one of my favorite things to do, because again, I think it's so wonderful to have access to just. Free information to be entertained by stories. And this is just a very, very low risk way to start dipping your toe in the water and saying, is this, this topic even interesting to me? You know, what are people doing with points or how complicated is it to really learn this? And so I break all of that down on the podcast. And so that's a great first place for people to start. And then, as you mentioned, for people who. Either have the experience of understanding that points can theoretically be really, really valuable for travel, but they don't actually want to have to figure it out all by themselves. They don't want to poke around the internet and have to piece things together, make mistakes without anybody there to help them or guide them. That is really why I created my points made easy course. So again, it's for anybody. Who really wants to learn how to turn their expenses into travel. And I walk you through like when you were saying what you really want is a streamlined kind of strategic linear approach to doing this. Like tell me the information I need to know to be able to book a trip. And if I want to learn extra stuff later, I can always make it more complicated. That's what points made easy is about. It's a three month online program where you get tons of hands on support from me. So I will teach you everything you need to know about how do you get set up with credit cards to earn points, help you pick the ones that are right for you. You don't actually need 27 credit cards like I have. You can do this amazingly with three or four different credit cards. And most importantly, like how do you turn those points into travel? So you don't do what I did initially, which was spend four times as many points as I needed for economy flights. So I walked you through all of those things inside of the Points Made Easy course. And again, you can find out more information about that just by going to my website. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I love it, Devon. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Guys, you have to go check her out. She's just full of information. I have felt so grateful. And it's not even just, I think number one, you really have validated my feeling of overwhelm. I'm like, I don't even know. Why does everybody else seem to have figured this out? And I really just love you have brought me down to earth. It's okay that you have not figured this out because I have a whole, I have a whole story around that, very dramatic story. And also I just know that I, You know, our whole trip last year to India was truly because of you. A hundred percent, I give you all the credit for helping me navigate that whole experience. And I want. More people that are listening to this podcast who I know are having personal spends to have those kinds of experiences. It was magical to go to India on a first class flight with my kids. I mean, it was just, it was just everything. It was lovely. And I want more people to have experiences like that just by leveraging things that are already available to us. So Devon, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Guys, go check her out and I will see you all next week. Bye. 

  Dr. Devon Gimbel: Thank you so much for having me. Bye everyone. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I hope you all enjoyed today's podcast conversation with Devon. Again, if you are brand new to her, or if you want to learn more about her, make sure you go and check out her podcast or her course. She has just really changed the trajectory of how I think about travel and how we think about leveraging, um, Points. And I think it's just so fascinating because I have always been someone that has had one credit card generally just growing up, but she just kind of opened my eyes to the two points she shared on today's podcast. Number one, I started to become a lot more aware of where I actually spent money, like where my, my family is having actual spend and having a credit card that leverages that spend. And then I think the second one for sure that felt overwhelming for me before I. Learn from her was how to really take the points that we are accumulating in our accounts and how to leverage it so that we get more travel and more experiences for our family. So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode and understand that it is possible with certain information to strategically leverage information. Decisions that we are already making. I hope you guys all have an amazing week and make sure you go and grab the body reset, private podcasts so that you can also start leveraging decisions around food that align with the body goal that you have as well. I will see you all next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast it's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant brain. If you want more resources or information from the show, head on over to theunstoppablemombrain.com.