Christo: Welcome back to Basic Bananas TV! In this tip, I want to share what we do around expenses in the business.

So basically, it‘s around using credit cards so that you get points. Because if you‘re spending money through your business which you would be, every business has a lot of expenses, sometimes too many, and basically what you want to do is get strict on this.

A few years back, we‘re running for many years and in different businesses. As we‘re running, some expenses will go on a credit card and a lot of them will be transferred to payments, or even our bookkeeper will just transfer them. But we got strict on every expense, basically. It goes on a credit card unless the supplier doesn‘t have a credit card option. So, the bookkeeper knows to use this credit card as a priority then this credit card next because then you collect a lot of points which you can use for business travel, you could use for accommodation, you can use for on holidays, basically.

If you‘re spending even $10,000 a month in bills or even if it‘s just $5000, I bet a lot of you watching are likely to spend a lot more. You might spend $200,000 in expenses per month, that‘s a return trip to Europe every month that you could be getting for free out of those points. This probably is a business class return trip, actually. It‘s about $129,000 for return in the economy to Europe now. So the way it goes is because a lot of cards, too, will give you double points for certain expenses, double, even triple, even higher. Not just for things like paying for travel on the cards, like everything. The preferred cards we‘re using at the moment, it will vary depending or your circumstances, and of course the spend that you have as well and of course, the banks do their own check criteria. But we use an AmEx as a priority. So there‘s like a business platinum AmEx and then we use a Citibank which is a Citi platinum.

Now, depending on the cards, whatever they are, just get started. But just be strict on getting clean on that card. We just use that one for everything or that one in certain supplies. The only thing to watch out is if they do charge a fee because people get concerned about, “oh, but I‘ll pay an extra 1% when I use a card if it‘s AmEx, for example. However, you‘re likely to get 2 or 3 times the points by using AmEx. So what that would mean is if you spend a $10,000, pay a $10,000 bill, you‘ll likely get 20,000 points out of that or maybe even 30,000 points. That‘s already half a trip to the States. Like a big long-haul flight you‘ve just got for free. However, the bill, the extra 1% fee would have only been maybe $100. So keep in mind, it‘s a bigger return. Obviously, if the fees are up around 3% or higher, then I‘ll tend to go or let‘s say then use a visa, or transfer for something stupid like a 3.5% fee. I wouldn‘t go for it.

But you get the idea. Everything and most supplies will be under that, but you‘re under 2% in terms of their fee to use a credit card. So a great little tip for you. We do it a lot. We get a lot of travel out of it. We get a lot of business travel out of it, we get a lot of events around the world using points often in business class and it‘s totally free just because we‘re putting the bills through on the cards.

You got questions about it? Feel free to email through to [email protected]. Check out with the card options for yourself. Any comments on social media, feel free to ask us any questions and we‘ll look after you as best we can on whatever channel you message us on. So until next time, keep creating ripple effects of awesomeness and we‘ll see you on the next episode. Bye for now.