McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

by Robert McGarvey

The target is plain: $695. That is the new annual fee for American Express Platinum. That’s up from $550. Is it worth it?

Sure, Amex Plat comes with lots of perks. But there also are lots of perks I will never use. Such as elite status with Avis, Hertz and National. I do not recall the last time I rented a car and have no interest in this. I do have elite status with Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton via the Plat card but, honestly, all I’ve gotten from that is free wifi at a few Hiltons and that was years back. So I count that as zero value too.

Ditto Equinox membership credits – $300 potentially., But there is no Equinox in Phoenix and even if there were I wouldn’t use it.

WalMart+ credit – $12.95 per month. $155 total. But zero value to me since I do not belong and see no reason to since I do pay for Amazon Prime and don’t want to switch to WalMart where I rarely shop.

There are other perks I can scoff at but enough of that. Where are my real benefits of holding Amex Plat?

Here’s a fast list:

$20/monthly digital credit. Reimburses a NYTimes subscription – actual savings $18.07 monthly, $216.84 annually

$200/yr Uber credit. $15/month $35 in December. I use it all, nowadays on Uber Eats.

$100 credit on Saks Fifth Ave purchases

Cellphone damage protection – I value this at $200, covering two phones.

Airline fee credit $200 on Delta this year. I have used $110 so far in 2022, will use the remainder by year end.

Global Entry $100 – a value of $20 yearly over five years.

Total projected savings: $936.84

But wait, there’s more.

Amex pegs a guest pass at $50 for Centurion Lounge access and already I have one visit this year. Priority Pass lounge access also is in this mix and so far I haven’t used it in 2022 but I will. For now I claim no value for it but it will get used, probably in Madrid where it wins entry to a very pleasant lounge. Plat also includes access to Plaza Premium lounges which, again, I have not yet used this year abut may well. I’ll tote up that value when I do.

There’s also a $200 Amex hotel credit I will almost certainly use in Portugal and Madrid later this year.

So add those amounts and the new total perks is $1186.84.

There doubtless will be more Centurion visits. The full value will be well over $1300.

Now add in the cost of a spouse’s card fee: $175. Already covered with a free Clear membership for her ($179 value). Plus she will get multiple Centurion visits. No net cost.

And I may decide to take a free Clear membership myself. Initially I had no interest but, recently at PHX, there was a long line at TSA Pre, no line at Clear and, yeah, I started rethinking, That would tack another $179 on my total savings.

By now you may be pondering – I had pondered same myself – am I putting in a lot of work tracking and cashing in these Amex Plat perks? I had feared it would take lots of time to monitor the ever changing list of Amex Plat deals and discounts – I see around 100 whenever I call up Amex Offers – but this really takes little time. Mainly because I have zero interest in most of the offers such as 6% back on purchases at LookFantastic, 3% back at Maunces, 4% back at Francesca’s, and, well, dozens more meaningless to me offers.

Frankly I don’t much look anymore at the Amex Offers because I know I won’t find much for me. I see that 22 of my offers are expiring soon so I will glance at the new list in a few weeks and that will take just minutes.

I have my roster of set discounts – Uber, cellphone damage protection, digital credit, etc. — which will stay in place until Amex withdraws the offers. As long as most of these offers remain I am in the black with Amex Plat. It actually pays me money to keep it. Sure, I wince at a $695 annually fee – for a freakin’ credit card! – but when it puts money in my pocket, what’s the problem?

Do your own math. You may also find Amex Plat is cashflow positive. And that makes it a no brainer.

 It’s called Array for good reason.  That’s because this fintech offers an arsenal — ok, an array – of credit score tools such as a a credit score, a credit score simulator (what happens if you pay off that mortgage?), three bureau credit scores (they do differ), dark web monitoring and more.

Credit unions that sign up for the Array services can pick and choose what tools they want to offer.

Isn’t it simpler – and cheaper – just to point members to Credit Karma?

You bet. But why don’t you just tell them to apply for a loan there, too, because Credit Karma makes its money by funneling users into financial products. Products that aren’t yours.

Now do we have your attention?

In this podcast, Laura Trujillo – call her Lo – director of credit union sales at Array – tells why you want to know about Array and why your members will be eager to use the tools.

You want more member visits to your site and your mobile app? You want sticky tools?  Then you probably want credit score tools because many frequently check their credit score, especially if they are dreaming about a new home or rental or maybe a new car and who isn’t these days? Is your credit score high enough to qualify? Don’t guess, know. Use the Array tools at your credit union – and get loan or mortgage there too.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

On Saturday I logged into Delta Air and, after checking flights, hopped into my Amex account, transferred 244,000 points, then spent those SkyMiles on two tickets to Spain six months down the line

Why the hurry?  Why didn’t I wait?

Just coincidentally, the next day’s New York Times featured a lead travel story headlined: The Best Time to Use Your Airline Miles? Now.

Yep. The reasons are powerful for emptying out your airline rewards stashes. But I also was just taking my own advice: If you have miles, burn ’em. Soon.

Listen up: miles are a fast deteriorating asset, especially nowadays with sky rocketing petroleum prices and massive route uncertainties.

As for the latter, Russia is a huge country by land mass – 11% of the globe, almost twice as big as the U.S.  As airlines rush to route outside Russian air corridors, who knows how many flights will be canceled? For how long?

Meantime, our points stashes are growing. In the pandemic we used credit cards that generated points but many of us traveled much less, meaning we did not burn points on travels.  (Yes, I am an exception.  In fall 2021 I used a few hundred thousand Amex points to buy Delta tix to Spain where I walked 150 miles of the Camino.  But that was atypical.)

Most of us are sitting on mountains of points.  Per Value Penguin, “In 2020, customers of five key airline loyalty programs earned about half the miles they did the year before, while only redeeming about one-tenth of the miles they had earned.”

Value Penguin goes on: “The U.S.’ five most valuable airline loyalty programs — Delta Air Lines’ SkyMiles, American Airlines’ AAdvantage, United Airlines’ MileagePlus, Southwest Airlines’ Rapid Rewards and JetBlue’s TrueBlue — ended 2020 with a combined $27.5 billion in rewards program liabilities, according to a new ValuePenguin study that examined annual filings.”

So what? Here’s why these riches are important: The masters of the currency (the big five carriers) almost certainly will devalue them.  Said Matt Schultz, Value Penguin chief credit analyst: “Ultimately, this glut of miles might end up leading to more devaluation. That would help airlines as they continue to try to recover financially from the devastation wrought by the pandemic, but it would not be great news for consumers.”

You bet, not great news at all. We are living in what may soon resemble a Weimar Republic of currency devaluation where money received at breakfast was worth substantially less by dinner so smart people bought useful stuff as soon as money hit their hands, just because a pair of shoes or a bottle of beer would hold value even if the currency couldn’t.

Expect similar with rewards miles.

I pat myself on the back for spending 244,000 Amex points on Saturday because I had wide choice of flights as well as a wide choice of seats.  Yeah, I grumble at the value I received – roughly a penny a point when converted into SkyMiles – but who knows what I would have gotten had I waited until the summer.

And who knows what choices would have been open to me.

Listen up: even with the Ukraine war and its disruption of a significant slice of air travel (as well as triggering understandable unease about taking flights to central Europe) there will be a devaluation of airline miles, just so carriers can reduce the liabilities on their books.  Rising award costs also may prompt some of us to spend cash instead – I know I did the math before deciding burning points was the wiser course – and, definitely, the carriers want to up cashflow and profits so that they seem more desirable investments.

But spending money is not the right move, not in 2022.

Burn your points. Now.

Right now, my miles stash at Delta, AA, United and Amex amounts to under 25,000 – and I am plotting a use of most of those miles (in an Amex account) as I type. My hope is to finish 2022 with under 10,000 miles in all accounts.

We are all living in a Weimar Republic of airline rewards. Pflücke Den Tag.

 Take a guess: how many of your members earn income from the Gig Economy? 

That can mean anything from an Uber driver, doing DoorDash deliveries, working as a realtor, or creating podcasts.

Guesses run from 25% to over 40% of your members get some money that results in a 1099 form and, therefore, they very much need an easy way to track tax deductible expenses.

Enter Hurdlr, an app that automates expense tracking – including mileage.  That means more Gig workers can deduct more expenses and pay less taxes.  Legally.

Hurdlr’s aim is to take the sweat and heavy lifting our of expense tracking for gig workers, said Raj Bhaskar, CEO of Hurdlr.

By the company’s estimate it has saved users over $300 million in taxes

What does this have to do with your credit union?

Hurdlr is available directly to consumers – there’s even a free version.

But now Hurdlr wants to help credit unions make the app available to their members – and that may help bring in new members who suddenly see that your credit union is actively deploying tools for gig workers.

Sound good?

Listen up to this interview with Bhaskar.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

 Time travel back 20 years. Imagine going into a credit union or bank and asking for a personal loan for $500.  

Reality: unless you are a very established member/customer you would be shown the door.  Empty handed.  That’s because, in those days, there was no way to profitably make that loan.  

$50,000? Sure.

But $500 for some emergency dental work? Nah.

But now we are in 2022 and, suddenly, fast, inexpensive loan underwriting is a reality as is loan processing. Enter Quilo, a startup co-founded by Don Shafer, well known as a co founder of Kasasa  (click here to hear CU2.0 Podcast #23 on Kasasa).

Quilo’s business is making quick instalment loans to credit union members where the member chooses the payback timetable that works best for him/her.

In most cases, too, the terms are more favorable than buying over time on a credit card.

Loan decisioning also is very fast and loans can be offered on credit as well as debit transactions.

Quilo’s business model is direct to credit unions and community banks. 

The company also plans to help participating credit unions market the availability of Quilo financing to merchants in their community who will be encouraged to make their customers aware of this opportunity.

Sound good? The other guest in this podcast is Joe Arnold, CEO of the $500 million Carter Credit Union in northern Louisiana. Arnold says he wants to offer Quilo to both his members and merchants in his community. He also indicates he believes Quilo will help bring new members into Carter. That means it will help solve two concerns: the need for new members and putting Carter deposits profitably to work.

This is the fourth and last quick podcast from the recent CU2VIP-Live event that brought together perhaps three dozen credit union and fintech leaders. The conversation with Armstrong and Shafer that you hear in this podcast is representative of the kinds of conversations that participants enjoyed over two and one-half days.

Wish you’d been there? Take heart. A follow up event is planned for late summer/early fall. Stay tuned.

And…listen up.

On Tuesday – five days after returning from a four day maskless event where I flew on full planes and navigated jammed airports – I popped open the free US government Covid-19 test kit, did the nasal swab, waited 15 minutes and…negative.

I did not have Covid.

But I do have sniffles and a cough which is what prompted the test.

I did have Covid two years ago and mainly I remember a high fever. This time I did not have a fever and, yes, along the way I had bought an instant read thermometer which I put away maybe six months ago when I got boosted but you betcha, I dug that out of a drawer not long after getting home.

What is wrong with me?

Call it two years of fretting about Covid-19.

Probably I have a minor, run of the mill cold or cough.

But here’s the deal: Travel brings out our inner Covid worries.

How could it not?

Yes. I traveled to Spain early fall but that was a different time, different rules. Only vaccinated Americans could gain entry to Spain. Planes were half full. Mask compliance everywhere was high. Even outdoors in small towns in northern Spain.

On this February trip, mask compliance in airports – and they were full – was high. But the airports were stuffed.

Side note: at Sky Harbor in Phoenix there was a very long TSA Pre line, probably 50 of us. There was nobody in the adjacent Clear line, except for three or four Clear employees. I found myself wondering if I should get free Clear with my Amex Plat card. I had decided it was unnecessary. Maybe it’s time for a rethink?

On the planes, there also was high – probably universal – mask compliance. There certainly were no incidents. The American Airlines flight crew seemed amiable, relaxed. Sure, we all see the many stories about drunken anti mask nutters – even nuttier Senators who oppose a shared Do Not Fly list – but there were no signs of disruption on my flights. In fact they were on time, hassle free, nothing to complain about.

At the event I attended – a gathering of maybe three dozen credit union executives and fintech entrepreneurs – there was no wearing of masks. But the room was spacious, there was distance in seating, and if I had to guess I’d say the overwhelming majority of attendees were like me, fully vaccinated and boosted.

Offsite dinners in crowded restaurants set off small alarm bells in my brain. Do these people look boosted? What does a boosted person look like, exactly? And of course between munching food and swilling wine there’s no mask wearing anyway. File restaurant dining as a risk in my mind. But you gotta eat. So….

Taxis to/from the event hotel: Masked drivers, no worries on my part.

Lightrail to/from Sky Harbor in Phoenix where I live: full cars, SRO, but good mask compliance. Not ideal but no loud warning buzzers in my head.

So why did I become concerned about my health pretty much as soon as I returned home? Know that I have zero history of hypochondria.

For one, I did have a sniffle and a minor cough. And you know what? I recorded a conversation I had at the event with two experts and both had sniffles. I know because I heard it on the tape as I did an edit before publishing (of course I took out the sniffles).

But these were rather clearly oldfashioned trivial cold sniffles.

And yet my mind dove deep into Covid worries.

My guess is that most of us will be doing this for some months to come. Years? I hope not. But I will say that for as long as I have flown a lot, I have accepted that once or twice every winter I would get a cold and it would be no big deal, it wouldn’t even cost me any lost work days. A box of OTC cold medicine, maybe a bag of lozenges, some Kleenex and I was geared up for the season.

Fortunately, as my mind meandered through its Covid worries, I remembered that I had a box of CVS cold/cough meds, some Ricola, and some tissues. Cold handled.

The other big takeway from this trip for me is that suddenly I found myself having to remember how to travel. What do I need to take out of my pockets at the TSA check (basically everything). where’s my boarding pass (in the app of course). how much time before boarding do I need to arrive at the airport? Suddenly things that I did on auto pilot required thought.

It was as though I were 24 again and starting a life that would involve significant travel – but at 24 I had been on a plane exactly twice before and had never checked myself into a hotel. It was all new, different.

And so it is again now.

 Build a fintech from the ground up with security in mind – especially and crucially if the fintech wants to work with credit unions.

That is the one sentence takeaway from this 20 minute conversation with Shane Butcher, director of CISO Services of CUSO Ongoing Operations (and a past CU2.0 Podcast guest, episode 85), and Gary Jeter, chief technology officer at Trustone Financial Credit Union.

At credit unions – and the federal regulator – security is a non negotiable must have.

Along the way you will also hear about the differences between CIOs and CTOs, where a CISO resides in a credit union (and why), and – listen closely – Jeter tosses out a fascinating idea for a newstyle 21st century safe deposit box that is there for data protection and, he suggests, it just might bring in revenues down the line.

Right there is what made the CU2VIP event special – clever ideas just pop up if you are listening for them.

Listen up.

 Money talks.

Fintechs are hungry for money.

Ray Crouse, CEO of Parsons Federal Credit Union – and a CU 2.0 Podcast veteran (episode link here) – talked in detail at the CU2VIP-Live event about how credit unions and fintechs both can harness the money raising ability of CUSOs, credit union service organizations.

Ray, by the way, is also chair of the board of NACUSO, the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations.

Parsons, incidentally, is not a huge credit union. It has assets of around $265 million – but Crouse has found a few million dollars that will get invested in CUSOs.

Why? In this short podcast he tells why he sees CUSOs as crucial to credit unions today, maybe especially today when many are looking for new income sources.

Consider this all you wanted to know about CUSOs and credit unions but didn’t know who to ask.

Listen up.

 The inaugural CU2VIP-Live event will become a Woodstock like meeting in this sense: yes, hundreds of thousands went to Woodstock but if you  asked for a show of hands of those who were there be ready to count well into the millions.

Five years from now many will say, yes, I was there at the first CU2VIP-Live event.

We were actually there and what you will be hearing this week are snippets of short talks with participants – who also were there.

The first episode: Martin Walker with NextLevel Ventures with its $250 million-plus venture fund for investments in fintech oriented CUSOs that will bring next gen tech to the credit union industry.

The big idea: to stay competitive with mega banks and fintechs credit unions have to up their technology game.

The better idea: by investing in early stage fintechs credit unions can get a sizable jump on the market and just maybe will gain competitive advantages.

Sound good?

You bet.

Keep listening and you will also hear why Walker attended CU2VIP-Live and what he got out of it.

Listen up.

Boring. Old. Anachronistic.

Are those the words that come to mind when you think of calculators?

Guess what: maybe those adjectives apply to the calculators at your financial institution’s website…but that is not how Chase Neinken, a co-founder of fintech Chimney, sees them.

That’s because Chimney is in the business of creating calculators that engage members in looking at their finances in new ways.

Chew on the company’s mantra: Engage more customers. Fund more loans.

You know you now want to know more about Chimney.

This podcast will be the short course. Then go to the website – link in the show notes – click into the Chimney website and you will find some 30 templates that are there to try for free.

As in: at no cost.

Neinken in the podcast also reveals that the typical Chimney FI customer is billed under $1000 monthly. That’s for 10 calculators.  Fees are not based on institution size or number of members. And there is no minimum contract, no need for any time commitment.

You understand calculators. We all do. But the Chimney message is that there is a new breed of calculators that you won’t typically find on a credit union website but your members will find them at fintechs such as Nerd Wallet.

Can that member be won back?

Neinken says sure, with Chimney’s calculators.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto