 Hi, so the video today is a bit of a cop-out because, as you can see, my surrounding is different right now. We recently moved to the US, so I'm falling a bit behind on my videos. But what you'll get for me is two videos about my travel, the travel itself that I did from Switzerland over here. And the main reason for this is because the way I travel is kind of unique. So the things that I do, the things that I'm able to do with like points and miles and stuff are things that probably someone who works in an office 9 to 5 couldn't really do. But being able to work as a freelancer, you have that flexibility. And anyway, I'll get into the details. There'll be two videos. The first video will be me talking about what exactly I do and how I go about, you know, using my points and my travel and all that. And the second video will be the travel itself. So yeah, that's about it. I'll be quiet now and get on with the first video, which is the one you'll see now. And then the second video, I'm almost done. I'm hoping to have the second video by tomorrow. And that's pretty much it. Tomorrow, I'm flying from Milan to Charleston, basically from Milan to Newark, Newark to Charleston. And so I wanted to show how I travel, how a freelancer travels. Because the way that a freelancer lives is very different from how someone who works in an office in 9 to 5 lives. And I realized that when, because I used to work in an office, I worked at a bank here, and then I worked in a market research agency. I worked in real estate. So I realized pretty quickly that what I really liked about this lifestyle was that I could be location independent. I could work from anywhere. I could work from here. I could work from a coffee shop, or I could work from a different country or a different continent. Anywhere that there is a Wi-Fi connection, I can get work done and I can earn money. And so I decided, okay, that's what I'm going to concentrate on. I want to concentrate on travel and being able to do as much of it as I can. Because I enjoy travel. I like it and I want to do more of it. And not everyone's like this, by the way. Some people, I know plenty of freelancers who freelance because they want to be able to spend more time with their family. They want to be able to dictate their own hours so they can be there for their family moments. There are other people who, you know, I have a friend who spends half his day working and half his day surfing. He lived, they lived, I haven't talked to him in a while, but he lived in Thailand and basically did that. Anyway, for me it was travel. That's what I wanted to concentrate on once I got to a certain level. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to take this seriously. Now, I'd always heard about these people who, you know, these that have a good jillion miles and travel all over the place for free and this, that and the other. And I got really curious about that. So I wanted to start looking into it. And to start following some of these people, and I still do now, I can't remember the names. I remember one is called One Mile At A Time. But if you go to these FlyerTalk forums, like FlyerTalk is a place where you find a lot of people who know this stuff and then you'll find other blogs and people like. So I follow these blogs and, you know, I try to take them seriously because one thing about travel is that you have to fly and planes cost money, right? Hotels cost money. Every time I travel, I'm going to stay in a hotel in a B&B, in an Airbnb, something like that. When I travel, I take planes, trains, automobiles, all that costs money. Now while I'm earning a living, I'm not, they're definitely people who earn more than I do from freelancing. On the other hand, I do want to be able to travel a lot. And so I need good deals for that. And I need to try to figure that part out. Anyway, long story short, or long story, still kind of long, these blogs have, you know, one of them a couple years back told me about this credit card by United that gave you, I can't remember, 90,000, 100,000 miles. If you've spent 3000 bucks in the first three months, right? And, and then another X number of miles, if you add someone else on it. So I applied for this, got the credit card, added my wife on it so I could get the extra miles. A quick side note, spending the money doesn't mean saying, okay, I need to spend two 3000 bucks, so I'm going to go in a shopping spree just so I can get the miles. Because quite frankly, that's stupid. What you need to do, my advice will be to spend money you're going to spend already. For me, it was my apartment fees. I have these apartment fees, condominium fees, whatever, that I need to pay every month. And what I did was I paid a year's worth all at one, all in one go. That way I was able to spend the money. Now this is money I was going to spend anyway. So that's why it kind of works out. And in the meantime, I get these 90,000 miles or whatever it was. Actually, it doesn't have any numbers. So that's what the card looks like. So in conclusion, I was able to get these miles and I'm able to use these miles to travel from Milan to Charleston. And so I'm flying there for free. I'm sorry, I'm spending like 50 bucks for, you know, there's that airport tax and fee and stuff like that, which you can't get out of. But basically, I'm flying there for 50 bucks. Second point, I'm leaving tomorrow morning, as I said, now my flight's at 11 something tomorrow morning. So I'm not that far from Milan. I think I'm about an hour away, something like that. So I could wake up early, get all the stuff ready and then leave. But I don't like doing that. So I wanted to spend the night in a hotel. Once again, I don't have cash to burn all over the place. So how do I do it? And there it will actually, it's the same idea, but with hotel points, there was another deal. And I pretty much did the exact same thing for hotel points. The main difference is I use this card for all my expenses. Now, anything I can put on a credit card, I put it on that. This includes, yeah, any rent or car payments or cell phone bills or anything that I can put on a credit card, I put it on there. This is money, A, that I would spend anyway. B, I might as well get points from it if I do so. And C, I obviously pay off my credit card in full every month because you don't want to be paying interest on that stuff. That doesn't make any sense. Now I have a hotel in that I can stay in for free in Milan, the Moxie Hotel. It's kind of this new agey kind of hipster, cool hotel. Also because I'm leaving here, so I'm going to have to, you know, before I leave, I have to wash the sheets, throw away the trash, do all that stuff. I'm putting this apartment up on Airbnb later. So, you know, I need to leave it nice and clean. I'd rather do, you know, take my time doing that the day before rather than doing that the morning of and being completely rushed. So these are just two points that I probably went on and on and on about dealing with a hotel and dealing with a flight. So every time I fly or every time I stay in a hotel, I'm either using points or I'm getting points. Just briefly, one more point. I'm not obviously a financial advisor, financial guru, whatever they're called these days. I'm just, well, I'm a freelance translator. That's what I do. But I just wanted to share what I am doing with, you know, my miles and my points because I find it quite interesting. It works for me and hopefully you can find it interesting. Obviously, I'm not advising to do one thing or the other. I'm not saying follow these steps or that or whatever. You don't want to be taking advice from me in finance. I'm just sharing my experience and I'm hoping you can find that useful. It's going to be different for everyone. So, you know, take it all with a grain of salt.