Artificially Intelligent with Sam Maule and Maia Bittner

Unlocking the Mysteries of Credit Card Loyalty Programs And the Bilt Conundrum

• Sam Maule, Maia Bittner, Rachel Morrissey

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Ever wondered how credit card loyalty programs actually work and why some stand out more than others? Join us as we unravel the secrets behind these fascinating systems! Our episode kicks off with Maya Bittner and Sam Maul taking you on a nostalgic journey through the origins of loyalty programs. We highlight milestones from American Airlines' pioneering efforts in 1981 to Sam's amusing memories of Piggly Wiggly stamps. Maya passionately argues why the Chase Sapphire Reserve card is a game-changer in today's market, focusing on its Visa Infinite classification and higher interchange fees. Together, we navigate the complexities of how loyalty programs are implemented, right down to the nitty-gritty details of rewards calculations and the essential data elements involved.

As we transition to the deeper layers of transaction data, you'll get a comprehensive look at how credit card companies categorize each purchase you make, from merchant category codes to the elusive SKU-level data. We also dissect the profound impact these loyalty programs have on consumer behavior and financial models, spotlighting examples like Costco's transition from Amex to Citi. Lastly, we delve into Visa's strategic push to capture rent payments and discuss Built's innovative, though financially demanding, rewards program for rent payments via Wells Fargo. Tune in to understand the broader implications and strategic maneuvers behind these ubiquitous yet intricate loyalty programs.

Hosts: Sam Maule & Maia Bittner


Maia Bittner:

Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Artificially Intelligent. You know I'm Maia Bittner. Typically, I'm here as your FinTech intern. I love learning new things, gobbling up as much as I can as fast as possible, but today, me and my co-host, S sam Maule, we are turning the tables. Today, the interns are going to be the teachers and we are talking about credit card loyalty programs and giving you the rundown of everything. This is inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal article talking about the built partnership that Wells Fargo has, so we will touch on that, but first I think we're going to kind of start at the top. I don't know, S sam, you ready to have fun?

Sam Maule:

Yeah, I love topics like this. I was thinking about it and you know I was going back in my own history. So I actually started working with credit cards and loyalty programs back in 2004 when I joined TESUS so both here in the US and then moved to Europe and did a bunch over there too.

Maia Bittner:

So I have officially- I was in high school.

Sam Maule:

Yes, and that was a show everybody, thank you. Yeah, I mean it's been 20 years now.

Sam Maule:

Um, yeah, I mean it's been 20 years now um, crazy enough, and seeing different programs come up and you know um how loyalty programs have worked in conjunction with technology and mobile, I think is fascinating, and I really do. I think that because, God, if we don't have trivia it's not fun. Everybody. So, Sam, all in trivia, God, the dad thing. Do you know what is considered the first loyalty program? How do you like that? What was considered the first loyalty program?

Maia Bittner:

Ooh, the first loyalty program. I don't Normally, I got to say normally with the trivia questions have got a date involved and I want to go you didn't ask, but I want to go 80s for the first loyalty program and I don't know who had it or what it was.

Sam Maule:

That is beyond frustrating, because you got it right. Dang it. I believe it was 1981, american Airlines.

Maia Bittner:

Yeah, not surprised.

Sam Maule:

Yeah. So there you go, which I don't think is a shock for most of us, because I don't know anybody that flies that doesn't use the loyalty programs. I don't think there's an airline that exists that I don't have points with, but yeah, they were the first one to really introduce it from a car's perspective, points perspective back then, which I'm kind of surprised there wasn't. I mean, there was stuff before then. I'm really going to show my age.

Sam Maule:

If you're in the South, you know what piggly wiggly is. Um, if you're out west, you're laughing at that name. But piggly wiggly would be our grocery store down here in the south and you used to get piggly wiggly stamps and as you shopped you got physical reward stamps that you then put in booklets and I used to go to movies for free using piggly wiggly stamps. That was a thing, and actually around 1790s I think there was there was an american merchant in I believe it was new hampshire that used to give copper tokens to try to get people to come back and they could use those as rewards for checking in and that's, I think that's. Uh, it was called like shrewberry. It was in new ham Hampshire. There you go, dad trivia. That was considered the first real merchant loyalty program.

Maia Bittner:

We're not going to go that far back everybody.

Sam Maule:

Oh, my God.

Maia Bittner:

We already went back 20 years.

Sam Maule:

I don't think we want to go back more than that. I mean, maya, in your opinion, what do you think are some of the best loyalty programs in the US, and why would that be?

Maia Bittner:

I'm really curious. I think the best loyalty program is the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it's kind of hard to argue with that, I would agree.

Maia Bittner:

Yeah, and why that is. Here's why that is Chase Sapphire Reserve. So we talked about a little bit of this with the interchange episode. Right, there's different sort of classes of cards. So visa has their visa normal card, their visa signature card. The chase safari reserve is a class of card called the visa infinite card, and all of this varies by purchase size and mcc code and lots of other factors. Uh, often charges merchants a higher interchange fee than even an Amex, which is, you know, american Express, famously has the highest interchange fees for merchants, but the Visa Infinite is often even higher than that. So that's how these loyalty programs work they charge merchants to take the cards and then they give a portion of that back to the cardholder in terms of the reward.

Sam Maule:

I don't think some of our listeners will really understand how complex these loyalty programs can be when I moved back from the UK to the US around 2010 and moved to Atlanta and was working for TESUS Loyalty at that time, so their loyalty and prepaid office was based out of Atlanta and I ran the group that would do the implementations around the loyalty programs. The complexity that went into that when you were converting a loyalty program over from a cards perspective and how points were calculated, how they were redeemed Really complicated oh my God. It is complex the mapping that you do on your spend and redemption, and I mean it will.

Maia Bittner:

I had a lot of headaches. So part of this I understand really well. Part of it I have some questions for you about. So the part I understand really well right is the rewards calculation right? So credit cards they define which transactions earn what type of rewards and the only things they can use to do that are the data elements that they get in the auth stream, right? So we know it's stuff like MCC code.

Sam Maule:

Oh, let's geek just a little bit. I'm excited I think we've talked about level one, level two, level three, data before haven't we transaction?

Maia Bittner:

we should really talk about it now, though, yes, because you've mentioned amex for example.

Sam Maule:

But do you mind talking a little bit about what are the difference between level one, level two and level three data on a transaction, and I'll add in my two cents. I love this topic.

Maia Bittner:

It's kind of how rich is the data that the card networks have about that transaction? And so level one data is things like merchant category code, which there's a finite number of codes. All transactions are slotted into one of them. So there's one and it's a little bit random and kind of reminiscent of the time that merchant category codes were them. So there's one and it's a little bit random and kind of reminiscent of the time that merchant category codes were created. So, for example, american Airlines you mentioned they have their own MCC code. Automated fuel dispensers, so the gas pumps, there's one for that, and then it's a different one if you pay for your gas inside at the station.

Sam Maule:

That's a big deal. By the way, when that was coming out right, how did you pay at the actual pump as compared to going inside? And Lord, let's make it even more complicated. What if you're using tap to pay? Or I mean, there's just complications, everybody, on the handover of data and how you verify it.

Maia Bittner:

Did you verify with a signature or with a pin? Lots of data elements, level three transaction data people are very excited about because that includes what did you actually buy? So not just attributes about the store, but what did you know, like what did you purchase? So you might've seen? You can sometimes see like pieces of that level three data creeping in. Most famously, when you buy airline tickets, they usually include your departure airport and your destination airport and some other pieces about, like what actually- Multiple legs.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, if you're renting a car, where are you renting it from? Where are you dropping it off at?

Maia Bittner:

All of that detail shows up in the auth stream. It's not just $200 at Delta Airlines.

Sam Maule:

Because, I mean, the ultimate dream is to have SKU-level data.

Maia Bittner:

So now we're talking about.

Sam Maule:

Think about what the merchants have right when we're talking barcodes, for example. Sku level data is the dream.

Maia Bittner:

But in general credit cards don't have it.

Sam Maule:

Exactly.

Maia Bittner:

And that's why, when you see rewards right, the rewards are usually like oh, we will give you 3x rewards on travel and dining. They're trying to tie it as close as they can to the SKUs that you're actually buying, because that's what makes most sense to people. But they actually have to use these merchant category codes in most situations and they can't say you know, you get three X rewards on pretzels versus Oreos, where you only get one X rewards, because they don't know if you bought pretzels or Oreos, they just know that you're going to the grocery store.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, and that's I mean when you think about it. When we first started talking about this, we talked about American Airlines. Believe it or not, prior to the eighties, something like 95% of tickets that were bought were done through a travel agent. The airlines didn't know anything about you, right? And now you jump forward to you know. I remember I think it was the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times did an analysis of United's mileage program. They valued it at $22 billion, which is hilarious because United's market cap was only $10.6 billion. So think about that. Their loyalty program, that card program, was 2x what the entire airline's market cap was. This is a massive, highly oh my God, highly competitive space when it comes to banking and who you partner with when it comes to loyalty and reward points.

Maia Bittner:

So, Sam, my question for you I've never actually made a loyalty program myself.

Maia Bittner:

Like I said, I understand the technical details behind it and how you might craft it together, but when I think about coming up with a model for this, a financial model on how this is going to make sense, the biggest question I have is if you introduce a loyalty program, how does that change consumer behavior? Right, because you can look at the behavior of your cardholders and say how much do they spend at each of these different places and in each of these different ways. But if you start rewarding them for that, that's going to change. Do credit card companies? Are they able to model that and predict how spend is going to shift if they reward different categories? Or how do they even understand that?

Sam Maule:

Because they have to include that in order to understand if they're going to make money on it. That is a massive component when it comes to the bidding for these programs when they come up. And I'll give an example of this. If you recall Costco which, by the way, their membership program is Costco members are incredibly loyal to everybody. One of the reasons this is funny because Maia and I were talking about companies that are fantastic around loyalty from their members and everything, and Costco members are incredibly loyal to that company A lot to do with the return policy and how they do their goods and everything. But the hilarious part about Costco in 2023, 72% of its total income came from their membership program.

Maia Bittner:

I heard, all their profit is the membership and that they just sell everything at cost.

Sam Maule:

You got it that. And hot dogs because it's only, I think, $1.25 or $1.50. Got to love a Costco dog, everybody. That's the Detroit screaming out of Sam. Don't judge me, not even a kosher dog, don't even care. A good dog. But yeah, when Costco actually put their membership program up for bid for RFP, it was massive because they had been with Amex.

Maia Bittner:

They had been with Amex for years For years and Citi won that program.

Sam Maule:

And, funny enough, guess who was part of that conversion? Sam. All in that 20 years when he was a consultant, I worked with Citi on the conversion from Amex to Citi the equivalent of their thank you program and all the data mapping that went in there and I can 100% tell you, Maia, one of the key metrics went back to customer spend, customer loyalty and how do you frame up that program that?

Maia Bittner:

is huge.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it is a massive component.

Maia Bittner:

Thinking about it, you talk about it 100%.

Sam Maule:

Every bank will have their own algorithm on how they're coming up with those numbers, but they go under a not even a microscope, an electron tube, nuclear powered particle collider microscope to cut those numbers every which way. I remember, yeah, but it is huge because it gets back to, does it? The whole purpose is driving up customer spend, customer loyalty. Will they return? I mean, you go back to that initial story I was telling you. You know, in the 1700s in New Hampshire, where you know the storekeeper was handing out copper tokens, the whole idea of the exchange was you're going to come back, these are useless anywhere else, you can't use them. So it's that repeat behavior of getting in prepaid. The equivalent was do you reload the card? So in prepaid, that's great that you got a card, but that's not where the money is. The money is when you do a reload and reuse In loyalty. It is when do you come back into my store? When are you spending it there? So it's that behavior.

Maia Bittner:

Well, and very specifically every single. So with these rewards programs and credit cards, every single transaction has basically a different margin for the credit card company, right? So they get the interchange revenue for the transaction the issuer does and then they pay you out some rewards and the difference, right, is their margin. And so for some transactions and you know Chase Sapphire Reserve it pays out the highest on travel and dining. That's actually pretty easy for them to do because travel and dining pay the highest interchange rates and so they're making lots of revenue. They got high cost. It kind of works out.

Maia Bittner:

And then you look at stuff like groceries. So most grocery stores have extremely low interchange rates, so it's really hard to pay rewards on groceries and there's different variables like that. What credit cards really want is they want you to use them for the categories that they have the highest revenue on, but that they don't have to pay out those high rewards on right. And so they want you I mean, really they want you to use their card without thinking about it so that they scoop up some of those really high margin transactions and you're just using that card for everything.

Sam Maule:

And politely higher spend right.

Maia Bittner:

Yeah, just more spend.

Sam Maule:

I mean. This comes to simple math right the more you spend, the more likely it's going to be a while before you pay it off. Because what's the average number of credit cards for Americans? Seven, eight in a wallet. When we talk about top of wallet, we love credit cards here.

Maia Bittner:

We also have loyalty programs. $5,000 in debt or something like that on average, I think.

Sam Maule:

But we also love to game the system. I mean the points guy. I love that guy. How many times have I seen that seven foot six? I don't know how tall he is. Everyone's tall to me except I'm five seven. That dude is. I love him, I love seeing him on stage, I love reading his newsletters. He makes me laugh. And so it's this concept of how do you game the system to make it work which makes the Wells Fargo story with Bilt even more interesting.

Maia Bittner:

We teased with that at the opening of the show. It's so juicy.

Sam Maule:

Oh well, get into the juice. Maia, talk to us what happened here.

Maia Bittner:

Okay, built is a company that offers a couple of different products, right. So they offer a rent pay product that they sell to landlords to help facilitate rent payments in lots of ways, but one of, I think, the most thing they're most known for amongst consumers is the built credit card, which gives you rewards on rent. Now I started a company in the rent pay space, pinch. You earned a credit for paying your rent. It was reported to the credit bureaus and so everyone told me you know what I really want? I really want rewards on paying my rent. And I was like not possible. And then Bill started and everybody was like Maia see, like now I'll show you like it was such a great idea to earn rewards on rent. And I was like man, I really don't get how this works, and here's why I don't get how it works. So historically, you haven't really been able to use a credit card most of the time to pay your rent. The most common way that rent is paid in the United States is. Well, for a long time it was like check, it was cash, it was money order. It's not just not your credit card, but it was very analog systems. People use Zelle bank transfers Increasingly there is more acceptance of credit and debit cards, and here's why Visa and MasterCard, but really Visa.

Maia Bittner:

Visa wants the most transactions possible going over the Visa network. Anything they do to make that happen is a success for them. Anytime you're moving money, visa wants it to be happening over Visa-owned rails, even if it's not a high margin transaction for them. And so rent is a huge category that is not going over the Visa rails, and so Visa did what they had to do to get it over their rails, which is they said hey, if you guys will accept credit and debit cards for rent payments, if you guys will accept credit and debit cards for rent payments, we are going to charge you extremely low interchange rates. We're going to make it basically free to encourage landlords and property managers to accept cards. Now, often in the portals and stuff like that, I'll still charge them like a 3% fee. Right, so that it's not. But often if you're not paying a fee, it's because that landlord is not paying very much to Visa and that means that the card issuers make almost no money on these rent transactions because the interchange is so low.

Maia Bittner:

It's a deal that Visa cut because they want more volume over their network. They get paid a fee per transaction. So they just want as many transactions as possible. They're scooping up rent, they're scooping up groceries, they're scooping up anything that historically has it. People haven't wanted to use credit or debit cards on and yeah, so that's rent. So I always said it's not possible to get rewards on rent. The interchange, if any, like usually you're paying that 3% fee. If you don't even have to pay a fee, the interchange by the issuer is so low they can't afford to pay your rewards. And then Built is like a $3 billion company off of the idea that I've been saying is not possible to work for years and I've been looking like a real idiot.

Sam Maule:

I believe it's, and I mean I could be wrong, but I thought this was something like a 10-year deal with Wells Fargo that built it and, interestingly enough, the Wall Street Journal I think it was last week reported that Wells Fargo is losing about $10 million a month to sustain the program.

Maia Bittner:

I believe it. Wells Fargo said, hey, we're going to give you rewards even though we're not making interchange on this specific transaction. And they said, hey, we'll make it up on all of the rest of the card spend.

Sam Maule:

Well, that was the bet right. That's the bet, Because what the journal's reporting is what they really thought was. That's great. You got the card. You'll use it for rent.

Maia Bittner:

It's a loss, but you'll use it for others.

Sam Maule:

Right, we'll use it for other transactions. But the journal reported that only 15 to 25% of the dollars people spend on their card are being carried month to month, which means there's no interest fee revenue, which means that model that somebody had come up with. There's a key cell in that Excel spreadsheet that has a zero in it, which impacts numbers. Again, the journal said Wells had anticipated that 65% of the credit card purchase volume would be from expenses other than rent and they're not seeing it.

Maia Bittner:

Yep, you do have to do five transactions per month in order to get rewards on your rent, in order to qualify you see that occasionally. To qualify you see that occasionally I don't know my local credit union if you do 10 debit card transactions per month, I think you qualify for a higher interest rate on your checking account. So right, because they want you to be top of wallet. They're like you gotta be swiping that card and even if you're not top of wallet, they need some interchange revenue coming in to subsidize it. They thought that five would be enough and, to be honest, that was the measly answer that I got.

Maia Bittner:

So when people were like, how does built make it work? So first of all I was like this doesn't make any goddamn sense to me. But if I really stretch and see how can built make it work? How can they pay? It must be this five transactions thing that if you require someone to do five transactions on their card, they end up just using it by default for everything, and that Wells Fargo is getting tons of interchange revenue from all of these different transactions such that they can afford to pay the rewards on rent, and really it's a great customer acquisition tool. That was the only way that I was able to explain it.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, I mean it's interesting, I mean from the built standpoint.

Sam Maule:

I'm like you know, good job folks, Um, I don't know what else to say. There it's they, they targeted, I believe they call them Henry's which are not basically not Sam all. So if you look up Henry's and then you look me up, it's the opposite of me. So, young, um, you know, highly educated um, have a good income. But even the partners uh, the point partners that built one after they were like Alaska airline, Virgin Atlantic, Hyatt, SoulCycle I mean that kind of tells you, right, Um, what, what they were looking at when they were, when they were putting this program together, and you know, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't it a zero interest when they came out with this thing? It's just amazing. I mean, it's just that, again, there's when you build out a loyalty program you brought this up earlier it's the ecosystem that you build out. That's what's so important, right?

Sam Maule:

How do you get customers to one want to spend and want to use the card? I mean, I'll tell you, yeah, who want to do? I mean, honest to God, this gets overused so many times. But Starbucks, just, well done, right. I mean, keep it simple, simple, you know, load it up for you. We're making it easy for you. Just 25 bucks, push the button and we'll do the load. Thank you for the float and, oh my god, the amount of money that Starbucks makes, and not only thank you for the float because of right, interchange has a fixed fee component in addition to a variable fee that depends on the purchase amount.

Maia Bittner:

If they drive up that average order value, um from like five dollar latte to twenty five dollars at a time, they're paying less overall. And interchange to the cart networks um on a ratio. So, like all their other numbers are looking a bit good, accountants, happy, excel, spreadsheets, good again.

Sam Maule:

Uh, starbucks think you got over 40 million users. You, you know, and I think the formula that you mentioned earlier and I was a number that can't have McKenzie they'll tell you when you're doing a good loyalty program, you're going to boost annual revenue by about 15 to 25%. You know, for Starbucks, it's ridiculous. Think about Amazon. I mean, we're moving past cards. Now we're talking about people that own an ecosystem that put incredibly clever programs together, starbucks being one, amazon being the other. When they introduced Prime, I think it was back in 2005. I mean, we've got almost 200 million Americans, I think, on Prime. Now, I mean it is a powerhouse. I understand why fintechs look at these programs and go how do I tap into this?

Maia Bittner:

Right, and we've been talking about how they're looking to drive loyalty, looking to drive retention. But it's actually right. It's not just that. We think about the Chase Sapphire Reserve, we think about Amazon Prime and we think particularly about the built credit card with Wells Fargo. It's about driving new customer acquisition as well, and that's why I also think it's hard to understand. It's about driving new customer acquisition as well, and that's why I also think it's hard to understand. It's like, okay as Wells Fargo losing $10 million a year. Well, how much would they have paid to acquire these customers? Right, Because you've got to look at it comprehensively. It's not just the deal itself. Customer acquisition costs are really juicy.

Sam Maule:

Oh my God, CAC is.

Maia Bittner:

We're talking like $500 for these, henry, these high earners not yet rich. Well, you say this all the time.

Sam Maule:

Maia, when you look at a company, we do this all the time here.

Maia Bittner:

Chase is paying a lot of money for a Chase Sapphire Reserve customer.

Sam Maule:

I hear you ask this constantly when we're talking to startup founders. It's what's your revenue model? Right, and that's great. How are you making money? But then also Kac, how are you acquiring customers and what's that cost for you?

Maia Bittner:

I think they're assuming that they're just going to get customers in the door and that is the biggest cost for all these companies and they're looking at their rewards program. For how well does it sell right? Does it sell new customers? Do people sign up? And you got to say the Built Well's Fargo card got people to sign up right? Sure, did. They did incredibly well. Cash back on rent boom. Yep, people want it. Yeah, I mean their numbers.

Sam Maule:

their first year numbers were fantastic. I always do find that funny because of that geography bubble effect, and what I mean by that is when I first got going in FinTech I was in. London. So I was in London in 2008.

Sam Maule:

So you know if you go on the tube, all you're seeing are FinTech adverts. That's all you see. But New York, san Francisco, pretty much the same. But how do you stretch those when you're talking about customer acquisition and marketing and everything else to? You know, cedar Falls, iowa, to Texas, to Dallas, there's no mass transit, by the way, everybody let me help you out it's America. We drive cars and trucks and God knows what else, but that is a massive component tied back to your success metrics.

Sam Maule:

Right is customer acquisition, and so I agree with you when it comes to these loyalty programs and how they put them together. Just a huge, huge part of this, and that's why we've talked about this. That's why I'm bullish on like a Walmart, because the reality is they control the point of sale, they control the till, they control the line and you know what they can put in front of you. They did that with AMX and Bluebird for signage. They did that with well, I'm blanking out Green Dot and their partnership there right on the prepaid side, and you could do the same on loyalty. When you control this, amazon does it, but in a virtual space. So when you're online, you know the same with buy now, pay later when you go to spend. Can we split these payments up? Apple, good Lord, right the partnership.

Maia Bittner:

They just did with the firm.

Sam Maule:

It's everything. It's everything which gets back to pinch. Maia and can you make money on rent?

Maia Bittner:

Damn. Okay, Sam. So you know what I wish I had done, now that we're talking about it Looking back.

Maia Bittner:

So everyone was like I really want rewards on rent. And I was like not possible, because I knew too many things. I wish I had not known that the interchange rate was, whatever all this. I just like tangled myself up. I was like not possible.

Maia Bittner:

Okay, here's what a good founder would do. And somebody who's really in touch with customers, right, they would say hey, everybody is telling me that they want rewards on rent. Right, there's so much organic consumer demand for this and that is so valuable. How can I come up with a way to give people rewards on rent? These guys I mean Bill negotiated a hell of a deal with Wells Fargo. But even if they didn't, even if they were losing money through a way, right, it's like boom, that's your way of acquiring customers.

Maia Bittner:

You might be losing money on the rent rewards, but that's money that you're saving not having to buy ads on the tube in London, right? Because people are organically thinking of this idea. That means they're probably organically Googling how do I earn rewards on my rent? They're talking to each other about it. If they get rewards on their rent, they tell their friends hey, man, you gotta get in on this, you got to get in on this, like if people are excited about it, that means you've got much cheaper customer acquisition, and that is such a huge component of building a successful business.

Maia Bittner:

I wish I had approached it that way and said, hey, there's clearly a ton of demand for this, just make it work right. Like the first idea of how to do it. On the face of it, like the economics aren't great. But figure it out Like what if your customer acquisition cost is zero? What if you're top of wallet? What if you get them to do these other transactions on their cards? What if you use this to sell landlords into your SaaS platform? You know, figure it out.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it's gonna and it's morphing. Let's look out a couple of years. This is going to morph to. You talked about top of wallet. It's going to. This is going to morph into how does your AI talk to my AI? Going to. This is going to morph into how does your AI talk to my AI? Yes, how does it figure out? How do I maximize my spend? I got to spend the money. Where am I spending it, who am I spending it with and how am I doing that? And I think built has kind of proven that, that that group of customers that they went after are pretty savvy right.

Sam Maule:

And and actually yeah, they're savvy and the reality is they don't want to carry too much debt because of you know what has occurred in their lifetime, and I think that's going to become more and more of the behavior, which is you know, how do I maximize the dollars I have to spend? How do I get the most out of my book? That's nothing new. That goes back to copper tokens in 17,. Whatever, it was New Hampshire right. We're just doing it now with phones. And you know somebody in Scarlett Johansson's voice.

Maia Bittner:

But on that note on that note.

Sam Maule:

We can wrap up, because unfortunately, you and I could do this all day. I love this topic, god. I love this topic. It is way too much fun.

Maia Bittner:

I just feel so much better knowing that somebody is losing money on this built deal. I knew it wasn't a good business.

Sam Maule:

That's a t-shirt. Everybody Everybody thanks for listening this week. Go out and give us a review. We'd appreciate it. Reach out to Maia and I you know how to reach out to us by now, I hope. Reach out to us. Give us ideas for a show. We want to thank you for listening. We want to thank Money 2020.

Maia Bittner:

It's always fun being part of their network and everybody. We will talk to you next week. See you next week.