Mastering Cash Flow: Tracking Spending to Boost Savings and 10+ Hacks to Spend Less

00:00:00.000 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:05.300 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I've been tracking my spending for years, trying to optimize my expenses in every category to save money without having to make big sacrifices.

00:00:14.340 | So I am so excited to share everything I've learned, including the best software to make this process easy, how to set everything up and avoid some common pitfalls, as well as all my tips and tactics for saving money across every category of spending.

00:00:27.980 | So if you want to understand your spending, be more intentional about where your money goes, and ultimately save some money along the way, I think you'll love this episode.

00:00:36.780 | So let's jump in right after this.

00:00:38.820 | So first, let's talk about budgeting, cash flow, and why this even is something you might want to do.

00:00:48.580 | It seems like everyone I know tracks their account balances to some extent, whether that's individually, how much is in checking or savings or their investment accounts,

00:00:57.220 | or more often than not, it's usually summed up to a number called net worth, where they're tracking how much they have and how it's growing over time.

00:01:05.120 | And a lot of people I know, know one of those two numbers offhand.

00:01:08.560 | And I'm actually going to do an entire future episode on this topic, how you track it, project it, and all that kind of stuff.

00:01:14.440 | And I think it'd be really interesting.

00:01:16.140 | But while a lot of people know their net worth, I find that a lot fewer people know how much money they're actually spending each month, which is so important.

00:01:24.060 | Because without that number, it's really hard to make any projection or forecast about how your net worth might go up or down every month or year.

00:01:32.320 | Also, when you understand how much you're spending, you can be so much more intentional about where you spend.

00:01:38.160 | And you can learn a lot and honestly save money.

00:01:40.660 | Just by seeing where we spend money and tracking things, I'm learning a lot and actually making changes.

00:01:45.540 | So let me go back to when I first started doing this.

00:01:48.340 | A long time ago, Mint launched and I used it to link a few accounts and start tracking all my expenses.

00:01:53.820 | But very quickly it died.

00:01:55.980 | The categorization was so terrible that everything seemed wrong and it was really tedious.

00:02:01.180 | About five or six years ago, I started doing this again, but in a little bit of a different way.

00:02:05.960 | So at first it was just high level.

00:02:07.760 | I would make a spreadsheet for the purposes of trying to figure out how much our net worth would change each year, where I outlined all the fixed expenses and about how much I thought I'd be spending on a monthly basis on everything else.

00:02:19.100 | It was good to get a sense of, oh, maybe I'm going to save this much, but I wasn't really sure if it was in any way, shape or form true.

00:02:26.240 | So I went back to my old Mint account and I linked some accounts and I started asking Amy if she could help.

00:02:32.860 | And every year for two years in a row, we would go through at the end of the year and try our best to categorize thousands of transactions all at once.

00:02:41.120 | It was a painful process.

00:02:42.900 | It wasn't very intentional.

00:02:44.460 | And honestly, by the end, it didn't feel good at all.

00:02:46.840 | So we gave up on it very quickly.

00:02:48.960 | In the last couple of years, as we've been preparing for a world with no salaries, starting off with me and then ultimately Amy gave it a shot again and it got so much better.

00:02:58.640 | And now that we don't have any regular salaries, it's even more important for us to understand our spending habits and our cash flow, because we actually have to transfer money each month from our savings into our checking account so we can just pay our bills.

00:03:10.980 | Now, you'll notice I haven't really talked about budgeting yet because I prefer to think about spending tracking, but budgeting and spending tracking in some ways are really the same thing with a little bit of different nuance.

00:03:23.460 | And if you search for spending tracking apps and budgeting apps, almost all of them will do the same thing.

00:03:28.960 | But to me, it's really different.

00:03:30.260 | When I think about budgeting, it's much more about setting an amount of money you want to spend in different places and tracking whether you're doing it and making sure you're allocating all of your money into the right place so you can save.

00:03:41.140 | Whereas spending tracking for me is a little bit more of a reactive approach.

00:03:44.820 | I want to see how much money I'm spending on groceries to decide whether I think I want to make any changes.

00:03:50.620 | It's not about saying our goal is to only spend $300 a month on X and really tracking that week to week to make sure we don't go over it.

00:03:58.860 | That said, in the process of doing all of this spending tracking, I actually think it is helpful to have a budget.

00:04:04.960 | But for me, the budget is really more like a monthly or annual target just so I can see how we're trending against our expectations, because those expectations are usually what I'm using to make projections about the future or just to kind of get a sense of whether we're spending more or less than we make or an idea of how much we'll be able to save each year or how much we might have to dip into our savings if we're spending too much.

00:04:26.400 | So by having a budget, it's really more for us about having an expectation of what we think we're going to spend and being able to see if we're trending above or below that number.

00:04:34.160 | The best part about all this, by the way, if we talk about how to even get started, is that once you have a system set up, it is so much less work to maintain than you'd think, maybe a couple of minutes a day.

00:04:44.560 | And honestly, I think if you have the right tool to do this, it almost feels a little bit like a game because every time you add more transactions, you get more data, you get to see how you're tracking, and it really doesn't feel like work.

00:04:57.360 | So let's talk about the tools you can use to make this really easy.

00:05:01.280 | First off, there are probably an unlimited number of tools, and I'm going to miss a ton of them because every year new ones crop up, old ones die.

00:05:08.000 | So surely you're going to have one that I missed or you're going to have some that you find on the internet that I don't cover.

00:05:13.520 | And it's just impossible for me to do them all.

00:05:16.000 | But at the highest level, the way almost every one of these tools works is by pulling in your transactions from bank accounts.

00:05:23.200 | Now, yes, you could also have a budget by exporting all of your transactions, putting them into a spreadsheet, doing things manually.

00:05:29.680 | That is totally possible.

00:05:31.040 | That is not within the scope of this conversation, mostly because there is no way to make that system simple and only take a few minutes a day or week.

00:05:38.640 | And so I much prefer thinking about a system that's easy and simple and works in an automated basis.

00:05:43.840 | So what almost all of these products are doing are using one of a few service providers that help aggregate data from your various accounts.

00:05:53.840 | The most common ones are Plaid and Yodlee.

00:05:56.400 | There are a few others that happen on the back end, MX is one and there's a couple others.

00:06:00.560 | But almost every consumer app I've seen is using Plaid or Yodlee as the primary source because they have some of the widest coverage and the best data.

00:06:09.840 | Now, how this actually works and something important to keep in mind is when you log into an app and you say, I want to link my Chase account or my Capital One account or my Bank of America account.

00:06:20.400 | More often than not, you're going to get a screen that pops up and that screen's from the aggregator.

00:06:25.440 | It's not from the app creator.

00:06:27.040 | And you're going to put your login and password on that screen.

00:06:30.320 | Now, a couple financial institutions have started to adopt this thing called open banking, where instead of actually typing in your username and password, you get redirected to the Chase site or the Capital One site.

00:06:41.040 | You put in your username and password there and you authenticate that you're allowing Chase or Capital One to share your data with that app.

00:06:48.480 | I love that direction, but with 20,000 plus financial institutions needing to implement that open banking technology, it's going to take a while.

00:06:56.480 | So what's important to know is if an institution doesn't support that, you're going to type in your login and password into a screen that's managed by Plaid or Yodlee or whatever the linking provider is.

00:07:07.200 | And they're going to go log into your bank account on their server and pass that information back on to the app in question.

00:07:15.600 | And what's important about that flow is that the app you're using should never get access to any of your credentials, your username or password.

00:07:23.680 | And the company doing the aggregation is not actually storing it in a way that someone could access.

00:07:28.640 | They're usually storing it in a tokenized way.

00:07:31.120 | And the company that's actually doing the aggregating is doing everything in a much more secure and monitored way than you need to rely on any of these apps to do.

00:07:40.400 | I haven't had any concern using any of these apps in the past.

00:07:43.840 | When it comes to Plaid and Yodlee, I'm very trustworthy of what they're doing.

00:07:48.000 | It's read-only.

00:07:49.200 | That said, I would love them all to support open banking and have authentication instead of username and password stuff because that's even more secure.

00:07:57.760 | I will caveat one important thing.

00:07:59.920 | There are a few apps I've used in the past.

00:08:02.080 | I mentioned this in a past episode about the Max Rewards app for credit card tracking where the username and password fields were actually not on pop-ups that said Plaid or Yodlee and were run by the linking sites.

00:08:13.920 | And for those apps, I would immediately turn away, delete the app and not use it.

00:08:18.720 | I want to be 100% sure that when I'm typing in my username and password to my banking site, it is on a site of a brand I trust like Plaid, like Yodlee, like MX, like any of the other major linking providers.

00:08:31.120 | So none of the tools that I'm talking about are ones where I've seen a circumstance where they're actually trying to collect your username and password first and pass them on.

00:08:40.640 | So I wouldn't be worried about that with these tools.

00:08:42.880 | But in any case, if you're using an app to do this, I would definitely make sure that you're typing in your username and password on a pop-up or a modal or a page run by the linking aggregation sites.

00:08:54.640 | OK, so let's go to the tools that I played around with, because the way I did this project, and it was actually a little while ago.

00:09:01.200 | So on the plus side, I have some history of using them.

00:09:04.080 | On the downside, some of it's not as fresh as I want, but I actually opened up an account with Copilot, Monarch Money, I already had one with Mint, Rocket Money, Tiller HQ and YNAB.

00:09:16.480 | And I went through the entire process of syncing 2022 transactions across all my accounts, categorizing them and looking at the reports.

00:09:24.560 | And since then, I've also in the past week gone in and done the same thing for Simplify, which is a product from Quicken.

00:09:31.200 | So I went through the process for all of these tools and played with all of them, categorized everything.

00:09:36.240 | And so I want to be clear that this is not everything.

00:09:38.960 | Ultimately, I ended up picking Copilot as the tool I thought was the best for me.

00:09:43.600 | And after becoming such a huge fan of the product, I probably used it six to 12 months at the time.

00:09:49.200 | I reached out to the team and said, hey, guys, I really love your product.

00:09:52.720 | I don't want to talk about any other personal finance products when it comes to spending tracking.

00:09:57.440 | And could we work together?

00:09:59.520 | Fortunately, after some back and forth, we found a way to make that work.

00:10:02.640 | They are now a sponsor of the show.

00:10:04.560 | However, they did not ask me to make this episode.

00:10:07.840 | They don't even know I'm making this episode.

00:10:10.000 | They're not paying me to produce this episode.

00:10:12.240 | Everything in this episode is purely my own opinions.

00:10:14.560 | I was going to make this episode whether they were a sponsor or not.

00:10:17.280 | But fortunately, I'm super excited to have them as a sponsor because I love the product.

00:10:21.840 | So if you go to allthehacks.com/copilot, you can get two months free.

00:10:26.240 | Throughout this episode, because as I mentioned in the intro,

00:10:28.720 | it's not just about how to track all of this.

00:10:31.280 | I want to go through every single category where we spend money

00:10:34.560 | and talk about all the different things that we've thought about

00:10:37.280 | and some of the hacks and processes and tools we use to try to bring down our cost

00:10:41.520 | without making a lot of sacrifices.

00:10:43.440 | And that's going to be a lot of this conversation.

00:10:45.520 | Hopefully, you'll be able to use a lot of those tips to save money yourself.

00:10:49.040 | Within that process, I actually do talk about some other brands

00:10:52.480 | that I work with in the show and plenty of brands that I don't.

00:10:56.000 | And I just want to be clear again that none of the brands that I'm partnering with in the show

00:10:59.760 | know that I'm even mentioning them in this episode, have paid me to mention this episode.

00:11:03.760 | I do have sponsors.

00:11:04.880 | Those sponsors do pay for the advertisements you hear on the show.

00:11:08.720 | I introduce all of them with a little whoosh sound

00:11:11.360 | and you can kind of tell that there's a sponsor coming in.

00:11:13.520 | I talk about how excited I am to have them partnering with the podcast.

00:11:16.640 | But throughout the rest of this episode, you will hear me talk about some brands that I love.

00:11:20.720 | And to the extent those brands have offers or deals for listeners,

00:11:24.800 | I'm going to mention those.

00:11:26.160 | And I just thought it was good to be fully transparent

00:11:28.560 | that some of those brands are sponsors.

00:11:30.640 | Some of those links might not be sponsors.

00:11:32.400 | They might be my personal referral links, but none of them have paid to be here.

00:11:37.040 | And I've tried my best to only talk about the products and services

00:11:40.640 | that I've evaluated or that I think are great,

00:11:42.960 | which fortunately is exactly how I think about sponsors.

00:11:45.680 | Whenever I find a product I love that I want to talk about,

00:11:48.160 | I reach out to them and say, "Can we work together?"

00:11:50.400 | Because I really want to only work with brands with products I love.

00:11:53.600 | So with that aside, let's talk about some of these tools.

00:11:55.840 | And again, I've used most of them for hours at a time,

00:11:59.520 | going through all of these products, trying to decide what makes sense.

00:12:02.240 | As I said, I loved Copilot.

00:12:04.800 | It's what I use every day.

00:12:06.160 | It's how Amy and I get on the same page about spending.

00:12:08.400 | However, it's not a free app and it's only on iOS and Mac.

00:12:12.240 | So I totally get that it's not going to be a perfect option for everyone.

00:12:15.760 | For some of you, you'd rather use a free app and there are options.

00:12:19.680 | And for some of you, you have Android and you don't have an iOS or Mac and that won't work.

00:12:23.120 | So like I said, to test all these products,

00:12:25.040 | I went in and I spent hours with each of them trying to figure out what worked.

00:12:28.720 | And it was really hard not to want to put Copilot ahead.

00:12:31.680 | From a speed standpoint, from a design standpoint,

00:12:34.160 | from a functionality standpoint, from the automatic categorization standpoint,

00:12:37.840 | you'll hear me talk about a lot of features of these tools that I really like.

00:12:40.880 | Features that I love about Copilot because that's what I'm using.

00:12:44.240 | However, it's not a free product.

00:12:46.320 | If you want a free product, you can use Mint, you can use Rocket Money.

00:12:49.840 | I think they have a lot of limitations.

00:12:51.600 | Mint is filled with ads and not as customizable as you'd want.

00:12:55.360 | Rocket Money was a past partner of the show

00:12:57.600 | because I actually love the product for canceling subscriptions

00:13:00.960 | and making it super easy to automate that process and negotiate your bills.

00:13:05.360 | But when it comes to the spending and savings tracking, I think it's a little slow.

00:13:09.440 | I don't think it works as well on the web as I'd want it to.

00:13:11.680 | But it is a free product if you want something free.

00:13:15.120 | But if you're willing to pay and you don't have an iOS or Mac on Android,

00:13:18.880 | you could use something like Monarch Money.

00:13:20.960 | Or Simplify is an interesting one because when I was prepping for this episode,

00:13:24.640 | I was doing a little bit of research and I wanted to see if someone had done some similar content.

00:13:28.080 | Well, it turns out Wirecutter did a whole post on the best expense tracking and budgeting apps

00:13:32.480 | and they came to Simplify as the number one.

00:13:34.800 | However, when I went to the competition section and looked at all the products they used,

00:13:38.960 | they left off so many options that it's really hard for me to take their recommendation too seriously.

00:13:44.640 | In fact, they didn't even include Copilot, Monarch, Rocket Money,

00:13:48.480 | and a handful of other popular tools in the evaluation.

00:13:51.360 | So I wouldn't trust that review too much until it gets updated.

00:13:55.840 | But the fact that Simplify came out ahead and I didn't include it

00:13:59.360 | when I went through this whole process earlier this year

00:14:02.160 | made me think maybe I should go back and give it a look.

00:14:04.640 | And after that process, I am totally confused how it became number one.

00:14:08.800 | I went in and tried to use the product.

00:14:10.640 | I linked all my accounts.

00:14:12.160 | And there were so many things that didn't make sense to me.

00:14:14.800 | First off, you go in and categorize all your transactions,

00:14:18.080 | but those categories don't actually get linked to any budget

00:14:21.360 | or tracking ability that I could find until you created a separate spending plan,

00:14:26.240 | which you had to one by one re-add all of your transactions in.

00:14:30.960 | And then everything else fell into another category.

00:14:33.920 | You couldn't look at categories and subcategories together.

00:14:36.880 | You had to pick one.

00:14:37.920 | I didn't think the design was great, but I thought maybe I just don't get it.

00:14:43.040 | Maybe I was not using it right.

00:14:44.960 | So I searched on YouTube for a video of someone else using it

00:14:48.400 | to try to see if there was someone out there who is a diehard fan

00:14:51.440 | to see if they could explain why it was so awesome.

00:14:54.000 | I literally only found one or two videos that wasn't produced by Quicken itself.

00:14:58.240 | And for both of them, I think they did a pretty bad job of selling it.

00:15:02.800 | And one of them, which actually looked like it had the most promise,

00:15:05.680 | it was someone reviewing their actual spending.

00:15:07.840 | So there was real data in there.

00:15:09.520 | It seemed like multiple times the woman reviewing it

00:15:12.480 | had to go and fix something or correct something

00:15:14.640 | because it wasn't working or was a bit confused.

00:15:17.200 | So I don't know.

00:15:18.560 | I couldn't figure out why this was the number one tool.

00:15:21.680 | Does it do the job? Probably.

00:15:23.520 | Does it make sense to me?

00:15:25.120 | Was it simple and easy to use?

00:15:26.880 | Not at all.

00:15:27.840 | So I might be missing something, but I didn't get that recommendation at all.

00:15:31.840 | Now, if you're hearing all that and wondering, where is YNAB?

00:15:34.880 | Don't worry, I didn't leave it off completely.

00:15:36.960 | I have tested out YNAB multiple times.

00:15:39.520 | The main difference between YNAB and why ultimately, for me,

00:15:43.040 | it's not the right tool

00:15:44.640 | is that they really focus on what's called zero balance budgeting.

00:15:47.760 | YNAB calls it giving every dollar a job.

00:15:50.000 | Now, what that means is every bit of income coming in

00:15:53.840 | needs to be assigned somewhere

00:15:55.920 | so that you can know where all of your money is going.

00:15:58.320 | For me, that's not what I'm trying to do here.

00:16:01.040 | I'm not trying to make sure that everything is going to the right place,

00:16:04.640 | including savings and all that.

00:16:06.560 | I'm really just trying to understand how much money I'm spending.

00:16:09.920 | And so that actually is not the process I wanted to follow.

00:16:13.360 | Even more so now that we don't have income from a regular job,

00:16:17.120 | we don't actually have dollars to give jobs to.

00:16:20.000 | So zero balance budgeting is definitely something

00:16:22.480 | that I think can be really valuable for people

00:16:24.880 | who are just starting to learn how to save and budget

00:16:27.440 | and want to figure out how to allocate that savings,

00:16:29.920 | who need to get a better grasp of applying money towards debt pay down

00:16:33.600 | or future goals or building their emergency fund,

00:16:36.160 | or just people that like that form of budgeting,

00:16:38.800 | where you're actually making sure you know

00:16:40.400 | where every single dollar is and you can account for it.

00:16:43.040 | So I definitely think YNAB is a great tool.

00:16:45.440 | You can even get a 34-day free trial at allthehacks.com/ynab.

00:16:49.360 | And you can listen to episode 16,

00:16:50.800 | where I had Jesse Meacham, the founder of YNAB, on the show

00:16:54.240 | to give his perspective on budgets and budgeting,

00:16:56.720 | which I think will give a different perspective than I have.

00:16:59.120 | So if you want to go back and listen to that,

00:17:00.480 | I'll put the link in the show notes.

00:17:01.920 | But at the end of the day, for the purposes of what I wanted to do

00:17:05.120 | and what I thought made the most sense for us,

00:17:07.360 | which was tracking our spending

00:17:09.200 | and understanding all the categories that money gets spent on,

00:17:12.160 | Copilot was the tool that I thought made the most sense.

00:17:14.480 | That said, a lot of what you need to do to get these tools all set up is the same.

00:17:18.800 | So I'm going to talk about that.

00:17:20.160 | And it's a process that will apply to almost any tool you're using.

00:17:23.280 | So the first part of that process is setting up categories.

00:17:27.280 | Because at the end of the day,

00:17:28.320 | the main action you're going to take that takes time

00:17:31.280 | is just making sure all of your expenses are tied to a specific category,

00:17:35.920 | so you can do some analysis later.

00:17:37.760 | And I'm actually going to run through all the categories I use.

00:17:40.960 | Almost every one of these tools, by the way,

00:17:42.480 | will give you a set of default categories.

00:17:44.640 | And you can choose to use them, modify them, use some of them.

00:17:47.920 | There's plenty of options.

00:17:49.360 | I think there's a few things that are important to understand.

00:17:52.240 | One, at the end of the day,

00:17:54.240 | the level of granularity you need is really up to you.

00:17:58.000 | For us, we don't need to know the difference between coffee shops,

00:18:01.920 | bars, restaurants, fast food, and everything else.

00:18:05.520 | We just generally want to know how much we spend going out to eat.

00:18:08.400 | Also, you could decide you want to go in

00:18:10.400 | and categorize all the shopping you do into every category,

00:18:13.680 | or you can just put it all into shopping.

00:18:15.680 | So that's a personal decision.

00:18:17.760 | I think a really important thing to keep in mind is

00:18:19.840 | you want to get directionally important.

00:18:22.240 | You can always drill down.

00:18:24.080 | If you put everything in food and you realize it's too much,

00:18:27.280 | you can look into food and look at all the expenses.

00:18:29.520 | You can recategorize them later.

00:18:31.200 | So I would err on the side of not making it too much work up front

00:18:35.200 | and deciding later if you need more.

00:18:37.360 | Though I'm sure there's someone listening that would say,

00:18:39.440 | "Whoa, that's so much harder."

00:18:40.800 | If you have more categories up front and you want to reassign them,

00:18:44.000 | it's much easier.

00:18:45.040 | So I'll leave it to you to decide what you want.

00:18:47.040 | But here are the categories and subcategories we ended up using.

00:18:50.640 | And I'll talk a little bit about what they are.

00:18:53.280 | First off, I'll do all the categories first,

00:18:56.160 | and then I'll break each one down into subcategories

00:18:58.240 | so you can kind of get a sense of this.

00:18:59.920 | I'll probably see if there's an easy way to put this in the show notes.

00:19:02.960 | We break everything up into household,

00:19:05.120 | car and transport,

00:19:06.400 | children,

00:19:07.120 | health and wellness,

00:19:08.320 | lifestyle,

00:19:09.360 | food and drink,

00:19:10.480 | shopping,

00:19:11.440 | gifts and donations,

00:19:12.480 | fees,

00:19:13.760 | and two others which are actually hidden categories

00:19:16.160 | for credit card payments and work expenses,

00:19:18.000 | which I'll come back to.

00:19:19.680 | Within household, we break things into home loans,

00:19:22.400 | but obviously if you rent, you'd have rent,

00:19:24.080 | dog, could be other pets,

00:19:27.280 | insurance,

00:19:28.000 | bills and expenses,

00:19:29.760 | which is things like phone, cable, internet,

00:19:31.920 | home, which is things like furniture,

00:19:35.280 | cleaning supplies,

00:19:36.320 | utilities,

00:19:37.760 | and property taxes.

00:19:39.120 | We have car and transport.

00:19:41.040 | Make sense?

00:19:41.760 | For car, it's our monthly payments.

00:19:44.000 | It's any maintenance and service costs.

00:19:46.160 | And then transportation is things like taxis,

00:19:48.400 | train cards, lift rides, Ubers, etc.

00:19:50.720 | Within children, we've got child care, children and education.

00:19:54.400 | I think child care makes sense.

00:19:55.520 | That's our au pair.

00:19:56.720 | Children is all of the miscellaneous expenses that you buy for kids,

00:20:00.880 | which seems like a very big part of our budget right now.

00:20:03.760 | And also one that I think was really helpful to get an understanding of how much it is,

00:20:08.320 | because it's something that you're kind of always adding little purchases to.

00:20:12.320 | And I never really had a good sense of what we're spending.

00:20:14.480 | And then education.

00:20:15.760 | Preschool right now,

00:20:16.720 | but in the future could include tutors and courses and anything like that.

00:20:19.760 | In health and wellness, we have fitness, healthcare, and personal care.

00:20:24.000 | I think those all kind of make sense.

00:20:25.840 | Personal care, meaning things like haircuts,

00:20:27.680 | or if one of us were to get a massage or a manicure or something like that.

00:20:31.040 | In lifestyle, I have subscriptions, entertainment, personal, and travel.

00:20:36.000 | Subscriptions is things like Spotify or Netflix.

00:20:38.880 | Entertainment is stuff like if we buy tickets or go to a zoo or a museum,

00:20:43.040 | or Amy and I want to do an escape room.

00:20:45.680 | Personal is actually a category that I created

00:20:48.320 | for all of the things that you might spend money on

00:20:51.200 | that don't fall into other categories that are personal to you.

00:20:54.480 | But it turns out there aren't that many expenses there.

00:20:56.400 | I don't even think we had one last year.

00:20:58.480 | So I don't know if you really need it.

00:21:00.400 | But if someone wanted to buy a nice handbag,

00:21:03.600 | maybe you don't want to call that clothing and you could put it in personal.

00:21:06.400 | And then travel is a bucket for all of our travel.

00:21:09.920 | Food and drink, that's where we have only two categories,

00:21:13.040 | groceries and dining and drinks,

00:21:14.880 | which like I mentioned earlier, encompasses everything.

00:21:17.040 | Within shopping, we really just have shops and clothing.

00:21:20.960 | I know some people want to go in and break down all their expenses,

00:21:23.920 | but for us, shops is basically Target and a few other transactions.

00:21:28.240 | In gifts and donations, we have gifts,

00:21:31.600 | which is birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, all those kind of things.

00:21:34.160 | And then donations is any money we contribute to charity,

00:21:37.680 | which mostly for us is just contributions to our Daffy account.

00:21:42.320 | I'll come back to that.

00:21:43.200 | Last is fees.

00:21:44.800 | This is an interesting one because we have a lot of credit cards with annual fees.

00:21:49.440 | This one actually is not insignificant.

00:21:51.600 | But anytime I get credits back on a credit card for purchases,

00:21:57.040 | I also throw them into fees if they are credits

00:22:00.480 | for things I would have normally already spent money on.

00:22:03.280 | So that's important because, for example, with a Chase Sapphire Reserve,

00:22:07.600 | the $300 travel credits, I was going to spend money on travel anyways.

00:22:11.360 | So I categorize those credits in fees to help offset the actual cost of those fees.

00:22:17.920 | So for example, we have a subscription to SiriusXM.

00:22:21.040 | I rarely use it, but we have it on one of our cars.

00:22:24.080 | It's free because Amex has an entertainment credit.

00:22:26.880 | So when the Sirius charge comes in, it's all auto-categorized as entertainment.

00:22:31.280 | But the credit from Amex for that charge, that digital entertainment credit,

00:22:34.800 | I categorize that credit as entertainment

00:22:38.160 | because it's not fair to offset the fees with that credit

00:22:40.880 | because I wouldn't otherwise pay for Sirius.

00:22:43.440 | A little confusing, but if I'm getting credits from credit cards

00:22:46.560 | that are on things that I would have paid for,

00:22:48.160 | I just categorize them into the fees category.

00:22:50.640 | Have another category called other,

00:22:52.240 | which is where if I don't know where something goes, I put it into other.

00:22:55.040 | However, we don't really have anything here.

00:22:57.680 | And if we ever found a transaction in other,

00:22:59.840 | it would probably more be a signal that we need to create a new category

00:23:03.360 | than that we would keep using it.

00:23:04.880 | Finally, I mentioned the last two categories, and I guess there's a third.

00:23:08.160 | So one is credit card payments.

00:23:09.760 | I generally want a sense of how much money

00:23:13.680 | we're spending on our credit cards each month,

00:23:15.840 | just so I can kind of understand at a very high level

00:23:18.800 | what are our monthly credit card bills

00:23:20.480 | because I need to make sure there's enough money to pay them, et cetera.

00:23:23.280 | So I have a hidden category in Copilot called credit card payments

00:23:26.800 | because all of the transactions on those credit cards

00:23:29.840 | are getting categorized as expenses.

00:23:31.680 | I don't want to duplicate the credit card payments as transactions,

00:23:35.200 | so I have it as a hidden category that doesn't show up in our budgeting,

00:23:38.800 | but that I can look at if I want to see

00:23:40.640 | how much am I spending each month on credit cards in general,

00:23:43.600 | which is actually really helpful just to get a sense of

00:23:46.480 | how many points did I earn last year?

00:23:47.920 | How much did I put on credit cards?

00:23:49.280 | What was my average point earning?

00:23:50.960 | And then I have work expenses, which is another hidden category

00:23:53.680 | because any of those expenses that are related to the podcast,

00:23:56.960 | related to business, I want to make sure I separate

00:23:59.920 | and don't encounter in our regular budget.

00:24:01.840 | I probably wouldn't have spent them if I didn't have a business

00:24:03.680 | that makes some money.

00:24:04.960 | And so those are all hidden as well.

00:24:07.360 | I'm trying to put all of my work expenses on a work card

00:24:10.720 | that I don't actually integrate into Copilot at all.

00:24:14.080 | And the only challenge there is every now and then

00:24:16.640 | there's a purchase like a flight

00:24:18.320 | where I just really want to earn five points per dollar

00:24:20.880 | more than I want to have those separate.

00:24:23.200 | And so there's just a handful of work expenses a year

00:24:26.080 | that I put on a personal card

00:24:27.680 | because usually there was a lot more points to be earned.

00:24:30.880 | And so I want to hide those from the budget.

00:24:32.320 | Finally, there's a category that's a non-category

00:24:34.960 | that's just excluded, which I use for things

00:24:37.600 | that don't really matter or don't make sense

00:24:40.400 | or don't fit into any of these.

00:24:42.240 | On Copilot, at least there's a whole separate thing

00:24:44.960 | where you can categorize something

00:24:46.240 | as an internal transfer or income.

00:24:48.880 | And so if you didn't hear any of those things,

00:24:51.200 | that's because I put income and income.

00:24:53.200 | And if I'm transferring money between accounts,

00:24:54.800 | that's an internal transfer.

00:24:56.320 | So those are all the categories.

00:24:57.680 | And with each category,

00:24:58.880 | there are budgets associated with them.

00:25:01.040 | Almost all of these tools will help you

00:25:02.960 | automatically do those budgets

00:25:04.640 | based on your prior spending.

00:25:06.000 | And then you can tweak them from there,

00:25:07.440 | which is how we did it.

00:25:08.560 | One of the tricky things here

00:25:09.600 | is that almost every piece of software

00:25:11.600 | goes in and looks at budgets on a monthly basis,

00:25:14.960 | which is great except for some cases like property tax,

00:25:18.880 | where we pay it twice a year.

00:25:20.560 | So some apps, Copilot being one of them,

00:25:23.200 | let you go in and set different budgets for each month.

00:25:26.240 | So you could say my property tax budget is $0 a month,

00:25:29.600 | but in the two months a year

00:25:30.960 | that we have to pay property tax,

00:25:32.880 | it's whatever that amount is.

00:25:34.720 | So that's how I've set it up for property tax.

00:25:36.960 | And it's smart enough

00:25:38.000 | that it kind of forecasts into the future

00:25:39.680 | that it's gonna be the same months every year.

00:25:41.920 | And it also looks at your past transactions

00:25:43.840 | to know when it is.

00:25:44.720 | So it's pretty smart like that.

00:25:46.400 | That's how I do some things that are annual.

00:25:48.880 | The other alternative or compliment

00:25:51.840 | is using what's called carryover budgets.

00:25:54.000 | So if you enable this on Copilot,

00:25:55.920 | you can take a budget

00:25:57.120 | and any money that's not spent

00:25:58.640 | will roll over to the next month.

00:26:00.320 | And this works really well on travel

00:26:02.240 | and any other category

00:26:03.360 | where you really probably have an annual budget.

00:26:05.760 | So it's not as much monthly,

00:26:07.440 | but the transactions happen across the year

00:26:10.160 | different times of the year.

00:26:11.600 | So let's say you wanna spend $6,000 a year on travel.

00:26:14.480 | You can create a $500 a month travel budget

00:26:17.920 | with carryover so that each month

00:26:20.160 | you don't spend all $500.

00:26:21.840 | It just rolls over to the next month.

00:26:24.000 | And so at the end of the year,

00:26:25.600 | that should all balance out.

00:26:27.120 | It also supports negative.

00:26:28.480 | So if you take your vacation in March,

00:26:30.400 | you'll just be negative

00:26:31.360 | and slowly get back to zero

00:26:32.720 | by the end of the year.

00:26:34.000 | And you can go in

00:26:34.800 | when you enable carryover budgets,

00:26:36.800 | you can actually say only on these categories

00:26:38.880 | or not on these categories.

00:26:40.160 | So you're not having every category carryover.

00:26:42.720 | So that's how we solve

00:26:43.520 | some of the variability each month.

00:26:45.200 | Next, almost every one of these apps

00:26:46.960 | has something to track recurring expenses.

00:26:49.680 | The good apps almost all automate this.

00:26:52.000 | They look at your past transactions,

00:26:53.440 | they identify what things happen every month,

00:26:55.520 | and they create a recurring expense.

00:26:57.440 | They identify whether it's monthly,

00:26:59.520 | every other week,

00:27:00.800 | every two, three months, every year,

00:27:02.720 | and they create a separate place in the app for it,

00:27:05.440 | which is super helpful.

00:27:07.040 | So I can go somewhere and see

00:27:08.240 | what are all my recurring expenses,

00:27:09.920 | which is great 'cause you can identify ones

00:27:11.440 | you wanna get rid of.

00:27:12.240 | It also is great because it tracks when things come in.

00:27:16.400 | And so for an example of how this feature worked,

00:27:18.480 | I was looking in Copilot the other day,

00:27:20.000 | and I noticed that one of the bills I have

00:27:22.080 | hadn't been paid.

00:27:23.200 | It looked like it was overdue.

00:27:24.720 | So I was like, "Hmm, that's strange.

00:27:25.840 | This bill's on autopay, what happened?"

00:27:27.440 | So I logged into the site

00:27:28.800 | and I noticed the credit card linked to that bill

00:27:31.440 | had expired and disabled autopay.

00:27:34.400 | So I quickly added a new credit card

00:27:36.320 | and I was able to pay the bill and avoid late fees,

00:27:38.800 | all because I noticed

00:27:40.000 | when I was monitoring recurring transactions

00:27:41.840 | that one of them was supposed to come.

00:27:43.520 | So I think that covers almost all of the setup

00:27:45.760 | for all of these spending tracking apps.

00:27:48.160 | Each app might have its own nuance to how it works.

00:27:50.640 | So I can't speak to every single one,

00:27:52.560 | but for the most part, it's setting up your categories,

00:27:56.080 | categorizing your transactions, setting up budgets.

00:27:59.280 | And on a regular basis,

00:28:00.800 | all you need to do is go in and categorize transactions.

00:28:04.080 | And then on a monthly or annual basis,

00:28:05.840 | you'll be able to go in and see how things are trending,

00:28:08.080 | which is where the real value comes in.

00:28:10.240 | Now, I mentioned that on a regular basis,

00:28:11.680 | you have to go in and categorize transactions,

00:28:14.560 | but I did wanna flag something that is really exciting.

00:28:17.360 | So I just saw, as I'm recording this,

00:28:20.080 | the release notes from Copilot

00:28:22.160 | that they just launched something

00:28:23.280 | called Copilot Intelligence,

00:28:24.960 | which is using your data to build a model

00:28:28.320 | to automatically categorize your transactions.

00:28:30.480 | The really cool thing about it

00:28:32.000 | is that each individual user

00:28:34.240 | actually gets their own private categorization model

00:28:37.440 | based on their data,

00:28:39.040 | and it's not being used on everyone else.

00:28:41.600 | So they're automatically looking at your past behaviors

00:28:44.240 | to suggest the categories you want,

00:28:46.320 | which is really cool.

00:28:47.600 | And even if they're not 100% sure on the right category,

00:28:50.320 | they're at least sorting the list

00:28:51.840 | based on the things they think

00:28:53.280 | are the most likely to be the right categories.

00:28:55.760 | I'm so excited to play with this.

00:28:57.280 | I already think the model they're using

00:28:59.200 | is one of the best

00:29:00.160 | based on me going through five or six apps and doing this.

00:29:03.120 | But if they can really build out a model

00:29:04.800 | based on just my past transaction categorization,

00:29:08.400 | I think it's really likely

00:29:09.600 | to be the best categorization tool out there.

00:29:11.760 | But next, I wanna talk a little bit

00:29:13.200 | about some of the things

00:29:14.240 | that make this whole process confusing or messy

00:29:16.880 | and how I go about solving them.

00:29:18.400 | So one is purchases at retailers

00:29:21.120 | that have lots of different categories assigned to them.

00:29:23.920 | So let's take Target, Amazon, anything like that.

00:29:26.640 | So one option is what I've done with Target,

00:29:29.440 | which is I just create a category called Shops,

00:29:31.360 | and I throw everything in there.

00:29:32.880 | Now, we don't spend that much money at Target

00:29:35.520 | such that I think that's gonna have

00:29:37.840 | a big impact on our budget.

00:29:39.360 | However, on Amazon, we do.

00:29:40.560 | And also, by the way, on Target,

00:29:42.080 | almost everything we're doing is in a similar category.

00:29:45.280 | Whereas on Amazon, we might buy furniture,

00:29:48.080 | we might buy sporting goods,

00:29:49.600 | we might buy food and groceries,

00:29:52.160 | we might buy household goods.

00:29:54.000 | So for Amazon, I wanna make sure we get everything right.

00:29:56.640 | So two things.

00:29:57.840 | One, there is a page on Amazon

00:29:59.840 | that I can't believe I only just found

00:30:01.840 | where you can search for your transactions

00:30:03.920 | or you go to the account page and click on Transactions.

00:30:06.640 | And instead of sorting everything by orders

00:30:09.520 | and all your orders you've had,

00:30:10.800 | it sorts everything by credit card transactions.

00:30:13.520 | So you can see $37 transaction,

00:30:16.000 | click here and see what it is.

00:30:17.680 | So that screen is incredibly helpful.

00:30:20.320 | It's also helpful for refunds,

00:30:21.680 | which I'll get to in a minute.

00:30:22.640 | But Copilot actually has this amazing feature

00:30:26.320 | where you can log into Amazon

00:30:28.160 | and they'll sync with your Amazon account.

00:30:30.000 | And then whenever you have a purchase,

00:30:31.760 | they'll fill in straight natively within the app,

00:30:34.160 | all of the purchased items

00:30:35.840 | that are associated with an order.

00:30:37.440 | So you might see $73 from Amazon,

00:30:40.880 | but you'll actually be able to also see

00:30:42.800 | all the items you purchased with that order.

00:30:44.640 | And you'll be able to more easily categorize

00:30:46.320 | that transaction without having to go look somewhere else.

00:30:48.400 | Another one like this is Venmo,

00:30:50.480 | where you'll see a bunch of transactions

00:30:52.080 | on your checking account that say,

00:30:53.760 | Venmo in, out, in, out, in, out.

00:30:55.920 | And the way Copilot solves this

00:30:57.440 | is they set up an email forwarding system

00:30:59.760 | where you can set up a Gmail filter

00:31:01.280 | to auto forward your Venmo transaction emails

00:31:03.680 | to Copilot and only your Venmo ones.

00:31:06.400 | And then they actually get data

00:31:08.560 | on what those individual transactions are.

00:31:11.120 | It's especially helpful

00:31:12.320 | if you ever have a balance in your Venmo account,

00:31:14.240 | because if someone sends you $100

00:31:15.680 | and you don't cash it out,

00:31:17.040 | and then you send someone else $50,

00:31:18.320 | your bank account won't actually see

00:31:20.720 | any of those transactions.

00:31:22.320 | So we've used that Venmo transaction

00:31:24.080 | to make this easier.

00:31:25.280 | Another category that can be confusing

00:31:26.720 | is cash and ATMs.

00:31:28.400 | So the way we think about this,

00:31:29.760 | if I see an ATM charge while we're traveling,

00:31:32.240 | I'll try to just pick the category that's most likely

00:31:34.640 | and be okay that it's not perfect.

00:31:36.640 | If we took out money

00:31:37.520 | 'cause we were buying food

00:31:38.480 | while we were walking around the city,

00:31:39.680 | I'll call it food.

00:31:40.640 | If we took out money

00:31:41.520 | because we knew we would need to buy bus tickets,

00:31:43.920 | I'll call it transportation.

00:31:45.200 | It's not a perfect solution,

00:31:46.480 | but it's a lot easier

00:31:47.360 | than logging every individual cash transaction.

00:31:49.840 | That said, we do have some cash

00:31:52.400 | that we keep around the house for various things.

00:31:54.880 | And if I'm spending any meaningful amount of money,

00:31:57.600 | let's call it something around $100 or more,

00:32:00.640 | I will go into Copilot after I do it

00:32:02.960 | and just add the transaction in my manual account.

00:32:06.000 | You can do this on any app

00:32:07.200 | where you just add a manual transaction,

00:32:09.360 | but I try to only really do it

00:32:11.120 | if I think it's enough that matters

00:32:13.040 | because it's too complicated

00:32:15.200 | if I just have five bucks that I bought something

00:32:17.360 | at a food truck, it's too much work.

00:32:19.520 | That said, as you know, I love points.

00:32:21.360 | So I'm trying to put as little as possible on cash,

00:32:23.360 | but every now and then there's something that makes sense.

00:32:25.920 | And when I'm doing that,

00:32:26.800 | I wanna log that so that it's in there

00:32:28.640 | if it's enough that matters.

00:32:30.080 | Next, let's talk about refunds.

00:32:31.920 | This one can be a bit of an annoying one for two reasons.

00:32:34.960 | One, the misalignment of when it happens.

00:32:37.600 | So the easy fix there is for Amy's birthday,

00:32:40.480 | I bought her a tennis racket,

00:32:41.520 | but I didn't know which size.

00:32:42.640 | So I bought two different sizes.

00:32:44.320 | I bought them in one month

00:32:45.600 | and then we returned the one

00:32:47.040 | that wasn't the right size the next month.

00:32:49.040 | So it looks like I spent twice as much on gifts in one month

00:32:51.600 | and then we got it back the next month.

00:32:53.520 | So I'll just go in on the return transaction

00:32:55.760 | and I'll just change the date

00:32:56.880 | to the purchase date transaction

00:32:58.720 | so that it all nets out in the same month.

00:33:01.120 | And then on Amazon, it's a little bit more tricky

00:33:03.920 | because you need to go find

00:33:05.440 | what transaction the refund was associated with.

00:33:08.160 | So I'll just go to that transaction screen,

00:33:10.080 | look at the category

00:33:11.280 | and just make sure I put whatever category

00:33:13.600 | the original transaction was on.

00:33:15.520 | Next, let's talk about splitting

00:33:16.720 | because it's especially relevant to Amazon stuff.

00:33:18.960 | If I have a transaction

00:33:20.640 | that's not wholly in one category

00:33:22.800 | or not entirely mine,

00:33:24.400 | let's say I bought dinner for some friends,

00:33:26.320 | there's two options to deal with that.

00:33:27.920 | One, categorize the whole thing as food

00:33:30.000 | and then if your friend Venmo's you money

00:33:31.360 | to pay you back for it,

00:33:32.400 | you can just put that deposit or credit in food as well

00:33:37.120 | or you can just split the transaction in two,

00:33:40.320 | exclude half of it.

00:33:41.520 | You could say dinner was $100, I'm splitting it,

00:33:43.680 | $50 is food, $50 is exclude.

00:33:46.480 | Or maybe you're out at dinner

00:33:47.760 | and half of it's a work expense,

00:33:50.160 | you could say 50 to work expenses, 50 to food.

00:33:53.280 | On Amazon, sometimes there are purchases

00:33:54.960 | where some of the stuff is for the house,

00:33:56.480 | some of the stuff is for the kids,

00:33:57.680 | some of the stuff is for the dog

00:33:59.760 | and if it's a really, really big transaction,

00:34:03.040 | maybe on a rare case,

00:34:04.960 | I'll split the transaction

00:34:06.160 | so I can separately categorize it

00:34:08.000 | but for the most part,

00:34:09.200 | I'm just choosing the category

00:34:10.400 | that makes the most sense.

00:34:11.680 | So if we spent $100, $75 on clothes

00:34:14.720 | and $25 on home, I just call it clothes

00:34:17.840 | and I don't worry about the fact

00:34:19.520 | that there's a little bit of home purchasing

00:34:21.280 | going into the clothing category,

00:34:23.120 | it just all kind of nets out.

00:34:24.800 | One other thing is maybe you have a transaction

00:34:27.520 | that's for a long period of time

00:34:29.600 | I mentioned earlier that one way to do it

00:34:31.600 | is separate budgets.

00:34:32.560 | So let's take insurance payments.

00:34:34.000 | A lot of car insurance, you pay every six months.

00:34:36.720 | So two options.

00:34:38.080 | One, you just go in

00:34:39.280 | and you set a car insurance budget

00:34:41.040 | where the budget is higher every six months

00:34:43.440 | and it's lower every other month

00:34:45.520 | or you can go in

00:34:46.640 | and you can click on the transaction,

00:34:48.240 | split it into six

00:34:49.520 | and allocate it over each of the next six months.

00:34:52.000 | It's really a personal preference

00:34:54.800 | how you wanna do it.

00:34:55.600 | Depending on how frequent it is

00:34:58.000 | or how big it is,

00:34:59.040 | it may or may not matter

00:35:00.240 | or you may or may not make sense

00:35:01.440 | to do one or the other.

00:35:02.240 | For me, I'm just thankful that USAA

00:35:05.280 | allows you to split your insurance bill

00:35:07.040 | into monthly payments

00:35:07.920 | without charging any fees.

00:35:09.440 | So we just do that

00:35:10.240 | and don't worry about it for insurance.

00:35:12.000 | Next, I wanna talk about one feature

00:35:13.600 | that I wish all of these apps have

00:35:14.960 | and to be fully transparent,

00:35:16.480 | I've emailed Copilots

00:35:17.760 | and please build this feature

00:35:19.360 | is trying to manage cashflow.

00:35:21.520 | And so I'm gonna do a whole episode actually

00:35:24.000 | on how we do this

00:35:25.040 | and how we take our money

00:35:27.120 | and decide where it goes

00:35:28.320 | and in what order

00:35:29.280 | and all the financial automation we do

00:35:31.120 | to make it all efficient.

00:35:32.400 | But I really wish that one of these apps

00:35:34.720 | would look at upcoming credit card bills,

00:35:37.360 | look at upcoming expenses we have

00:35:39.280 | because it knows all of our recurring expenses,

00:35:41.280 | filter out the ones on credit cards

00:35:43.440 | because we don't pay for them

00:35:44.480 | the moment they hit

00:35:45.760 | and show me over the next week

00:35:47.760 | or over the next month,

00:35:48.800 | here's how much money is estimated

00:35:50.880 | to be withdrawn from your checking account

00:35:52.720 | so I can make sure I have enough money in there.

00:35:55.200 | Why does it matter?

00:35:56.160 | Well, because if that money

00:35:57.360 | is in my high-yield savings account

00:35:58.720 | or my wealth front cash account

00:36:00.000 | or if it's in short-term treasuries

00:36:01.600 | or a treasury ETF,

00:36:02.960 | I'm earning probably around 5% on that money

00:36:05.520 | and if it's in my checking account, I'm not.

00:36:07.520 | And so I wanna leave as little money

00:36:09.040 | in checking as possible.

00:36:10.480 | All these apps have enough information

00:36:12.080 | to tell me how much money I need

00:36:13.600 | in my checking account on any given day

00:36:15.360 | but it's not something

00:36:16.960 | that any of them have built yet

00:36:18.160 | so I can hope and cross my fingers

00:36:20.400 | when I was looking at the AI features

00:36:22.480 | that Copilot launched,

00:36:23.600 | they said in the future,

00:36:24.640 | you'll be able to actually query your money

00:36:26.640 | and ask questions.

00:36:27.760 | So maybe I'll be able to write a query

00:36:29.360 | that says, "How many dollars do you think

00:36:31.120 | will get withdrawn from my checking account

00:36:33.200 | in the next 15 days?"

00:36:34.960 | Maybe I can automate asking that question

00:36:37.280 | or maybe they will just build this feature

00:36:39.360 | because I know I've talked to them about it

00:36:41.040 | and given them a lot of ideas

00:36:42.480 | of what it would be.

00:36:43.120 | So like I said, I'm gonna do a whole episode

00:36:45.680 | on how we think about

00:36:46.640 | all of our financial automation.

00:36:48.160 | It's really separate from budgeting

00:36:49.680 | but I've put a lot of time into

00:36:51.600 | where does the money go?

00:36:52.560 | How does it go?

00:36:53.280 | How does it flow?

00:36:54.560 | So that like tracking our spending,

00:36:57.200 | we just don't spend that much time

00:36:58.880 | managing our money either

00:37:00.160 | and it makes life really easy.

00:37:02.000 | So before I jump into all the categories

00:37:04.640 | and how we think about saving money in them,

00:37:06.640 | I thought it might make sense

00:37:07.760 | to just jump into all the benefits of doing this

00:37:11.360 | and why it even makes sense

00:37:12.880 | to spend all this effort in the first place.

00:37:14.960 | So the biggest one for me

00:37:16.080 | is that we get to see how much we spend

00:37:17.440 | in all these different categories.

00:37:18.960 | We get to see how on both a category

00:37:20.880 | and subcategory level,

00:37:22.480 | we get to see our month-to-date trends.

00:37:24.640 | I love that.

00:37:25.360 | I love that we can go in and look at

00:37:27.760 | here's how much we spend in one area

00:37:29.840 | and here's how much we spend in another

00:37:31.520 | and actually ask ourselves

00:37:33.440 | whether that's aligned

00:37:34.640 | with how we wanna spend our money.

00:37:36.480 | We often ask ourselves two questions.

00:37:39.520 | One, if we were gonna spend more money,

00:37:42.480 | where would we put it?

00:37:43.600 | Is there a category

00:37:44.560 | where we feel like we're too restrained?

00:37:46.960 | And then we ask ourselves,

00:37:48.000 | if we were to cut from our current spending,

00:37:50.800 | where would we cut?

00:37:51.920 | And then the real fun

00:37:53.360 | is when you look at those two things

00:37:54.640 | and compare it.

00:37:55.440 | So let's say you're looking

00:37:56.320 | at all of your expenses and you say,

00:37:57.920 | if we could add 10% more,

00:37:59.360 | I think we'd travel more.

00:38:00.560 | And if we could cut 10%,

00:38:01.600 | I think we'd eat out less.

00:38:03.760 | But you can actually ask yourself,

00:38:05.040 | do we actually wanna travel more

00:38:06.880 | and eat out less now?

00:38:08.160 | And you can consider swapping them

00:38:09.760 | and reallocating.

00:38:10.960 | And I think it's a really interesting exercise

00:38:12.880 | to just think about

00:38:14.000 | where would we spend more of?

00:38:15.120 | Where would we spend less of?

00:38:16.640 | And how do those two things align?

00:38:18.400 | Also, like I said before,

00:38:19.600 | I love that I can see

00:38:20.640 | these upcoming recurring expenses,

00:38:22.560 | ones that are overdue,

00:38:23.680 | track how they've changed over time,

00:38:25.280 | know when it's time to go call up companies

00:38:27.520 | to negotiate better prices and all of that.

00:38:29.680 | I also think it puts a lot of expenses

00:38:31.360 | in perspective.

00:38:32.480 | It's really easy for me to get stressed out

00:38:34.720 | when I'm going to the grocery store

00:38:36.160 | and I see something I want

00:38:37.280 | that's not on sale,

00:38:38.320 | but often is,

00:38:39.600 | especially when it comes to fruit

00:38:41.120 | and all the berries that we buy

00:38:42.480 | because our kids love them.

00:38:43.760 | And when you look at the grocery budget in whole,

00:38:46.880 | and you look at how much money

00:38:48.080 | you're spending a year in general,

00:38:50.320 | it makes it a little easier

00:38:51.520 | to just stop sweating the small stuff.

00:38:53.680 | I like how Ramit Sethi says,

00:38:55.120 | "Don't ask yourself the $3 questions,

00:38:56.960 | ask yourself the $30,000 questions."

00:38:59.280 | I think we can get caught up in,

00:39:00.560 | "Ooh, what if we cut this dollar here,

00:39:02.320 | this dollar there?"

00:39:03.440 | But when you look at it in the big picture,

00:39:05.360 | you realize that

00:39:06.480 | a lot of those small decisions

00:39:08.160 | could add up,

00:39:08.880 | but they're not really going to move the needle,

00:39:10.720 | like making major changes

00:39:12.640 | or spending a lot more time

00:39:14.160 | on earning more,

00:39:15.600 | starting a side hustle,

00:39:16.720 | negotiating your salary

00:39:18.080 | or stuff like that.

00:39:19.200 | Also, one of the most valuable parts of doing this

00:39:22.000 | is that I can share

00:39:23.360 | all of this work with Amy

00:39:24.720 | and we can have a shared view

00:39:25.840 | of how we're spending all of our money.

00:39:27.520 | In most relationships I've found,

00:39:29.920 | there's one person

00:39:30.800 | that gets a lot more excited

00:39:32.160 | about doing all this work than the other.

00:39:33.920 | And by having a central place to do it,

00:39:36.080 | you can give the other person a login

00:39:38.000 | or in some apps,

00:39:39.360 | you can have shared logins

00:39:40.880 | and you can let your partner

00:39:42.080 | get access to all of it as well

00:39:43.920 | and see how you're spending money

00:39:45.360 | and sparks really interesting conversations

00:39:47.520 | like the one I just talked about,

00:39:49.120 | where you can be intentional

00:39:50.960 | and proactive about how you spend money.

00:39:53.120 | So I find that I'm a lot more open

00:39:54.800 | with people about money,

00:39:55.760 | so maybe it's not for you,

00:39:57.280 | but I'll pull out CoPilot,

00:40:00.000 | especially with a couple of friends

00:40:01.360 | I know do this as well in CoPilot

00:40:03.760 | and we'll be like,

00:40:04.400 | "Oh, how much are you spending here?

00:40:05.680 | How much are you spending there?"

00:40:07.040 | And it creates these really interesting conversations

00:40:09.360 | that I feel like we don't often have about money

00:40:12.000 | and it makes it really easy

00:40:13.360 | and almost fun to compare notes with friends.

00:40:16.080 | Finally, one thing I didn't mention

00:40:17.600 | is that with all these apps,

00:40:19.440 | there might be something you wanna look up

00:40:21.600 | or do that you can't

00:40:23.120 | and for almost all of them,

00:40:24.960 | I know for sure within CoPilot,

00:40:26.880 | you can export all the transactions

00:40:28.960 | and all the data you've categorized

00:40:30.480 | and all the work you've done to a CSV

00:40:32.880 | and use it for whatever you want.

00:40:34.640 | And so for example,

00:40:36.080 | I wanna send all of our work expenses to our CPA

00:40:39.280 | so I can go and export everything,

00:40:41.360 | filter out everything but work expenses

00:40:43.360 | and have a really clean spreadsheet

00:40:44.880 | that I can forward on.

00:40:46.240 | So it is very possible with most of these tools

00:40:48.320 | to be able to export all your data.

00:40:50.160 | Maybe you wanna do more complicated analysis.

00:40:52.640 | At one point, I was kind of thinking,

00:40:54.000 | "Ooh, I not only wanna know how much I spend,

00:40:56.400 | but how much do I spend in the first half of the month

00:40:58.560 | versus the second half of the month

00:41:00.160 | so I can decide how much money I need

00:41:01.920 | in my checking account at certain days?"

00:41:04.000 | Ultimately, that just ended up being too much overhead,

00:41:06.880 | but that kind of analysis,

00:41:08.720 | if you can't do it within an app,

00:41:10.160 | you can at least export your transactions

00:41:12.080 | and do it on your own.

00:41:13.200 | Almost every time I've done this,

00:41:14.400 | it's ended up being a waste of time,

00:41:15.920 | but it is something that's possible.

00:41:17.760 | So that's all the benefits of doing this.

00:41:20.080 | I hope that was really helpful.

00:41:21.920 | For the next part of this episode,

00:41:23.360 | I wanna dive in deeper

00:41:24.400 | to all the categories of spending

00:41:26.240 | and really talk about ways

00:41:27.440 | that you can think about saving money here.

00:41:30.080 | This is gonna be a little quick

00:41:31.440 | and for some of them,

00:41:32.160 | there's an entire episode of the show

00:41:33.920 | I've done about this.

00:41:35.280 | So let's just go straight into it.

00:41:37.440 | So on household,

00:41:38.880 | first category for me is home loans,

00:41:41.040 | could be rent for you.

00:41:42.400 | I'm gonna send everyone to episode 14,

00:41:44.240 | which was all about house hacking.

00:41:46.000 | I think there's so much good content in there

00:41:48.160 | that can help you think about that.

00:41:49.840 | So while it's not quite saving money

00:41:51.840 | and this really applies to all the categories,

00:41:54.160 | but making sure you're at least getting the most

00:41:56.080 | out of the spending on that category

00:41:57.600 | is another way to save

00:41:58.880 | or really to earn more if you will.

00:42:01.040 | So if you have rent,

00:42:02.400 | definitely consider the built card

00:42:03.920 | where you can earn one point per dollar on rent

00:42:06.160 | up to $100,000 a year.

00:42:08.000 | I'm a huge fan.

00:42:09.120 | I wish I either had some rent

00:42:10.320 | or they accepted mortgage payments

00:42:11.840 | so I could make this work.

00:42:13.280 | And if you wanna check that out,

00:42:14.240 | you can use my referral link,

00:42:15.440 | allthehacks.com/built.

00:42:17.200 | And last, this isn't for everyone,

00:42:18.640 | but if one of your home expenses

00:42:20.160 | or future home expenses might be a second home,

00:42:22.560 | definitely take a look at Picasso.

00:42:24.960 | It's a company that finds really amazing vacation homes

00:42:28.320 | in lots of different destinations,

00:42:30.160 | puts them into an LLC

00:42:31.520 | and makes it really easy for people to buy 1/8 of them

00:42:34.240 | so you don't have to buy the entire house.

00:42:36.480 | I can tell you that our monthly payment

00:42:38.720 | for our Picasso is way smaller

00:42:40.640 | than it would have been

00:42:41.200 | if we bought a similar vacation home.

00:42:43.280 | They're also a sponsor of the show.

00:42:44.880 | So if you wanna get early access

00:42:46.320 | to a lot of their properties

00:42:47.440 | or get some credits towards closing costs,

00:42:49.120 | you can go to allthehacks.com/picasso.

00:42:51.040 | Next category is dog or pets.

00:42:53.680 | I wish I had a good answer here, but I don't.

00:42:55.680 | I don't really know a great way to save money on your pet.

00:42:58.560 | Definitely shop around if you have a dog walker

00:43:01.280 | or if you're sending your dog somewhere overnight,

00:43:03.360 | maybe you can find some deals.

00:43:04.880 | But other than that, I don't really have anything here.

00:43:07.280 | On the insurance category,

00:43:08.720 | I have an entire episode dedicated to this.

00:43:11.040 | It's episode 104.

00:43:12.240 | A recent email from an Apple podcast listener

00:43:15.200 | said they saved over $15,000 a year

00:43:18.000 | implementing a lot of the things

00:43:19.440 | they learned from that episode.

00:43:20.960 | So if you wanna save money on insurance,

00:43:22.640 | highly recommend going there.

00:43:24.080 | There was one other hack

00:43:25.040 | that I don't know if it was in that episode,

00:43:26.480 | but it was definitely in another one,

00:43:28.160 | which was just if you have an emergency fund

00:43:30.560 | that allows you to maybe increase your deductibles

00:43:33.200 | on some of your policies,

00:43:34.720 | it will ultimately result in you

00:43:36.080 | lowering your monthly expenses.

00:43:37.680 | So if you wanna use your emergency fund

00:43:39.760 | to raise your deductibles,

00:43:41.120 | you can cut your monthly insurance costs.

00:43:42.800 | On bills and expenses,

00:43:45.360 | that's phone, internet, cable, stuff like that.

00:43:47.840 | So one thing, negotiate all these bills.

00:43:50.400 | When we had cable,

00:43:51.360 | it felt like every year our cable bill would increase.

00:43:53.680 | We had to call Comcast, get them to lower the price.

00:43:56.160 | You can also use a tool like Rocket Money

00:43:57.760 | to automatically do a lot of this negotiation for you.

00:44:00.800 | Definitely shop around.

00:44:02.240 | I think bundling always seems like it's the cheapest deal,

00:44:04.880 | but that's not always true.

00:44:06.720 | And then consider canceling your TV

00:44:08.720 | for internet services, YouTube TV, or something like that.

00:44:12.160 | And last on cell phones,

00:44:13.360 | I have an episode that I'm working on

00:44:14.560 | that's almost done and ready to go,

00:44:16.560 | all about cell phones and cell phone insurance

00:44:18.960 | and saving money.

00:44:19.760 | I compare all the carriers in the US

00:44:22.560 | across a lot of different categories.

00:44:24.880 | The preview was that

00:44:26.720 | if you don't need international coverage,

00:44:28.480 | hands down, the best option was Mint Mobile.

00:44:30.720 | We use Mint Mobile in our household.

00:44:32.320 | I got a Mint Mobile account for our au pair.

00:44:34.560 | They are now a sponsor of the show.

00:44:35.840 | So thank you, Mint Mobile.

00:44:37.120 | You can go to allthehacks.com/mintmobile

00:44:39.440 | and get a plan for as little as $15 a month

00:44:42.080 | for unlimited data.

00:44:43.200 | And at the high end on the, I want unlimited data,

00:44:46.720 | I don't wanna worry about eSIMS.

00:44:48.640 | It was really neck and neck between T-Mobile and Google Fi.

00:44:51.520 | But if you're gonna make a change to any of this,

00:44:53.680 | definitely go listen to that episode.

00:44:55.280 | It will be out soon.

00:44:56.320 | I promise I just have to wrap it up,

00:44:58.080 | but I hope you enjoy.

00:44:59.280 | So next is home.

00:45:00.560 | Shout out to my wife, Amy,

00:45:01.920 | who came up with a bunch of these.

00:45:02.960 | I'll just run through a few.

00:45:04.320 | First, keeping your house organized.

00:45:06.480 | So Amy just reorganized our entire pantry.

00:45:10.080 | It looks absolutely incredible.

00:45:11.760 | And through that process,

00:45:13.040 | we realized there was stuff like chicken broth

00:45:15.200 | where we had plenty of it and we were still buying it.

00:45:18.000 | So the more organized I think your house is,

00:45:20.720 | the more you know exactly what you have

00:45:22.480 | and the more you're not buying stuff you don't need.

00:45:24.480 | Next, I have two things

00:45:25.360 | that are a little bit opposing forces.

00:45:27.520 | One is depending on where you live,

00:45:29.360 | it's probably very easy to get things delivered

00:45:32.080 | same day or even next day.

00:45:33.920 | So for certain purchases,

00:45:36.000 | don't buy them if you think you're gonna need them,

00:45:38.240 | especially if they're not that urgent.

00:45:40.240 | Wait until you actually need it.

00:45:42.000 | I know that there are a lot of things in this house

00:45:43.520 | that I've said, "Oh, that's something we might need one day.

00:45:45.520 | Let's get that."

00:45:46.480 | If I had just waited until I needed it,

00:45:48.000 | there are a lot of them

00:45:48.720 | that I never would have ended up buying.

00:45:50.320 | On the flip side,

00:45:52.000 | if there are things you absolutely know you need regularly,

00:45:54.960 | paper towels, deodorant, toilet paper,

00:45:57.360 | buy them in bulk or on sale.

00:45:59.200 | I do this at Costco all the time.

00:46:01.120 | If Costco doesn't have toilet paper

00:46:02.560 | or paper towels on sale, I don't buy it.

00:46:04.320 | If I'm going to Costco and I see it on sale, I buy it.

00:46:06.720 | Even better if it's things that are smaller,

00:46:08.640 | like deodorant, where whenever it's on sale,

00:46:10.720 | I buy that in bulk,

00:46:12.320 | and then I just put it under the cabinet in the bathroom,

00:46:14.640 | and I know that I'll have it for a long time.

00:46:16.800 | Next one doesn't really reduce your cost

00:46:18.800 | as much as it reduces your net cost.

00:46:20.480 | But if you're buying any major appliances,

00:46:22.880 | make sure to look into whether it makes sense

00:46:24.960 | to sell your used appliances.

00:46:26.800 | When we bought a new washer and dryer,

00:46:28.720 | our old ones were older, but they still worked.

00:46:31.360 | And they offered to pick them up free of charge.

00:46:33.840 | But the day before delivery,

00:46:35.440 | I listed them on Facebook Marketplace,

00:46:37.520 | and we ended up selling the washer and dryer

00:46:39.200 | for a few hundred dollars.

00:46:40.320 | Someone picked them up that same day.

00:46:42.320 | So what we thought might've been something

00:46:43.680 | we were just going to have someone take away for free,

00:46:45.920 | we were able to sell and offset the cost

00:46:47.440 | of the new washer and dryer.

00:46:49.040 | Also, if you have gardening in your house in the winter,

00:46:51.840 | you often don't need it as much.

00:46:53.280 | So the gardener might not tell you,

00:46:55.360 | "Hey, do you want to cut back your visits

00:46:56.960 | from once every two weeks to once a month?"

00:46:59.200 | But you can always request that.

00:47:00.480 | So I know in the winter, we reduce ours to once a month.

00:47:03.840 | So that's all for houses.

00:47:05.040 | On utilities, I'll give one hack,

00:47:07.120 | which is to go check your energy plan.

00:47:09.520 | Some states don't have different plans,

00:47:11.200 | but at least in the Bay Area with PG&E,

00:47:13.280 | there's five or six different plans you can choose from.

00:47:16.080 | And they are basically different prices

00:47:18.400 | based on times of day.

00:47:19.680 | And depending on your usage,

00:47:21.200 | there might be one that makes a lot more sense

00:47:22.960 | and costs a lot less.

00:47:24.400 | There's also a ton of stuff you can do

00:47:26.080 | to save money on energy,

00:47:27.840 | solar, batteries, LEDs, water heater temperatures.

00:47:31.280 | And we actually have an entire episode coming up on that.

00:47:34.320 | So I'll punt the rest of these hacks to that episode.

00:47:37.600 | And then when it comes to property taxes,

00:47:39.120 | I don't have a good way to save money on property taxes.

00:47:41.680 | So I don't know what to say.

00:47:43.600 | It sucks.

00:47:45.360 | Moving into car and transport.

00:47:46.720 | On car, a lot of people have emailed

00:47:49.200 | suggesting different ways to save money

00:47:51.120 | with gas station loyalty programs.

00:47:53.200 | Look up those gas station loyalty programs for sure.

00:47:56.000 | I also know a lot of the grocery apps

00:47:57.920 | have gas station loyalty points that tie into that.

00:48:00.800 | Obviously, make sure that those loyalty programs

00:48:03.200 | are worth the discount relative to the cost they charge.

00:48:07.120 | If they're the most expensive gas in town

00:48:09.040 | and you can get a discount,

00:48:10.080 | but it still ends up being more expensive.

00:48:11.680 | It's not really a deal.

00:48:12.640 | To be clear, I don't know a lot about these programs

00:48:15.440 | because the only vehicle we have that takes gas is a Vespa.

00:48:17.760 | And I fill it up about one gallon at a time.

00:48:20.080 | And it's just not worth trying to save money on.

00:48:23.440 | We only spend about, I don't know, $100 a year on gas.

00:48:27.760 | Another one that I thought was really surprising

00:48:29.920 | the first time I did this was getting multiple quotes

00:48:32.800 | anytime you need service.

00:48:34.400 | I was blown away when we had a,

00:48:36.720 | I think it was a power steering pressure hose go out.

00:48:39.760 | And the range in prices was like from $1,000 to $5,000

00:48:44.800 | or something like that.

00:48:45.920 | I don't remember the exact price,

00:48:47.120 | but it was that wide of a range.

00:48:49.280 | So definitely make sure you get a few quotes

00:48:51.120 | anytime you need service for your vehicle.

00:48:54.320 | On transportation,

00:48:55.920 | if you work at a company that offers an FSA

00:48:58.080 | for transportation expenses,

00:48:59.440 | you can use pre-tax money to buy transit passes,

00:49:02.800 | often parking.

00:49:03.840 | So definitely look at that.

00:49:04.880 | And for ride sharing,

00:49:07.040 | your credit card might already give you discounts

00:49:08.880 | through things like a LiftPink membership,

00:49:10.480 | which I know you can get with a lot of chase cards.

00:49:12.880 | And link all of your cards to all these loyalty programs.

00:49:16.000 | You're not gonna save money.

00:49:17.440 | But if every dollar you spend,

00:49:18.880 | you're earning Delta miles or Hilton points

00:49:21.200 | or something like that,

00:49:22.320 | it's like saving money in that you're earning a lot.

00:49:24.480 | When it comes to children,

00:49:25.360 | which is the next category,

00:49:26.640 | there's actually a lot of questions you all have sent in.

00:49:29.120 | And Amy and I were talking about

00:49:30.560 | how to incorporate it into the show.

00:49:32.480 | And I think what we're gonna do next year

00:49:34.880 | is a series of episodes

00:49:36.560 | tackling a lot of the things related to kids and parenting,

00:49:39.840 | maybe even relationships

00:49:41.360 | that aren't relevant to everyone listening.

00:49:43.360 | Not everyone has kids,

00:49:44.720 | but that are relevant to a lot of people.

00:49:46.400 | And we'll probably do like a 4 to 10 episode mini series,

00:49:50.800 | releasing those episodes,

00:49:52.080 | not on the core Wednesday release date,

00:49:54.000 | but another episode each week for a limited time

00:49:57.040 | to hit on a lot of children topics.

00:49:58.960 | So we're gonna cover a lot of those things here.

00:50:01.440 | Within childcare, we have an au pair,

00:50:03.600 | which I think is both an amazing experience

00:50:05.760 | and an amazing way to save money on childcare

00:50:08.400 | if you have the extra room.

00:50:09.600 | On children, one big thing,

00:50:12.320 | we buy a lot of the kids' toys,

00:50:14.160 | bike stuff used or get hand-me-downs.

00:50:16.800 | We build up the karma for that

00:50:18.160 | by giving away a lot of our old stuff for our kids,

00:50:21.120 | but more kids stuff in those episodes.

00:50:23.760 | On education, there's gonna be another episode on this

00:50:26.400 | in that whole series.

00:50:27.520 | So look out for that.

00:50:28.640 | But one thing to keep in mind is take a look.

00:50:31.520 | A lot of cities actually run their own

00:50:34.000 | afterschool programs, preschools, classes

00:50:37.200 | that are way, way cheaper

00:50:38.800 | than a lot of the private ones.

00:50:40.000 | So you might be able to save money there.

00:50:41.520 | Next, health and wellness.

00:50:43.120 | On fitness, I don't have much

00:50:44.400 | other than that there's a lot of free content on YouTube

00:50:47.120 | and apps that you can use to get free content

00:50:49.200 | that might save you the cost of going to classes

00:50:52.240 | or spending money on a gym.

00:50:53.840 | But honestly, I think health and fitness

00:50:55.600 | is a really important category.

00:50:56.880 | So it's one of the places

00:50:58.400 | where Amy and I often ask ourselves,

00:51:00.800 | if we could spend more money, where would we spend it?

00:51:02.960 | And our health is one of those things.

00:51:04.880 | Broader theme,

00:51:05.680 | just as I'm going through all these categories,

00:51:07.520 | I am not trying to tell you,

00:51:08.560 | "Here's all the ways to cut your costs

00:51:09.920 | because you need to."

00:51:11.040 | I'm trying to tell you,

00:51:11.840 | "Here are thoughts about how to do it."

00:51:13.600 | But at the end of the day,

00:51:14.640 | some of these things might be areas

00:51:16.000 | where you actually wanna spend more money on

00:51:17.680 | and you could skip right past it.

00:51:19.280 | When it comes to healthcare,

00:51:20.640 | my goal is to get an episode out

00:51:22.320 | before open enrollment this year,

00:51:23.680 | all about how I think about health insurance

00:51:25.520 | and different options.

00:51:26.640 | So expect that soon.

00:51:28.240 | But ways to save money,

00:51:29.840 | if you have access to an FSA or an HSA,

00:51:32.000 | they're fantastic.

00:51:33.280 | If you have healthcare bills that are really high,

00:51:35.600 | go back and listen to episode 34,

00:51:38.240 | where I talked to Marshall Allen

00:51:39.920 | about fighting the healthcare system

00:51:41.440 | and getting better deals on healthcare

00:51:43.120 | and lowering your bills.

00:51:44.480 | It is a goldmine of information

00:51:46.320 | if you're in that situation.

00:51:47.840 | And then there's some programs like GoodRx,

00:51:50.000 | which are helpful to get discounts on prescriptions.

00:51:52.240 | In personal care,

00:51:53.760 | a lot of things by bulk on sale,

00:51:56.560 | one option.

00:51:57.440 | If you live in a city

00:51:58.880 | and you're willing to accept a little bit of risk

00:52:01.440 | when it comes to your haircuts,

00:52:03.040 | if you go on Craigslist,

00:52:04.080 | you can often find beauty schools and salons

00:52:07.200 | and barbershops that need hair models.

00:52:09.360 | A lot of times they're looking for specific haircuts

00:52:11.680 | that you need.

00:52:12.400 | Like maybe they're looking for someone who wants a buzz

00:52:14.480 | or a bob or something.

00:52:15.920 | But they're usually stylists in training,

00:52:17.920 | but they're almost always supervised

00:52:19.680 | by someone more senior.

00:52:21.120 | So definitely could be a way to save money on haircuts.

00:52:23.520 | Could be as little as $0.

00:52:25.200 | Sometimes they're just discounted.

00:52:26.880 | And then only because they're a product I love

00:52:28.720 | and use every week.

00:52:29.840 | If you want to save money on razor blades,

00:52:31.840 | I definitely think you should check out Henson.

00:52:34.000 | They're a sponsor of the show.

00:52:35.040 | I'm a huge fan of Henson.

00:52:37.760 | Significantly cheaper than buying cartridges

00:52:39.760 | and a traditional razor that a lot of us have.

00:52:42.240 | And I think it's honestly a much better shave.

00:52:44.400 | I went about a week or two shaving

00:52:46.480 | with two different razors on each side

00:52:48.320 | just to see if I really thought it was a better razor.

00:52:50.720 | And it was.

00:52:51.360 | If you want to get 100 free blades

00:52:53.040 | with your first purchase on Henson,

00:52:54.720 | go to allthehacks.com/henson.

00:52:57.280 | In lifestyle,

00:52:58.480 | I'll run through a few things here.

00:52:59.680 | In subscriptions,

00:53:00.720 | like I mentioned earlier with bills,

00:53:02.560 | cut them or negotiate them.

00:53:04.400 | You're going to hear about this in the cell phone episode,

00:53:06.320 | but there are some subscriptions that are included

00:53:08.320 | with certain cell phone providers

00:53:09.760 | or maybe even included for a premium,

00:53:12.160 | but that's less than the regular cost.

00:53:14.320 | So I know with some T-Mobile plans,

00:53:15.840 | you get free Apple TV+ and free Netflix.

00:53:18.240 | You can save some money there.

00:53:19.920 | And then last, if you're signing up for a subscription

00:53:21.600 | that you want to make sure you don't cancel,

00:53:23.040 | use a virtual credit card.

00:53:25.200 | Capital One has a really slick system for creating them.

00:53:28.320 | Or if you don't have them through your credit card company,

00:53:30.480 | you can go to privacy.com,

00:53:32.160 | which is a company that helps make this process easier.

00:53:34.720 | You can put in a credit card to set up a trial of some service

00:53:38.240 | and you can have it deactivate the next day

00:53:40.720 | so that if you forget to cancel it during the trial,

00:53:43.040 | you won't get charged.

00:53:44.480 | On entertainment,

00:53:45.680 | here is one fun hack that's very, very specific to escape rooms,

00:53:49.920 | which Amy and I are massive fans of.

00:53:52.480 | If you happen to be listening

00:53:53.520 | and are a huge fan of escape rooms as well,

00:53:55.520 | send me any recommendations you have.

00:53:57.520 | Every time we're traveling,

00:53:58.640 | we try to do the best room in any city.

00:54:00.560 | And honestly, we also try to do them without other people.

00:54:04.400 | We much prefer to do a room with just the two of us.

00:54:07.040 | A lot of escape rooms make you pay for the number of people

00:54:09.600 | that room could hold if you want to do it privately.

00:54:12.400 | So we'll sometimes look at the calendar

00:54:14.320 | and if we see an escape room that has all the spaces free,

00:54:18.000 | we might head over there

00:54:19.440 | knowing that someone else could book it last minute,

00:54:21.600 | walk in there right before the room starts and say,

00:54:23.760 | "Hey, we'll book two people."

00:54:25.200 | And we'll know right then that we're able to get it at a deal.

00:54:27.840 | If not, we'll go dinner, have drinks somewhere nearby.

00:54:30.480 | For a lot of zoos and museums,

00:54:32.560 | they're actually set up as nonprofits

00:54:34.640 | and getting a membership could be tax deductible.

00:54:37.440 | On top of that, a lot of those memberships

00:54:39.360 | have reciprocal discounts.

00:54:40.880 | So when we're traveling

00:54:41.920 | with the two museum memberships we have,

00:54:44.160 | there are hundreds of zoos and science museums

00:54:46.400 | that we actually get access to either free

00:54:49.040 | or for a discount with our membership.

00:54:51.200 | Another one is for last minute tickets.

00:54:53.200 | This also works with concerts and Broadway shows.

00:54:55.600 | It's just getting right near the venue,

00:54:58.160 | similar to the escape room one,

00:55:00.000 | and buying the tickets right when the event starts

00:55:03.120 | or 10 minutes before, or if it's a concert,

00:55:05.680 | even a little bit after it starts,

00:55:07.440 | if you don't care about the opening act.

00:55:09.520 | I have a couple of friends that did this

00:55:10.880 | for the Taylor Swift show.

00:55:12.400 | They bought their tickets like 45 minutes

00:55:15.040 | after the show started.

00:55:16.800 | It was before Taylor went on,

00:55:18.480 | but the owners of these tickets on StubHub

00:55:20.400 | were dropping the prices rapidly

00:55:22.080 | because they knew if they didn't sell them at some point,

00:55:24.000 | they would get nothing.

00:55:25.120 | On personal, I don't have much

00:55:26.480 | because like I said earlier,

00:55:27.280 | I don't even know what that category really was.

00:55:29.600 | On travel, a third of this entire show is about travel.

00:55:32.240 | So go listen to those episodes.

00:55:33.840 | In food and drink, when it comes to groceries,

00:55:36.800 | I think the biggest thing here is to make a plan.

00:55:39.040 | And if you have a plan and it's organized,

00:55:41.600 | you're going to really make sure

00:55:42.480 | you're buying the things you need for that plan

00:55:44.400 | and not aimlessly buying things at the grocery store.

00:55:46.560 | We do all our planning with the Paprika app.

00:55:49.200 | I keep emailing them trying to get a deal

00:55:50.880 | for listeners and members, but I've been unsuccessful.

00:55:53.520 | We do three of our meals a week using Green Chef.

00:55:56.160 | We did that before they were sponsors of the show.

00:55:58.400 | We're such big fans of it.

00:55:59.920 | We've tried a bunch of meal kits and we like them the most.

00:56:02.720 | You can go to allthehacks.com/greenchef

00:56:05.520 | and let me know what you think.

00:56:06.720 | Definitely be using the grocery apps.

00:56:08.960 | Every time I'm going to Safeway,

00:56:10.800 | I pull up the Safeway app,

00:56:12.320 | and I'm pretty convinced that the coupons in that app

00:56:14.880 | save me at least 10% every single time.

00:56:17.360 | I don't know why, but it seems like

00:56:19.120 | every time I open that app,

00:56:20.320 | there's a $3 to $10 off my grocery store purchase coupon

00:56:24.320 | in my account.

00:56:25.280 | And then in episode 131, a couple of weeks ago,

00:56:27.680 | I talked a lot about buying bulk meat.

00:56:29.280 | So go back and check that out

00:56:30.640 | if you want to save money on meat.

00:56:32.160 | On the dining and drinks category,

00:56:34.320 | obviously you could just go out less.

00:56:36.000 | That's an option that you could go early

00:56:37.920 | to a lot of places that have happy hour specials.

00:56:40.640 | If you are regularly ordering food online,

00:56:43.760 | check if your credit card has any deals

00:56:46.560 | to get programs with them.

00:56:48.560 | For example, Chase Sapphire Reserve,

00:56:50.880 | you get DoorDash credit and you get free Dash Pass.

00:56:54.160 | So when we're ordering food,

00:56:56.320 | we're using DoorDash.

00:56:57.680 | Amex gets $10 off on Grubhub.

00:56:59.920 | So we're using those programs to get a deal

00:57:02.720 | if we want to order food.

00:57:04.080 | DoorDash happens to be a sponsor of the show.

00:57:05.840 | So I will say if you haven't tried it out,

00:57:07.760 | but you have a Chase credit card

00:57:09.040 | and you want to get a free Dash Pass and free credits,

00:57:11.280 | I would love it if you signed up

00:57:12.240 | at allthehacks.com/doordash.

00:57:14.320 | And then last, there's an app that I am very new to,

00:57:17.760 | but I just saw promoted by a friend of mine

00:57:20.320 | called InKind.

00:57:21.360 | And it lets you buy credits

00:57:24.240 | that you can use at restaurants for a discount.

00:57:27.280 | And normally, I look at these and think,

00:57:29.200 | "Gosh, the restaurants on this app

00:57:31.120 | might be really terrible."

00:57:32.720 | But I saw some really great restaurants in San Francisco

00:57:35.760 | where you would regularly go to.

00:57:37.520 | So if you want to check this out

00:57:39.040 | and see if there are any restaurants

00:57:40.240 | worth going to where you live,

00:57:41.840 | they're not a sponsor of the show,

00:57:43.360 | but I do have a referral code

00:57:44.640 | that you can get $25 off

00:57:46.320 | at allthehacks.com/inkind.

00:57:48.800 | To be clear, I have not used this,

00:57:51.120 | so I don't want to fully endorse it.

00:57:53.040 | But if it looks interesting

00:57:54.080 | and you want a free $25,

00:57:55.360 | you can use that code.

00:57:56.560 | I think that's all for dining and drinks.

00:57:58.320 | This is an area similar to health

00:58:00.640 | where we enjoy good food.

00:58:02.320 | We enjoy going out.

00:58:03.280 | So I'm not always looking at costs here.

00:58:05.520 | And in many cases, when we're traveling,

00:58:07.200 | this is some of the most exciting ways we spend money.

00:58:09.600 | In shopping, there's a lot.

00:58:12.080 | So I am always trying to stack

00:58:14.960 | as many different deals when I'm buying stuff.

00:58:17.440 | That includes looking for coupons,

00:58:19.760 | sometimes buying coupons.

00:58:22.080 | If you have a really big purchase,

00:58:23.520 | you can buy coupons for places like Home Depot

00:58:25.520 | or Crate & Barrel for a lot less.

00:58:27.200 | You can get them sometimes

00:58:28.560 | when you get the change of a dress pack from USPS.

00:58:32.080 | Looking for promo codes

00:58:33.280 | or even live chatting with a store

00:58:34.880 | to get those promo codes.

00:58:36.240 | Looking for cashback options.

00:58:38.880 | I love going to Cashback Monitor,

00:58:40.560 | which is a website that shows you

00:58:41.760 | the best cash and points back options for any purchase.

00:58:44.640 | And then last, buying gift cards for the retailer,

00:58:48.320 | either at a discount online.

00:58:50.000 | There are sites where you can buy discounted gift cards,

00:58:52.080 | or at a minimum, going to a place

00:58:53.680 | where you earn a lot of extra points.

00:58:55.680 | If you have a grocery card

00:58:56.880 | or an office supply store card,

00:58:58.640 | and you can go buy gift cards for other merchants

00:59:01.120 | and get a lot more points per dollar

00:59:02.640 | on the grocery card purchase and then using those.

00:59:05.360 | There are a bunch of apps.

00:59:07.040 | Camel Camel Camel is one of them.

00:59:08.800 | There's another one, I think it's called Wistia,

00:59:10.800 | where you can track prices on Amazon

00:59:13.120 | and find out whether it's regularly cheaper and hold off.

00:59:16.480 | I love Library Extension for getting free eBooks.

00:59:20.000 | In episode 113, I covered all the hidden benefits

00:59:22.160 | of credit cards, things like purchase protection.

00:59:25.520 | So definitely another way that you can make sure you save,

00:59:27.680 | especially if you buy something and it breaks,

00:59:29.520 | you can get your money back.

00:59:30.480 | There's a lot of buy nothing groups on Facebook.

00:59:34.400 | You can look on all kinds of sites to buy things used.

00:59:37.120 | I do that a lot.

00:59:38.000 | A lot of stores do price matching.

00:59:39.520 | I probably should have mentioned that in stacking,

00:59:41.120 | but definitely look around for price matching.

00:59:43.600 | And then almost every credit card issuer has offers.

00:59:46.720 | So always making sure you're looking at the Amex offers,

00:59:49.440 | the Chase offers, the Capital One offers to see

00:59:52.160 | if there is some deal that could earn you money back.

00:59:55.120 | I know for example, there was one on Chase a few weeks ago

00:59:57.680 | where you got 10% off Southwest.

00:59:59.760 | There's two components to this.

01:00:00.960 | One is making sure you see them and activate them.

01:00:03.280 | And the other is making sure you use the right card

01:00:06.160 | when you're spending money at the merchant.

01:00:08.320 | I'm a big fan of the Card Pointers app

01:00:10.080 | because it auto enrolls you in all of these offers.

01:00:12.640 | You do still need to look at the offers

01:00:14.240 | to make sure you use the right card to get that offer.

01:00:17.520 | But Card Pointers Pro is awesome for that.

01:00:19.760 | And you get 30% off as an AllTheHacks listener

01:00:22.320 | at allthehacks.com/cardpointers.

01:00:24.640 | In clothing, I don't have a lot.

01:00:26.240 | There are a lot of sales.

01:00:27.360 | So if what you're trying to buy isn't urgent,

01:00:29.120 | maybe just wait for a sale.

01:00:30.640 | Last category is gifts and donations.

01:00:32.320 | When it comes to gifts, one thing is just buying early

01:00:34.800 | so you're not scrambling last minute,

01:00:36.560 | paying extra for shipping or not being able to shop around.

01:00:39.120 | Another one is gifting experiences.

01:00:41.840 | It's kind of cool if you really love something

01:00:44.160 | and you want to give someone a gift,

01:00:45.520 | can you combine those two?

01:00:46.800 | So you're getting both an experience and a gift

01:00:50.160 | with someone you care about.

01:00:51.280 | Another one is just being thoughtful.

01:00:53.840 | For me, I would rather get a $10 gift

01:00:56.320 | that was really thoughtful

01:00:57.520 | that someone spent a lot of time thinking about

01:00:59.920 | than a $500 gift that was just some random thing

01:01:02.720 | they found on the internet that they thought I would like

01:01:04.960 | or that I was going to buy myself anyways.

01:01:06.720 | So I give, I don't know what the right multiple is,

01:01:09.360 | but it's probably somewhere between a 2 to 5X multiple

01:01:12.480 | for thoughtful gifts in terms of the value they have for me.

01:01:15.680 | And then last is probably a controversial one,

01:01:17.840 | which is just remove gifting.

01:01:19.360 | I am not someone, given what I said about thoughtful gifts,

01:01:22.960 | I'm not someone who likes gifting things that are on a list.

01:01:26.160 | And I remember one Christmas in one of our families,

01:01:29.040 | people were like, "What's on everybody's list?

01:01:30.640 | Can everyone share their list

01:01:31.760 | so we can buy all the Christmas gifts?"

01:01:33.520 | And I was like, "I feel like what's going on

01:01:36.480 | in the background is everyone is just thinking,

01:01:39.200 | 'I want to spend X dollars on each person.

01:01:41.200 | Let's look at their list.

01:01:42.320 | Let's buy them something on their list.

01:01:43.920 | And then we're all just passing money around each other.

01:01:46.480 | What if we all just said what we'd want to spend on each other?

01:01:48.880 | We netted it out on a spreadsheet

01:01:50.240 | and we Venmo'd each other."

01:01:51.600 | And people were like, "That's a horrible idea."

01:01:53.520 | And I was like, "But it's kind of the same thing,

01:01:55.440 | except it's even worse.

01:01:56.480 | Because if I'm going to go buy something,

01:01:58.640 | I'm going to do all the things that I mentioned earlier

01:02:00.640 | to stack and save."

01:02:02.240 | And I know a lot of people in our family aren't.

01:02:04.240 | So they're actually going to end up spending more

01:02:06.320 | to get this thing than I would,

01:02:08.560 | which just inside drives me nuts.

01:02:11.760 | So what we ended up doing ultimately was saying,

01:02:14.320 | "Look, if we're not together for the holidays,

01:02:17.280 | which we often alternate between my and Amy's family,

01:02:20.640 | no gifts."

01:02:21.680 | And if we are together, we started switching to say,

01:02:24.480 | "Maybe every sibling and parent picks one other person."

01:02:28.400 | And we even did it for just couples.

01:02:30.640 | So there were four couples

01:02:32.160 | between three siblings and parents.

01:02:33.840 | Each one got one other one

01:02:35.440 | and did one nice gift for that couple.

01:02:37.920 | Removed a lot of the money that we were all spending

01:02:40.080 | to just buy things for, in my opinion,

01:02:42.720 | the purpose of buying things.

01:02:44.400 | You could also set up gift caps to try to lower the cost.

01:02:47.040 | There's a lot of stuff you could do.

01:02:48.160 | I have some controversial opinions on gifts.

01:02:50.880 | Totally hear that.

01:02:51.760 | It might not be for you.

01:02:53.040 | On donations, if you don't know about Amazon Smile,

01:02:55.680 | you can basically buy anything on Amazon,

01:02:57.680 | except have 1% of the proceeds go to charity.

01:03:00.560 | That's an awesome way to give.

01:03:02.240 | And then last on donations,

01:03:03.760 | there are a lot of tax benefits of donations.

01:03:05.840 | It can be a lot of headache

01:03:07.280 | because you've got to keep and track all of your receipts.

01:03:09.280 | One way we solve this is

01:03:11.440 | we do all of our donating to our Daffy account,

01:03:14.320 | which is a donor advised fund.

01:03:16.000 | If you want to learn more,

01:03:16.880 | I did a whole episode with Adam Nash,

01:03:18.880 | who started the company in episode 50.

01:03:21.040 | The basic premise is you get an account

01:03:22.880 | and you can donate money, stocks, crypto.

01:03:25.520 | And at the time of that donation, it's a tax deduction.

01:03:29.120 | However, you don't have to allocate that money right away.

01:03:32.000 | So we were able to, in one of our higher tax years,

01:03:35.120 | donate a lot of appreciated shares of stock

01:03:37.600 | to our Daffy account.

01:03:38.720 | And now we have a pool of funds

01:03:40.080 | that anytime we want to make a donation to,

01:03:42.560 | we can type in the name of the charity quickly.

01:03:44.640 | Both of us have access to Daffy

01:03:46.320 | and we can send money to that charity.

01:03:48.160 | So actually, when you look at our donations line item

01:03:51.520 | in our budget, it's almost zero every single year

01:03:54.640 | because we upfront loaded about 10 years of donations

01:03:58.640 | into our Daffy account

01:04:00.320 | because it was a really advantageous year

01:04:02.720 | to take that tax deduction.

01:04:04.400 | We had some really highly appreciated stocks

01:04:06.560 | we wanted to sell.

01:04:07.680 | And so we're able to get a really big benefit that year.

01:04:10.400 | And now we can actually invest the money

01:04:12.480 | in our Daffy account.

01:04:13.520 | So it's been growing every year.

01:04:15.280 | Hopefully it should give us money to donate to charity

01:04:18.480 | for at least 10 years, if not more.

01:04:21.120 | If you wanna check it out, you can get a free $25

01:04:23.120 | to donate to the charity of your choice

01:04:24.720 | at allthehacks.com/daffy.

01:04:26.560 | Or like I said, go back and listen to episode 50.

01:04:28.880 | Okay, that was a lot.

01:04:30.320 | Thank you for sticking with me.

01:04:31.760 | Hopefully that was super helpful.

01:04:32.880 | I would love to know what you guys think of this episode.

01:04:34.960 | If you have any feedback, questions, or other tips

01:04:37.520 | that should have been in here to save money,

01:04:39.600 | please send them to me.

01:04:40.960 | I'm gonna do another mailbag episode

01:04:43.200 | where I'd love to share all the tips that I missed.

01:04:45.760 | So please send them my way.

01:04:47.520 | And if you're listening to this sometime in the future,

01:04:50.080 | go look for that next mailbag episode

01:04:52.000 | 'cause there's probably gonna be a lot of awesome ways

01:04:53.760 | to save from all of our listeners

01:04:55.840 | that I'd love you guys to hear as well.

01:04:57.680 | If you have any thoughts or experiences

01:04:59.280 | with any of the apps we shared, I'd love to hear them.

01:05:01.520 | If you have questions, please shoot me an email,

01:05:04.080 | podcast@allthehacks.com.

01:05:06.080 | We check it every day.

01:05:07.360 | I love hearing from you guys.

01:05:08.880 | And I try to get back to everyone

01:05:10.400 | and bring up a lot of what I hear from you on the show.

01:05:12.720 | That's it for this week.

01:05:13.840 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:05:15.440 | I will see you next week.

Mastering Cash Flow: Tracking Spending to Boost Savings and 10+ Hacks to Spend Less

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