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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading
00:01:45.920 | your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more.
00:01:49.920 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you on my journey to find all
00:01:54.080 | the hacks to optimize my life.
00:01:56.400 | I've been asking you all to share any questions you have so I could do a
00:01:59.520 | Q&A episode, and that's exactly what today will be all about.
00:02:03.320 | Also, I'm going to be putting a lot more time and effort into the All The Hacks
00:02:06.560 | newsletter in the near future.
00:02:07.680 | So if you want to hear about all the cool stuff I'm learning about, some new hacks
00:02:10.960 | I'm finding, please make sure you subscribe at allthehacks.com/email.
00:02:15.080 | Okay, so by far the biggest questions were all around earning and redeeming
00:02:19.920 | points for maximum value.
00:02:21.800 | So I'll spend a lot of time there.
00:02:24.000 | I'll also share my top two to three cards for 2021 and how you might want to think
00:02:28.560 | about accumulating points with your partner.
00:02:30.360 | Aside from points, we'll talk about investing questions like whether to invest
00:02:34.880 | in alternatives like wine or art, how to think about saving for college, and
00:02:39.160 | automating your investments.
00:02:40.560 | Finally, I'll break down the full stack of tools, services, and software I use to
00:02:45.640 | optimize my life, my finances, and our home.
00:02:48.240 | But first, I want to share a cool listener story that's also a great hack.
00:02:53.360 | So I've been dealing with this ant problem at home.
00:02:55.480 | And no matter how much of that liquid ant bait I put around the house, they
00:02:59.520 | just keep coming back.
00:03:00.760 | So we had some termites last year and it cost hundreds of dollars for someone to be
00:03:05.160 | here for like 45 minutes.
00:03:06.800 | So I just couldn't bring myself to pay hundreds of dollars for pest control to
00:03:11.120 | come out because it seemed like such a racket.
00:03:13.280 | Anyways, I started doing some research and I found this product called Pesty.
00:03:18.560 | They offer a DIY version of the same pest control the pros use for under $50.
00:03:23.560 | They even ask for your zip code so that you're getting a formula for the pest in
00:03:27.680 | your region.
00:03:28.280 | So last month, I tried it out.
00:03:30.360 | You walk around your house, you spray for about five minutes, and since then, no
00:03:34.800 | ants.
00:03:35.200 | So I thought it was cool and I reached out to the company and small world, one of the
00:03:40.440 | founders who replied was a guy named Dylan, who actually had already emailed me.
00:03:46.200 | He's an All The Hacks listener who emailed me in June after listening to episode one.
00:03:50.600 | So I told him how much I loved his product.
00:03:53.160 | He said that he loved the show and I told him I wanted to mention it.
00:03:57.000 | And he said, if anyone on the show is a listener and wants 10% off, he set up a
00:04:02.520 | promo code.
00:04:03.280 | So you can go to AllTheHacks.com/Pesty and get 10% off.
00:04:09.520 | So thanks to our listener, Dylan, for setting that up.
00:04:11.960 | All right, so let's jump in.
00:04:14.720 | But of course, I still always have to remind you, I do work at Wealthfront.
00:04:18.640 | All the opinions I'll express are solely my own.
00:04:21.760 | They do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront.
00:04:24.000 | This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on for
00:04:28.360 | investment decisions.
00:04:29.400 | All right, so with that out of the way, let's jump in and start with a great
00:04:33.600 | question.
00:04:34.160 | Ross emailed me and asked, if you had to pick the two or three cards to have in
00:04:40.160 | 2021, what would they be?
00:04:42.200 | Amex Gold and Sapphire Reserve, that was his guess.
00:04:45.000 | And I'll say, you got it half right.
00:04:47.040 | I do think the Chase Sapphire Reserve is the best single card.
00:04:50.640 | It's the card I carry with me all the time.
00:04:52.920 | And I think for most people, travel and dining is a bulk of their spending and
00:04:57.840 | getting three points per dollar on that is fantastic.
00:05:00.400 | Now, if you want to save a little bit on the annual fee and just get two points
00:05:04.240 | per dollar on travel, but now you still get three on dining, you can go for the
00:05:08.200 | Chase Sapphire Preferred.
00:05:09.800 | The only thing I'll point out is that the Reserve comes with a $300 annual fee
00:05:14.280 | credit.
00:05:14.880 | So even though you're paying a pretty high annual fee, you get $300 back off any
00:05:19.920 | travel purchased on the card.
00:05:21.480 | You don't have to use a portal or anything like that.
00:05:23.120 | The other real big benefit of the Reserve is that every Chase Ultimate Reward Point
00:05:28.080 | is worth 1.5 cents if you want to redeem it in the portal.
00:05:31.800 | And that's across any Chase card you have that earns points.
00:05:35.480 | So I actually think the best second card for most people, if they have the Chase
00:05:40.080 | Reserve or Preferred, is the Freedom Unlimited.
00:05:42.600 | And the reason I think that is because it's an everyday card.
00:05:46.040 | It's one and a half points per dollar on everything.
00:05:48.960 | So I think a great one-two combo is Reserve for travel and dining, Unlimited
00:05:54.520 | for everything else.
00:05:55.560 | And then all those points can take advantage of the fact that the Reserve
00:05:59.280 | gives you points value of one and a half cents if you redeem in the portal or if
00:06:04.120 | you want to transfer it to other airlines, which I'll get to in a little bit.
00:06:07.200 | You could do that with all those points as well.
00:06:09.080 | So that's my favorite kind of one-two combo.
00:06:12.360 | If you're in the Amex ecosystem, I do think the Gold card is a great card.
00:06:17.760 | You're getting 4x on restaurants and 4x on groceries, but there's not a great
00:06:23.640 | earning on flights, which is something that I spend a bunch of money on.
00:06:26.760 | So I think to make the Amex combo work really well, you need the Gold and the
00:06:30.200 | Platinum, and that's just a lot of annual fees, unless you're really able to take
00:06:34.160 | advantage of the perks that the Platinum card has.
00:06:36.680 | That said, if you do spend a lot on flights, five points per dollar on
00:06:42.040 | flights is really unheard of.
00:06:44.040 | And every now and then I've planned a group trip and I've been responsible for
00:06:48.280 | booking like 10, 15 flights all at once.
00:06:51.040 | And the number of points you can earn on a Platinum card is so huge.
00:06:55.200 | So I do think for that reason, if you find yourself spending a lot on flights,
00:06:59.200 | it could make sense.
00:07:00.000 | I also think Amex, while they have way more transfer partners, as you're getting
00:07:04.720 | into points, I think if you're not ready to jump all the way into finding the
00:07:09.960 | airline to transfer the points to, it's nice that the portal on Chase gives you
00:07:14.720 | one and a half cents, whereas on Amex, it's only one cent per point.
00:07:18.200 | So I think for most people, Sapphire Reserve combo with the Unlimited is a
00:07:23.440 | great two cards to have.
00:07:25.040 | If I were going to add a third card, instead of trying to go for another
00:07:28.880 | ecosystem, I would really look at whether there's a place you spend a lot of
00:07:32.720 | money or have a lot of loyalty to.
00:07:34.480 | That could be an airline that you fly all the time.
00:07:37.240 | That could be a hotel that you stay at a lot.
00:07:39.920 | That could be Amazon.
00:07:41.720 | I know for me and my wife, we spent a lot on Amazon, both for Amazon Fresh
00:07:46.120 | delivery at Whole Foods and just buying stuff on Amazon.
00:07:49.280 | So I would say the Sapphire Reserve, the Freedom Unlimited and the Amazon Prime
00:07:54.520 | Visa are like our three core cards.
00:07:57.000 | And yes, we have a Bonvoy card for when we stay at Marriott and we have other
00:08:00.600 | cards, but those are the three that I really use a lot.
00:08:03.120 | Okay, so that's my favorite one, two, maybe three card combo.
00:08:07.600 | But Danielle and Dennis sent a question asking about whether signup bonuses are
00:08:12.760 | really the place to accumulate points.
00:08:14.800 | And I'll say, I do spend a lot of time talking about the cards that I use day to
00:08:19.880 | day to maximize the points I'm earning on my spending.
00:08:22.560 | But if you ask me how I got a big portion of the points I have, it's all from signup
00:08:28.040 | bonuses. I've almost never signed up for a new card without a massive bonus.
00:08:31.960 | And sometimes when I see a huge bonus, that's really the time to strike.
00:08:35.600 | I do keep track of my credit score.
00:08:37.640 | And I think the most important thing to think about with these signup bonuses is
00:08:41.680 | you have to hit the minimum spend.
00:08:43.400 | One time I think I signed up for a card and this was a poor lesson to learn, but I
00:08:49.440 | didn't hit the minimum spend in time and I only got half the signup bonus.
00:08:52.960 | So I would keep track of that.
00:08:54.760 | I would keep track of your credit score.
00:08:56.520 | I would keep track of rules.
00:08:58.200 | Chase has one where you can only open five cards in a 24 month period.
00:09:02.600 | So you'll know that you'll just get declined if that happens.
00:09:05.840 | And as you do this a lot, you'll find out that different credit companies, Chase is
00:09:10.800 | another good example, will only extend a certain amount of credit.
00:09:13.800 | So if you sign up for a fifth Chase card, you might get this message that says we're
00:09:18.160 | reviewing your application.
00:09:19.360 | Now, the good news is you can call the reconsideration line.
00:09:22.760 | There's a number, just Google Chase or Amex reconsideration line and talk to them.
00:09:27.400 | Oftentimes they'll let you say drop some of the credit on one card, transfer it to
00:09:31.640 | another card.
00:09:32.440 | So I think there's a lot of options there.
00:09:34.040 | I would say the subreddit churning, that's r/churning, is a great place to go look up
00:09:40.960 | all of this information.
00:09:42.080 | There's so much stuff there.
00:09:43.640 | But right now, 2021, when I record this in September, there are some massive signup
00:09:49.320 | bonuses.
00:09:49.920 | So I just want to run through a few of them because it's really unusual to have so
00:09:54.640 | many.
00:09:54.960 | So on the Chase side, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, even though I wouldn't use
00:09:59.920 | it right now because I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, it's a 100,000 point signup
00:10:05.040 | bonus.
00:10:05.520 | So if you figure you're getting, even on the Reserve, three points for travel and
00:10:10.040 | dining, you'd have to spend $33,000 on travel or dining to earn 100,000 points.
00:10:15.960 | So these signup bonuses can have a huge impact on how many points you have.
00:10:20.160 | The Reserve, although not as big, is at 60,000.
00:10:23.680 | There's two United cards, the Explorer at 70,000 and the Quest at 100,000.
00:10:29.960 | These are some really big bonuses from Chase.
00:10:32.520 | On the Citi side, there's a card I've never had and I've always kind of thought
00:10:36.520 | about, but for me, I didn't necessarily want to add yet another place to collect
00:10:40.800 | points is the Citi Premier card.
00:10:42.560 | It's 3x points on gas, groceries, restaurants, and travel, and they have a
00:10:47.680 | huge 80,000 point signup bonus right now.
00:10:50.200 | Amex has a bunch as well.
00:10:52.320 | The Platinum card, depending on where you sign up, could be 100 to 125,000 points.
00:10:57.480 | The Gold card is 75,000 points.
00:11:00.040 | The Delta cards range from 75 to 125,000 points, and the Hilton cards range from
00:11:05.760 | 150 to 200,000 points.
00:11:07.840 | There's just so many huge bonuses right now.
00:11:10.360 | So I will say, if any of those sound like places you want to accumulate points,
00:11:14.680 | signing up for a new card can be a great way to get points.
00:11:17.960 | And I definitely look into it, assuming you can meet the minimum spend and
00:11:23.040 | assuming that that minimum spend is spend you already need.
00:11:26.240 | Don't go spend money that you don't need to spend just to meet the bonus.
00:11:30.600 | It kind of reminds me of going into debt and paying interest.
00:11:33.720 | It's never worth it to get those extra points.
00:11:35.960 | But if you already spend enough to meet these minimum spends, the signup bonuses
00:11:40.000 | can be huge, and they're the reason I've taken so many free trips.
00:11:43.760 | Finally, if you do decide you want to sign up for any of these cards, I put
00:11:48.000 | together a page with all my card recommendations, as well as the top signup
00:11:52.120 | bonuses right now, including some big ones for business cards.
00:11:55.400 | And I'd really appreciate it if you use those links.
00:11:58.560 | You can find them in the show notes on your podcast app or at allthehacks.com/cards.
00:12:03.920 | As you know, I don't have sponsors on the show right now, but I will
00:12:08.160 | earn a little bit from those links.
00:12:09.600 | So if you find a better bonus somewhere else, by all means, go wherever the best
00:12:14.160 | bonus is.
00:12:14.800 | My number one priority is you get the most points and take the most free
00:12:18.160 | vacations.
00:12:18.800 | But if it's all the same and you want to get a new card, I'd love it if you use
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00:13:52.720 | You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with
00:13:56.520 | Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking.
00:14:00.520 | It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place and
00:14:04.600 | makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every
00:14:09.280 | purchase.
00:14:09.840 | You can also load it on your partner's phone, so they always know the best cards
00:14:14.280 | to use.
00:14:14.840 | The app automatically tracks every category bonus and recurring credit from
00:14:19.800 | over 5,000 cards, and they also track and help you use your Amex, Chase, Bank of
00:14:25.800 | America, or Citibank offers to save even more money every day.
00:14:29.840 | And with their browser extension, you can actually activate every single Amex and
00:14:34.720 | Chase offer in just one click.
00:14:36.760 | And because of that massive credit card database, you can do all of this without
00:14:41.320 | having to give up any personal or banking details.
00:14:44.120 | The app is free to download, and many of the features are free as well, so you can
00:14:49.280 | download them as well.
00:14:50.280 | But if you want to try out the pro version, there's a free trial.
00:14:53.360 | And if you decide you want to sign up after the trial, which you probably will,
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00:15:03.600 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/cardpointers.
00:15:08.680 | Another question from Christopher, which is actually kind of in the same vein, was
00:15:13.800 | about how to optimize points for wedding expenses.
00:15:17.040 | It's true of a home renovation as well, or any time you have to spend a lot of
00:15:20.840 | money, but that money's not really in a category that often earns really, really
00:15:25.200 | high bonuses like travel or dining or gas or groceries.
00:15:28.680 | And so I think there's really two things to consider.
00:15:31.160 | One is if you want to get some of these big signup bonuses for new cards, a great
00:15:36.240 | time to do it is when you already have a lot of spending coming up.
00:15:39.680 | Some of these big bonuses come with $5,000, $10,000 of spend.
00:15:44.960 | And if you have a business card, sometimes it's even higher, but the bonuses can be
00:15:49.520 | higher as well.
00:15:50.320 | And so I think that that's a time where you say, look, I've got a lot of money to
00:15:53.880 | spend on my wedding.
00:15:54.600 | I've already budgeted for all this spending.
00:15:56.720 | That could be a perfect opportunity for you to sign up for a new card and be able
00:16:01.880 | to meet that minimum spend and get that huge signup bonus.
00:16:04.760 | But one thing that happened when we were getting married is I realized that, yes,
00:16:10.360 | I could get a couple points per dollar paying for a lot of these things on my
00:16:14.000 | credit card, or maybe it was only one and a half because I was probably using the
00:16:17.320 | Freedom Unlimited.
00:16:18.080 | I actually offered to pay cash to a lot of vendors and asked them if there was a
00:16:22.200 | better deal.
00:16:22.920 | And some vendors gave anywhere from 5% to 10% off.
00:16:26.400 | And in that case, it was just a way better deal for me to use cash than it was to
00:16:31.360 | earn one or two points per dollar because 5% to 10% off is like an instant
00:16:36.480 | no-brainer.
00:16:37.200 | And so I would say negotiate for a cash deal.
00:16:40.560 | And if you can't get it, and by the way, if you don't have to pay a fee to pay by
00:16:45.360 | credit card, then I would consider signing up for a card and using these expenses to
00:16:49.720 | meet the minimum spend to get a huge bonus.
00:16:51.800 | Or maybe, you know, depending on how expensive your wedding is, two or three
00:16:55.120 | huge bonuses.
00:16:55.960 | Okay.
00:16:56.520 | And if you're getting married, then you're probably already starting to think about
00:17:00.160 | how you might want to optimize points as a couple with your partner.
00:17:03.200 | And this was the second most popular question.
00:17:05.720 | Charlie, Brendan, Daniel all sent in asking about this.
00:17:09.280 | And the big piece of it was, are you using separate cards or are you using
00:17:14.000 | authorized users or how do you do this with your partner?
00:17:16.400 | And so I'll say for all but one card, we just are authorized users on each other's
00:17:22.640 | cards when it makes sense and when it's free.
00:17:24.760 | So my wife happens to be the Freedom Unlimited cardholder.
00:17:28.480 | So I'm an authorized user there.
00:17:30.120 | I have my Chase Freedom card.
00:17:32.480 | She's an authorized user there.
00:17:34.040 | I've got a Bonvoy card.
00:17:35.440 | She's an authorized user and so on and so on.
00:17:37.800 | The one exception to that rule is that we each have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
00:17:42.720 | And while to some people that might not make any sense, for us, it's the card we
00:17:48.800 | use the most, so we both want one and we wanted to have one card where the other
00:17:54.240 | person wouldn't log in and see the transactions each month.
00:17:57.200 | So if we wanted to buy gifts for each other, we could kind of keep it a secret.
00:18:00.600 | And if you take the annual fee and you subtract off all the travel credits, the
00:18:05.920 | Peloton credit, the DoorDash credit, and you consider the fact that if one of us
00:18:10.480 | were an authorized user on another person's card, they do charge $75.
00:18:14.520 | For us, it ends up being worth spending a little bit extra to have two cards so that
00:18:21.080 | we each have at least one credit card that's totally our own, that we can put
00:18:24.600 | something on that the other person doesn't see.
00:18:27.120 | It's often gifts.
00:18:28.520 | It's often around the holidays, but that's the one exception to that rule.
00:18:33.200 | One thing that was a follow-up question someone asked that I think is really
00:18:36.320 | important is if you make someone an authorized user on your card, let's say
00:18:39.760 | you've had the Chase Sapphire Preferred for a while and your partner has been on
00:18:43.960 | that card, that does not preclude them from getting a sign-up bonus.
00:18:47.800 | So right now, they could very easily go sign up for the Sapphire Preferred and
00:18:52.040 | get that 100,000-point sign-up bonus right away.
00:18:54.800 | I think that it's very important to consider that because I think one of the
00:18:58.960 | ways we've accumulated so many points is that I played the whole points game for a
00:19:03.440 | few years, and I was kind of bummed out because there weren't dozens of new cards
00:19:08.160 | each year.
00:19:08.800 | And then I talked to my wife.
00:19:10.640 | I said, "Hey, what if we do this on your side?"
00:19:12.200 | So then we just started opening up a lot of these same cards on her side, and we
00:19:16.040 | were just doubling up the bonuses.
00:19:17.680 | So we've both had a Sapphire Preferred.
00:19:19.960 | We've both had a Sapphire Reserve.
00:19:21.560 | We've both had an Amex Platinum.
00:19:23.480 | I think we've both had an Amex Gold, and that has allowed us to accumulate a lot
00:19:28.280 | of points.
00:19:28.880 | And funny enough, we have most of those cards today.
00:19:31.560 | We might not have two of them, but we've kept a lot of them, and we've been
00:19:35.040 | continuing to rack up points ever since.
00:19:37.280 | When it comes to the authorized user thing, I will say, consider what the
00:19:41.160 | purpose of the card is and whether it even matters.
00:19:43.640 | For us, the Amex Platinum is a great example where almost all of the spending
00:19:49.320 | goes on that card for flights.
00:19:51.120 | And we don't buy flights in person, so we don't really need our own Amex Platinum.
00:19:55.560 | Another perk of that card is that you get access to the Centurion Lounge at a lot of
00:19:59.000 | airports, but we don't travel independently enough to make it matter because you get a
00:20:04.040 | guest for free.
00:20:04.880 | So we don't need to both have a Platinum card for that lounge.
00:20:08.320 | So again, think about whether it even makes sense to get an authorized user if
00:20:13.440 | that's a card you use exclusively online.
00:20:15.880 | We store all of our credit cards in one password.
00:20:19.600 | We have a joint one-password account.
00:20:21.640 | I'll talk a bit more about one-password at the end of this, but I can't say more
00:20:24.920 | about how much it's been helpful to be able to have all of our logins for all of
00:20:28.960 | our mileage accounts, all of our credit card numbers in one place where we can both
00:20:33.560 | access it.
00:20:34.200 | And because we have all these cards, we have points in a lot of places.
00:20:37.640 | So we do keep a spreadsheet to track all of it.
00:20:40.240 | That includes where they are, whose they are, when they expire.
00:20:43.760 | And while nobody asked this, I will point out that miles do expire with some
00:20:48.720 | programs. And if you want to make sure they don't expire, there's a few things you
00:20:53.080 | can do to keep them around.
00:20:54.640 | If you have a flight or a hotel coming up, that's an easy one.
00:20:57.960 | If you have that credit card, you can just spend money on it.
00:21:00.840 | But let's say you happen to have a random old airline or hotel account where you
00:21:05.600 | don't have a credit card and there's nothing going in.
00:21:07.560 | You could always just transfer some points there.
00:21:10.320 | So if they're a Chase or an Amex partner, you could move some points over.
00:21:13.200 | You could make a small redemption.
00:21:15.080 | I don't know if this is as common anymore, but you used to be able to spend like
00:21:18.800 | 100, 200 points to get a magazine subscription.
00:21:22.120 | You could always just buy $10 or $20 worth of points to top up the balance.
00:21:26.960 | Anytime that points balance changes, that almost always qualifies to extend the
00:21:32.080 | deadline. A few others are most rental car companies like Hertz or Avis will let you
00:21:37.320 | credit that rental to almost any airline.
00:21:39.840 | So you could do that. Or almost any airline and hotel has a shopping portal.
00:21:44.360 | And if you click through their portal, it's kind of like Ebates and Rakuten where you
00:21:49.200 | can make a purchase online and earn a few more points.
00:21:51.920 | So that's what we do to make sure that all these points that are all over the place
00:21:55.240 | never expire. But yeah, that's our strategy as a couple.
00:21:58.600 | So David wrote in asking, "Is it even worth dealing with points and miles if you only
00:22:04.720 | fly once or twice a year?" And I'll say it really depends on where you travel and what
00:22:08.960 | class you want to travel in and what kind of hotel you want to stay at when you get
00:22:12.720 | there. So I think points really come in to be valuable when you're staying in really
00:22:19.120 | luxurious hotels or when you're flying business class, when you're flying international
00:22:24.080 | or maybe even if you're flying domestic, but to obscure airports where there might only
00:22:29.240 | be a couple of flights a week.
00:22:30.760 | So if none of those things apply or if the amount you spend on travel each year is only
00:22:36.200 | a few hundred dollars, then honestly, you might be better off just using the Citi Double
00:22:41.600 | Cash Card and getting 2% cash back and just using that cash to buy flights.
00:22:47.280 | OK, so one of the hacks that I talked about before is that if you have a credit card that
00:22:51.520 | gives you a lot of points per dollar on grocery store purchases, you can actually buy
00:22:56.200 | gift cards at the grocery store to spend elsewhere.
00:23:00.320 | And so David wrote in and asked, "Is there any downside to buying gift cards at the
00:23:04.400 | grocery store and specifically buying prepaid Visa gift cards?" I'd say there are two
00:23:09.800 | reasons this might not be as good as it sounds.
00:23:12.720 | On the prepaid Visa card or Amex card, anything where it's not actually a specific
00:23:17.440 | retailer gift card, one of the reasons I don't like them is that you usually have to pay
00:23:21.800 | a fee. So if you get a $100 gift card and you got to pay a $4 activation fee, you might
00:23:26.720 | be getting a lot of points per dollar, but you're paying a 4% fee and chances are that
00:23:30.920 | doesn't make up for it.
00:23:31.800 | So I typically won't use a credit card to earn points to buy a gift card if I have to
00:23:37.520 | pay a fee to get that gift card.
00:23:39.440 | The other challenge with these prepaid cards is that it's sometimes tricky to get the
00:23:43.280 | balance down to zero.
00:23:44.400 | And if you ultimately have a $100 card and you only spend it down to $4, that's just
00:23:49.240 | like having a 4% fee on the card.
00:23:51.240 | And I don't love that.
00:23:52.400 | And one of the reasons it's tricky to get the balance to zero is there's not that many
00:23:56.240 | retailers that will let you split purchases on multiple cards.
00:23:59.720 | However, a restaurant is a great place to do this.
00:24:02.960 | And there's one hack that I've learned along the way.
00:24:05.440 | If you tell someone to put $100 on a card at a restaurant, but it's a prepaid card that
00:24:10.000 | only has a $100 balance, it often won't go through because the restaurant might
00:24:14.600 | preauthorize an amount greater than you tell them to leave room for the tip.
00:24:18.760 | So what you can do is you can say for a $100 gift card, can you put $80 on this card and
00:24:24.280 | then tip $20 to get it to the full $100?
00:24:27.440 | When it comes to buying retailer gift cards, if it's already a retailer that I have a
00:24:32.560 | purchase in mind, let's say I need to spend a lot of money on something at Home Depot,
00:24:36.640 | or I don't have a travel card and I want to buy some flights on Southwest, I think
00:24:41.600 | these are great opportunities to get a lot of points, assuming you earn a lot of
00:24:45.880 | points at the grocery store.
00:24:47.400 | But the one caveat I'll give is that Visa, MasterCard, Amex all offer some amount of
00:24:54.800 | purchase protection with their cards.
00:24:56.280 | And I've used this purchase protection for a few different things.
00:25:00.040 | But oftentimes, if you buy something and it breaks or you lose it within the first 90
00:25:05.160 | days, they'll refund you up to a certain amount.
00:25:07.760 | And so a great example was I bought an SD card and I immediately lost it a week later
00:25:13.000 | and I was able to get that completely refunded.
00:25:15.480 | Warranty extension is another one.
00:25:17.600 | And so sometimes if you buy something, it has a one year warranty.
00:25:20.920 | The credit card company will actually give you an extra year warranty.
00:25:24.720 | So if you buy an iPhone and it breaks in the second year, Visa or Amex might actually
00:25:29.680 | cover the cost of repair that second year, even though Apple won't.
00:25:34.160 | But when you buy gift cards, if the purchase wasn't on the original credit card, then
00:25:40.160 | you don't get a lot of those benefits.
00:25:41.760 | So if I'm buying something on Amazon or anywhere and that purchase is of something
00:25:48.680 | that I think could break or might be easily lost or that I might need to repair, those
00:25:54.120 | are purchases that I often won't make with gift cards.
00:25:58.120 | OK, and now for the big question that Steven, Brendan, Ryan, Michael all wrote in
00:26:02.640 | asking about, how do you redeem miles to get the maximum value?
00:26:06.400 | So as much as I love the fact that the Chase and Amex travel portals make it really easy
00:26:12.280 | to use your miles, use your points to book travel, the way you get the really, really
00:26:17.480 | big values for your points is when you can book directly with airlines and hotels.
00:26:22.760 | And to do that, you either earn points in those programs or you take Chase points or
00:26:28.040 | Amex points and you transfer them to those airline or hotel partners.
00:26:31.680 | And don't forget, you're not limited to flying on just the transfer partners.
00:26:35.440 | You can use miles with those partners to fly on their partner airlines.
00:26:39.440 | So you could transfer Chase points to United and fly on any of the 26 different Star
00:26:44.040 | Alliance airlines like Lufthansa or Asiana or A&A, and you could transfer miles to
00:26:49.480 | British Airways and fly on any One World partner like Japan Airlines or Qantas.
00:26:54.640 | And you could transfer Amex points to Delta and fly on Korean Air or Alitalia.
00:26:59.880 | And that's how you get really, really outsized value from your miles.
00:27:03.320 | And like I mentioned earlier, the biggest outsized value usually comes from flying
00:27:08.600 | business class, flying to obscure destinations, flying international, staying at
00:27:14.360 | luxury hotels or doing all.
00:27:16.480 | If you're trying to take a long flight to an obscure destination in business class,
00:27:21.600 | that can sometimes get you 10 cents per point or mile, which is really, really
00:27:26.520 | crazy compared to what it would cost otherwise in cash.
00:27:29.200 | A great example of this is a flight that my neighbor Joe recently booked.
00:27:33.760 | So he was looking to take his family of four to Europe and was trying to do it in
00:27:39.720 | business class, was sitting on a lot of miles and managed to find that if he
00:27:43.960 | transferred 440,000 miles from Chase to Air France, he was able to book four round
00:27:51.400 | trip business class tickets to Europe.
00:27:53.440 | Now, those tickets would normally cost somewhere on the order of four or $5,000
00:28:00.160 | each, but if he had used 440,000 miles in the travel portal on Chase, he would have
00:28:06.360 | gotten one and a half cents per mile and he would have been able to book $6,600
00:28:10.960 | worth of flights, which wouldn't have even gotten him two tickets.
00:28:13.760 | So he got crazy value.
00:28:16.200 | So the question isn't really, how do you get the crazy value?
00:28:19.960 | It's clear that it's from luxury travel, luxury hotels, international trips.
00:28:24.800 | The real challenge is how do you find the availability?
00:28:27.880 | And I'll give you three ways to do it.
00:28:29.960 | There's a DIY approach, there's a premium paid search approach, and then there's
00:28:36.960 | paid award booking services that will do it all for you.
00:28:39.840 | So you could do all this for free with a DIY approach, which basically involves
00:28:45.760 | going to the websites of all the airline partners and searching for
00:28:49.480 | the flights you want yourself.
00:28:50.720 | So Chase has, you know, 10 different airline partners.
00:28:54.720 | You could go to the United website and search for flights.
00:28:57.240 | You could then go to the Flying Blue website or the British Airways site.
00:29:00.240 | And the downside is that it's a lot of searching and the more flexible you are
00:29:04.240 | with dates, the more searching you have to do.
00:29:06.120 | And depending on the airline, you might actually have to go in and create a
00:29:09.560 | mileage account with each airline you're searching, but it's a hundred percent
00:29:13.240 | free and it totally works and in general, I always say it's a great starting point.
00:29:18.120 | If you have a bunch of Chase points, maybe just go to United's website
00:29:21.480 | and see if you find the flight.
00:29:22.760 | If you have a bunch of Amex points, maybe it's Air Canada, maybe it's
00:29:26.640 | Delta and just search the sites just to get a quick glance, but if you don't see
00:29:31.120 | what you want at the very beginning, you might want to consider paid sites because
00:29:36.320 | they make the searching a lot easier.
00:29:38.600 | So I used to always recommend JuicyMiles.com because it was easy and fantastic,
00:29:44.000 | but it seems as of a few weeks ago, they're transitioning to a new brand,
00:29:47.920 | which is Point.me and while it does appear that they finally put the search on their
00:29:53.640 | site, I think it's still a little broken.
00:29:55.680 | So maybe by the time you're listening to this, it's working.
00:29:58.440 | I really hope it does because it's a fantastic product when it was working,
00:30:03.080 | but right now it's really hard to recommend because it doesn't work.
00:30:06.480 | Another paid search site is ExpertFlyer.
00:30:09.040 | It doesn't support every airline, but they do let you search plus or minus three
00:30:13.640 | days so you can search a little bit more and so you can go in and search by airline.
00:30:17.920 | Or I think one of the best products with a couple caveats is KVS Availability Tool.
00:30:24.240 | Now you need a PC and you need to be comfortable using an interface that looks
00:30:29.240 | like it was made 10 or 20 years ago, but they support more airlines than anyone
00:30:33.400 | else and if you do have a Mac, you can use it with an emulator like VirtualBox,
00:30:37.960 | but it definitely has a learning curve.
00:30:39.920 | So I wouldn't recommend it if you don't want to go deep down the rabbit hole.
00:30:43.360 | And I really hope for your sake that the Juicy Miles to Point.me transition is
00:30:48.120 | made by the time you need it because it's just such an easier product to use.
00:30:52.680 | One thing to keep in mind with any of these searches, whether you're doing it
00:30:56.320 | manually on the airline websites or using a tool, is that you're only going to find
00:31:00.640 | availability when it exists for your entire trip.
00:31:03.640 | So I'd say it's worth looking for flights to major cities and buying a paid
00:31:08.720 | ticket for a short flight at the end.
00:31:10.480 | So for example, we recently tried to go to Santorini in Greece and there
00:31:15.000 | was basically no availability, but we looked for flights round trip to Athens
00:31:20.160 | and got them in business class with points and then we just bought a $50
00:31:24.360 | 30 minute flight to get to the island.
00:31:26.120 | So if you're flying to Thailand on an island, maybe you just search for flights
00:31:31.560 | to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or Singapore instead, or if you're going somewhere in
00:31:35.760 | Europe, maybe search for London, Paris, or Frankfurt if you don't find your
00:31:40.280 | original destination right away.
00:31:41.800 | This is also true for departing cities.
00:31:44.200 | So I live right near SFO and while my preference is always to fly directly
00:31:48.120 | from here, one time we wanted to go to Tokyo and there just wasn't anything.
00:31:52.440 | So we took two business class flights from LA and we just bought a cheap $75
00:31:56.560 | ticket to LA and flew direct from there in an amazing lie-flat business seat on
00:32:00.520 | ANA, which by the way is fantastic.
00:32:02.920 | Finally, if all of this sounds like a lot of work, but you're sitting on lots
00:32:07.960 | of points and want to take an epic trip, there are award booking services, which
00:32:12.440 | are basically like paying someone like me, but better, who has access to all
00:32:16.480 | these tools and knows the ins and outs of everything, promotions, what's going
00:32:20.640 | on right now, who's got the right availability, and they will go and find
00:32:25.200 | all of your travel for you, depending on which site you use, they can cost
00:32:31.280 | anywhere from $100 to $200 a person.
00:32:33.640 | Some of them just charge a fee to get started and if they don't find you
00:32:37.920 | anything, they don't actually end up charging you.
00:32:40.200 | I know that Juicy Miles ran a service like this and now Point.me
00:32:44.480 | has their full service concierge.
00:32:46.200 | I've heard great things about it, so check that out.
00:32:48.720 | Or if you just search award booking service online, you'll find
00:32:51.960 | dozens of companies that do this.
00:32:54.840 | Hey everybody, I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with Point.me,
00:32:58.400 | my favorite award search tool, to give you a special offer of only $1 for your
00:33:03.200 | first month of their standard plan, if you go to allthehacks.com/pointme and
00:33:09.280 | use the promo code HACKS.
00:33:10.880 | Again, allthehacks.com/P-O-I-N-T-M-E, or find the link in the show notes.
00:33:18.320 | So definitely take advantage of that if you're planning a trip with Points.
00:33:23.160 | So that's all flights.
00:33:24.520 | We didn't talk at all about hotels and that's because they're a little easier.
00:33:28.480 | If you already have hotel points with a specific program, then great.
00:33:32.520 | Just search on their website and there really isn't much more to do.
00:33:35.360 | And while Chase and Amex each have hotel partners, other than transferring
00:33:39.880 | Chase points to Hyatt, I don't think you should waste your time.
00:33:43.000 | That said, I think some of the best points redemptions I've ever
00:33:46.400 | had are booking through Hyatt.
00:33:47.960 | For Christmas in 2019, we stayed at the Park Hyatt Kyoto.
00:33:52.320 | It was a 30,000 points a night, which probably would have gotten me four or
00:33:56.800 | $500 booking through the portal, but that room was almost $1,300.
00:34:01.760 | So it was a fantastic redemption.
00:34:03.880 | If you do really want to take epic trips to hotels and for whatever reason, Chase
00:34:09.840 | Points or Hyatt is not interesting, the way you're going to want to do it is to
00:34:13.720 | get a credit card with a hotel chain.
00:34:15.640 | And the reason why is that so many of the transferable points, Chase, City,
00:34:21.800 | Amex, they transfer one-to-one, but for almost all hotel chains, except Hyatt,
00:34:28.320 | the value of hotel points is about half to a third the value of airline points.
00:34:33.760 | So you're just always going to get a better deal transferring your
00:34:36.960 | Chase or Amex points to airlines.
00:34:39.120 | That said, credit cards for hotel companies have much higher earnings.
00:34:44.960 | So if you want to earn hotel points, you're better off getting a hotel
00:34:48.320 | card that earns five, six, maybe even seven points per dollar on different
00:34:53.600 | categories and really helps you rack up points on a hotel program like
00:34:57.600 | Marriott's Bonvoy or Hilton Honors.
00:35:00.360 | Okay.
00:35:01.800 | I know that was a lot, but so many of you asked that question.
00:35:04.800 | So hopefully that was helpful.
00:35:06.040 | If I missed anything, please reach out.
00:35:08.200 | I'm happy to help clarify.
00:35:09.680 | I probably should just write a big guide to this and I probably will at some point,
00:35:13.320 | but for now, I hope that helps.
00:35:15.960 | So there's still a bunch of other questions people wrote in.
00:35:18.920 | I'm going to start next with investing because we got a lot of questions there.
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00:38:11.360 | Before we get back to the episode, I just want to thank you for listening
00:38:15.760 | to and supporting the show.
00:38:17.120 | Your support of our advertisers is what keeps this show going.
00:38:20.840 | To learn more about all our partners and get links to all their deals, you can go
00:38:25.160 | to allthehacks.com/deals where the URLs, codes, and discounts are all right there.
00:38:31.480 | So please consider supporting those who support us.
00:38:34.400 | So Josh wrote in and asked what type of setup I have for my 529, and Swarupa wrote
00:38:40.320 | in asking about investments and planning for kids coming into the world.
00:38:43.720 | So I'll just share a little bit about what I do.
00:38:46.000 | So I set up a 529 at Wealthfront, and at first glance, I thought, even as an
00:38:51.640 | employee, do I really want to pay a fee for my 529 given that tax benefits of the
00:38:57.560 | automation aren't as relevant when you have tax-free gains like you do in a 529?
00:39:02.880 | Ultimately, I did some research and I came to the conclusion that most 529s that you
00:39:08.800 | sign up for online don't have as much opportunity for diversification as
00:39:13.840 | Wealthfront offered.
00:39:14.680 | And so for me, the extra risk-adjusted return I thought I would get from that
00:39:19.480 | diversification made up for the fee.
00:39:22.240 | And so that's what I went ahead and did.
00:39:24.600 | Now, last week, I talked to Andy Ratcliffe, and he brought up a really
00:39:28.240 | important point about liquidity.
00:39:29.600 | I would say one thing to consider is that when you put money in a 529, that money
00:39:35.080 | needs to be used for educational expenses.
00:39:37.360 | Now, the good news is it doesn't just have to be college.
00:39:40.520 | It could be for private school.
00:39:41.720 | And if you don't end up needing it for your children, you could pass it on to
00:39:45.440 | their children, and there are even some circumstances where you might be able to
00:39:48.720 | withdraw it if your children get scholarships.
00:39:51.240 | But I will say you can't use it to buy a home.
00:39:54.200 | You can't use it to pay for medical expenses.
00:39:56.160 | So do make sure you have enough liquidity outside of a 529 to be able to cover
00:40:00.840 | things like that that might come up.
00:40:02.240 | And realize that the value of not having to borrow or pay fees if you do need that
00:40:07.360 | money is probably going to be greater than the tax advantage you'll get from a 529.
00:40:12.720 | So as for trying to predict how much you need to contribute, there are lots of
00:40:17.000 | tools online, we've built one at Wealthfront where you can go in and pick
00:40:20.640 | whether it's a state school or a private school and kind of get a sense of what
00:40:23.800 | that's expected to cost and how much you need to contribute and then just start
00:40:27.360 | making contributions.
00:40:28.440 | One other financial thing when it comes to planning for kids is making sure you
00:40:32.920 | have the right insurance plan.
00:40:33.960 | So when you're young and healthy, it might have made a lot of sense to get a
00:40:38.000 | high deductible health plan with an HSA and contribute each year because you
00:40:42.120 | weren't going to the doctor that often.
00:40:43.320 | But it turns out if you haven't looked up, having a baby is quite expensive.
00:40:48.200 | And if you're using a high deductible health plan, it's very likely that you
00:40:52.040 | will go through that entire deductible and it will probably not have been your
00:40:55.640 | best choice that year if you had access to a PPO or an EPO.
00:40:58.840 | One of my favorite plans, assuming all of the doctors and facilities you want to
00:41:03.000 | use are in-network, is an EPO.
00:41:05.120 | Usually it's the cheapest cost for you if you're in-network, but the downside is
00:41:09.920 | you can't go out of network.
00:41:11.160 | I was fortunate that the EPO my company offered had all the facilities we wanted
00:41:16.360 | it to go to in-network, and so I signed up for that and my wife had an EPO through
00:41:21.560 | her plan, and the entire cost of pregnancy and childbirth was less than $500.
00:41:27.800 | Another question that I get a lot, and specifically this time from Josh, is how
00:41:33.160 | do you think about allocating to alternative strategies?
00:41:36.080 | This could include things like crypto, wine, art, angel investing, etc.
00:41:42.720 | The way I think about it in general is that I keep a small amount of my portfolio
00:41:47.080 | on things that are exciting, things that are fun, things that I think I might have
00:41:50.920 | an edge on, but at the end of the day, I keep the vast majority, 90 plus percent,
00:41:56.920 | in a long-term, diverse, passive investment strategy.
00:42:00.640 | And so as my net worth has grown, that kind of small less than 10% piece has
00:42:06.080 | gotten big enough that I've been able to do some extra things.
00:42:09.400 | So some of that was buying some Bitcoin.
00:42:12.200 | I've invested in a few companies I was really interested in, and I've made a few
00:42:15.640 | other small investments in projects I was excited by, but at the end of the day, I
00:42:19.360 | haven't actually really purchased a lot of alternatives.
00:42:22.720 | I haven't gone and purchased any fractional art or any wine other than the
00:42:27.280 | wine I buy to drink, but if you want to dive a little deeper, definitely check out
00:42:31.160 | the episode I did with Andy Ratcliffe, or keep an eye out for an upcoming episode of
00:42:35.600 | the Modern Finance Podcast, where I talk about how much to consider allocating in
00:42:39.800 | your portfolio to cryptocurrency.
00:42:42.520 | Finally, Jeremiah asked me, "How can I send money into an account and
00:42:46.800 | automatically invest it?"
00:42:48.000 | Now, this is a fantastic question because it's just something that seems so broken.
00:42:54.080 | There are so few brokerage firms that will allow you to do any kind of recurring
00:42:58.560 | purchases, and almost none that will let you do it with a portfolio.
00:43:02.200 | Instead, you're forced to deposit money and set up a trade every time you want to
00:43:07.560 | make an individual investment.
00:43:09.440 | So, I might sound like a broken record, but I use WealthRent for this.
00:43:13.200 | In fact, when I joined, I spent the first 18 months working on building automated
00:43:17.960 | investing so that you could say, "I want to deposit money, and I want it to
00:43:22.160 | automatically go here and do this," which could mean keep a certain amount in cash,
00:43:26.840 | then transfer $200 a month into my IRA, and then invest the rest in a portfolio
00:43:32.800 | that looks like this.
00:43:33.800 | And you can customize that portfolio to whatever types of investments you want.
00:43:38.000 | I do think there are probably a few other brokerage firms that allow this.
00:43:41.280 | I know that Vanguard allows you to set up direct deposit, but you still have to set
00:43:45.400 | up the individual trades.
00:43:46.600 | I also believe that Robinhood lets you make recurring purchases, but you have to
00:43:50.960 | set it up for each individual security or index fund.
00:43:54.440 | So, I really think this is one of the things that RoboAdvisors and WealthRent
00:43:58.920 | specifically have put together to make this really easy.
00:44:02.120 | So, if that's interesting, definitely check it out.
00:44:04.720 | And last episode, Andy shared that if you go to wealthrent.com/andy, you can get
00:44:09.480 | your first $5,000 managed for free.
00:44:11.320 | All right, that's it with investing.
00:44:13.920 | I want to jump into the different tools and services I use to optimize everything I do.
00:44:17.800 | And Josh wrote in specifically asking about financial and investment tools, so
00:44:21.800 | I'll start there.
00:44:22.520 | When it comes to tracking my points, my budget, spending, net worth, there's
00:44:28.640 | really three tools I use.
00:44:29.960 | I track all my points, and I create a budget in Google Sheets.
00:44:33.840 | It's as simple as that.
00:44:35.120 | I do use Mint to sync all of my transactions from all of my credit cards so I can try to
00:44:41.040 | get a good sense of how much I'm spending each month.
00:44:43.080 | I don't love Mint, but it's free.
00:44:45.400 | Although I have heard really fantastic things about Copilot, Jesse from YNAB really
00:44:51.280 | lured me in that direction.
00:44:52.440 | And Tiller is a really cool product that lets you sync data into Google Sheets.
00:44:57.720 | But at the end of the day, I think Mint being free works for this very specific
00:45:02.440 | purpose well, and I'll be honest, I oftentimes just export all the data out of Mint and
00:45:07.520 | just bring it right into another spreadsheet.
00:45:09.080 | And then finally, I use Wealthfront for tracking my net worth.
00:45:12.720 | I sync all of my accounts there, and I can just see how it's going.
00:45:16.200 | I can use that for planning for the future.
00:45:18.400 | I go in and say, "This is how much I'm going to save each month," and I can project my
00:45:22.560 | net worth, slide around my retirement age, and all that.
00:45:25.480 | When it comes to insurance, I am not loyal to any particular insurance company.
00:45:30.960 | In fact, we use Geico for car, we use Lemonade for our home, we use Travelers for my
00:45:37.480 | wife's engagement ring.
00:45:38.560 | So honestly, every year or so, I just go on, I do some quick searching on different
00:45:43.880 | providers to see if one is cheaper, and I'm happy to switch at any point in time.
00:45:47.720 | Taxes, up until a few years ago, I used TurboTax for everything.
00:45:53.160 | And then it just got to a point in life where the different types of investments, the
00:45:58.040 | different businesses, everything was just enough that I was done doing it myself.
00:46:02.080 | And I used a firm called Anderson.
00:46:04.560 | It's not cheap.
00:46:05.760 | But if you are in a situation where your taxes are complicated enough that you want to
00:46:09.920 | spend a few thousand dollars a year at minimum, definitely encourage you to check them
00:46:13.880 | out or email me, and I'm happy to make an introduction.
00:46:16.200 | Once we had a child, we really started to think about estate planning, trusts, wills.
00:46:21.640 | One hack here is that some big employers offer a legal benefit where you can pay a
00:46:26.520 | small amount of money each month, and it gives you access to free legal services.
00:46:31.240 | So our first estate plan and will and trust and health care directives and all that good
00:46:36.400 | stuff, we set up with a lawyer through the legal program that Google had.
00:46:40.560 | Recently, after having a child, we decided to update everything.
00:46:44.560 | And I went ahead and set everything up with Trust & Will.
00:46:47.320 | I got a chance to meet the founders of Trust & Will.
00:46:50.280 | I thought they were fantastic.
00:46:51.720 | I'm not an investor.
00:46:52.840 | I'm not an advisor.
00:46:53.880 | I'm not a shareholder.
00:46:54.840 | But I just think the product's great.
00:46:56.520 | And if you want to get 15% off, I emailed the founder, Cody.
00:46:59.520 | He set me up with a promo code, allthehacks.com/trustandwill, and you'll get
00:47:04.360 | 15% off when you sign up.
00:47:05.840 | And I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
00:47:07.320 | Finally, when it comes to brokerage, it's probably no surprise that almost all of my
00:47:11.360 | investments are at Wealthfront.
00:47:12.560 | So I use that for my taxable brokerage, my 529, my Roth IRA.
00:47:18.720 | I have 401(k)s wherever they are.
00:47:21.440 | Wealthfront happens to be at Vanguard.
00:47:23.280 | And if I do trade any individual stocks, I do that at Interactive Brokers.
00:47:28.320 | I would not recommend Interactive Brokers to most people.
00:47:31.760 | I would much prefer or recommend something like Schwab or Vanguard.
00:47:36.560 | But the reason I love Interactive Brokers is that they do offer the ability to
00:47:42.040 | borrow against your stock positions for, right now, I think it's 0.75%.
00:47:47.160 | So there have been a couple of times where I've wanted to do that.
00:47:49.680 | And that rate makes it worth the fact that they have one of the worst user interfaces
00:47:53.800 | I've seen in my entire life.
00:47:55.120 | Finally, one other one, HSAs.
00:47:59.320 | I do have an HSA from a few years ago.
00:48:02.200 | And one thing I didn't realize until recently is that you can actually transfer your HSA
00:48:06.840 | to a new provider.
00:48:07.760 | And many of the HSAs that I've seen or that I've personally had through my employer are
00:48:13.640 | terrible and ridden with so many fees.
00:48:15.760 | I love this startup called Lively.
00:48:18.560 | I transferred my HSA there.
00:48:20.240 | They set you up with a Fidelity account.
00:48:22.680 | You can invest your HSA however you want.
00:48:25.000 | And again, I have no affiliation with this company other than I think they have a
00:48:29.080 | fantastic product.
00:48:30.040 | So I moved my HSA over to Lively.
00:48:32.120 | I think that covers all of the kind of investing and financial things.
00:48:36.280 | But I got an email from John asking how I use an app called Alfred.
00:48:39.840 | And instead of diving into that right away, I thought I'd just give a high-level
00:48:43.400 | overview of the types of apps and software I use to make everything more efficient.
00:48:48.160 | So the biggest thing that I think I couldn't live without is Gmail keyboard shortcuts.
00:48:52.960 | If you haven't turned those on, I don't even know how I would operate without being
00:48:57.160 | able to fly through my inbox without shortcuts.
00:48:59.760 | They aren't the most intuitive shortcuts, but I promise that as soon as you figure it
00:49:03.920 | out, it'll make email so much faster.
00:49:05.720 | For storing stuff, I just use Google Drive and Dropbox.
00:49:10.040 | For some reason, I have both of them.
00:49:11.480 | I'm not really sure.
00:49:12.240 | I've decided to use one of them for kind of podcasts and all that stuff and Google Drive
00:49:16.760 | for everything else.
00:49:18.000 | On my Mac, I use an app called Alfred, and it's probably the most important app I
00:49:21.920 | have. It replaces the spotlight search when you press command spacebar.
00:49:26.560 | I use that to find any file on my computer.
00:49:29.520 | I use that to look for contact information.
00:49:32.120 | I use it for snippets where I can create a shortcut for longer pieces of text like a
00:49:39.600 | known traveler number or an address.
00:49:42.360 | And I can just type in a couple of letters and automatically expand that to what I
00:49:46.240 | want. I actually use that for emojis so I can spell out an emoji like S space.
00:49:53.280 | Thumbs up will immediately give the thumbs up emoji so I can use those faster.
00:49:57.360 | I use it to do calculations.
00:49:59.160 | It actually stores your clipboard so I can search things that I've copied and pasted
00:50:04.560 | days or even weeks ago.
00:50:06.240 | And then finally, I use it for custom web search.
00:50:08.760 | So things like Google Drive, I have it set up so I can really quickly just type in, you
00:50:15.640 | know, like S G and then just search Google Drive straight from there.
00:50:19.080 | It'll pull up a website and search Google Drive.
00:50:20.960 | So Alfred is a fantastic product.
00:50:23.440 | I gladly pay for it myself and I use it probably a hundred times a day.
00:50:27.960 | Another app I use a lot is called Rectangle.
00:50:31.760 | I used to use an app called Spectacle.
00:50:33.640 | I actually think I have one on each computer, but I love that Rectangle is open
00:50:37.200 | source. And really, all it lets you do is very quickly and easily with keyboard
00:50:42.040 | shortcuts, move things around your screen.
00:50:44.040 | So it'll let you quickly take one window and jump into the right half of your screen
00:50:49.120 | and then take the other window and you can jump into the left half or the top and
00:50:52.600 | bottom halves just to kind of manipulate things and move them around quickly.
00:50:55.680 | And 1Password is a fantastic piece of software.
00:50:58.840 | I use it every day.
00:51:00.440 | We have a family plan that my wife and my parents are on.
00:51:04.080 | I store credit cards, passports, logins for every website.
00:51:08.760 | I use it to create a unique login for every website so that I don't have any passwords
00:51:13.640 | that are duplicated.
00:51:14.680 | I store a lot of two-factor codes in there instead of Google Authenticator.
00:51:18.800 | It's great because you can access those codes from your computer or your phone.
00:51:22.560 | I'm a huge fan of 1Password.
00:51:24.400 | I've been paying for it since 2013.
00:51:27.000 | And if you go to allthehacks.com/1password, you can try for free for 14 days.
00:51:33.080 | I think it's fantastic.
00:51:34.400 | All right, Notion is another piece of software I use a ton.
00:51:39.440 | It's a web app, but I use it all the time to organize my thoughts.
00:51:43.280 | We have a whole Notion setup for our home and, you know, just keeping track of everything
00:51:47.720 | there, our child care schedule.
00:51:49.880 | I use another Notion doc for our podcast.
00:51:52.560 | So where Google Docs, everything is a doc and you have to link to another doc.
00:51:57.320 | This has a bunch of hierarchy.
00:51:58.800 | And so I use it to organize thoughts on so much.
00:52:01.400 | Another new one is an app called BlueStacks.
00:52:04.640 | It's a Android emulator for the Mac.
00:52:07.800 | And I don't really do any Android development.
00:52:10.600 | But why I think it's fantastic is there's always a handful of mobile apps that just
00:52:15.360 | don't have a website, don't have a web version.
00:52:17.680 | And a great example of that is our baby monitor.
00:52:20.320 | We use an app called Nanit, and there's not a way to access the camera from your
00:52:24.600 | computer. But when I'm working, sometimes I want to check and keep an eye on our
00:52:28.720 | daughter. And so I just pull up BlueStacks and I'm able to do that there.
00:52:32.560 | So it's a free piece of software that basically gives you access to everything on
00:52:36.520 | Android on your computer.
00:52:38.400 | So I think that's the core of the apps I use on a day to day basis that really help
00:52:43.480 | me be much more efficient with my life.
00:52:45.200 | I think that wraps up this listener Q&A episode.
00:52:49.440 | I hope there was a lot of information that was helpful and there will be links to
00:52:53.080 | everything we discussed in the show notes.
00:52:54.880 | If you were one of the people that wrote in, hopefully you got a great answer to your
00:52:57.800 | question. If you have other questions, please feel free to reach out.
00:53:01.600 | Chris@allthehacks.com, ask away.
00:53:05.280 | We'll do this again and I'll try to get to as many questions as possible or I'll
00:53:09.320 | respond to you on email.
00:53:10.520 | This was a lot of fun for me.
00:53:12.040 | I really enjoy hearing from you guys.
00:53:13.920 | So please keep that up.
00:53:15.560 | Finally, I'll just say it again.
00:53:17.720 | If you haven't signed up for the All The Hacks newsletter, that is going to be the
00:53:20.280 | primary way outside of this podcast that I communicate, send hacks and give updates.
00:53:24.880 | So please head over to allthehacks.com/email and you can sign up and I will get that
00:53:29.160 | next issue out shortly.
00:53:30.320 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:53:32.080 | I really appreciate it.
00:53:33.160 | We'll be back with a guest next week.
00:53:35.280 | See you then.
00:53:35.680 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.
00:53:51.920 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.
00:53:55.680 | It's called the Personal Finance Podcast, and it's much more about building
00:53:59.840 | generational wealth and spending your money on the things you value than it is
00:54:03.720 | about clipping coupons to save a dollar.
00:54:05.800 | It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in this
00:54:10.080 | world can build wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show so
00:54:14.400 | entertaining.
00:54:15.120 | I know because I was a guest on the show in December, 2022, but recently I listened
00:54:20.640 | to an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind.
00:54:24.760 | And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating
00:54:29.720 | in their employer's retirement plan.
00:54:31.360 | And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared.
00:54:35.000 | The Personal Finance Podcast has something for everyone.
00:54:37.960 | It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with
00:54:41.720 | your money and grow your wealth.
00:54:43.200 | So I highly recommend you check it out.
00:54:45.360 | Just search for the Personal Finance Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
00:54:49.720 | wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.