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00:01:34.680 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about

00:01:41.320 | upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:01:43.440 | If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm a diehard

00:01:46.680 | optimizer who loves doing all the research to get the best experience in

00:01:50.800 | life without the expensive price tag.

00:01:53.180 | That means optimizing travel, think flights, hotels, points, and miles,

00:01:57.160 | money, think savings, investing, and getting deals, as well as life and work.

00:02:03.080 | Think happiness, leadership, negotiation, and so much more.

00:02:06.680 | To make this happen, I sit down with the world's best experts each week to

00:02:11.080 | learn the strategies, tactics, and frameworks that shape their success.

00:02:15.080 | And this week, I'm talking to podcasting legend, Jacob Goldstein, all about

00:02:19.360 | money, many of you know him as an NPR correspondent and the co-host of

00:02:23.220 | Planet Money for over a decade.

00:02:25.180 | Before NPR, he was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, and he

00:02:28.700 | recently published his first book, Money, The True Story of a Made-Up Thing,

00:02:33.500 | which is a fascinating look at the history of how money came to be.

00:02:37.180 | Finally, he just launched a new podcast this year called What's Your Problem,

00:02:41.420 | where he interviews founders and CEOs about how they work to solve

00:02:45.260 | the world's hardest problems.

00:02:47.220 | Our conversation today will be all about money, including what's going on with

00:02:51.120 | inflation, what you can do about it, the genesis of money, and what might be in

00:02:55.520 | store for its future, including how crypto might fit in.

00:02:58.760 | I'll also make sure to get some of Jacob's favorite money hacks along

00:03:02.440 | the way, so let's jump in.

00:03:16.520 | Jacob, welcome to the podcast.

00:03:18.120 | Thanks for having me.

00:03:19.120 | Hi.

00:03:20.120 | You've written a lot about inflation and that it's often based on what

00:03:23.600 | people think and that whether they think there should be inflation.

00:03:26.800 | So I'm curious if you think what we're in right now is a self-fulfilling

00:03:30.120 | prophecy of what people think that just will get compoundingly worse, or is

00:03:34.000 | this different because we have these supply chain issues and the Russian

00:03:37.400 | gas stuff?

00:03:38.400 | So I hope it's not a self-fulfilling, compounding prophecy where it's just

00:03:43.400 | going to get worse, right?

00:03:44.320 | And it may not be.

00:03:46.040 | That is maybe like the most important macroeconomic question for the sort of

00:03:51.080 | medium term, you know, for the next year, a couple of years term is, do people

00:03:57.520 | expect inflation to stay high?

00:04:00.040 | And there is this weird thing about inflation, which is inflation

00:04:04.840 | expectations.

00:04:05.560 | What people think inflation is going to do has a huge effect on what inflation

00:04:10.000 | actually does.

00:04:11.200 | And for a long time, a sort of bizarrely long time, we lived in this world where

00:04:16.000 | we had persistently really low inflation after the financial crisis, through the

00:04:20.800 | aughts, into the teens, whereby like 2019, we were in this world where

00:04:25.920 | unemployment was super low.

00:04:27.480 | The economy was doing well.

00:04:28.680 | The government was borrowing tons of money.

00:04:30.880 | And all of those things you would think would give you higher inflation, right?

00:04:34.360 | That classically is a really inflationary environment.

00:04:36.960 | And we didn't see it.

00:04:38.040 | And part of the reason it seems it's kind of a mystery why we didn't see it.

00:04:41.920 | But part of the reason it seems is because people expected it would stay low.

00:04:46.640 | So now what do people think?

00:04:48.440 | You know, you can look at various financial markets and people don't think

00:04:51.680 | inflation is going to stay at 8% for like five years.

00:04:54.080 | So that's encouraging.

00:04:55.120 | So I'm hoping people's expectations are still kind of moderate.

00:04:58.000 | I was doing some quick math looking at what is inflation been like in some

00:05:02.720 | countries.

00:05:03.160 | And if you go back and look, Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, 8% seems like

00:05:06.880 | nothing.

00:05:07.360 | But even right now, Turkey is like in the 50%.

00:05:11.200 | So is 8% really that unreasonable?

00:05:14.160 | So inflation is weird because it can be nonlinear, right?

00:05:19.240 | And it's useful to distinguish 8% high inflation that we have now from your

00:05:26.720 | certainly Venezuela, Zimbabwe is where it was like thousands of percent.

00:05:30.560 | So it was just runaway and also Turkey, whereas you say it's 50% in those runaway

00:05:35.000 | cases, in those Venezuela, Zimbabwe cases.

00:05:38.160 | It's not just inflation.

00:05:40.000 | It's basically an economic collapse.

00:05:42.120 | And the inflation is as much or more an effect, a symptom of the underlying

00:05:47.800 | collapse as the cause, right?

00:05:49.720 | We don't have that.

00:05:51.200 | We're not going to be Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

00:05:53.520 | And if somebody says that, it means they don't know what they're talking about.

00:05:55.720 | But 8% inflation is bad.

00:05:58.920 | One thing that's really striking is people just hate it.

00:06:02.920 | Like people really hate inflation.

00:06:05.800 | And the other simple thing is real wages are going down, right?

00:06:10.720 | If you look at how much wages are going up versus inflation, inflation is going up

00:06:14.960 | faster than wages.

00:06:15.880 | And that doesn't usually happen, especially when the economy is growing.

00:06:19.640 | And that means people are getting poorer and it's bad when people are getting poor.

00:06:23.200 | That's the simple reason of why inflation is bad.

00:06:25.160 | It is a basket of goods, and some of them can have an outweighed impact.

00:06:29.760 | Are there any areas that you're aware of right now that aren't really doing as poorly?

00:06:33.880 | I know fuel prices are driving inflation significantly.

00:06:37.160 | Yeah, so it's interesting to think about the different components of inflation.

00:06:40.720 | Fuel is obviously the most salient one, right?

00:06:44.720 | Gas, gas prices and gas prices are really interesting.

00:06:48.560 | So if you look at the sort of budget, the typical household budget,

00:06:52.120 | which is the inflation basket, all the stuff a typical family buys,

00:06:55.200 | gas is somewhere around like 5%.

00:06:58.560 | So it's not that much.

00:07:00.040 | But one, the price of gas went up way more than the price of basically anything else.

00:07:05.160 | It essentially doubled and the price of nothing else really doubled.

00:07:09.160 | Two, two is psychological, right?

00:07:12.000 | You see gas prices in giant numbers as you're driving around.

00:07:16.120 | You stand there pumping the gas in your car and you see the numbers going up

00:07:20.400 | in front of you.

00:07:21.320 | And so it has a disproportionate impact on people's awareness.

00:07:26.040 | People freak out about gas prices in a way that they don't freak out about,

00:07:29.560 | say, health care, health care prices.

00:07:31.720 | In fact, right now are not going up that fast, not going up as fast

00:07:36.480 | as I think the rest of inflation.

00:07:38.120 | I haven't checked on that number in a while.

00:07:40.040 | And health care is a bigger chunk of the household spending basket than gas.

00:07:45.280 | But it's like the opposite in terms of salience.

00:07:47.680 | Like if you have a job and you get health insurance through your job,

00:07:50.520 | your employer is just straight up paying a bunch of your health insurance premium.

00:07:54.240 | So you don't even see that.

00:07:55.560 | And then the part that you're paying comes out of your paycheck.

00:07:58.840 | So you don't really notice it unless you're looking through all the stuff

00:08:02.240 | on the gross part of your paycheck that's not flowing through to the net.

00:08:05.720 | So health care is like the least salient part.

00:08:08.240 | And interestingly, it's a place where at this moment, inflation is relatively low.

00:08:12.360 | So those are kind of two poles.

00:08:14.640 | And to the point I made earlier about people's expectations,

00:08:17.200 | one thing that I personally am fearing is.

00:08:19.720 | Everyone assumes inflation is high right now.

00:08:22.680 | Maybe even people are assuming it's higher than it actually is.

00:08:25.640 | If you see gas prices double, that's not eight percent.

00:08:28.800 | And when they report eight percent, they're annualizing a number.

00:08:32.240 | So it's like if it went up one percent in a month, it would be 12 percent reported.

00:08:37.880 | Yes. Well, sometimes they're doing year over year.

00:08:40.040 | They do do the month over month.

00:08:41.840 | But the typical annual number they're doing the year over year.

00:08:44.480 | But they're not saying in May prices went up nine percent or they are not.

00:08:48.920 | They're saying between May of 2021 and 2022, prices went up nine percent.

00:08:53.200 | Nope. Like there are surveys.

00:08:54.600 | People traditionally think inflation is higher than it is at baseline.

00:08:58.000 | So does that give restaurants permission,

00:09:01.720 | even if their underlying food costs haven't gone up 10 or 15 percent?

00:09:05.840 | Are they like, you know, we might as well raise prices right now.

00:09:08.520 | Everyone's going to accept it because everyone assumes prices are going up

00:09:11.480 | and it creates this.

00:09:13.200 | OK, now food prices are up and everyone's like, oh, now I need to work an extra job.

00:09:16.840 | I need to demand for my employer and employers are like, well,

00:09:19.040 | if we're going to pay people, we've got to raise our prices.

00:09:20.800 | And even though the underlying food might not be getting as expensive.

00:09:24.280 | Well, so there's a lot in that question and it's worth unpacking it, right?

00:09:27.800 | One part of that question is,

00:09:30.880 | can businesses sneak in price hikes under the veil of broader inflation?

00:09:36.720 | And it's an interesting question to think about.

00:09:38.840 | I personally am a price conscious consumer.

00:09:42.080 | I like a deal. I know what I'm paying.

00:09:44.080 | I look at the price before I buy things and.

00:09:47.240 | We want businesses to be competing against each other all the time.

00:09:51.240 | Competition is good for consumers.

00:09:53.440 | So when we order in, we usually order in Thai.

00:09:56.200 | And there's two or three Thai restaurants that we order from.

00:09:58.120 | And they're like pretty similar.

00:09:59.440 | And if one of them suddenly got more expensive,

00:10:01.600 | I would just start ordering in from the other one.

00:10:03.400 | So they're competing on price.

00:10:04.920 | And so if they colluded, they could raise prices.

00:10:07.680 | But that's always true, right?

00:10:08.800 | I assume they're not colluding.

00:10:10.040 | So I don't think there is that much room for that.

00:10:13.000 | What there is, and this is the I think most important piece of inflation right now,

00:10:18.000 | is not expectations.

00:10:19.480 | That's important for the long run.

00:10:20.600 | But as you alluded to earlier, basic supply and demand are the two drivers right now.

00:10:25.080 | There's less supply, certainly of oil, to some extent of food,

00:10:28.240 | both because of the war in Ukraine and then to some extent manufactured goods,

00:10:32.440 | because China has been doing this COVID zero extreme lockdowns.

00:10:35.400 | And so their manufacturing output has declined.

00:10:37.320 | So that's less supply.

00:10:38.720 | And then demand is high.

00:10:40.120 | And that's important for price increases.

00:10:41.800 | Demand is high because, weirdly, it doesn't feel like it.

00:10:44.760 | But the economy has been really strong.

00:10:47.640 | It feels like all of a sudden, it's like, "Whoa, are we in a recession?"

00:10:49.920 | But unemployment is below 4%.

00:10:52.360 | Savings is really high for U.S. households.

00:10:54.920 | And so people are willing to pay more.

00:10:57.640 | And that piece goes to your question.

00:11:00.360 | People are willing to pay more because they have more money,

00:11:02.400 | and also because their wages are going up.

00:11:04.120 | Wages are going up faster than they've gone up for a long time,

00:11:06.880 | just not as fast as inflation.

00:11:08.040 | So demand is high.

00:11:09.560 | That does allow companies to raise prices,

00:11:11.640 | but we hope that's constrained by competition.

00:11:14.920 | Let's talk about one thing that you mentioned to me right before we rolled.

00:11:18.480 | Inflation can be a good thing for a certain type of product.

00:11:23.520 | I won't steal your lead.

00:11:25.560 | Sure, for a certain type of person, if you have debt

00:11:28.640 | and your debt is at a fixed interest rate, not a variable interest rate,

00:11:32.200 | inflation, on average, makes it easier to pay off that debt.

00:11:36.600 | As I mentioned, wages are going up really fast,

00:11:39.640 | faster than they've gone up in a long time.

00:11:41.120 | And that is partly a result of inflation.

00:11:44.400 | Prices of everything are going up, and labor is a price.

00:11:48.480 | We don't think of it as a price, but it is.

00:11:50.880 | When you go to work, you are selling your labor,

00:11:53.280 | and the price of labor is going up.

00:11:55.040 | And so that's good if you are a person who sells labor for a living.

00:11:57.800 | It means you're getting more money.

00:11:59.160 | And notably, if you have a student loan or a mortgage that is at a fixed interest rate --

00:12:05.080 | I have a mortgage that's at 2.9% not to brag,

00:12:08.280 | but I was fortunate to buy a house last year.

00:12:11.200 | So, my wages are going up.

00:12:14.800 | My mortgage payment is staying the same.

00:12:17.000 | So, what that means is, as my wage goes up,

00:12:19.920 | I have to work less to make the same mortgage payment.

00:12:22.720 | So, that's good for me.

00:12:23.760 | And it's bad for the bank, frankly.

00:12:25.280 | They're getting paid back in dollars that are less valuable.

00:12:28.600 | The higher inflation, the less each dollar I pay the bank buys.

00:12:32.760 | It's definitely a win for debtors.

00:12:35.000 | Although, obviously, in a limited way.

00:12:36.680 | And people get mad when you say that,

00:12:38.120 | because nobody wants to hear that anything is good about inflation.

00:12:41.040 | I'll give an example.

00:12:41.960 | So, I bought a car.

00:12:43.360 | And it was a Tesla that I've been waiting a year for.

00:12:46.560 | Mazel tov.

00:12:47.080 | And it was two crazy things.

00:12:48.000 | One, you could see the inflation because Tesla, thankfully,

00:12:51.960 | locks in the price when you buy it.

00:12:53.840 | So, when I put in the order for it last year, it was locked in at one price.

00:12:56.840 | And that price went up about 20% since I ordered it.

00:12:59.760 | Could you have just sold it back to the dealer for more than you paid for it?

00:13:03.880 | Well, here's the crazy thing.

00:13:04.800 | I was thinking, "The price today is 20% higher, and you have to wait a year."

00:13:09.560 | So, I was like, "Man, if I could sell my place in line,

00:13:12.360 | someone would presumably pay more than 20%

00:13:15.520 | because they would get it now instead of a year from now."

00:13:18.520 | And then I thought, "Gosh, if only Tesla reservations were on the blockchain,

00:13:21.400 | it was easy to transfer, but we could get there."

00:13:23.080 | It wouldn't have to be on the blockchain.

00:13:24.600 | It wouldn't have to be on the blockchain.

00:13:26.800 | I know, it's just what came in my mind living in Silicon Valley.

00:13:28.840 | If anybody was going to put reservations on the blockchain, it would be Tesla, right?

00:13:32.320 | If only you paid in Doge.

00:13:33.840 | Oh, man.

00:13:34.840 | If you paid in Doge, you'd be screwed.

00:13:36.440 | So, I was looking for a loan, and I will share one tip for anyone listening.

00:13:40.280 | You do not need to finance your vehicle with the company you buy the car from.

00:13:44.560 | Many people had told me, "Oh, what's Tesla's rate?"

00:13:46.960 | And I was like, "Well, I shopped my rate online."

00:13:49.240 | And I went and looked at tons of credit unions around the country,

00:13:53.080 | and some of whom only adjust their rates monthly,

00:13:55.960 | some of whom don't really adjust them at all.

00:13:58.160 | And the range of rates I saw were anywhere from 3%, 4%.

00:14:02.760 | Tesla, I think, was at 3.74%.

00:14:05.200 | To the lowest rate I could find for a five to six-year loan was 1.99%.

00:14:10.200 | 1.99% is really low for a five-year loan right now?

00:14:13.920 | That's amazing.

00:14:15.000 | And that's now.

00:14:15.800 | What is the mortgage now? Five or six, right?

00:14:18.120 | Yeah, it made no sense to me.

00:14:19.560 | High-yield savings accounts right now are paying...

00:14:22.560 | I know the Wealthfront Cash account is at 1.4%.

00:14:25.520 | So I was like, "Gosh, you're almost at the point where if rates go up

00:14:28.600 | as expected over the next few months..."

00:14:30.960 | Two or three-year treasuries are at, what, 3% or something last I checked.

00:14:35.120 | There is a tax thing there.

00:14:36.120 | But yeah, it's obviously a sweet deal to finance at 1.9%. Yeah.

00:14:39.760 | We're not that far away from the ability to earn more than your loan cost

00:14:44.560 | if you locked it in.

00:14:45.520 | Yeah.

00:14:45.920 | And so for anyone listening, definitely go look around.

00:14:49.440 | I might even link to this Tesla Google Sheet

00:14:52.400 | where people from some Tesla forum put every credit union

00:14:55.000 | and all the deals there.

00:14:55.640 | I went to credit union one, had a great experience.

00:14:58.360 | Highly recommend it.

00:14:59.560 | But I locked it in.

00:15:00.680 | They told me they could lock the rate in for 60 days.

00:15:02.480 | And so I locked it in the morning of the Fed rate cut

00:15:05.000 | because I wanted the most time to buy the car.

00:15:07.000 | You knew it was going to go up.

00:15:08.880 | You would think they would have known it too, right?

00:15:10.920 | It's interesting that it was so low.

00:15:12.800 | But, you know, it means you're going to be paying that money back

00:15:15.320 | in dollars that are worth a lot less than dollars are worth now.

00:15:18.720 | A dollar four years from now, when you're still paying off your loan,

00:15:22.200 | is going to be worth more than 10 percent less than a dollar today.

00:15:26.040 | We don't know the path of inflation, but 15, 20 percent less.

00:15:29.240 | It could be a lot less.

00:15:30.680 | Based on Treasuries and everything, it's definitely going to be worth less.

00:15:34.640 | And the thing that blows my mind, the CME group has this tool

00:15:37.840 | on their website called the FedWatch tool, and it shows the probabilities

00:15:41.760 | of rate hikes at different Fed meetings.

00:15:44.560 | And the thing that I thought was so crazy was I'm literally going to pull it up here.

00:15:48.680 | And it says by the end of the year, December 22nd,

00:15:52.040 | there is a 42.6 percent chance it will be in the 3.25 to 3.5 percent range.

00:15:58.680 | And then a 34 percent chance it'll be 3.5 to 3.75.

00:16:02.400 | And then an 8 percent, it's 3.75 or more.

00:16:04.720 | And to be clear, that rate is just the overnight rate, right?

00:16:09.760 | It's not a five year rate.

00:16:10.920 | It's the overnight rate for the safest credit there is, basically.

00:16:13.880 | So it's wild that it's going to be that much higher

00:16:16.280 | and that you were able to lock in a five year loan.

00:16:18.480 | And it wasn't just one credit union.

00:16:19.960 | Most of them were 1.99 to 2.5, even though people way smarter than me

00:16:25.800 | and spending more time on this than me are like 80 plus percent confident

00:16:30.080 | that rates will be in the 3 percent by the end of the year.

00:16:32.760 | Yeah, it's interesting to think about what's going on on the credit union side.

00:16:36.120 | Like, where are they getting the funding?

00:16:37.360 | I guess it's deposits, right?

00:16:38.480 | They're still paying zero on deposits.

00:16:40.360 | Now, if deposit rates have to go up, then they might get underwater.

00:16:44.040 | That's a thing that has happened.

00:16:45.080 | They might get screwed being on the other side of your loan.

00:16:47.960 | But for now, they're paying zero percent to get deposits

00:16:50.440 | and lending to a two percent.

00:16:51.720 | And that's why I think it's important for everyone to realize that most banks

00:16:55.760 | that are lending the money out to you, like most of the average Chase

00:16:59.480 | Bank of America, Wells Fargo, they're paying no interest on their savings accounts.

00:17:03.080 | I'm sure they're still playing literally zero.

00:17:05.880 | And we've forgotten now, but checking accounts used to pay interest.

00:17:09.680 | Oh, yeah.

00:17:10.600 | It is hard to get interest at a brick and mortar bank these days.

00:17:13.720 | So I was going to ask you what you're doing to prepare for inflation.

00:17:16.400 | But I'll share one thing, which is as inflation rises

00:17:18.760 | and different institutions are paying over one percent or hopefully

00:17:23.120 | in the future, over two or three percent on savings,

00:17:25.120 | leaving your money at a place paying zero percent is not a great idea.

00:17:29.160 | I'm curious what you might be doing. Yeah. In preparation.

00:17:32.040 | So a couple of things. Right.

00:17:33.160 | As I mentioned, I bought a house a year ago.

00:17:34.720 | Before that, I was saving a down payment.

00:17:37.240 | So enough cash to make it worth sort of shopping around.

00:17:40.480 | And I used American Express as an online high yield savings account.

00:17:45.000 | And it went to zero during the pandemic when everything else went to zero.

00:17:48.120 | But that one, I think it's back up. A lot of them like it.

00:17:50.880 | I think I saw an ad for Marcus, which is Goldman Sachs,

00:17:53.120 | sort of consumer facing online bank.

00:17:54.960 | So there are a lot of just FDIC insured, totally liquid.

00:17:58.440 | Put it in today, take it out whenever you want that are up around one percent now.

00:18:01.600 | My favorite one.

00:18:03.760 | I don't know if you've talked about it on the show.

00:18:05.160 | Have you talked about bonds on the show?

00:18:07.760 | I've written about bonds in my newsletter, and I'm doing an AMA episode

00:18:13.440 | where people are asking where to put cash right now.

00:18:15.720 | And I bonds was the answer. We haven't talked about them.

00:18:18.080 | So we could just go now and I could just skip that on the AMA.

00:18:20.880 | Well, I don't want to I don't want to step on you.

00:18:23.040 | No, no, no. But it's my favorite answer.

00:18:25.040 | I don't generally believe in tips.

00:18:26.840 | My basic investing tip is always just buy index funds, right?

00:18:30.280 | Just buy index funds and look away.

00:18:32.120 | Don't do anything because whatever you do, you could do the wrong thing.

00:18:34.480 | So we could talk about tax loss harvesting. Right.

00:18:36.920 | But anyways, so my big hack with money that I'm excited about now is I bonds.

00:18:43.040 | You obviously know about them, too, so we can both talk about them.

00:18:45.960 | What are they? Let me ask you, what's an I bond?

00:18:48.680 | So the government has these bonds that they issue.

00:18:51.360 | It's a series I savings bond.

00:18:54.000 | You can only buy them on a terrible website,

00:18:56.440 | treasury direct or so bad with so bad.

00:18:59.520 | And for anyone who hasn't used it,

00:19:01.200 | the only way you can enter your password is through a virtual keyboard

00:19:04.720 | that you have to click with each letter with your mouse really hard.

00:19:07.680 | Or I think you can still buy them paper ones with your tax refund.

00:19:11.920 | Yes. So you can buy them and there's limits on how much you can buy.

00:19:15.280 | You can buy up to $5,000 with a tax refund and up to $10,000

00:19:19.920 | just straight up on the terrible website.

00:19:22.160 | I should also make a distinction.

00:19:23.920 | Sometimes people confuse them with tips, which are treasury inflation

00:19:27.560 | protected securities, I think it stands for.

00:19:29.240 | But it's a different thing.

00:19:30.320 | And those are like a regular market, though.

00:19:32.160 | The amazing thing about I bonds is basically they are guaranteed

00:19:37.200 | to pay an interest rate that keeps up with inflation.

00:19:40.720 | Essentially, there's some formula, but that's basically

00:19:44.040 | they have a rate that right now I think is actually zero.

00:19:47.160 | It is like the base rate.

00:19:48.600 | And then they add on every six months.

00:19:51.560 | They change whatever the current inflation rate is.

00:19:53.640 | So from May 2022 to October, if you get one, you'll get the first six months.

00:19:58.640 | You'll get nine point six two percent interest.

00:20:01.240 | And we should just pause and wave our hands at nine point six two percent interest.

00:20:07.280 | This is the most safe borrower.

00:20:10.640 | You're lending your money to the government.

00:20:11.760 | The safest thing you can do with it.

00:20:13.480 | You have to leave it in for a year, essentially.

00:20:16.040 | There's like a small penalty if you take it out less than five years.

00:20:18.560 | You have to leave it in for a year.

00:20:19.880 | But getting nine point six percent interest from the government

00:20:23.400 | guaranteed is extraordinary.

00:20:25.440 | And I should add, depending on how fortunate you are, how much cash you have.

00:20:29.160 | So it's limited to 10000 per person per year.

00:20:31.360 | But you can also open an account for your kid or your kids.

00:20:35.080 | So I actually I opened one for each of my daughters

00:20:38.400 | and I bought the Max last year and I bought the Max this year.

00:20:41.600 | And I also have a lot of money in the stock market that I've watched go down.

00:20:45.200 | But that's like to me, I now have a non-trivial amount of money

00:20:48.360 | that is very safely and comfortably going up.

00:20:51.000 | And it just makes me happy to think about it.

00:20:53.280 | We did the same if you have a revocable trust, which in an episode

00:20:57.000 | recently we talked about is not the same thing as these crazy high net worth trusts.

00:21:00.960 | It's a pretty basic legal document that can be another entity.

00:21:04.600 | And so you could do another one there.

00:21:06.120 | So, you know, if you had a family of four, you could conceivably put 50,000 five

00:21:10.360 | $10,000 series I savings bonds or bonds in a year, which is a real amount of money.

00:21:15.480 | And it's a real amount of money.

00:21:17.120 | Yeah, it's a lot.

00:21:18.840 | Even if inflation goes to zero before the end of the year,

00:21:23.440 | which I think is very unlikely personally.

00:21:25.640 | But even if inflation went to zero, you would earn nine point six two percent

00:21:30.480 | for the first six months or four point eight one because it's an annualized rate

00:21:34.800 | and then zero on the rest of the year.

00:21:36.120 | But even earning four point eight one percent is a much larger number

00:21:41.080 | than any other government backed place

00:21:43.920 | I've seen you could invest money for a one year horizon.

00:21:46.160 | And on the other side, right, if inflation keeps going up,

00:21:49.360 | the interest rate you receive, it resets, as you said, every what is it?

00:21:53.960 | Six months. It keeps going up.

00:21:55.920 | It shouldn't exist. Right.

00:21:57.480 | It's a weird it's like a loophole.

00:21:59.680 | I have to assume the reason there is a cap is because

00:22:02.720 | this is not a profitable endeavor for the US government.

00:22:06.480 | No, it doesn't make any sense. Right.

00:22:08.280 | They borrow most of their money from the market and the market

00:22:10.720 | will accept a profoundly lower rate of interest.

00:22:13.400 | I think the idea is to encourage saving, right, that their savings bonds.

00:22:16.600 | Right. If you're old enough, like when I was a kid,

00:22:18.600 | your uncle would give you like $100 savings bond and they would pay $50 for it.

00:22:22.480 | And the idea is you hold it for 10 years and you can cash it in for 100

00:22:25.440 | or something. And I think this is the legacy of that.

00:22:28.960 | It's a real hack, though.

00:22:30.480 | I feel like I'm bringing a hack to the show with that.

00:22:32.560 | I totally agree.

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00:25:14.200 | You talked about things not making sense that the government does with money,

00:25:16.640 | which is a great thing I wanted to talk about.

00:25:18.720 | In a past episode, I talked with someone about charisma, Vanessa Van Edwards.

00:25:22.160 | And we talked about how it was this thing that everyone kind of knows.

00:25:25.360 | But when you actually try to say, like, what is it really?

00:25:28.160 | People can very rarely answer the question.

00:25:30.640 | The answer she found was that it's a balance of warmth and competence.

00:25:34.120 | But I was thinking about money and your book made me think, gosh, money is similar.

00:25:38.920 | It's this thing that you did an interview on This American Life for an episode.

00:25:43.320 | Ira Glass called What Is Money the most stoner question he'd ever posed on the show.

00:25:48.040 | And it made me think, gosh, it's this thing that we all know what it is.

00:25:51.160 | But like, what is it really?

00:25:52.480 | And that led you to write an entire book.

00:25:54.480 | So I'm going to just ask now that you're the expert, like, what is money?

00:25:58.840 | I mean, after that setup, would it be anticlimactic to say money is what we buy stuff with?

00:26:05.120 | I mean, that's what I would say it is, but it's what you buy stuff with.

00:26:09.240 | You don't need a book for that, right?

00:26:10.720 | No, no. The reason it seemed interesting enough to me to write a book about is.

00:26:16.000 | At a more complex level, the answer to that question

00:26:19.960 | has changed an incredible amount over time, right?

00:26:23.480 | The book is a history book, basically.

00:26:25.120 | It's like a series of origin stories, really, of money.

00:26:28.360 | And the really striking thing to me, I think, at the root is at any given moment.

00:26:36.880 | What money is just seems like the natural state of the world, right?

00:26:41.320 | Like most people, most of the time don't really think about it.

00:26:44.720 | They just think, oh, yes, this piece of paper in my wallet, this number in my account.

00:26:48.320 | That's what money is. Fine, whatever.

00:26:50.440 | That's just the way the world works.

00:26:51.960 | But the lesson, the insight to me that was really interesting, exciting is

00:26:56.400 | that's not necessarily the way the world works.

00:26:58.600 | It didn't used to work that way.

00:26:59.800 | It'll probably be different in the future.

00:27:01.640 | And so that's what's fun.

00:27:02.840 | Money turns out to be this set of rules, this set of arrangements

00:27:07.000 | that a society agrees on without really realizing

00:27:11.840 | that they're agreeing on something quite often.

00:27:13.680 | It is emergent and it's bottom up more than you might think.

00:27:16.920 | Rather than let's have a constitutional convention and decide what money is.

00:27:20.560 | So we're not going to go through the entire history

00:27:22.760 | because there's a wonderful book that I didn't advance.

00:27:25.320 | But where did it all start?

00:27:26.720 | I didn't think it started where it did.

00:27:28.920 | And I'd love at least that story to jump in here

00:27:31.760 | and let people get a little glimpse.

00:27:33.360 | Yeah, there's where like the best guess now of where it started.

00:27:37.360 | And then there's what people always thought. Right.

00:27:39.440 | And it's interesting to distinguish between them.

00:27:41.400 | For a long time, there was this

00:27:42.800 | sort of a parable, almost a kind of just so story

00:27:46.840 | that people told about the origin of money.

00:27:49.080 | And that was before there was money, there was barter, right?

00:27:52.960 | Trade and barter was inconvenient because for you and me to make an exchange,

00:27:58.720 | not only did I have to have something that you want,

00:28:01.080 | but you also had to have something that I want. Right.

00:28:03.560 | So maybe I've got a thing and you want my thing,

00:28:06.520 | but you don't have anything that I want.

00:28:08.160 | So we can't make a deal.

00:28:09.360 | And that sucks because it would be good if we could make a deal.

00:28:12.240 | It'd be good for me and it would be good for you.

00:28:14.080 | And money solves that problem.

00:28:15.640 | Then if you want something I have, I don't care what stuff you have.

00:28:19.560 | Just give me some of your money

00:28:20.640 | and I'll give you this thing that I have that you want.

00:28:22.720 | That's the traditional story of money emerged from barter.

00:28:27.560 | The thing is, in the 20th century, basically, anthropologists

00:28:32.480 | from largely Europe and the U.S. started going around the world

00:28:35.480 | and studying different societies in stages of development

00:28:40.560 | that people had imagined this kind of barter universe would exist in.

00:28:43.880 | And what the anthropologists found was they weren't like that into barter.

00:28:48.640 | What they were much more into was social agreements

00:28:53.320 | about the borrowing and lending and gift giving and reciprocity.

00:28:57.400 | There were all these rules.

00:28:58.520 | Right. And so these are basically tribal societies, right?

00:29:01.240 | They're small kinship based groups of people where everybody knows everybody else.

00:29:05.560 | And there are lots of rules about exchange, essentially exchange of material goods.

00:29:11.120 | And, you know, some of the sort of canonical cases have to do with marriage

00:29:15.520 | is a big one.

00:29:16.040 | There are very often rules like if you're going to marry somebody,

00:29:19.160 | you have to give their family, your family has to give their family cattle

00:29:23.560 | or your family has to give their family a certain kind of boar tusk or whatever.

00:29:27.440 | Another one was around murder, kind of awesomely.

00:29:30.120 | Lots of societies have rules where, like, if you kill somebody,

00:29:33.440 | then your family has to give their family typically same kind of stuff.

00:29:36.600 | Cattle in a lot of places, cowry shells, whatever, some prescribed thing.

00:29:41.480 | And those things, those are really proto money.

00:29:47.000 | Right. Because once there's a thing where it's like, well,

00:29:49.360 | probably not going to murder somebody, but my kid's probably going to get married.

00:29:53.000 | And when my kid gets married,

00:29:54.840 | I'm going to need some cows to give to the bride's family or whatever.

00:29:57.920 | That's really, I think, the best.

00:30:01.520 | Yes. For the roots of money, it reminds me of something

00:30:06.200 | I think you probably wrote in the book that said, you know,

00:30:08.040 | it's also money is what you have to pay your taxes with.

00:30:10.720 | It's like the reason I care about having dollars in my bank account

00:30:13.320 | is because every April I have to send dollars to the U.S.

00:30:16.520 | government and they only accept that.

00:30:18.360 | It's a good starting point.

00:30:19.360 | And certainly in places and times where different things

00:30:23.520 | are sort of competing to be money, that's a world we're not used to now.

00:30:26.440 | But there have been times where that was the case.

00:30:28.400 | If the government comes in and says, you will pay your taxes in this thing.

00:30:32.480 | And sometimes it was cloth and sometimes it was some currency.

00:30:35.520 | Then that thing becomes like the cows you have to give for marriage,

00:30:39.360 | a thing everybody's going to need at some point.

00:30:41.360 | And yes, it becomes money.

00:30:42.720 | I mean, one of the interesting things distinguishing between the sort of barter

00:30:46.120 | story and the marriage and murder story is the barter story

00:30:49.920 | is really this very cold, impersonal market story,

00:30:54.040 | which I think is the typical sort of vibe we associate with money.

00:30:57.360 | But it's really interesting to me to think about the other story, right?

00:31:00.680 | The murder and marriage story, because that's a much more like

00:31:03.600 | hot, social, interactive story of what money is.

00:31:08.840 | And that side of money, right, this social creation, this thing that works

00:31:13.320 | because we all agree to use something as money

00:31:16.920 | is a really interesting piece of it.

00:31:19.680 | And I think underappreciated.

00:31:22.160 | And you mentioned cattle as an example,

00:31:24.120 | cattle is not something easy to bring up and divide and divide.

00:31:27.680 | No, no.

00:31:28.480 | Is that ultimately what drove to the creation of paper money?

00:31:33.400 | I need something from you.

00:31:34.680 | And a cattle is just too valuable.

00:31:36.480 | I don't think it was overnight that we just switched there.

00:31:38.920 | What happened then when you needed half a cattle?

00:31:41.280 | And how did we end up? Good question.

00:31:43.040 | So paper was much later for sort of technical reasons.

00:31:45.560 | Paper wasn't invented until, I don't know, a thousand hundred years A.D.

00:31:48.800 | But coins, coins came along first.

00:31:50.960 | Coins came along around, I don't know, six, seven hundred B.C.

00:31:53.560 | And the short answer to your question is yes.

00:31:56.080 | But the longer answer to your question is before coins,

00:31:59.680 | if you go back to the ancient, ancient world,

00:32:02.000 | there were these small sort of tribal societies like we talked about.

00:32:06.080 | And then there were bigger civilizations, right?

00:32:08.640 | If you think of the classic cradle of civilization,

00:32:11.280 | the eastern Mediterranean and those societies were very top down.

00:32:16.800 | Today, we'd call them command and control economies.

00:32:18.960 | There was a ruler, a king or a queen or a priest or whatever.

00:32:21.680 | And they would essentially direct the exchange of good.

00:32:25.600 | They would take grains from the farmers and give them to the bureaucrats

00:32:29.760 | who worked at the temple or whatever.

00:32:31.000 | So there was not a market exchange,

00:32:34.360 | or at least not to the extent at all that we're used to.

00:32:37.120 | There was a solution to like, how do you do exchange in a bigger civilization?

00:32:41.480 | Well, you just have a king take and give and decide what everybody's going to get.

00:32:44.560 | But then the first place coins really took off was ancient Greece.

00:32:49.080 | Interestingly, and I think arguably not coincidentally,

00:32:53.520 | certainly interestingly, around the time democracy was emerging,

00:32:57.040 | what you had in ancient Greece is a classical Greece, the Olympics.

00:33:00.200 | The whole thing was something that was bigger and more complex

00:33:04.560 | than a tribal civilization slash economy,

00:33:07.440 | but also a more bottom up power distribution

00:33:10.920 | than you had in these very top down kingdoms.

00:33:13.280 | And so you needed some new way to do material exchange

00:33:18.120 | that was neither top down nor everybody knows everybody.

00:33:20.840 | And we all share the same rules.

00:33:22.080 | And coins, money was the perfect solution for that.

00:33:25.440 | I was blown away reading that in the 1800s,

00:33:29.720 | we still had lots of different kinds of money.

00:33:32.040 | It wasn't like we'd centralized on this is the kind.

00:33:34.520 | So I'm intentionally fast forwarding because there's a book.

00:33:37.720 | Go read the book. I thought it was great.

00:33:39.360 | We don't need to recap the entire book, but I'm going to make a hard turn

00:33:44.000 | from the conversation of the history of money and talk about

00:33:47.720 | maybe a little bit of the future, which was I think you said

00:33:51.200 | there was 8,370 kinds of money somewhere in the mid 1800s in the US.

00:33:56.320 | And I thought, OK, right now it feels like if you talk to a lot of people,

00:34:00.720 | the future of money is something online and there's all these cryptocurrencies.

00:34:03.680 | I was like, it feels like there's probably 8,370 different cryptocurrencies.

00:34:08.000 | I'm curious what happened in that last,

00:34:12.400 | let's call it 200 years, watching money evolve

00:34:15.720 | from lots of different things to get more centralized.

00:34:18.080 | Do you think anything like that plays out in the world of crypto?

00:34:21.120 | And how do you think it falls into the world of money?

00:34:23.400 | I know it's a loaded question.

00:34:25.600 | No, it's an interesting question.

00:34:27.720 | So let me just say a little thing about the moment you're alluding to in the 1800s.

00:34:31.840 | And then we can jump to now because it'll help it make more sense.

00:34:34.200 | So the way it worked in the U.S. in the 1830s, 40s, 50s was

00:34:38.560 | the dollar was the unit of account, but private banks issued their own paper money.

00:34:44.120 | And this was still the era when paper money was like a claim check for gold.

00:34:48.240 | The real value or silver, the real value was the precious metal.

00:34:51.600 | And so there were, in fact, 8,000 different kinds of paper money

00:34:55.200 | because each bank issued different looking pieces of paper.

00:34:58.200 | And it was wild and interesting.

00:34:59.400 | And like you said, you can read all about it.

00:35:01.400 | But still, the underlying thing was the dollar.

00:35:03.840 | So there are some elements that are similar to cryptocurrencies

00:35:06.440 | and some that are different.

00:35:07.120 | And people have been writing about that.

00:35:08.640 | The thing that has happened over the last couple hundred years is.

00:35:12.080 | The government has gotten more and more power over money, right?

00:35:15.480 | Going off the gold standard in the 1930s gave the government

00:35:18.360 | much more power over money doing deposit insurance for banks

00:35:21.680 | actually gave the government a much bigger role in money.

00:35:25.280 | And I think the central role that government has in money

00:35:30.040 | is the most important thing, both about money today and frankly,

00:35:33.960 | in thinking about cryptocurrency in the context of is it really going to be money?

00:35:38.040 | Are people really in a widespread way going to use crypto to buy and sell stuff?

00:35:42.760 | And I think it's unlikely that governments will relinquish their control over money.

00:35:47.840 | They basically have a monopoly on money now.

00:35:50.080 | And yeah, you can find scattered use cases like ransom

00:35:54.160 | or people who want to move money out of countries like China,

00:35:58.440 | where there are capital controls, where cryptocurrency has a clear use case.

00:36:03.320 | It's striking to me how long

00:36:06.160 | in a sort of technology standpoint, Bitcoin has now existed. Right.

00:36:10.760 | It was 2008 was the white paper.

00:36:13.360 | And I think 2009 was when the first block was minted.

00:36:17.360 | So that's a long time in a certain way for it to not really take off.

00:36:20.880 | You know, I remember I started covering Bitcoin in 2011.

00:36:24.320 | And at the time, I was like, wow, this is really interesting.

00:36:27.520 | Either it'll work and like be this wild new thing or it won't work and it'll go away.

00:36:32.000 | And the surprising thing to me is I was wrong on both of them.

00:36:35.920 | It didn't really work and it totally didn't go away. It blew up.

00:36:39.320 | I feel like there are a lot of non-monetary potential use cases

00:36:43.640 | for stuff on the blockchain, cryptocurrency slash the blockchain.

00:36:48.040 | And I'm surprised that those haven't worked yet, like remittances

00:36:51.360 | or even just payments, right?

00:36:52.520 | Like we pay a lot to credit card companies to pay with a credit card.

00:36:56.840 | We don't see it. The merchant pays it.

00:36:58.840 | But I would love it if somebody could make something on the blockchain

00:37:01.600 | that lowered fees.

00:37:03.120 | People pay a lot to send money home when they go abroad to work.

00:37:05.880 | It would be great if there were just some simple, boring blockchain product

00:37:09.280 | that people used who didn't care about blockchain.

00:37:12.040 | That's what I'm waiting for and hoping for.

00:37:13.480 | And I'm surprised that it hasn't happened yet.

00:37:15.720 | And do you think it will?

00:37:17.360 | Do you think it will?

00:37:19.440 | When I think about the projects that everyone I know

00:37:22.000 | working in this industry are excited about, it's like generative art as NFTs.

00:37:26.520 | And there's some value to those projects, but they're not going to necessarily

00:37:30.920 | change the cost for someone living in America to send money to South America.

00:37:36.080 | People compare it to the Internet or to the Web.

00:37:38.200 | And there was this moment in the 90s when like the Internet was interesting

00:37:42.880 | and weird and people didn't know what to do with it.

00:37:45.040 | And then somebody, it was Hotmail.

00:37:48.640 | Hotmail came along, which was the first Web-based email.

00:37:51.920 | Before Web-based email, it was a huge hassle to get your email.

00:37:55.480 | You had to have a special app on your computer.

00:37:57.760 | And if you were on a different computer, you couldn't get your email,

00:38:00.640 | if I recall correctly.

00:38:02.000 | And so it was just this obvious killer app that was useful,

00:38:05.440 | even if you didn't care about the Web, per se.

00:38:08.080 | It just let you do a thing.

00:38:10.000 | And it wasn't about the technology.

00:38:11.800 | It was about the thing it let you do.

00:38:13.800 | And that's all I want out of blockchain.

00:38:17.400 | You know what I mean?

00:38:18.040 | Like, I want something if it's finance, sure,

00:38:19.920 | but just to have it be financing something in the real world.

00:38:22.200 | DeFi just seems to be financing other DeFi.

00:38:25.360 | It's just like a Russian doll of people borrowing in crypto to buy more crypto.

00:38:29.680 | I believe that finance can do useful things in the world.

00:38:32.160 | I don't know.

00:38:32.840 | I mean, when you talk about whatever NFT art projects, truly, what do you think?

00:38:36.080 | I view it like a project where I'm like, OK, the entire crypto experience,

00:38:39.640 | I don't know what it will become.

00:38:41.360 | There's enough use cases that people talk about.

00:38:43.280 | You mentioned remittance, title insurance.

00:38:45.080 | There's all these things waiting for a real project.

00:38:47.960 | I think it's crazy that when you buy a house, you pay a company to title insurance.

00:38:52.760 | It's like an anti hack, right?

00:38:54.920 | Title insurance.

00:38:55.960 | You just get hosed.

00:38:57.800 | And then someone else pays that insurance the next time they buy the house.

00:39:00.760 | And you're all insuring against the thing that, you know, it's crazy.

00:39:03.800 | Yeah. Put my title in the blockchain, please.

00:39:07.400 | You know, please.

00:39:09.040 | But I haven't seen it.

00:39:10.640 | But some of the smartest people I've ever met are all working on different projects

00:39:13.920 | and some of them in earning yield, some of them in NFTs

00:39:19.120 | and some of them in crazy other stuff that's still taking shape.

00:39:22.240 | And so I do think there is a future of use cases that we haven't seen.

00:39:27.240 | And I can't remember which podcast it was that I heard Chris Dixon

00:39:31.120 | from Andreessen Horowitz on.

00:39:33.160 | And he made a kind of crazy case of when the app store came out for the iPhone.

00:39:36.880 | No one really knew what the apps were.

00:39:38.600 | It was like there were people that were like, oh, I want a calculator

00:39:41.040 | that can do some advanced functions, because that's what we were thinking of.

00:39:44.600 | But so many things happened that were out of our wildest dreams.

00:39:48.760 | We couldn't even come up with them.

00:39:50.160 | And so I believe those things are coming.

00:39:53.120 | I'm just I've been waiting.

00:39:54.720 | Like you. It's been a while.

00:39:56.680 | I think when did the iPhone came out?

00:39:58.160 | I think Bitcoin is about as old as the iPhone.

00:40:00.680 | It's certainly taking longer than the app store did to deliver.

00:40:04.120 | I mean, and whatever.

00:40:05.760 | Easy for me to say because I'm not doing the work.

00:40:07.360 | But like you, in a way, the collapse in crypto prices might be useful

00:40:11.240 | because there is so much like scammy noise around crypto

00:40:15.200 | that it's just obviously scammy noise that you just want to wave it all away.

00:40:20.240 | And maybe the crash will sort of wash out the scammy noise to some extent

00:40:24.760 | and leave the people who are actually working in good faith

00:40:28.160 | on potentially useful projects.

00:40:30.200 | We both share a common story that almost a decade ago for me,

00:40:34.360 | I had some Bitcoin and I made a purchase where I was looking online

00:40:38.040 | and I was like really into fantasy football.

00:40:39.920 | I was really into fantasy football for a few years.

00:40:42.080 | And there was this site that I'm not going to say

00:40:45.480 | I understood whether it was legitimate or not, but you could get access

00:40:49.480 | to stream all the football games of the season for the low price

00:40:53.600 | of a Bitcoin or something.

00:40:55.120 | It was like maybe it was half of the time that this was not legitimate.

00:40:58.640 | But let's keep going.

00:40:59.400 | And I remember thinking, gosh, you know, it would be way more expensive

00:41:02.680 | paying for NFL Sunday ticket because that's $300.

00:41:06.200 | And you got to get DirecTV.

00:41:07.680 | Looking back, it was probably like a $10,000 subscription

00:41:11.480 | to watch 16 or 20 games during a season.

00:41:14.320 | I know you also bought a sandwich that probably maybe is a $10,000 sandwich.

00:41:19.560 | Yeah, me and another reporter, David Kessenbaum and I went,

00:41:22.280 | we bought falafel and like a smoothie.

00:41:24.280 | And this was when Bitcoin was like, I don't know, 20, $20 for one Bitcoin.

00:41:30.520 | Well, it's cheaper now than it was six months ago, right?

00:41:33.800 | Six months ago, it was a $50,000 lunch, and now it's a $20,000 lunch.

00:41:37.720 | So if it keeps going, maybe it'll get back to normal.

00:41:39.840 | To your earlier question about money and crypto, money doesn't work that way.

00:41:45.560 | You don't regret buying a sandwich because the value of money,

00:41:49.200 | it actually appreciated so much like you don't hodl money doesn't make sense.

00:41:53.320 | That's not what money is for.

00:41:54.880 | On a simple level, it demonstrates the extent to which certainly Bitcoin is not money.

00:41:59.600 | And I think the closest thing to money in crypto,

00:42:01.920 | ironically, given the history is stable coins, which is funny,

00:42:05.520 | given that so much of the sort of crypto noise is about the unreliability of the dollar,

00:42:09.760 | that the thing that actually functions like money is the thing that is pegged to the dollar.

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00:44:44.800 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:44:50.360 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

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00:45:04.280 | To get back to the book at the end, you had this conclusion

00:45:08.360 | section of the future of money and you had these three possibilities.

00:45:12.520 | And sure, there are more.

00:45:13.760 | But I love the three, which was a world without cash, a world without banks

00:45:18.680 | and a world that sounds like the world you described in the past,

00:45:21.400 | which was the government's going to kind of manage it all and print money

00:45:24.560 | and give it to anyone who wants a job.

00:45:26.080 | Is one of those a world where you actually think this is where we're going?

00:45:28.800 | So the world without cash is probably the most reasonable of those.

00:45:33.200 | It certainly feels like cash is going away.

00:45:36.720 | There are a couple of things to say about that, though.

00:45:38.680 | One is, in fact, cash is not going away.

00:45:42.080 | In fact, there is more cash than there has ever been, despite what it feels like.

00:45:46.160 | There's an extraordinary amount of cash in the world now.

00:45:49.160 | When I wrote the book, it was something like forty four zero

00:45:53.560 | hundred dollar bills for every man, woman and child in America,

00:45:56.840 | which is just astonishing when you think about it.

00:46:00.120 | More hundred dollar bills than one dollar bills.

00:46:02.280 | And so then there's the question of, like, where is it right?

00:46:06.760 | Where are all those hundreds?

00:46:08.600 | And the awesome answer is we don't exactly know because it's cash

00:46:12.240 | and kind of the whole point of cash, certainly the whole point of hundreds.

00:46:15.360 | Let's be honest, is it's like nobody knows where it is.

00:46:18.560 | It's not tracked.

00:46:19.360 | It's pretty clear that a lot of it is outside the United States

00:46:22.200 | in a lot of countries where the banks are unreliable,

00:46:24.560 | where the currency is unreliable.

00:46:25.800 | People like U.S. paper money as a real store of value.

00:46:30.000 | So that seems useful.

00:46:31.240 | And it's a good export for the U.S., right?

00:46:33.000 | People want to give us stuff and we give them paper.

00:46:35.200 | That's a good deal.

00:46:36.320 | Also, crime.

00:46:37.360 | People just use paper money to commit crimes a lot.

00:46:40.000 | There was this story that came out after I wrote the book.

00:46:42.040 | It was at the beginning of the pandemic when all the stores shut down

00:46:45.040 | and in L.A., in Southern California.

00:46:47.400 | The DEA just started seizing these vast sums of cash.

00:46:51.480 | And what had happened was the drug dealers in L.A.

00:46:55.240 | were using these stores to launder their money.

00:46:57.880 | And when the stores shut down, they couldn't launder their money anymore.

00:47:00.600 | So the money was just like piling up and they just had all this cash

00:47:04.240 | that they couldn't hide anymore.

00:47:05.920 | So that is still going to happen.

00:47:08.360 | The other piece of it is money is largely already digital.

00:47:12.280 | If cash goes away, I mean, there are certain people

00:47:14.880 | like people don't have access to bank accounts.

00:47:17.080 | And so you would definitely want to create a system

00:47:20.240 | to basically give those people bank accounts, give everybody a bank account,

00:47:23.240 | give everybody a debit card. That's solvable.

00:47:25.480 | The key thing is our money is already mostly digital, right?

00:47:29.440 | Even though I think if people sort of close their eyes and think about money,

00:47:32.520 | they'd think about a $20 bill or a $100 bill.

00:47:34.440 | The vast majority of money in the world is just a number on a bank's computer.

00:47:38.640 | So if cash goes away, the world wouldn't look that different.

00:47:41.120 | Harder to commit a crime, harder to save money

00:47:43.360 | if you live in a country with like bad banks and a bad currency.

00:47:46.600 | I don't know how much, but there's a decent amount of our

00:47:49.720 | economy that happens with cash.

00:47:52.280 | People that get paid in cash don't pay taxes again.

00:47:54.480 | Maybe it's good that that happens.

00:47:56.440 | Yeah, no, you're right.

00:47:57.560 | There was this famous moment in Italy

00:47:59.840 | when they decided to start including in GDP

00:48:04.560 | and the measure of their overall economy, the black market, the illegal economy.

00:48:09.200 | And because of the nature of the Italian economy,

00:48:12.320 | their GDP grew a ton when they decided to start counting it.

00:48:15.560 | And I think they passed to the UK.

00:48:16.880 | They became a bigger economy than the UK.

00:48:18.960 | And they had a celebration.

00:48:20.200 | They called it il sorpasso because like, hey, we're bigger than the UK, which is fun.

00:48:24.320 | My fun moment was I had a tenant and we had an Airbnb

00:48:28.360 | and we were talking about the US economy is from Germany.

00:48:31.000 | And we talked about cash.

00:48:33.360 | He was like, oh, do you want me to pay you with cash?

00:48:35.080 | Is it OK if I send it electronically?

00:48:36.800 | Do you take credit card?

00:48:38.160 | We were talking as he's like, because in Germany, we say that cash is tax neutral.

00:48:43.280 | And I thought that was the best description of cash I'd heard to date.

00:48:48.040 | Cash neutral is funny.

00:48:49.640 | I mean, arguably, it's tax negative.

00:48:52.400 | If in the proper world, you're paying the tax that you pay in cash,

00:48:55.600 | you don't have to pay the. Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:48:57.280 | Anyway, that depends on what your baseline is.

00:48:59.600 | It's good that you've learned a lot about money.

00:49:01.080 | You've researched it, talked about it, run a podcast for over a decade.

00:49:04.720 | But I saw you say that before you started thinking about money,

00:49:07.920 | you didn't really think about it that seriously.

00:49:09.680 | It became this thing that you're now known for.

00:49:11.720 | And now that you have a family and kids, I'm curious what kinds of money

00:49:16.440 | related lessons or thoughts you're trying to pass on

00:49:20.040 | so that they have a better understanding earlier on, maybe you did.

00:49:23.480 | Yeah, that's a good question.

00:49:25.480 | The way I thought about money before I started.

00:49:28.080 | Studying it and writing about it was I was always really into saving money

00:49:33.920 | and not spending money.

00:49:35.160 | Yeah, just the way I was raised.

00:49:36.520 | My personality is I like a deal, I think twice before I buy things.

00:49:40.360 | And it's interesting you ask about my kids.

00:49:44.280 | And so I think I think a lot about with them is what's the right balance?

00:49:50.120 | Like, I think I was

00:49:51.760 | neurotically cheap to some extent or in some settings.

00:49:54.840 | At the same time, I'm glad that I know the value of a dollar. Right.

00:49:58.000 | And don't take for granted buying stuff.

00:50:01.200 | And so what I'm trying to

00:50:03.360 | teach or model for my kids, because the modeling is the real thing with kids,

00:50:08.400 | what you do is really what matters.

00:50:10.480 | So what I'm trying to model for them is some happy medium, right?

00:50:14.520 | Like a recognizing that we're fortunate to just be OK

00:50:18.360 | and not have to worry about buying food and paying the rent.

00:50:20.960 | That's a big one. Right. Don't take that for granted.

00:50:23.120 | We're lucky to it's OK to buy yourself something nice.

00:50:26.920 | But remember, if you buy this thing, you're going to have less money

00:50:29.800 | and less ability to buy something else in the future.

00:50:31.720 | So is it worth it to you?

00:50:33.400 | It's that idea of value.

00:50:34.840 | That's really what I want to teach my kids.

00:50:37.160 | And how are you modeling those two things?

00:50:39.440 | Well, it's hard.

00:50:41.160 | I mean, I'm trying to be like thoughtful about money, but not neurotic.

00:50:44.840 | Like, I'm just trying to be the money person

00:50:47.320 | I aspire to be in my behavior in front of them.

00:50:50.120 | Do you talk about, oh, we're going to make this decision?

00:50:53.080 | You mentioned you got to bought a house.

00:50:54.160 | Did you? I don't know. I don't know how old your kids are.

00:50:56.320 | So maybe that's too much.

00:50:57.800 | They're, you know, nine and eleven.

00:50:59.440 | I explained to them the mortgage.

00:51:00.800 | You know, I explained to them how a mortgage worked.

00:51:02.160 | And for that matter, we lived in an apartment before and we had a mortgage.

00:51:04.760 | And I explained to them, they're curious, smart kids.

00:51:06.960 | So I explained to them, we're going to sell the house and we're going to get money

00:51:10.200 | and we're going to use that money to pay off the bank for this mortgage.

00:51:13.200 | And then we're going to have some leftover

00:51:14.200 | and we're going to use that to buy some of the house that we're buying.

00:51:16.400 | And we're going to get a loan.

00:51:17.200 | They were into the mechanics of it.

00:51:18.760 | And we talked a lot about it.

00:51:20.040 | So like that part is just fun.

00:51:21.960 | I'm a nerd. My kids are kind of nerds.

00:51:24.040 | The mechanics part, to me, that's like the fun, easy part.

00:51:27.680 | The more certainly the harder and maybe more interesting.

00:51:30.880 | Ultimately, a part is the more emotional, frankly, more emotional part,

00:51:35.600 | because like rationally, I save a lot of money and I'm fine and we're fortunate

00:51:40.040 | and I work and my wife works and whatever.

00:51:42.200 | But there's a large emotional component to money and managing that

00:51:47.600 | and being reasonable about money that I find hard at some level.

00:51:54.080 | There's an unlimited number of studies that show that people who have money

00:51:57.920 | would think they will be happier if they have more money.

00:52:00.280 | I think it's probably the hardest emotional thing to solve,

00:52:03.320 | whether it's keeping up with the Joneses or the hedonic treadmill

00:52:05.600 | or whatever name you want to give it.

00:52:06.880 | Yeah, I have not found someone

00:52:09.560 | give any kind of here is exactly how you fix that.

00:52:13.160 | The answer has been you just have to accept that what you have is enough

00:52:15.960 | and maybe it's gratitude or is there anything you've picked up

00:52:18.720 | in all the episodes you've done or conversations you've had

00:52:22.320 | that would help someone get out of that rut of always thinking

00:52:25.960 | more would be better and not being content with what they have now?

00:52:28.560 | At a broader level, and this might be too broad, but

00:52:32.480 | a thing I have found in my life, frankly, more than in my work,

00:52:36.560 | is that I'll have some emotion about money or about work or something,

00:52:41.480 | some worry, I worry a lot, whatever, and then I'll go for a jog.

00:52:46.640 | I like to jog.

00:52:47.640 | I found that exercising just makes me less worried and I'll feel better.

00:52:51.360 | Right. I'll stop worrying about the thing I was worried about.

00:52:53.320 | But the thing hasn't changed at all.

00:52:55.120 | The money situation in my life or the thing at work or whatever

00:52:57.760 | I was worried about.

00:52:58.560 | And so, like for me, a big insight of adulthood has been

00:53:01.440 | my emotions are more about what's going on inside of me

00:53:06.880 | than about what's going on out in the world.

00:53:08.640 | To me, the key thing to worry less is to not fix something external.

00:53:13.080 | I mean, unless you have some horrible thing in your life,

00:53:14.800 | but unfortunately don't have horrible things in my life.

00:53:16.880 | It's to manage myself.

00:53:18.200 | It's to run. It's to whatever sleep.

00:53:20.040 | If you need to sleep, take a break. If you need to take a break.

00:53:22.240 | It's recognizing that the source of a lot of problems, a lot of worry is internal.

00:53:27.040 | It's interesting.

00:53:27.840 | My answer would have been something that I don't think contradicts

00:53:30.960 | what you said, but compliments it on the other side,

00:53:33.320 | which is a lot of the source, I think, of people's struggles

00:53:37.680 | with money or thinking that most people have more than them,

00:53:40.560 | which I actually think is not true.

00:53:42.600 | And so my challenge to people is if you're feeling like

00:53:46.560 | you can't keep up with the Joneses, per se, try to just talk about money.

00:53:51.040 | It's like the most uncomfortable thing.

00:53:52.440 | And I don't know if people will, but I imagine the person on Instagram

00:53:56.760 | who posted a photo in a Greek island that you're jealous of,

00:54:00.160 | talk to them about money and they might say, "Gosh,

00:54:02.320 | we're still struggling to pay off our student loans."

00:54:04.560 | And you're like, "Oh, well,

00:54:06.080 | just that they're not posting their student loans on Instagram, right?

00:54:09.280 | They're not posting the credit card payment they missed."

00:54:12.800 | And so your example is think inward.

00:54:16.040 | And mine is a complimentary one, which is talk to the people

00:54:19.440 | that aspire to be like, and you might find out you're a lot more like them

00:54:22.480 | or you might even be better off.

00:54:23.840 | They just might be making you look like you're not better off

00:54:26.520 | because all you see...

00:54:28.160 | Stay off Instagram also, right? Instagram is a vehicle for that.

00:54:31.360 | I mean, one word that's interesting to talk about in this context,

00:54:34.480 | I think it's under discussed in the context of money and other things is status.

00:54:38.400 | Right. A lot of the time, obviously, money and status are closely linked.

00:54:44.360 | And sometimes what people will articulate

00:54:48.440 | as a worry about having enough or whatever is actually a worry about status,

00:54:53.160 | a worry about, "Oh, I am lower status than this person who went to Greece or whatever."

00:54:58.080 | And I don't know exactly what to do about that.

00:55:00.520 | Like in my dream world, it was don't care about status.

00:55:02.920 | But I haven't been able to not care about status, candidly.

00:55:06.000 | Like we're hierarchical animals.

00:55:07.360 | It's very hard to not care about status.

00:55:09.320 | But I think to at least be aware of it and be aware of what status games

00:55:14.400 | do you want to play, what status games can you get out of playing,

00:55:17.480 | whether that's at work or with respect to material things

00:55:21.000 | or the kind of car you have or whatever.

00:55:22.720 | Just an awareness that a lot of what we think of as, "Oh, I need this

00:55:26.720 | or I need that, or I'm worried that I'm not going to have enough money,"

00:55:28.880 | is really a kind of status hierarchy

00:55:32.280 | primate brain doing weird things in the way we think about money.

00:55:36.200 | That I also find helpful.

00:55:38.400 | There's a person that I could think of that might have some suggestions,

00:55:41.280 | and I will take it as homework to bring him on the show in the future.

00:55:44.560 | Is Ryan Holiday, who talks a lot about stoicism.

00:55:48.560 | If I were going to try to solve that with a conversation,

00:55:51.280 | I feel like he would be the best sparring partner for that.

00:55:54.080 | So that's a great idea.

00:55:55.280 | I will send you a note when he comes on, which if anyone listening is like,

00:55:59.000 | "I'm buddies," send him a note.

00:56:00.160 | I don't know, Ryan, but I will find my way to him.

00:56:02.360 | I mean, that guy does a ton of stuff.

00:56:04.680 | I bet you could get him on the show.

00:56:06.520 | So that's a great idea.

00:56:08.560 | Thank you.

00:56:08.920 | Before we wrap, I have a couple of things.

00:56:10.400 | You said you're a nerd about money.

00:56:11.640 | You love a deal.

00:56:12.800 | You love saving.

00:56:14.360 | In our first conversation, before we hit the record,

00:56:16.480 | I know you've said you've got some hacks for money.

00:56:18.160 | I'd love to hear what are the things that you do

00:56:20.520 | that you often find your friends or peers or colleagues being like,

00:56:24.320 | "Oh, that's great. I got to start doing that," other than the iBonds,

00:56:27.960 | which will go down as the main one for the episode.

00:56:30.160 | Oh, yeah, that's the big one.

00:56:32.600 | Everything else is so small and goes more to the neurotic side.

00:56:36.040 | It's like the stuff where I don't actually save that much money.

00:56:38.720 | And in the big picture, I just like the feeling of getting a deal.

00:56:41.880 | Do you know the website Auto Slash?

00:56:43.680 | This is a weird one.

00:56:44.720 | But there's a website called Auto Slash.

00:56:46.440 | So I just bought a car for the first time a couple of years ago.

00:56:48.600 | I live in New York where you can get around without a car.

00:56:50.800 | So before the pandemic, I didn't have a car.

00:56:52.760 | And so we would rent cars pretty often if we're going to go away

00:56:54.800 | through the weekend or whatever.

00:56:55.760 | And renting a car in New York is really expensive.

00:56:58.080 | And so there's this weird website called Auto Slash,

00:57:00.960 | where you just type in where you want to rent a car and who you are,

00:57:04.960 | what kind of car you want to rent, if you're a member of Costco or the AAA,

00:57:08.000 | or if you have this credit card or that credit card.

00:57:09.880 | And the weird thing about it is it's not instant.

00:57:13.120 | But I don't know.

00:57:14.400 | An hour later, they email you rental car deals

00:57:17.560 | and they tend to be really good deals in New York.

00:57:21.360 | It's like the difference between 100 or 150 bucks a day

00:57:24.640 | and like 25 bucks a day for a rental car sometimes.

00:57:27.360 | So it's like a big deal.

00:57:28.760 | I don't know. Is that too little?

00:57:29.960 | Is that the wrong size hack?

00:57:31.200 | I think I would say no, because the CEO of Auto Slash, Jonathan Weinberg,

00:57:34.520 | is actually we're recording an episode next week all about rental cars.

00:57:37.840 | So, you just teed that up perfectly.

00:57:41.760 | But yeah, I think rental cars, especially right now,

00:57:44.040 | there's no supply of cars in the market.

00:57:46.320 | I noticed when we ordered our Tesla, they said it's going to come in April.

00:57:49.960 | We had our second child in June.

00:57:52.920 | Car hadn't come.

00:57:54.440 | Car said in the app it's coming in July.

00:57:57.200 | And we're like, "We could manage for a month in a car that doesn't fit everyone.

00:58:00.200 | That's OK." And then it said, "OK, it's got pushed back.

00:58:03.920 | It's no longer July.

00:58:04.960 | It's going to be somewhere between December and next April."

00:58:07.920 | And we were like, so I called Tesla.

00:58:09.440 | I was like, "What is going on?"

00:58:10.440 | And they're like, "It's normal that the dates shift like that."

00:58:12.480 | I was like, "What do you mean it's normal that the dates shift by six months?"

00:58:15.640 | It's normal that you go buy a car and drive home.

00:58:18.880 | That's what's normal, Tesla.

00:58:20.480 | And then a week later, it shifted back.

00:58:22.240 | This is the thing that I thought was so crazy.

00:58:23.880 | It said August 11th to October 12th.

00:58:27.840 | And I was like, "OK, I guess it's normal that it shifts by six months."

00:58:31.600 | And then the next week, it said August 12th to October 13th.

00:58:35.200 | And I was like, "How could a company have enough

00:58:38.240 | precision to change my delivery estimate by a day?"

00:58:41.680 | But the window is still two months, right?

00:58:44.480 | We know it won't be August 12th anymore.

00:58:46.080 | It's still a big window, but we're shifting it by two percent.

00:58:49.160 | The hack for this, though, that I learned, which I didn't want to share

00:58:52.680 | until I got the car right now, I don't care, is that when Tesla has a car

00:58:57.440 | that is ready for pickup, they email someone and say, "Hey, your car's here."

00:59:01.360 | And if in three days you're not ready for it, they put it to someone else.

00:59:05.080 | Ah, so can you like fly standby with Tesla?

00:59:09.080 | Can you get on the "I want to be on the someone else" list?

00:59:12.000 | I wouldn't say it's accepted, but it's also maybe not prevented.

00:59:15.520 | This is the perfect hack window.

00:59:17.560 | So if you go not to the showroom, but the delivery center.

00:59:20.760 | So in every major area, there's a delivery center.

00:59:22.920 | In the Bay Area, it's in Colma.

00:59:25.000 | Famous for its cemetery.

00:59:26.400 | Yeah, it is. That's all I know about Colma.

00:59:28.040 | I would say it helps if you genuinely have a need.

00:59:30.640 | We went in, we're like, "Our family doesn't fit in the car we have today."

00:59:34.320 | People are willing to make an exception.

00:59:36.520 | If you're flexible, you're like, "We'll change the color." That's fine.

00:59:39.760 | We found someone and they said, "Look, if a car shows up

00:59:43.960 | and no one wants it after two and a half days,

00:59:46.240 | or if we get a verbal confirmation that they don't want it,

00:59:49.240 | we'll give you a call because they want to get the car off the lot.

00:59:51.880 | And if they know someone that's going to come right away, it's helpful."

00:59:55.040 | I think they're supposed to put it back in the queue

00:59:57.440 | and give it to the next person in line.

00:59:58.880 | What we ended up getting was a car that came in six months ago

01:00:02.720 | and had something wrong with the door because they prioritize

01:00:06.240 | people who own cars, they prioritize fixing their cars.

01:00:08.920 | This car just sat there for four or five months before they fixed the door.

01:00:12.000 | And now it's technically a 2021 and the new cars are 2022s.

01:00:16.600 | So they kept calling people and saying, "Hey, your 2022s here.

01:00:19.240 | It's actually last year's model." Nothing changed.

01:00:21.760 | They changed like the charge port is slightly different. And that's it.

01:00:24.880 | And for anyone listening who's a huge nerd,

01:00:26.400 | they also added this swiveling screen that's motorized,

01:00:29.720 | but it didn't matter to us.

01:00:31.400 | So they're like, "Gosh, here's a person that said, 'I will take it.'"

01:00:33.640 | Let's stop calling people that keep saying no and give it to that person.

01:00:36.880 | So you just got it now.

01:00:38.280 | You got it in June instead of August to October and your whole family fits in it.

01:00:42.560 | We got it yesterday.

01:00:43.560 | I spent yesterday afternoon putting two car seats in there and getting it all ready.

01:00:48.000 | But yeah, it's a one day old car with a 1.99% loan that I'm excited about.

01:00:53.720 | That's a good hack. What else you got?

01:00:55.640 | I hit really hard the filters on like kayak,

01:01:00.200 | like really hard kayak trip advisor in the left rail on kayak.

01:01:05.440 | You can do all kinds of dialing.

01:01:07.280 | So I live in New York, for example, and there's multiple airports, which is helpful.

01:01:11.120 | I'm big at just pricing different things.

01:01:13.160 | There is some price for which I'd be willing to fly on Spirit Airlines.

01:01:17.800 | There's some amount of price differential that makes it worth it.

01:01:20.320 | Depends on am I flying with my kids and it's going to be a lot more.

01:01:23.440 | On the other hand, the thing about flying with kids,

01:01:25.480 | as you know, is everything is suddenly 4X.

01:01:27.840 | Here's one. OK, here's a hack.

01:01:30.320 | I don't know if it's a hack. I find it useful as a hack.

01:01:32.400 | If there's some recurring thing you pay for, whether it's a monthly bill is easy,

01:01:36.800 | but even like a thing you buy at the grocery store every week, annualize it.

01:01:40.880 | Right. So if you're spending an extra 10 bucks a week at the grocery store

01:01:45.400 | on something, something's 10 bucks more than the other thing.

01:01:48.600 | That's actually 500 bucks a year. Right.

01:01:51.800 | And I find saying, is this worth an extra 500 bucks a year

01:01:54.760 | to me feels different than is this worth an extra 10 bucks to me every time?

01:01:58.280 | That's a sort of behavioral hack, right?

01:02:00.440 | It's a way of framing things that helps me spend less, frankly.

01:02:04.000 | And same with subscriptions.

01:02:05.360 | Obviously, subscriptions are killer that way.

01:02:07.400 | There are those products now.

01:02:08.960 | They're a subscription product to manage your subscription products.

01:02:12.120 | And I've been interested in those because I have so many now, like for software,

01:02:16.040 | like I have Microsoft and Adobe and Dropbox and all these ones

01:02:20.080 | that I don't use that much, and they are all together.

01:02:24.120 | Certainly hundreds, maybe $1,000 a year.

01:02:26.880 | I could use a hack on that one, I think. Can you help me?

01:02:29.080 | So Truebill is a sponsor of the show.

01:02:31.040 | Oh, and as people know, no, no, no.

01:02:34.320 | I didn't ask. You're welcome.

01:02:35.840 | You're welcome. Truebill.

01:02:37.680 | I've had all the products that services anyone that wants to sponsor the show.

01:02:41.760 | I'm like, I am very serious.

01:02:43.880 | I'm like, I'm going to use the product.

01:02:45.160 | I'm going to try the product.

01:02:46.040 | My wife will try the product.

01:02:47.520 | And I say no to most of them.

01:02:49.360 | So I downloaded Truebill.

01:02:50.400 | I'd never used it before.

01:02:51.680 | They're getting a free ad here.

01:02:52.960 | It's not part of the ad.

01:02:53.800 | But basically, what you can do is you can see a calendar

01:02:56.440 | of when all your subscriptions are, where they are, even just the free version

01:02:59.840 | of not hiring them to do anything.

01:03:01.840 | And it's just what are they?

01:03:02.880 | Yeah. And that's for so many.

01:03:04.800 | There's so many. And they recur.

01:03:06.840 | I mean, there's the simple things of right when you sign up,

01:03:09.760 | make sure it's not automatically recurring.

01:03:13.000 | That's a useful one.

01:03:14.040 | There are so many like very often I'll get an email that's hey,

01:03:16.880 | thanks for renewing your subscription for another year.

01:03:19.080 | We just billed you 90 bucks.

01:03:20.520 | I'm like, ah, that's a little heck.

01:03:22.840 | I'll give you two ones for this.

01:03:25.240 | One is if you have a Capital One card,

01:03:27.400 | they have this browser extension called Eno.

01:03:31.080 | And I dislike the fact that they have hijacked a keyboard shortcut

01:03:35.840 | that I used for something else.

01:03:37.160 | But other than that, what they do is they give you a virtual card for everything.

01:03:41.040 | So you install this browser extension.

01:03:43.160 | And a lot of the virtual card companies like Privacy is an example.

01:03:47.120 | They route your money through your bank account.

01:03:50.120 | You don't earn points. I don't love it.

01:03:52.120 | I like the advantages.

01:03:53.440 | It doesn't automatically renew, right?

01:03:55.200 | It's sort of self-destruct.

01:03:56.760 | So they can't bill you again.

01:03:58.360 | That's so because this one's tied to Capital One, the card issue.

01:04:01.320 | You still earn all your rewards.

01:04:03.520 | So it's next level.

01:04:04.880 | But you can say for this card, I want to only allow a purchase of $100

01:04:10.160 | or I want to go manually turn it off.

01:04:12.320 | I want to buy a subscription. It's a one year thing.

01:04:14.560 | They don't have the ability to cancel it.

01:04:16.640 | Maybe you have to call to cancel.

01:04:18.200 | I just buy it and immediately turn off the billing for that card.

01:04:21.720 | And the great thing is it's just not going to go through.

01:04:25.200 | They're going to say, "Hey, we have to cancel your subscription."

01:04:27.120 | Now, Truebill does have a feature where you can say,

01:04:29.520 | "Hey, just call them for me and cancel it."

01:04:31.160 | And like that is a part of their premium subscription.

01:04:33.760 | They'll just do all that for you.

01:04:35.080 | But I like to use Capital One's thing because you still get the points,

01:04:37.720 | but they will go in and cancel the thing.

01:04:39.640 | And it just happens that I use my Capital One card for a lot of Internet stuff

01:04:43.280 | because it's the two X on everything, not the travel bonuses and grocery bonuses.

01:04:49.000 | OK, that's a good one.

01:04:51.960 | You got any travel hacks for me?

01:04:53.960 | And here's the thing for me with travel hacks is again, because I have kids,

01:04:58.000 | I'm definitely in the like schmuck category now where I have to go

01:05:01.520 | at the time when everybody goes, I have to fly the weekend.

01:05:04.120 | You don't want to have to fly.

01:05:05.560 | So I'm starting in a bad place, right?

01:05:09.160 | I'm starting where I'm the guy who has to pay retail for the seat.

01:05:12.440 | And I don't want to be that guy.

01:05:13.600 | What can you do for me?

01:05:15.120 | So I mean, going back and listening to a handful of episodes

01:05:17.800 | is probably not the best answer.

01:05:20.280 | I'll probably cut that.

01:05:21.280 | Maybe I won't. Maybe I won't.

01:05:22.680 | The best answer is you should have been listening to the podcast.

01:05:25.200 | We got a handful of episodes to tackle this.

01:05:27.120 | The hard answer is.

01:05:30.280 | I sometimes think that if you have the points, things open up last minute,

01:05:34.200 | so it's like the scary option, which is if you could find something

01:05:38.520 | all sometimes by the Southwest flight that I can cancel last minute,

01:05:42.480 | pay for a refundable fare and then keep looking for the for the last.

01:05:47.200 | Yes, but not.

01:05:48.560 | And most of the airlines now are cancelable and you get a full credit.

01:05:51.480 | You don't have to pay a fee. Right.

01:05:53.120 | So if you book with an airline where, you know, I fly Delta all the time.

01:05:57.080 | If I have to cancel this and get a $500 Delta credit, it's going to be OK.

01:06:00.480 | Buy the ticket.

01:06:02.280 | This is something I'd like to buy the ticket and then make the barrier

01:06:06.320 | having to cancel it when you get a better deal instead of holding off

01:06:09.680 | and making the action.

01:06:11.560 | I have to go buy it. That's nice.

01:06:13.160 | And so I say buy it and then check in regularly

01:06:16.520 | as late as the day of or the night before.

01:06:19.880 | Sure. A lot of times within the last week,

01:06:22.680 | tickets are really, really inexpensive with points.

01:06:25.720 | My wife's family wants to come visit because we had the new baby

01:06:29.080 | and they're coming next week, like within five days.

01:06:32.960 | And we looked on United and they live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado,

01:06:37.560 | which is notoriously an expensive place to fly to because it's just United

01:06:41.400 | and Southwest.

01:06:42.440 | And they route through Denver and they have a monopoly over the airports.

01:06:45.520 | And it was so cheap for points.

01:06:48.440 | It was like the lowest inventory, 12000 points each way or 12.5

01:06:52.440 | for a ticket that was like six or seven hundred dollars.

01:06:55.280 | So it ended up being a fantastic deal because they booked within a week.

01:06:58.560 | What they could have done is bought a Southwest ticket a month ago,

01:07:01.960 | canceled it if they needed to.

01:07:03.600 | I also want to talk about the podcast.

01:07:04.800 | I mentioned it in the intro, but you started a new podcast

01:07:08.800 | after being in this space longer than most.

01:07:11.040 | What led you to this topic and maybe share a little bit more about?

01:07:14.400 | Yeah. So I started this show called What's Your Problem?

01:07:16.640 | And it's really a show about people solving technical problems in the real world.

01:07:22.360 | I talked to engineers and founders of companies that are doing things

01:07:27.200 | that seem interesting and important to me.

01:07:29.120 | Drone delivery.

01:07:31.360 | Self-driving cars, but also events markets.

01:07:34.600 | I just interviewed somebody who started the first company

01:07:36.840 | that was approved by the CFTC to let people bet on real world events.

01:07:40.560 | That's an interesting one.

01:07:41.440 | And what led me to start it was, I mean, it just seemed fun to start something,

01:07:45.280 | frankly. Right.

01:07:46.200 | But I think that sort of the big idea that I got excited about

01:07:50.080 | when I started learning about economics, as which didn't happen

01:07:53.200 | until relatively late in my life, was this idea that

01:07:57.480 | the pie can get bigger, that everybody can be better off,

01:08:00.200 | that the world is not fundamentally a zero sum game.

01:08:02.720 | I feel like that is actually the big insight of economics.

01:08:06.080 | And I didn't know it before.

01:08:08.640 | And I think it's not intuitive, right?

01:08:11.160 | I think the intuitive.

01:08:13.720 | Idea of the world is it's zero sum.

01:08:15.720 | If somebody is getting more, somebody else must be getting less.

01:08:18.120 | But that's not true, right?

01:08:19.480 | Like the good news of economics is everybody can get richer.

01:08:22.800 | Everybody can have more.

01:08:24.800 | And the way that happens is.

01:08:27.040 | Technological improvements, basically, people figure out

01:08:31.240 | how to get more stuff out of a day's work, right?

01:08:35.520 | People figure out new efficiencies, ways to do new useful things.

01:08:38.880 | The big idea of the show is let's talk to the people

01:08:41.400 | who are actually figuring that stuff out.

01:08:43.800 | I think next week is going to be DNA storage, right?

01:08:46.400 | People are figuring out how to store data in DNA, which is just like rad.

01:08:51.480 | And apparently you can fit the whole Internet in a shoebox.

01:08:54.520 | But of course, it's super expensive now.

01:08:56.000 | And there's all these hard problems.

01:08:57.080 | How do you make it cheaper? How do you make it actually work?

01:08:58.840 | So that's the idea of the show.

01:09:01.120 | I've been listening. It's great.

01:09:02.680 | I pitch you on a non-technical, but it's a shame there's the technical requirement

01:09:06.360 | because I think the zero sum game with travel, I think that's something I love.

01:09:10.160 | I'll work on technology. I'll get back to you.

01:09:12.000 | Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to book David Nealman, the guy.

01:09:14.960 | He started JetBlue, which is actually an interesting kind of econ story.

01:09:19.000 | And then he has a new airline now.

01:09:20.520 | I forget the name. I haven't done the interview yet.

01:09:22.440 | I love the show. Thanks for doing it.

01:09:24.240 | People should definitely check it out.

01:09:25.600 | One thing I always ask everyone, because a lot of our listeners love to travel,

01:09:29.360 | is pick a place you're pretty familiar with.

01:09:32.200 | Someone's in town there.

01:09:33.760 | Where should they go for a great meal?

01:09:35.480 | Maybe a drink and some unusual thing to do to spend an afternoon?

01:09:38.840 | Well, that's fun.

01:09:39.840 | I mean, I live in New York and my hack for New York is just walk around.

01:09:44.240 | I don't know if that's too obvious to be a hack, but I love New York.

01:09:47.480 | I love living here.

01:09:49.160 | Even before the pandemic, I never really went to the theater, didn't go to anything.

01:09:52.560 | I just like being in New York.

01:09:54.040 | I just like walking around.

01:09:55.120 | Just get on the subway, walk around downtown, just enjoy.

01:09:59.200 | It's free. Eat anywhere.

01:10:00.480 | It doesn't matter. Eat at a cart. Just be in the street.

01:10:02.480 | So, that's one. I don't know if that's weak or not.

01:10:05.000 | The other one that came to mind, I grew up in San Diego.

01:10:07.640 | And my favorite place to eat in San Diego is a taco shop called Roberto's,

01:10:12.000 | which is just like super low-key, cheap taco shop.

01:10:14.720 | There's several of them.

01:10:15.920 | My favorite one is in Del Mar.

01:10:19.400 | And it's just a little taco shop near the beach, near Torrey Pines is the name of the beach.

01:10:24.840 | But just go there and get whatever you want.

01:10:27.400 | Get a carne asada burrito if you want to get one, sort of mild classic.

01:10:30.200 | But get whatever you want.

01:10:31.120 | You sit out on the deck and you have a view of the ocean.

01:10:34.560 | It's cheap. It's delicious.

01:10:36.080 | The beach is right there. You can go jump in the ocean.

01:10:38.040 | There's an incredible state park, Torrey Pines State Park,

01:10:40.640 | with these beautiful bluffs out over the ocean.

01:10:43.040 | You can hike there. Maybe you'll see a dolphin.

01:10:45.200 | You see the ocean. It's amazing.

01:10:47.440 | That's exactly the kind of recommendation people love.

01:10:50.040 | Thank you.

01:10:51.000 | Roberto's. Torrey Pines, Del Mar.

01:10:54.480 | Any other place people should find you online before we wrap?

01:10:57.080 | I spend too much time on Twitter.

01:10:58.560 | I'm @JacobGoldstein.

01:11:00.040 | If you ask me a question there, I'll see it and answer it if it's nice.

01:11:05.160 | Awesome, Jacob, thank you so much for being here.

01:11:07.120 | It was a delight. Thanks for having me.

01:11:09.320 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:11:12.920 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:11:14.680 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show

01:11:17.520 | in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

01:11:21.280 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me,

01:11:23.680 | or just want to say hi,

01:11:25.120 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:11:29.400 | That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.

01:11:31.440 | (upbeat music)

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