ATHLLC8734951178

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.480 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:05.280 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:08.000 | Now, today I wanted to try something a little different.

00:00:10.320 | In the past week, I've had a couple ideas or musings

00:00:12.760 | that I thought would be really interesting things

00:00:14.400 | to share on the podcast,

00:00:16.040 | but none of them really leveled up

00:00:17.520 | to an entire episode on their own,

00:00:19.520 | and they weren't really questions from you guys

00:00:21.200 | or hacks to share,

00:00:22.300 | so they didn't quite fit in the mailbag format.

00:00:24.620 | So I thought, why not just record them

00:00:26.800 | and put them out there?

00:00:27.760 | And originally I thought this might be

00:00:28.960 | a 10 or 15 minute episode,

00:00:30.440 | and I was gonna release it on Monday

00:00:31.840 | and just call it Monday's Musings.

00:00:33.700 | But then as I got to going,

00:00:34.740 | I realized there was a lot more I wanted to share,

00:00:36.800 | and it really filled up an entire episode.

00:00:39.080 | And so I decided I'm gonna release it on a normal day,

00:00:41.560 | and I'm just gonna share some of these things on my mind,

00:00:43.840 | 'cause there's a lot of lessons and hacks and learnings

00:00:45.880 | that I thought would be really valuable

00:00:47.020 | for everyone to hear.

00:00:48.080 | But I definitely, definitely, definitely

00:00:50.040 | want your feedback.

00:00:51.200 | I'd love to know if you think this is a format

00:00:53.080 | I should keep doing,

00:00:54.080 | or if maybe I should keep doing,

00:00:55.440 | but keep it to another day of the week

00:00:56.860 | so Wednesdays are different.

00:00:58.580 | Whatever your feedback is,

00:00:59.920 | please send me a message,

00:01:01.240 | podcast@allthehacks.com.

00:01:03.000 | I would really love to hear from you.

00:01:04.600 | You can also reach out to me on social

00:01:06.000 | or find me anywhere,

00:01:07.040 | because if this is interesting,

00:01:08.400 | I'd love to keep it going.

00:01:09.640 | If not, I can keep the Musings to myself.

00:01:12.380 | And if you're new here,

00:01:13.600 | first off, this is obviously not a typical episode,

00:01:15.820 | so don't judge that.

00:01:17.000 | And second, I normally cover a lot of topics

00:01:19.560 | about travel, points, miles, investing, personal finance.

00:01:23.040 | And in the last couple episodes,

00:01:24.640 | including the next one,

00:01:25.600 | which will actually be about France

00:01:27.360 | and a complete travel guide to the country,

00:01:29.640 | there's a little deviation from the standard.

00:01:31.280 | And that's 'cause I just like to make sure

00:01:32.760 | this show is not only focused on one thing,

00:01:35.600 | because I think we all like to optimize

00:01:37.280 | different areas of our lives

00:01:38.600 | and learn lots of things

00:01:40.040 | and don't wanna go too far down one path.

00:01:42.520 | So if you're coming here for content

00:01:43.800 | on travel, points, or miles,

00:01:45.320 | and you haven't heard it,

00:01:46.320 | or you wanna hear more about money and investing,

00:01:48.600 | and it hasn't been in the last few episodes,

00:01:50.440 | don't worry, that stuff is coming.

00:01:52.360 | Stay subscribed.

00:01:53.800 | And if you have any thoughts

00:01:54.960 | on other things you wanna hear me cover or talk about,

00:01:57.440 | or guests you wanna hear on the podcast,

00:01:59.160 | shoot me a note, podcast@allthehacks.com.

00:02:02.400 | Okay, so what are today's musings about?

00:02:05.000 | I'll give you a quick overview.

00:02:06.400 | First, I wanna talk about a last-minute trip

00:02:08.240 | that Amy and I are planning

00:02:09.360 | and how some of the rules of maximizing your points

00:02:12.040 | for last-minute travel might not be what they used to be.

00:02:15.080 | I also wanna come back to the point-optimizing spreadsheet

00:02:17.680 | I talked about in the last Q&A episode,

00:02:19.760 | because I've made a few tweaks with it

00:02:21.240 | and I'm finally ready to share it with you.

00:02:23.720 | I wanna share a story about optimization

00:02:25.440 | going a little bit overboard and wrong

00:02:27.600 | and just being a complete waste of time

00:02:29.280 | that you can all hopefully learn from my mistake.

00:02:31.640 | I wanna talk a little bit

00:02:32.520 | about these automated bedtime stories

00:02:34.480 | that I created for my daughter with ChatGPT,

00:02:37.200 | which I thought was a really cool, fun thing.

00:02:39.440 | I'll talk a little bit

00:02:40.280 | about the elusive perfect 850 credit score.

00:02:43.320 | I wanna share a sticky healthcare situation

00:02:45.140 | I found myself in that almost cost me a few thousand dollars

00:02:49.000 | and I'm gonna give an update

00:02:50.220 | on the first All The Hacks trip we're gonna take,

00:02:52.360 | and this is to Iceland next year,

00:02:54.280 | and I have a really special, exciting announcement

00:02:56.480 | I've been wanting to tell you all that I will end with,

00:02:58.920 | so let's jump in right after this.

00:03:01.000 | Did you know that some common symptoms

00:03:04.280 | of electrolyte deficiency include headaches,

00:03:06.640 | muscle cramps, fatigue, and sleeplessness?

00:03:09.280 | I feel like I'm late to the electrolyte game,

00:03:11.200 | but after getting pretty dehydrated earlier this year

00:03:13.700 | and discovering Element, I am fully on board.

00:03:16.760 | Element is an electrolyte drink mix that tastes great

00:03:20.000 | and has everything you need and nothing you don't.

00:03:22.800 | That means lots of salt with no sugar,

00:03:24.920 | and I'm so excited to partner with them for this episode.

00:03:27.840 | Honestly, I can't believe I never realized

00:03:30.000 | how important it can be to replenish electrolytes,

00:03:32.280 | whether that's after having a few cocktails,

00:03:34.140 | working out, not feeling well,

00:03:36.000 | or just to keep up with an active lifestyle.

00:03:38.400 | And when it comes to how you get those electrolytes,

00:03:40.340 | Element was an easy choice for me

00:03:42.120 | because there's no sugar, no coloring,

00:03:44.040 | no artificial ingredients or fillers,

00:03:45.960 | and on top of that, it tastes so good.

00:03:48.680 | My personal favorite is the lemon habanero,

00:03:51.040 | and Amy's is watermelon.

00:03:53.120 | Element is used by everyone from Olympic athletes

00:03:56.040 | to exercise enthusiasts to everyday parents

00:03:58.720 | and even podcast hosts like me.

00:04:00.760 | And if you're not sure if it's for you,

00:04:02.360 | don't worry because Element offers no questions asked refunds

00:04:06.120 | so you can try it totally risk-free.

00:04:08.200 | And right now, Element is offering a free sample pack

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00:04:12.140 | That's eight single-serving packets

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00:04:15.860 | This is a great way to try all eight flavors

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00:04:20.640 | Get yours at allthehacks.com/element, that's L-M-N-T.

00:04:25.360 | This deal is only available through my link.

00:04:27.360 | You must go to allthehacks.com/element, that's L-M-N-T.

00:04:32.360 | (upbeat music)

00:04:35.160 | First, I wanna talk about a trip

00:04:36.880 | that Amy and I are planning.

00:04:38.120 | So my parents have really graciously offered

00:04:41.920 | to come and watch our girls for five, six, seven days

00:04:46.160 | with the help of our au pair under the only stipulation

00:04:48.600 | that we find someone else to watch the dog

00:04:50.560 | so they don't have two young kids and a dog.

00:04:53.040 | And they're talking about coming in two weeks.

00:04:55.560 | Now we've known about this for about six or seven weeks.

00:04:58.640 | And because points availability often opens up so much

00:05:03.120 | in the last two weeks, we said, you know what?

00:05:05.160 | We're not even gonna figure out where we're going

00:05:07.040 | until two weeks out

00:05:08.580 | because we know that it'll be so much easier.

00:05:10.600 | At least historically,

00:05:11.520 | it's been so much easier to find availability.

00:05:13.900 | So we talked about high level what we wanted to do

00:05:16.980 | and set some requirements.

00:05:18.820 | We said, we don't wanna spend a six day trip

00:05:21.420 | flying for 27 hours each way.

00:05:23.680 | So as much as we've always thought it'd be amazing

00:05:25.640 | to go to places like the Maldives,

00:05:27.540 | it's just not in the cards for a six day trip.

00:05:30.100 | And so we said, we've gotta go somewhere

00:05:32.140 | where we can get there in less than 12 hours.

00:05:34.680 | And that includes any plane changes.

00:05:37.460 | So we're like 12 hours is our max.

00:05:39.740 | And we wanna go somewhere

00:05:41.300 | that we can't just go for a weekend

00:05:43.180 | because if we can go there for a weekend,

00:05:45.220 | we could probably go there another time easily.

00:05:46.980 | So it kind of is like outside North America,

00:05:50.300 | but less than 12 hours away, maybe including the Caribbean.

00:05:53.680 | And we wanted to relax a bit, right?

00:05:55.940 | This is a time to be away from kids

00:05:58.680 | and sleep in as long as you want,

00:06:00.780 | which is probably impossible

00:06:02.100 | because it seems to never happen

00:06:03.660 | anytime I'm away for work or my wife's away for work,

00:06:06.800 | but we're gonna try.

00:06:08.180 | So that leaves a few of the islands in the Pacific,

00:06:11.860 | that leaves the Caribbean, leave Central America,

00:06:15.220 | maybe even Korea, Japan, but it's July and it can get hot.

00:06:20.180 | And Europe, there are a lot of places in Europe

00:06:21.980 | that you can get to in less than 12 hours

00:06:23.460 | if you fly nonstop from the West Coast.

00:06:26.380 | So we kind of were holding out,

00:06:28.380 | which I think is a little anxiety inducing

00:06:30.960 | because they're all different kinds of trips

00:06:33.120 | and there's lots of stuff to figure out.

00:06:34.600 | And Amy and I, sometimes we love looking forward to a trip.

00:06:38.240 | Oh, what are we gonna do?

00:06:39.460 | But if you're not sure whether you're gonna be

00:06:41.200 | on an island in the South Pacific or on a city in Europe,

00:06:44.540 | it's really hard to really kind of viscerally feel

00:06:47.300 | that upcoming trip.

00:06:48.460 | But we also had a lot of stuff going on.

00:06:50.760 | So we said, you know what, we'll just wait.

00:06:52.520 | Well, we're now about two weeks away.

00:06:54.460 | I started looking at flights

00:06:56.100 | and the good news is it's opened up a little bit more.

00:06:59.060 | Two weeks ago, I looked briefly and there was just nothing.

00:07:02.020 | There was almost no availability nonstop out of SFO.

00:07:05.700 | And so first off, I'll share how I was doing this searching

00:07:08.000 | because I think there are a lot of us

00:07:09.700 | that have a lot of points and maybe we come to a time

00:07:12.040 | we wanna go somewhere, but we're not sure where

00:07:14.100 | and we want an easy way to search,

00:07:15.740 | but there just aren't great tools

00:07:17.900 | that allow you to do this.

00:07:19.360 | So I'll share two of them

00:07:20.820 | because I've only really found two of them.

00:07:23.420 | One of them is a site called seats.arrow,

00:07:25.740 | which is seats.a-e-r-o.

00:07:27.980 | And I'll include my referral link in the show notes

00:07:30.020 | or I think it's just allthehacks.com/seatsarrow,

00:07:32.780 | S-E-A-T-S-A-E-R-O.

00:07:35.020 | And it's not the most user-friendly tool,

00:07:37.800 | but it is very, very powerful

00:07:40.080 | once you kind of understand how it works.

00:07:42.040 | And so the way it works is that they go and index

00:07:45.460 | all of these flights in advance.

00:07:48.080 | So when you're doing your search,

00:07:49.380 | it's very, very easy to find things

00:07:51.240 | because they've already searched all the flights

00:07:53.280 | and they've stored all these routes.

00:07:55.160 | So because of that, they're only searching specific routes,

00:07:58.200 | but it's a lot, a lot of routes.

00:08:00.000 | Downside is you have to search by airline program.

00:08:03.100 | So you can search by Air Canada

00:08:04.720 | and that's gonna show you a lot of Star Alliance flights.

00:08:06.960 | There's only about 10 different airline programs

00:08:09.840 | to search for.

00:08:10.740 | But the real magic is that when you're searching,

00:08:13.520 | you can filter by a destination,

00:08:15.600 | you can filter by an origin,

00:08:17.520 | and you can filter by an airport,

00:08:19.720 | like I wanna go from SFO to Asia.

00:08:23.160 | And it'll filter all the flights there.

00:08:24.800 | You can say, show me only business class.

00:08:26.720 | And then it's not quite obvious,

00:08:28.840 | but if you start typing in a date in the search field,

00:08:31.520 | like 2023-07-24,

00:08:36.160 | you'll filter for only flights on that day.

00:08:39.140 | Now, if you start doing this search,

00:08:41.020 | you'll find out, okay, here's where I can go.

00:08:43.480 | And we started looking around

00:08:45.720 | and there were a few options that popped up,

00:08:47.740 | some that seemed like the weather

00:08:49.080 | was just absolutely a non-starter or the distance.

00:08:52.120 | For some reason, there seems to be a lot of business

00:08:54.240 | and first-class availability to Delhi,

00:08:56.760 | but India is just too far

00:08:58.360 | and not the weather we were looking for in July.

00:09:00.520 | But one thing did recently pop up,

00:09:02.800 | which was we noticed a lot of flights to Papeete,

00:09:06.080 | which is the airport in Tahiti in French Polynesia.

00:09:09.880 | Before I continue, I forgot,

00:09:11.080 | there's another tool called Roam,

00:09:13.280 | which I recently met the founders of

00:09:15.040 | and I'm really excited about what they're building.

00:09:16.760 | It's Roame.travel, R-O-A-M-E.travel.

00:09:21.120 | And they just launched a feature called Skyview.

00:09:24.280 | And it's a beta product.

00:09:25.400 | It's only available as a paid member.

00:09:27.560 | So you're gonna have to pay to check it out.

00:09:29.640 | But it does a similar thing where you can say,

00:09:31.720 | here, I'm looking for business class.

00:09:33.600 | I'm looking on these dates.

00:09:35.120 | I'm looking from here.

00:09:36.720 | And you can kind of get very generic on the destination.

00:09:40.200 | I'm looking to Europe

00:09:42.280 | and it will just show you all the flights there.

00:09:44.840 | You can say how many points you're willing to spend

00:09:46.880 | and what day you're looking for.

00:09:48.380 | You can even add a plus or minus three days if you want.

00:09:51.180 | So those are two tools that you can use.

00:09:53.520 | So we found these flights to Papeete.

00:09:55.560 | They actually worked on the exact same days

00:09:57.320 | we were looking for.

00:09:58.520 | And so we felt like we had scored.

00:10:00.120 | Now, we've been to Bora Bora before.

00:10:02.400 | I actually made an entire podcast episode on it

00:10:05.040 | in March last year.

00:10:06.960 | So yes, we've been there, but boy, is it amazing.

00:10:10.000 | We've actually been there twice.

00:10:11.400 | It's such an incredible place.

00:10:13.320 | Eight hour flight to French Polynesia

00:10:15.240 | from San Francisco nonstop.

00:10:17.040 | So surprisingly much easier to get to than the Caribbean,

00:10:19.900 | which for some islands,

00:10:21.400 | I couldn't find anything under 12 hours.

00:10:23.840 | Then I looked at hotels and all the points hotels

00:10:27.600 | were either completely sold out at the St. Regis,

00:10:30.840 | the Meridian, some of the Intercontinentals,

00:10:33.120 | or just an egregious number of points.

00:10:35.960 | Now, I actually looked two or three weeks ago

00:10:38.480 | at the Conrad in Bora Bora,

00:10:40.240 | where we stayed four or five years ago.

00:10:42.880 | And two or three weeks ago,

00:10:45.240 | it seemed like there was some availability.

00:10:46.960 | 100,000 points at night,

00:10:48.240 | which is enough to use your free night certificates

00:10:50.720 | if you have any of those from the Hilton Aspire card.

00:10:53.580 | And now it's 850,000 points.

00:10:56.200 | So as much as I often say that waiting till the last minute,

00:11:00.720 | you can get some of the best flight deals,

00:11:02.460 | which is absolutely true,

00:11:04.200 | because we're talking about 46,000 points each way

00:11:08.800 | in business class on United,

00:11:11.280 | booked through Aeroplan,

00:11:12.600 | as long as you have chase points,

00:11:13.960 | because there's currently a 20% transfer bonus.

00:11:16.260 | So it's actually 55,000 points each way.

00:11:18.600 | If you book it with United,

00:11:19.640 | it's over 70,000 points each way.

00:11:21.840 | And then with that transfer bonus,

00:11:23.080 | it goes down to 46,000 or a little less actually.

00:11:26.040 | And so fantastic deal,

00:11:28.880 | but no availability with hotels.

00:11:31.680 | And you can spend money.

00:11:33.440 | And so we thought, oh, let's go back to the Conrad,

00:11:36.000 | but at $1,500 a night, it's just not in the cards.

00:11:39.400 | And so we're looking at a few other islands,

00:11:41.760 | seeing if there's still a way to make it work.

00:11:43.880 | By the time you've heard this, maybe we've just committed,

00:11:46.160 | or maybe we've decided let's wait another week

00:11:48.480 | and see if a few things open up.

00:11:50.040 | I was surprised that in the past at 14 days,

00:11:53.280 | seems like stuff starts to open up,

00:11:55.340 | but right now there's still only a handful of options.

00:11:59.080 | And honestly, on some carriers,

00:12:01.160 | there's not really anything.

00:12:02.800 | I think right now on Star Alliance,

00:12:04.800 | other than that flight we found,

00:12:06.800 | it's like Edmonton, Mexico City, Delhi, and Vancouver.

00:12:10.400 | We're like the four nonstop flights from San Francisco

00:12:12.780 | we could use points on.

00:12:13.960 | So not the availability I was hoping for.

00:12:17.760 | Now, granted, we're talking peak

00:12:19.680 | summer travel season from America.

00:12:21.640 | So shame on us, but it's the week we have.

00:12:24.280 | So that's all we've got.

00:12:25.760 | But let's see, I'm gonna keep monitoring this.

00:12:28.000 | I'll probably give an update in a few weeks,

00:12:30.140 | maybe the next mailbag episode on what happened

00:12:32.600 | as we got closer and closer to our destination time,

00:12:35.400 | because I genuinely think it usually gets even better.

00:12:38.640 | Some things like Lufthansa First Class

00:12:40.880 | really only opened up in the last few days.

00:12:43.280 | So we'll see, stay tuned on where we end up.

00:12:45.800 | Maybe we'll get miraculously lucky.

00:12:48.160 | I think we'll be able to get enough good use

00:12:50.000 | out of points in Air Canada in the future

00:12:52.520 | that I might just do the transfer now,

00:12:54.640 | book the flights so that we have them,

00:12:56.480 | see what hotels open up.

00:12:58.080 | Worst case, we can cancel and book something else.

00:13:00.700 | Yes, there's a change fee,

00:13:02.380 | but to be able to lock something in,

00:13:04.060 | at least so we have a backup plan, would feel really good.

00:13:06.980 | So the general lesson I wanna share

00:13:08.980 | from this kind of musing is just that,

00:13:11.140 | yes, last minute, things have opened up a lot more

00:13:13.760 | in the last two weeks, but hotels can be a factor.

00:13:17.660 | So if you're looking at a place

00:13:19.460 | that feels like it might be a dream destination,

00:13:21.380 | but there aren't a lot of hotels there,

00:13:23.020 | maybe it's a smaller town,

00:13:24.580 | it might actually be worth booking those hotels earlier.

00:13:27.980 | Especially when hotels are so easy to cancel.

00:13:31.040 | In fact, if I had a destination in mind,

00:13:33.400 | I really wish I had just booked the hotels

00:13:35.440 | two, three weeks ago.

00:13:36.800 | Worst case, you cancel them, it's not a big deal.

00:13:38.760 | Many hotel rates can be refundable up until the last minute

00:13:42.100 | and then seeing how it works.

00:13:43.160 | So don't forget that if you're going to a major city,

00:13:45.640 | if you're going to London, you're going to Paris,

00:13:47.000 | you're probably always gonna be able to find a hotel,

00:13:49.320 | whether it's points or dollars,

00:13:50.960 | but in some smaller places or off the beaten path,

00:13:54.000 | even though you might wait last minute for flights,

00:13:56.000 | it might not be the best option.

00:13:57.660 | My fitness routine this year had a few rocky starts,

00:14:02.460 | but I am back into it now.

00:14:04.140 | And honestly, one of the things that helped me get back

00:14:06.580 | is that I just added some new workout gear.

00:14:08.820 | And if I'm gonna buy more,

00:14:10.100 | why not have the best performance apparel out there,

00:14:12.480 | which I think is Viorey,

00:14:14.100 | and I am excited to be partnering with them

00:14:15.900 | for this episode.

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00:14:22.180 | but it doesn't look or feel like it at all.

00:14:24.460 | And it is so freaking comfortable,

00:14:26.080 | you will wanna wear it all the time.

00:14:28.020 | But it's not just for men.

00:14:29.120 | My wife is obsessed with Viorey as much as I am.

00:14:32.360 | While my personal favorite

00:14:33.520 | will probably always be the Sunday Performance Joggers,

00:14:35.920 | I have at least three pairs.

00:14:37.440 | I just got a few pairs of the Core Shorts

00:14:39.840 | and three or four Strato Tech Tees, and I'm loving them.

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00:14:53.680 | but they're also great for lounging, running around town,

00:14:56.560 | or they even have a few things

00:14:57.840 | you can wear for a night out.

00:14:59.520 | Honestly, I think Viorey is an investment in your happiness.

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00:15:23.560 | It is astonishing how much of our personal information

00:15:28.000 | is online, and in the last few months,

00:15:30.240 | I've been trying to remove as much of Amy

00:15:32.820 | and my info as possible.

00:15:34.960 | I also did the same for our parents,

00:15:36.840 | and in total, after reviewing over 20,000 listings,

00:15:40.960 | we found over 1,000 pieces

00:15:42.960 | of personally identifiable information.

00:15:45.240 | Thankfully, it's all getting removed,

00:15:47.200 | and instead of spending 50 plus hours

00:15:49.400 | searching and filing requests to do that,

00:15:51.720 | it only took a few minutes,

00:15:53.220 | because I used Delete.me from Avine,

00:15:55.280 | and I am so excited to be partnering

00:15:57.080 | with them for this episode.

00:15:58.320 | Delete.me is an amazing service

00:16:00.120 | that will not just find and remove your personal information

00:16:03.400 | from over 500 data broker websites,

00:16:06.200 | but they'll continuously scan for new data

00:16:08.560 | that shows up and get that removed as well.

00:16:10.960 | On average, Delete.me finds and removes

00:16:12.880 | over 2,000 pieces of data for a customer

00:16:15.260 | in their first two years,

00:16:16.760 | and to date, they've removed over 35 million pieces

00:16:20.240 | of data for their customers.

00:16:21.600 | So if you wanna get your personal information

00:16:23.640 | removed from all these listings on the internet,

00:16:26.140 | go to allthehacks.com/deleteme

00:16:29.200 | and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family.

00:16:33.700 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/deleteme.

00:16:38.040 | Now, speaking of points,

00:16:39.840 | next I wanna talk about something I brought up

00:16:41.660 | in last month's mailbag episode.

00:16:43.600 | I shared the spreadsheet tool I built

00:16:45.800 | that analyzed a bunch of credit cards

00:16:48.360 | to help you find the best credit card combinations

00:16:50.920 | that you can use to maximize the points you earn.

00:16:53.540 | It goes in and prices out,

00:16:54.960 | here's how many points you earn in all these categories

00:16:57.200 | and what those points are worth.

00:16:59.040 | And after you put in your annual spending,

00:17:01.200 | you can check off one, two, five, 10 different cards

00:17:04.360 | and ultimately see the average number

00:17:06.440 | of points per dollar you'd earn,

00:17:07.920 | assuming you use the right card for each purchase.

00:17:10.380 | And with point valuations that I got from the points guy,

00:17:13.000 | you can see the effective dollar value return

00:17:15.420 | you get from that spend as well.

00:17:17.120 | So if you're averaging two chase points per dollar

00:17:19.720 | and the chase point valuation is two cents,

00:17:21.840 | you're actually getting an effective value back

00:17:24.160 | of four cents per dollar or the equivalent of 4% back.

00:17:28.180 | And another use case for that tool

00:17:29.480 | is that if you check off the cards you have,

00:17:31.820 | you can see the incremental value you're gonna get

00:17:34.400 | from adding any other card to your arsenal of cards.

00:17:37.540 | So that tool is precisely how I determine

00:17:39.340 | the best two card combo, which I talked about last time,

00:17:42.160 | at least for someone with the average spending pattern

00:17:45.560 | from the Bureau Labor Statistics data that I used.

00:17:48.260 | And it was the Amex Gold

00:17:49.660 | and the Capital One Venture or Venture X.

00:17:51.980 | And those two cards with that spending profile

00:17:54.740 | earned an average of 2.49 points per dollar

00:17:58.180 | or 4.75 cents per dollar, which is amazing

00:18:01.380 | because I don't know of a combo of cash back cards

00:18:03.860 | that'll get you 4.75% cash back.

00:18:07.180 | Now, obviously, if you spend a lot more in flights,

00:18:09.180 | the platinum might add a lot of value

00:18:11.060 | because you're getting 5X points on flights,

00:18:13.280 | but this spreadsheet will let you figure that out.

00:18:15.380 | So I'll pause because I imagine many of you right now

00:18:17.360 | are thinking, "Great, great, Chris,

00:18:18.460 | "thank you for telling me about this tool.

00:18:20.060 | "Can I actually play with it?"

00:18:21.960 | So I've been trying to think about what to do

00:18:23.360 | with all these little projects and tools and databases

00:18:26.300 | that I'm spending a lot of time on,

00:18:28.400 | and I have a bunch of examples.

00:18:29.720 | This tool is one.

00:18:30.880 | I built an entire Notion site for planning for children.

00:18:33.840 | I have a stroller comparison spreadsheet.

00:18:36.120 | I'm starting to think about writing interesting guides

00:18:38.320 | based on some other research I've done.

00:18:40.400 | And I was thinking what to do with them.

00:18:42.220 | So I mentioned in the mailbag episode

00:18:44.380 | that I was gonna make this tool available to members,

00:18:46.180 | which I did, but what do I do with them broadly?

00:18:48.760 | They take a lot of time.

00:18:50.160 | I really should be valuing my time.

00:18:52.260 | And so I'm gonna start out with an experiment

00:18:54.160 | to try to learn.

00:18:55.420 | I'm gonna make this spreadsheet tool available

00:18:57.260 | for at least the next two weeks

00:18:59.220 | for a pay-as-you-wish download.

00:19:01.100 | So the minimum is $1.

00:19:02.520 | You can pay $1, you can pay $1,000, whatever you want.

00:19:05.980 | And honestly, if you pay $1,000, that's too much.

00:19:08.580 | I'd greatly appreciate it,

00:19:09.420 | but seriously, it's a spreadsheet.

00:19:11.220 | And we'll see what happens.

00:19:12.580 | I really wanna know what value you get from this.

00:19:15.600 | And I'm gonna ask you what you thought.

00:19:17.620 | So if you wanna check this out,

00:19:19.460 | you can go to the link in the show notes

00:19:20.920 | or go to allthehacks.com/cardvalue.

00:19:23.980 | That'll redirect you to a page

00:19:25.300 | where there's a YouTube video that I put together,

00:19:27.840 | which is really just a walkthrough of the entire tool.

00:19:30.300 | So you can get a really good sense of what the tool is,

00:19:32.100 | how it works.

00:19:33.100 | And then I would say, choose whatever you think it's worth

00:19:35.280 | and let me know what you think.

00:19:37.200 | Or if you're an All The Hacks member,

00:19:38.820 | just log into the membership site

00:19:40.500 | and you will be able to get access to the tool for free.

00:19:42.980 | I sent it out to all members a couple of weeks ago

00:19:45.420 | to get some early feedback.

00:19:46.940 | I made a few changes since then.

00:19:49.080 | Know that as a member,

00:19:50.100 | you're always gonna get first access to these products

00:19:52.440 | and all these tools.

00:19:53.660 | And for things like this, they're gonna be free.

00:19:56.060 | So if you'd rather do that,

00:19:57.500 | you could just go to allthehacks.com/join and sign up today.

00:20:02.040 | It'll also give you access to all the member calls we've done,

00:20:05.180 | all the past member emails I've sent,

00:20:07.200 | all the deals we've set up,

00:20:08.960 | which right now is 50% off card pointers,

00:20:11.700 | 50% off trust and will,

00:20:13.340 | 40% off trustworthy,

00:20:14.820 | 20% off any day and a lot more deals to come.

00:20:18.340 | So again, that's allthehacks.com/join.

00:20:21.100 | But like I said, this is available for anyone

00:20:23.140 | at allthehacks.com/cardvalue.

00:20:25.900 | So hopefully that's helpful

00:20:27.300 | and you can play around with it

00:20:28.380 | with whatever set of cards you have

00:20:29.820 | and let me know what you think.

00:20:31.200 | If there's any other products or tools

00:20:32.880 | you think would be cool to see me build,

00:20:34.780 | let me know as well.

00:20:36.060 | You can always email me, podcast@allthehacks.com.

00:20:39.060 | I get all of those straight to my inbox

00:20:40.780 | and definitely will check them.

00:20:42.420 | Okay, so the next thing I wanna talk about

00:20:45.060 | is a story of optimization gone wrong.

00:20:47.740 | And it all starts back in February, 2021.

00:20:51.380 | We moved into a new house

00:20:52.500 | and we decided we wanted a new couch.

00:20:54.540 | And so we went to Macy's Furniture

00:20:57.420 | and I'm not sure I can recommend it anymore,

00:21:00.300 | but we found this couch, it was on sale.

00:21:03.020 | We got a great deal, it was $800.

00:21:05.560 | And they asked us if we wanted the warranty.

00:21:07.940 | So when you buy furniture at Macy's Furniture,

00:21:09.980 | they have this warranty service

00:21:11.540 | and it's actually called Warranty Service

00:21:13.380 | or maybe that's the name of the app

00:21:14.660 | and it's called Worry No More.

00:21:16.140 | It's quite confusing.

00:21:17.620 | But for $200, we could basically cover the couch

00:21:22.540 | for anything that happens, stains, damage,

00:21:25.260 | as long as it was not malicious damage.

00:21:28.260 | But if it was a pet stain,

00:21:29.440 | if your kid's drawn it with a marker,

00:21:31.300 | they will come out and clean it for you or replace it

00:21:33.980 | if something happens in the next five years.

00:21:36.080 | And if you don't have anything happen

00:21:38.000 | at the end of five years and there are no claims,

00:21:40.400 | you get that $200 back as a store credit.

00:21:43.600 | So at the time we had one young kid,

00:21:45.840 | we were planning on another young kid.

00:21:47.240 | Now we have two, definitely seemed like a good deal.

00:21:50.400 | So sure enough, about 18 months later in November,

00:21:53.520 | we realized that our dog

00:21:55.480 | who we no longer let stay on the couch

00:21:57.560 | was sitting on the couch.

00:21:58.400 | It was a white couch and it just was like,

00:22:00.740 | it wasn't hair as much as it was just like a dark spot

00:22:03.500 | from the dog being there a lot.

00:22:05.160 | So we call up the warranty service,

00:22:06.940 | we fire off a request and say,

00:22:08.560 | "Hey, we want to get this cleaned."

00:22:10.080 | They come out and they try to clean the couch

00:22:12.840 | and they do get the stain off,

00:22:15.060 | but it turns out they left a whole stain somewhere else.

00:22:18.420 | And a fun hack here that the cleaner told me

00:22:21.120 | was there are some couches that,

00:22:23.520 | especially a white couch, kind of fabric couch,

00:22:26.520 | where water leaves a stain.

00:22:28.640 | And so what you need to do when you're cleaning it

00:22:30.560 | is not just clean the stain,

00:22:32.460 | but you also need to vacuum out all the moisture,

00:22:35.640 | otherwise it will leave another stain.

00:22:37.940 | So this person came out, they did that,

00:22:40.440 | but they didn't realize that they left some stains

00:22:43.040 | on other parts of the couch.

00:22:44.720 | Maybe they didn't vacuum out everything, I don't know.

00:22:47.200 | And so we immediately followed up and said,

00:22:48.640 | "Hey, you guys cleaned the stain you came for,

00:22:51.440 | "but you created other stains, can you come fix it?"

00:22:53.520 | No response.

00:22:54.760 | We tried two or three times, got nothing.

00:22:57.200 | It was very frustrating.

00:22:58.880 | We called, they said they'd get back to us, they didn't.

00:23:01.440 | And we kind of forgot about it

00:23:02.740 | and just lived with this stain on the couch.

00:23:05.060 | Finally, a couple of months ago in April,

00:23:06.500 | I had just brought on a new EA or executive assistant,

00:23:10.160 | virtual assistant that I hired,

00:23:12.280 | which I've talked about in the past

00:23:13.520 | through a service called Oceans, oceansxyz.com.

00:23:17.120 | It's actually been so fantastic

00:23:18.680 | that I'm gonna do a whole episode on it in a few weeks.

00:23:20.980 | But I said, "Maybe she'll have better luck than me."

00:23:24.260 | And sure enough, she managed to get them

00:23:26.540 | to send someone out who came out and looked at the couch

00:23:29.800 | and said, "Hey, to really do a good job here,

00:23:31.840 | "we're going to have to clean the whole thing,

00:23:34.720 | "not just the stained areas, so it all matches."

00:23:37.080 | And we said, "Okay, fine."

00:23:38.560 | Person said, "But I can't do that now.

00:23:39.900 | "I've only been authorized to do a spot treat.

00:23:41.660 | "I don't wanna get in trouble from my boss

00:23:43.420 | "doing more work than I'm supposed to do,

00:23:45.340 | "but I can come out next week."

00:23:46.920 | Great.

00:23:47.760 | Person goes home, two days later we get an email that says,

00:23:50.640 | "We will not be covering this damage

00:23:52.840 | "because the damage is repeated damage of the same type,"

00:23:57.200 | or something like that.

00:23:58.020 | And I said, "No, of course not.

00:23:59.640 | "That's not even true.

00:24:00.600 | "This is in a different place

00:24:01.940 | "and it's a different type of stain

00:24:03.680 | "and it was caused by your team."

00:24:05.720 | So we call up, we state that case,

00:24:07.960 | they say there's nothing they can do.

00:24:09.240 | We email, they say there's nothing to do.

00:24:11.120 | I asked for a supervisor and finally someone comes back

00:24:13.880 | and says, "Okay, well, you can file a dispute

00:24:16.440 | "to a third party kind of team in the company

00:24:19.700 | "and they'll review it."

00:24:21.300 | So I write up this dispute, I create a Google doc,

00:24:23.700 | I put in all these images explaining how obviously

00:24:26.300 | this is not the same stain.

00:24:27.960 | And 24 hours later, I get a message

00:24:29.480 | that's the exact same one we got before that said,

00:24:31.940 | "We don't cover repeated damage of the same type."

00:24:34.280 | And I was like, I was losing my mind.

00:24:36.520 | I called, I talked to a supervisor, I stated the case.

00:24:39.640 | They said they'd get back to us in 24 hours, nothing.

00:24:43.080 | A week later, my wife, whose phone number is on the claims

00:24:46.900 | and was the original purchaser, gets a voicemail

00:24:49.800 | and someone said, "I'm so sorry.

00:24:51.160 | "I don't know how our team managed to process this

00:24:53.620 | "in this way, but I took a look at everything

00:24:56.000 | "and I wanted to take care of you guys.

00:24:57.800 | "You get two options.

00:24:59.020 | "We can send you $337 or we can replace the couch

00:25:02.520 | "with a brand new one."

00:25:03.720 | So now we're like, okay, but we don't want this couch again.

00:25:06.880 | This couch stains really easily.

00:25:08.880 | Can we just get a different couch,

00:25:10.240 | a store credit or something?

00:25:11.880 | And they said, "Well, that's in Macy's hands.

00:25:13.860 | "We file the claim, Macy's will tell you what to do.

00:25:16.220 | "We have no luck.

00:25:17.060 | "We call Macy's, we don't get a good answer.

00:25:18.320 | "So we just drive 20 minutes to Macy's Furniture.

00:25:21.260 | "We talked to the rep."

00:25:22.320 | Yes, this is a long story,

00:25:23.500 | but I think there's a moral at the end.

00:25:25.440 | "We talked to the rep at the Macy's Furniture store.

00:25:27.400 | "He explains that it's TBD

00:25:30.000 | "on whether they'll replace this couch or not.

00:25:32.540 | "We won't know till they file the claim

00:25:34.080 | "whether they force us to,

00:25:35.000 | "but because it was a custom fabric, they probably won't.

00:25:38.020 | "But it's also gotten more expensive.

00:25:39.700 | "So we might have to pay the Delta."

00:25:41.800 | And we were just like, this is crazy.

00:25:43.880 | So we go home that day and all I can think about

00:25:47.400 | is how easy it would have been

00:25:48.660 | for someone to just clean this stain.

00:25:50.680 | And so I say, you know what?

00:25:51.520 | Before we decide what we're gonna do,

00:25:53.400 | I'm just gonna try to clean the stain

00:25:54.880 | and I'm gonna go get our shop vac

00:25:56.320 | and I'm gonna vacuum out the moisture,

00:25:57.840 | do it just like the guy did the first time.

00:25:59.920 | Well, 30 minutes later using the cleaning kit

00:26:02.440 | that came with the couch,

00:26:04.120 | all the stains that were there

00:26:05.400 | that the guy created are gone.

00:26:06.840 | And I think there was a part of us

00:26:09.400 | that just was so angry that they would come out

00:26:13.200 | and leave a stain and not be willing to clean it

00:26:15.960 | that we put all of our time and energy

00:26:18.020 | to fighting this situation.

00:26:20.200 | And hours on the phone, writing emails,

00:26:23.600 | driving to Macy's, waiting to speak to the guy

00:26:25.880 | who worked there because there was only one employee

00:26:28.000 | at the time.

00:26:29.200 | And all of it was to get the satisfaction

00:26:32.840 | of them taking responsibility for this problem.

00:26:35.860 | But at the end of the day, for 30 minutes of time,

00:26:38.960 | we got rid of the stain and the couch looks like

00:26:42.520 | we would have wanted it to look

00:26:43.660 | if someone came out and cleaned it.

00:26:45.300 | And it's a little crazy for me to process the fact

00:26:49.200 | that we wasted so much time.

00:26:50.920 | We immediately took the $337 offer,

00:26:54.140 | which I guess we paid $200 for warranty.

00:26:56.840 | We got 337 back, so we made $137,

00:27:00.240 | but we probably spent five to seven hours of time on this.

00:27:03.240 | So absolutely not worth it.

00:27:05.080 | And what we should have done in the first place

00:27:07.120 | is just clean the stain.

00:27:09.520 | And I did, to be fair, the first time,

00:27:11.600 | I didn't know why when I tried to clean the first stain,

00:27:14.640 | it didn't come out easily.

00:27:15.920 | And the answer was we needed to vacuum out the moisture

00:27:18.260 | or we'd have all these residual water stains.

00:27:20.520 | But once I learned that,

00:27:21.960 | instead of trying to milk the system,

00:27:24.240 | at least once things weren't working,

00:27:26.260 | I should have given up and just done it myself,

00:27:28.500 | or at least tried.

00:27:29.900 | And if it didn't work, sure,

00:27:31.620 | I could continue fighting and maybe get a replacement.

00:27:34.180 | But I just wanted to share it

00:27:35.660 | because I think there are probably some of you out there

00:27:37.340 | who have the same instinct of fighting something

00:27:40.060 | to save money, to get money back,

00:27:42.220 | to make sure you get that deal.

00:27:43.900 | And I think sometimes you want to pause and say,

00:27:47.260 | yes, I want to rectify this situation.

00:27:49.400 | Yes, I want to get what's right.

00:27:50.980 | But if I'm going to spend five hours of my life

00:27:53.380 | to save a hundred bucks

00:27:55.120 | when I could just spend 30 minutes and get the same outcome,

00:27:58.780 | maybe that's not worth it.

00:28:00.460 | And so hopefully that helps you make that decision

00:28:03.060 | on your own the next time

00:28:04.340 | and save yourself a lot of hassle.

00:28:06.080 | Okay, the next interesting thing I want to share

00:28:08.460 | is something fun for anyone who has kids,

00:28:11.500 | maybe cousins, nephews.

00:28:13.480 | My daughter loves random stories at bedtime.

00:28:17.740 | Every time she's like,

00:28:18.580 | "Tell me a story about animals and food."

00:28:20.460 | And she picks a random animal and a random food

00:28:23.020 | and she wants to hear a story about it.

00:28:24.860 | And sometimes she adds details about where they're going

00:28:27.340 | or what they're doing.

00:28:28.580 | And so she'll say, "Whales eating oatmeal at the park."

00:28:32.980 | And then I'll just make up a story or a song about that.

00:28:35.880 | So that's something we do every night and it's been fun.

00:28:38.220 | Separately from that,

00:28:39.260 | she got this really cool thing called a Tony.

00:28:41.620 | And it's a box that's about, I don't know,

00:28:44.780 | four inches square.

00:28:46.580 | And it has these kind of characters on top,

00:28:49.660 | probably with some type of RFID in them.

00:28:52.420 | So when you set them on top of the box,

00:28:54.460 | the box is basically a speaker that's plugged in.

00:28:57.340 | It tells that story.

00:28:58.500 | So if you put the Gruffalo on top,

00:29:00.100 | it starts telling you out loud the story of the Gruffalo

00:29:02.380 | or Peter Rabbit, or some of them are songs.

00:29:05.220 | They have all these partnerships with different brands.

00:29:08.440 | And I actually think there's a couple other companies

00:29:10.700 | because I told this story to someone and they said,

00:29:12.420 | "Oh, we don't have a Tony box, but we have,"

00:29:15.100 | I think it was called a Yoto audio player.

00:29:17.340 | And they're very similar.

00:29:18.220 | They're like readers for kids.

00:29:19.820 | And they're fantastic 'cause our daughter

00:29:21.500 | will just get stories read to her on her own.

00:29:24.060 | She's three.

00:29:25.340 | And I thought, gosh, I had this idea.

00:29:27.380 | I don't know where the idea came from,

00:29:29.700 | but I thought, hmm,

00:29:32.740 | ChatGPT is pretty good at writing stories.

00:29:35.380 | And the podcast software I use, Descript,

00:29:38.620 | actually has this feature where if you read this long text,

00:29:43.040 | maybe two, three hours of text, it'll learn your voice

00:29:46.420 | and it will let you play your voice

00:29:49.940 | without you actually saying anything.

00:29:51.540 | It's basically like a virtual voice

00:29:53.740 | that can overdub anything

00:29:55.220 | because after you read three hours,

00:29:57.100 | it's learned the way you say everything

00:29:59.660 | and it can replace your voice.

00:30:00.740 | It's kind of scary.

00:30:01.900 | And I'm gonna play a clip of it in a second.

00:30:04.020 | So I had this process where very quickly,

00:30:06.500 | I had ChatGPT write maybe 10 different stories.

00:30:10.780 | And I would give it prompts like,

00:30:11.940 | "Write me a bedtime story for my three-year-old

00:30:14.220 | "about a white bird named Quinn going on a train to Mexico

00:30:17.220 | "and in the story, the bird should eat a hamburger."

00:30:20.020 | Or, "Write a bedtime story about a pink duck named Mama

00:30:23.500 | "who liked to eat grilled cheese sandwiches

00:30:25.220 | "and is going to the airplane museum."

00:30:27.100 | So like ridiculous things,

00:30:28.460 | but they're the kinds of things my daughter would say

00:30:30.460 | and some of them she actually wrote.

00:30:32.540 | Then I took all the text from it.

00:30:34.460 | Eventually I said,

00:30:35.300 | "Make sure the story is less than five minutes or something."

00:30:37.860 | So I wrote all of the stories.

00:30:39.900 | I copied them into Descript.

00:30:41.620 | And then I told Descript, "Now overdub this with my voice."

00:30:44.780 | Then I downloaded the MP3 and I uploaded it to the Tony box.

00:30:48.380 | And you can buy these custom Tonys.

00:30:50.460 | So I bought one of me, it's not really me,

00:30:52.460 | but I bought two custom Tonys.

00:30:54.540 | And one was a superhero guy and one was a fairy woman.

00:30:58.540 | And then I told our daughter, I said,

00:31:00.340 | "This is Daddy Tony and Mommy Tony."

00:31:02.260 | And so my wife and I have now each done this

00:31:04.340 | and she has a little Tony

00:31:05.380 | and whenever she puts it on her box,

00:31:07.380 | Daddy tells her a bedtime story or Mommy tells her a story.

00:31:10.700 | It doesn't even have to be bedtime.

00:31:12.180 | So I'll play a quick clip.

00:31:13.820 | You'll notice that it's not a perfect rendition of my voice,

00:31:17.340 | but it's close and to her, it's still my voice.

00:31:20.140 | So I'll play it.

00:31:21.340 | I just thought it was something fun,

00:31:23.020 | just a use case for different software and AI tools

00:31:26.780 | to add a little bit of interestingness to our lives,

00:31:29.820 | especially if you have kids.

00:31:31.140 | Once upon a time in a magical land,

00:31:33.260 | there lived a beautiful white bird named Quinn.

00:31:35.460 | Quinn had silky feathers as white as freshly fallen snow

00:31:38.540 | and a heart full of curiosity and adventure.

00:31:40.860 | One sunny morning while perched on a tall tree branch,

00:31:43.620 | Quinn noticed a colorful poster fluttering in the breeze.

00:31:46.460 | It depicted a magnificent train

00:31:48.020 | that was embarking on a journey to Mexico.

00:31:50.380 | Okay, so I won't play you the whole story,

00:31:52.220 | but there you go.

00:31:53.340 | As a parent, your child's wellbeing is your top priority.

00:31:58.220 | You wanna see them chase their dreams,

00:31:59.980 | embrace life's adventures and thrive in this world.

00:32:02.980 | But you also know life can be unpredictable

00:32:05.220 | and that's why it's important to plan for the unexpected

00:32:08.020 | so they can continue to thrive no matter what,

00:32:10.580 | which is why I'm excited to partner with Fabric

00:32:12.620 | by Gerber Life for this episode

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00:32:59.900 | Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company,

00:33:02.820 | not available in certain states,

00:33:04.580 | prices subject to underwriting and health questions.

00:33:07.180 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

00:33:12.140 | I get it, life comes at you fast,

00:33:14.540 | but trust me, your friends are probably desperate

00:33:17.420 | for a good hang.

00:33:18.540 | So kick 2024 off right by finally hosting that event.

00:33:22.620 | Just make sure you do it the easy way

00:33:24.580 | and let our sponsor Drizzly,

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00:33:30.220 | All you need to come up with is the excuse to get together.

00:33:33.060 | It doesn't even have to be a good one.

00:33:34.900 | It could be your dog's birthday,

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00:33:53.020 | Drizzly compares prices on their massive selection

00:33:55.580 | of beer, wine, and spirits across multiple stores.

00:33:58.580 | So when I really wanted to make a few cocktails

00:34:00.620 | while we were hosting family last week,

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00:34:04.500 | delivered in less than an hour,

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00:34:14.540 | That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today.

00:34:18.580 | Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations.

00:34:21.820 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

00:34:25.700 | and supporting the show.

00:34:27.180 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:34:30.020 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

00:34:32.740 | and discounts from our partners,

00:34:34.500 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:34:38.060 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:34:41.300 | Next, I wanna talk about

00:34:42.860 | this kind of elusive perfect credit score,

00:34:45.300 | because as someone who's tried to play this credit card game

00:34:49.620 | and been very attuned to my credit score

00:34:52.260 | and tried to optimize it in every way,

00:34:54.260 | I've always thought, gosh, how do I get to an 850,

00:34:56.740 | which is a perfect credit score?

00:34:58.300 | Now, when you log into Credit Karma,

00:35:01.100 | our most credit monitoring tools,

00:35:02.940 | they'll tell you the components of your score

00:35:04.620 | and how you score on them.

00:35:06.220 | I've been fortunate to be anywhere from 790 to 830

00:35:11.100 | in the last few years.

00:35:12.660 | But the other day, I was trying to clean up my inbox

00:35:15.500 | and disable some alerts I was getting from Experian.

00:35:18.860 | And when I logged into Experian,

00:35:20.740 | it said your FICO score on Experian was 850.

00:35:23.660 | And I looked at it, I thought, I finally did it.

00:35:26.340 | And nothing happened.

00:35:27.380 | Like, any amount of joy or satisfaction

00:35:29.980 | I thought I was gonna have from getting there, nonexistent.

00:35:33.180 | And the only thing I could think about was,

00:35:35.820 | I'm not getting any loans anytime soon.

00:35:38.340 | There are some credit cards

00:35:39.220 | with really great signup bonuses.

00:35:41.580 | Why was I ever even making this a goal?

00:35:43.660 | Like, in a way, it felt a little die with zero-esque,

00:35:47.660 | where targeting accumulating money

00:35:50.460 | and ending up dying with a bunch of extra money

00:35:52.780 | is actually a terrible goal

00:35:53.900 | because it means you didn't optimize for net fulfillment.

00:35:56.580 | Well, you don't need an 850 credit score.

00:35:59.220 | In fact, I think anything over like 760

00:36:01.820 | is gonna probably get you the best tier of rates

00:36:04.780 | for whatever loan you're looking for.

00:36:06.780 | In some ways, what I realized after hitting it,

00:36:09.500 | and I wouldn't say I tried hard, it wasn't like a quest,

00:36:12.500 | but I always thought, wow, it'd be cool to hit an 850.

00:36:15.420 | And then I realized, well, this 850 is really just a sign.

00:36:18.420 | I could probably get a few more welcome bonuses.

00:36:20.500 | Like, there's a little bit of room for play here.

00:36:22.700 | What am I doing?

00:36:23.540 | And so I think similar to the optimization story,

00:36:27.460 | it was just something interesting

00:36:28.820 | where I'd always thought it would be a cool goal.

00:36:31.260 | When I hit it, nothing happened.

00:36:32.980 | It wasn't cool, it wasn't interesting.

00:36:34.780 | And if anything, it made me think

00:36:36.060 | that it was a silly goal in the first place

00:36:38.140 | because I probably could, instead of that,

00:36:40.980 | add a few extra hundreds of thousands of points

00:36:43.580 | by not worrying as much about credit score

00:36:46.380 | and really focused on keeping it above a point that mattered

00:36:49.900 | but not really doing much else.

00:36:51.860 | So if anyone out there has a similar goal,

00:36:54.820 | I urge you to give up on it

00:36:56.060 | because there was zero satisfaction in hitting.

00:36:58.380 | Okay, maybe there's a little satisfaction in hitting it,

00:37:00.460 | but it wore off immediately

00:37:02.180 | and maybe came with some self-resentment

00:37:04.060 | over wasting any time doing that

00:37:06.540 | instead of optimizing for more points

00:37:09.020 | and ultimately more trips or more interesting adventures.

00:37:12.420 | Next, I wanna briefly share a medical

00:37:14.280 | or health insurance situation I dealt with recently.

00:37:16.940 | So if you were here last year, in episode 97,

00:37:19.500 | I interviewed Dr. Jordan Schlein

00:37:21.060 | about all kinds of ways to optimize your health.

00:37:23.700 | And in that episode, I shared that I'd recently gotten

00:37:26.060 | a positive calcium score on a heart CT scan,

00:37:29.260 | which unfortunately for me is evidence of high cholesterol

00:37:32.320 | leading to some calcified plaque buildup

00:37:34.980 | in one of my arteries, which is unfortunately irreversible.

00:37:38.540 | Now, the score was very low and it was early enough

00:37:41.060 | that getting on the right medication

00:37:43.120 | will hopefully be able to prevent

00:37:44.620 | or at least massively slow down any issues down the road,

00:37:47.920 | which by the way, I have gotten on those medications.

00:37:50.180 | My cholesterol is down.

00:37:52.100 | But recently I managed to chat with a cardiologist

00:37:54.460 | about the situation, and he talked about how

00:37:57.440 | a more affordable calcium score scan, like the one I did,

00:38:00.060 | really only checks for calcified plaque,

00:38:02.360 | but it won't actually see any of the soft plaque

00:38:05.220 | that may or may not be built up in your arteries

00:38:07.420 | that hasn't yet calcified.

00:38:09.220 | And if you find out you have a lot of soft plaque,

00:38:12.380 | he said you may wanna be more aggressive

00:38:14.260 | with your course of action or treatment.

00:38:16.440 | So to get that answer,

00:38:18.120 | he said you need to do a CT angiogram,

00:38:20.180 | which uses the same CT scan,

00:38:22.260 | but they inject you with a contrast dye

00:38:24.460 | so you can actually see the blood flowing

00:38:26.660 | through your arteries to see if they get constricted further

00:38:29.260 | by soft plaque.

00:38:30.360 | So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to also do that,

00:38:32.520 | and I started trying to see what it would cost.

00:38:34.780 | Now, the interesting thing I've learned recently

00:38:36.980 | about heart-related, cholesterol-related things

00:38:39.780 | is that so much of our medical system right now

00:38:42.940 | is based off of this kind of belief

00:38:46.140 | and kind of risk-scoring methodology

00:38:48.280 | that really only looks at what your near-term risk

00:38:51.560 | of having a cardiac-related event is.

00:38:54.820 | And the calculator, for many people,

00:38:56.380 | doesn't even actually work until you're 40.

00:38:58.840 | So establishing any kind of medical necessity for anything

00:39:03.280 | and getting things run through insurance

00:39:05.260 | can actually be quite difficult.

00:39:07.120 | And so I've had a lot of, I don't know,

00:39:09.040 | fear of getting charged that really reminded me

00:39:11.920 | of my episode with Marshall Allen

00:39:13.980 | about fighting back with health insurance companies,

00:39:16.660 | but fortunately, that first CT scan

00:39:19.100 | did get covered by insurance.

00:39:20.580 | And it was really funny because after I'd gotten it done

00:39:23.020 | and found out that I already had a positive calcium score,

00:39:26.540 | I got a letter from the insurance company that said,

00:39:28.380 | "We're not sure if we're gonna be able to cover this

00:39:31.020 | "because there's not enough evidence

00:39:32.520 | "that you might have a situation worth doing this test."

00:39:35.700 | Funny enough, obviously, that wasn't the case,

00:39:37.540 | and I did have it.

00:39:38.940 | I don't know if the results ended up justifying it or not,

00:39:41.700 | but eventually, it turns out it was covered by my insurance,

00:39:44.660 | so I didn't ask questions.

00:39:45.860 | This one was much more expensive.

00:39:47.900 | Depending on who you talk to,

00:39:49.260 | it could be $1,000 to $5,000 or $6,000.

00:39:51.940 | So I wanted to make sure before getting it

00:39:53.600 | that it would be covered.

00:39:54.440 | And the reason I wanna share this story

00:39:56.060 | is because what happened was very interesting.

00:39:59.260 | So I called up and said, "I wanna schedule this."

00:40:03.080 | I talked to Sutter Health,

00:40:05.340 | which is where I got the procedure done,

00:40:07.220 | quick in and out procedure, but they said,

00:40:09.240 | "Okay, we're gonna run it by insurance

00:40:10.700 | "and we'll let you know."

00:40:11.780 | And when they followed up, they said,

00:40:12.800 | "Hey, your insurance looks like

00:40:14.000 | "it's gonna cover it 100%."

00:40:15.820 | So I was like, "Okay."

00:40:17.260 | I called the insurance company and I'm like,

00:40:18.640 | "Hey, this is expensive.

00:40:19.520 | "I wanna make sure it's covered."

00:40:20.960 | And the first person I talked to said,

00:40:22.800 | "Totally covered, 100%, shouldn't be an issue."

00:40:26.140 | And I said, "Great.

00:40:27.320 | "Is there anything else I need to know?"

00:40:28.620 | And she's like, "Yeah, let me just read this out loud."

00:40:30.780 | And it was like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:40:32.080 | "Covered 100% as long as it's deemed medically necessary."

00:40:34.500 | I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:40:35.920 | "Who deems if it's medically necessary?"

00:40:38.140 | And the representative said,

00:40:39.780 | "Well, it kinda depends on the doctor and the hospital,

00:40:42.580 | "but it's the responsibility of the hospital

00:40:44.740 | "to make sure we'll pay for it.

00:40:46.540 | "So just make sure that when you go get it done,

00:40:49.060 | "you don't sign any documents saying

00:40:50.900 | "that you will be liable for the charges

00:40:53.240 | "because if you don't sign those documents,

00:40:55.220 | "then it's really just gonna be between us and the hospital

00:40:57.380 | "and you won't be on the hook."

00:40:59.020 | I said, "Okay, great."

00:41:00.060 | I go to the procedure and the first thing they do

00:41:02.240 | is they hand me a piece of paper that says,

00:41:03.920 | "Can you sign this thing that says

00:41:05.200 | "you will be on the hook for this procedure

00:41:07.240 | "if your insurance doesn't cover it?"

00:41:09.300 | Now, the insurance company told me not to sign this

00:41:10.980 | and I said, "Is there a way I can do anything

00:41:12.860 | "without signing this?"

00:41:13.700 | "No, if you don't sign this,

00:41:14.860 | "we're just gonna cancel your appointment."

00:41:16.580 | And I said, "Well, can you at least tell me

00:41:18.420 | "how much it's gonna cost?"

00:41:19.940 | And they said, "Well, we can't tell you how much it costs

00:41:22.000 | "because your insurance is gonna cover it in full."

00:41:24.460 | I said, "Well, why do you need me to sign this document

00:41:27.280 | "that says that if my insurance won't cover it,

00:41:29.320 | "I'll pay for it if it's gonna cover it in full?"

00:41:31.240 | They said, "Well, maybe you should call

00:41:32.220 | "the billing department.

00:41:33.060 | "Here's the phone number."

00:41:34.160 | So while I'm waiting at the hospital,

00:41:35.140 | I call this billing department and they said,

00:41:36.320 | "Well, we didn't even run an estimate

00:41:37.680 | "'cause your insurance is gonna cover it.

00:41:39.080 | "So I don't even think you need to worry about it."

00:41:41.200 | And I was like, "That's great.

00:41:42.420 | "But if my insurance doesn't cover it,

00:41:44.480 | "you're not gonna be stuck with a bill.

00:41:46.240 | "So would be really, really great

00:41:48.080 | "if you could tell me how much it's gonna cost."

00:41:50.240 | Back and forth while both doing this on the live chat,

00:41:52.840 | on the website and on the phone,

00:41:55.080 | I got two different estimates.

00:41:56.600 | One was 2000, one was $5,000.

00:41:59.760 | And I had to really make a call on how much do I trust

00:42:03.560 | that this hospital is correct

00:42:05.440 | that my insurance will cover it?

00:42:07.160 | How important is this medical necessity?

00:42:09.240 | Will the doctor be able to convince the insurance company

00:42:11.640 | if they don't believe it?

00:42:13.320 | I had the billing representative write down a note

00:42:15.680 | that she told me it looks like it will be covered.

00:42:18.080 | So at the end of the day, I decided,

00:42:20.140 | "I really wanna know what this is gonna tell me.

00:42:22.560 | "My cardiac health seems important enough

00:42:25.300 | "to roll the dice here.

00:42:26.820 | "If I tried to come up with some weighted probability

00:42:29.480 | "of being able to get this done,

00:42:31.100 | "and if they didn't cover it,

00:42:32.880 | "what would I be able to negotiate with the hospital

00:42:35.040 | "from everything I learned from Marshall Allen

00:42:36.680 | "in that episode?"

00:42:38.080 | I went for it.

00:42:39.120 | Now, I got the bill first,

00:42:41.240 | and it was for about $5,700.

00:42:45.320 | And I had a flag on the Cigna website

00:42:47.600 | that said, "Awaiting approval,"

00:42:49.760 | which made me a bit nervous.

00:42:51.600 | Fortunately, about four or five days later,

00:42:54.080 | I got an email that there was an update.

00:42:55.920 | I logged in and it was fully covered.

00:42:58.240 | So I didn't have to go fight that bill,

00:43:00.800 | but I would be lying if I wasn't sweating a few bullets

00:43:03.380 | that week wondering whether I was gonna get a $5,000 bill,

00:43:06.560 | what I'd be able to negotiate it with or not.

00:43:08.620 | The only step I didn't take,

00:43:10.320 | which I wish I did to prevent a little bit of stress,

00:43:13.720 | was it turns out I could have asked

00:43:16.460 | if they could review the medical necessity,

00:43:19.000 | but I would need my doctor to do that.

00:43:21.280 | So I would have needed the doctor that wrote the test order

00:43:24.380 | to reach out to the insurance company

00:43:26.960 | and spend a ton of time doing that.

00:43:28.980 | And in hindsight, I probably wish I did

00:43:31.300 | 'cause it would have saved me a little bit of stress.

00:43:33.300 | Knowing what I know now,

00:43:34.280 | obviously I wouldn't have 'cause it was covered,

00:43:36.200 | but I just wanted to share the situation.

00:43:38.720 | One, because had I not done my own research,

00:43:42.860 | everyone in that facility,

00:43:44.400 | including the first person I talked to

00:43:46.000 | at my insurance company,

00:43:47.240 | seemed absolutely certain it was going to be covered.

00:43:50.600 | But the small caveat that I learned

00:43:52.720 | was only if deemed medically necessary.

00:43:55.400 | And I've heard way too many horror stories

00:43:57.640 | about that not turning out in your favor.

00:44:00.240 | So I just say, be extra cautious

00:44:02.520 | when getting any of these treatments done,

00:44:04.760 | making sure that there aren't any

00:44:06.720 | potential hiccups in medical necessity,

00:44:08.580 | and if so, getting them approved in advance

00:44:12.020 | so that you're not stressed out about this.

00:44:13.800 | Also, shop around a bit.

00:44:15.640 | I did ultimately learn later

00:44:17.160 | that the difference between the $2,000 rate

00:44:19.480 | and the $5,000 rate was self-pay versus insurance pay.

00:44:24.200 | So I would definitely make sure when you're going in,

00:44:26.680 | if you know your insurance won't cover it,

00:44:28.800 | make sure it doesn't get coated up like it will

00:44:31.200 | because it might end up getting priced incorrectly.

00:44:33.900 | But definitely also call around

00:44:35.320 | and see if there's another facility.

00:44:37.020 | I did find a site that I had heard good things about

00:44:39.760 | called MedMo.

00:44:41.120 | I can't speak to anything about it, M-E-D-M-O,

00:44:44.360 | but they have a site where you can go in

00:44:46.880 | and schedule a bunch of different types of procedures.

00:44:50.360 | And the rates they have available

00:44:52.280 | are significantly, significantly lower

00:44:55.580 | than the rates I found anywhere else.

00:44:57.360 | For example, and this seems a little crazy,

00:45:00.720 | I'm reading this out loud, but I'm looking at it right now,

00:45:02.680 | the CT heart coronary angiogram with intravenous contrast,

00:45:06.680 | the self-pay rate on the MedMo site is 375.

00:45:10.680 | So I'm not sure how they get that rate,

00:45:12.800 | what facilities they're using.

00:45:14.480 | I was advised by that same cardiologist

00:45:16.920 | to try to find a facility with newer equipment

00:45:19.400 | that would have lower radiation doses than older equipment,

00:45:23.080 | but seemed like MedMo was a good option

00:45:26.460 | if you're having to self-pay to find something cheaper.

00:45:28.720 | Obviously, I hope everyone has

00:45:30.200 | all of their medical conditions covered.

00:45:31.640 | In fact, I hope everyone doesn't have any medical conditions

00:45:33.960 | but I just thought that would be helpful.

00:45:35.720 | And for anyone interested,

00:45:37.200 | the results of that CT angiogram

00:45:39.740 | were not only that I didn't have any soft plaque,

00:45:42.980 | but that the calcium score that the first test told me I had,

00:45:47.180 | which was actually in the exact same machine

00:45:49.520 | as the second test, was not correct.

00:45:52.840 | And that this test found that I had a zero instead of a two.

00:45:56.360 | And so now I'm in the process of trying to request

00:45:58.880 | that they review both of the scans next to each other

00:46:03.880 | and try to come to a determination of which one was correct.

00:46:07.320 | So still a little bit of ambiguity there,

00:46:09.920 | but I'm optimistic that the more expensive

00:46:13.760 | kind of fancier test might be correct, but who knows.

00:46:17.240 | I mentioned I wanna talk a little about

00:46:18.800 | this annual All The Hacks trip to Iceland.

00:46:21.800 | So at the end of the Iceland episode,

00:46:24.320 | I started talking with my guest Brandon Presser

00:46:26.400 | about whether we could actually take a trip like this.

00:46:29.400 | And so in that episode,

00:46:31.080 | we basically outlined a perfect trip to Iceland.

00:46:33.800 | I've never been to Iceland.

00:46:34.840 | I thought, why don't we just go on this trip

00:46:37.160 | and why go through the effort to plan a perfect trip

00:46:39.160 | and go on it just with the two of us?

00:46:41.120 | Or if we invite partners, maybe the four of us,

00:46:43.680 | why don't we invite the community?

00:46:45.880 | And so that sparked a series of back and forth questions.

00:46:49.280 | It sparked a survey.

00:46:50.800 | So if you haven't filled that out,

00:46:52.000 | you can go to allthehacks.com/iceland

00:46:54.880 | and fill out that survey, but it's actually coming together.

00:46:58.800 | So Brandon and I have decided that

00:47:01.280 | we're gonna plan this Iceland trip.

00:47:02.960 | It's gonna happen sometime in the spring of 2024.

00:47:07.280 | I, funny enough, wanted to try to optimize for a date

00:47:10.040 | that wasn't everyone's spring break,

00:47:12.360 | or maybe it was everyone's spring break.

00:47:14.480 | And I started looking up spring breaks

00:47:16.240 | in different counties and cities

00:47:17.680 | and found that every single week from March 11th

00:47:21.080 | till April 30th is a spring break somewhere.

00:47:24.560 | So I'm not sure if it's better

00:47:26.280 | that it's your spring break or not,

00:47:27.960 | but it most likely will be someone's

00:47:30.040 | because it seems impossible to avoid.

00:47:32.320 | So that trip is going to happen.

00:47:34.120 | Stay tuned on pricing, stay tuned on dates.

00:47:37.920 | I think it will likely be somewhere around 12 to 14 people.

00:47:42.920 | Brandon said the ideal group is a group

00:47:45.720 | that fits in two vans.

00:47:47.240 | That doesn't mean that we're all gonna be traveling

00:47:49.160 | and doing everything in groups of 12 to 15 people.

00:47:52.520 | It likely means that we'll split some things off

00:47:54.840 | so we can do some small group adventures so it's not crazy,

00:47:57.400 | but we will definitely have time for dinners together

00:48:01.000 | and all kinds of stuff.

00:48:02.000 | So I think it will be an awesome trip.

00:48:03.760 | I will be there.

00:48:04.840 | Brandon will be there.

00:48:06.040 | It'll be a trip to remember for anyone

00:48:08.660 | who wants to see Iceland

00:48:09.880 | because Brandon really knows everything

00:48:11.560 | there is to know about that country,

00:48:12.880 | at least as much as anyone I've ever heard talk about it.

00:48:15.980 | But given the limited size,

00:48:17.880 | I will just be totally transparent

00:48:19.640 | that I will make it available first to members

00:48:21.760 | for some period of time to maybe make a deposit,

00:48:24.120 | to lock in and hold a spot,

00:48:25.640 | and then I'll make it available to everyone else after.

00:48:28.440 | Now, we're already talking about also doing the same thing

00:48:31.800 | for a Japan trip next fall.

00:48:33.840 | So stay tuned.

00:48:35.640 | I think this could be the first of many trips

00:48:37.960 | that we take as a community together.

00:48:40.800 | And I think it'll be really cool to meet people in person,

00:48:44.520 | be able to talk about a lot of the things

00:48:46.160 | that we talk about on the show,

00:48:47.500 | but with people in real life,

00:48:49.780 | which also leads me to another interesting idea,

00:48:52.880 | which I actually got from a survey I sent to members

00:48:56.120 | of trying to figure out what the right way

00:48:58.240 | to engage the broader community is.

00:49:00.520 | And it turns out lots of people were pretty busy.

00:49:02.680 | And so having just a forum

00:49:04.840 | where people can chat every day might be too much,

00:49:08.160 | but the idea of an annual event

00:49:10.300 | where people can get together

00:49:11.960 | and talk about various aspects of our lives

00:49:14.960 | and tactics we have for improving them

00:49:17.480 | and discuss and debate ways

00:49:19.740 | that we like to live more optimal lives

00:49:22.540 | and break off into groups to talk about specific areas,

00:49:25.540 | whether it's health or families or personal finances.

00:49:28.700 | And so the idea of putting together an all-the-hacks summit,

00:49:32.860 | like a one-day event somewhere,

00:49:34.800 | is something that I'm really seriously excited about.

00:49:37.780 | And I don't have any further details,

00:49:39.980 | but it's something that I'm actively thinking about.

00:49:42.700 | Then that leads to how we're gonna take on all this stuff.

00:49:46.660 | So the trips, adding new products,

00:49:49.500 | I'm working on a course right now

00:49:50.980 | that will be all about credit cards, points, and miles.

00:49:53.540 | The goal is I get so many people that reach out and say,

00:49:56.380 | "You've done so many episodes.

00:49:58.260 | "What if I just want a start-to-finish course

00:50:01.780 | "that's like an intense deep dive

00:50:03.620 | "on credit card points and miles,

00:50:05.660 | "or maybe it's redeeming,

00:50:07.000 | "or maybe it's earning more points."

00:50:08.740 | And so I'm working on trying to take all the knowledge

00:50:11.140 | and all the content from the show,

00:50:13.580 | which you'll always be able to go back in the archives

00:50:16.300 | and listen to, but put it in a format

00:50:18.500 | that might be easier for people to digest

00:50:21.260 | who haven't been around for a while

00:50:23.580 | or want something in a different format.

00:50:26.880 | It looks like it'll probably be, my best guess,

00:50:30.040 | is like 100 hours of work to write it up,

00:50:32.500 | record it, build it out.

00:50:34.700 | And so it's gonna take a little time, maybe a few months,

00:50:37.740 | but it's something else I'm really excited about.

00:50:39.540 | So to do all of this,

00:50:41.020 | getting more deals for the membership,

00:50:42.660 | how do we go secure

00:50:43.740 | some of the best partner deals possible?

00:50:46.220 | Really, really big brands.

00:50:47.740 | How do we do awesome things?

00:50:49.940 | I was trying to figure out what to do,

00:50:51.180 | who to hire, how to grow this,

00:50:53.580 | and I had a great conversation with my wife,

00:50:56.660 | and the answer was so obvious.

00:50:58.980 | And you all have heard me talk about my wife, Amy,

00:51:01.100 | who's basically the behind-the-scenes person

00:51:03.700 | helping with so many aspects of this.

00:51:05.660 | She's listened to almost every episode,

00:51:07.300 | given feedback, helped in so many ways.

00:51:10.780 | And so after a lot of conversation about the future

00:51:14.820 | and how we wanna live our lives and work together,

00:51:17.820 | she decided that she's gonna join

00:51:19.780 | all the hacks full-time next month,

00:51:22.060 | and we are gonna really take this to the next level.

00:51:25.460 | For those of you who don't know anything

00:51:27.120 | about her background,

00:51:28.500 | she spent a decade at Lyft running Beady and Partnerships.

00:51:32.500 | She led the partnerships Lyft did

00:51:35.220 | with Chase, Delta, JetBlue, Disney, Hilton,

00:51:39.780 | and so many other big, big brands

00:51:42.380 | in travel, points, hospitality, and so many other areas.

00:51:47.100 | So she has some crazy, amazing ideas

00:51:49.940 | of ways that being an All The Hacks member

00:51:52.220 | could add so much more value to your life.

00:51:54.700 | She also has some really amazing ideas

00:51:56.980 | about how we can take all the interesting content

00:52:00.200 | and learnings and access we have

00:52:02.100 | and turn them into even more amazing things

00:52:05.300 | for everyone here.

00:52:06.300 | So I'm really excited for that.

00:52:09.020 | In fact, as a way to kick that off,

00:52:11.020 | I'm gonna invite her to join me right now

00:52:14.060 | just because she actually had her own musing

00:52:17.420 | of something amazing she experienced this week.

00:52:20.000 | And I was like, Amy, this is a perfect thing

00:52:23.180 | to share on this episode.

00:52:25.340 | So Amy, welcome to the show.

00:52:27.260 | - Thanks so much for having me.

00:52:28.820 | I'm really excited to be joining All The Hacks full-time.

00:52:32.340 | It's been really interesting to see

00:52:34.060 | all of the listener emails that come in.

00:52:36.100 | Chris has shared several with me.

00:52:37.700 | I'm fascinated by all the information

00:52:39.340 | being shared back and forth.

00:52:40.900 | And I'm really fascinated at the amount of intensity

00:52:43.980 | and passion you all bring around these topics.

00:52:46.500 | So thank you so much for continuing to support us

00:52:49.020 | at All The Hacks.

00:52:50.100 | I'm really pumped to be here and help out however I can.

00:52:53.660 | - Also, if you have any deals that you're interested

00:52:56.020 | in seeing from All The Hacks, definitely hit us up.

00:52:59.700 | Very curious to get people's thoughts.

00:53:01.700 | And obviously we are looking and thinking

00:53:04.540 | about membership stuff for you as listeners.

00:53:07.640 | So if you have any interesting ideas,

00:53:09.700 | please send them our way, podcast@allthehacks.com.

00:53:14.020 | Both Chris and I will be checking that.

00:53:15.940 | Or if you work at a company and you're interested

00:53:18.140 | in partnering with All The Hacks,

00:53:19.340 | please also send us a note.

00:53:21.380 | - Or if you run a company, we'd love to hear any ideas

00:53:24.140 | you have on things we could do for this community.

00:53:25.940 | But Amy, you had a thing,

00:53:28.020 | and we were talking about this episode,

00:53:29.260 | about doing some musings about random things.

00:53:32.100 | You actually had one this week.

00:53:34.140 | - I did.

00:53:35.100 | So Chris and I are very interested in all things

00:53:38.740 | credit card, points, travel.

00:53:41.100 | We both have Venturex cards.

00:53:42.540 | And earlier this week, I got a random email from Capital One

00:53:46.540 | and in the email it said,

00:53:48.140 | "Hey, it looks like you were charged

00:53:50.140 | the same transaction twice.

00:53:52.140 | Is this accurate or would you like to dispute it?"

00:53:54.860 | And in the email, there was a little button at the bottom.

00:53:56.980 | It said, "Dispute."

00:53:58.340 | I clicked on that.

00:53:59.340 | It took me to another landing page.

00:54:00.900 | It said, "File a dispute here."

00:54:02.980 | I clicked one other button,

00:54:05.380 | and immediately they submitted a disputed claim

00:54:09.860 | on my behalf.

00:54:10.900 | They flagged it for me.

00:54:12.500 | It took nothing more than maybe three seconds,

00:54:15.300 | two clicks, and that was it.

00:54:17.100 | Immediately after, I got a message from Capital One

00:54:21.020 | and they confirmed that they will credit my account.

00:54:25.540 | So shout out to Capital One.

00:54:27.260 | I hope that a lot of these other card companies

00:54:29.940 | are starting to do more proactive diligence around that.

00:54:34.300 | I think it was a really great experience.

00:54:35.980 | It definitely made me excited for what cards are doing

00:54:38.300 | and what cards could be doing for all of us.

00:54:42.180 | - It's funny 'cause I had a similar experience on Capital One

00:54:44.740 | where I wanted to like limit the number

00:54:47.020 | of email alerts I was getting.

00:54:48.620 | And I went in to turn off some alerts

00:54:50.220 | and they had all these new alerts.

00:54:51.900 | So I saw one that said, "This is the one you got."

00:54:54.180 | It's like, "We'll notify you

00:54:55.020 | if you think you've been charged twice."

00:54:56.740 | But they also had higher than usual tips.

00:54:59.820 | So like if you tip more, they're gonna notify you.

00:55:02.740 | They had another one that was like,

00:55:03.860 | "If we notice a new subscription or a renewal

00:55:06.540 | or a free trial or something like that."

00:55:08.580 | They always do the refunds and declines.

00:55:11.140 | But they also had, "We'll notify you

00:55:12.380 | if a recurring in-app purchase is higher than usual."

00:55:15.460 | So it just seemed like there's a lot of stuff

00:55:17.260 | they're experimenting with.

00:55:18.260 | So keep it up Capital One and maybe everybody else

00:55:21.380 | take a note from that playbook.

00:55:23.300 | Any other things you wanna share

00:55:24.780 | before we wrap this kind of musing episode?

00:55:26.980 | - So I have gone deep in figuring out

00:55:29.380 | how to preserve our berries for as long as humanly possible.

00:55:32.620 | We have two small children and honestly,

00:55:35.980 | the berry bill at the end of each month is insane.

00:55:39.060 | They go through crazy amounts of berries.

00:55:41.100 | And as part of that, it's been really hard

00:55:43.940 | to not have these berries go moldy

00:55:46.020 | halfway through the crate.

00:55:47.540 | So a big shout out to Kurt.

00:55:49.300 | He wrote in and gave us a tip.

00:55:51.740 | He's had a lot of success with distilled white vinegar baths.

00:55:54.900 | I actually read about this before Kurt had sent the note in.

00:55:58.820 | And honestly, it sounded like a ton of work.

00:56:01.540 | But the way that he communicated it in his note

00:56:04.460 | actually really got me thinking

00:56:05.740 | this could be much easier than I realized.

00:56:08.260 | And so I took Kurt's advice.

00:56:10.020 | I did a quick distilled white vinegar bath

00:56:12.340 | on all of our berries,

00:56:14.140 | about no more than 30 seconds to a minute.

00:56:16.100 | I used about a one to four distilled white vinegar

00:56:19.300 | to water ratio.

00:56:20.860 | That kills the mold spores in the berries.

00:56:23.700 | I then gave him a quick rinse,

00:56:25.460 | put him out on a drying rack to Kurt's recommendation,

00:56:28.740 | let them dry and pack them up.

00:56:30.900 | And they're now perfectly stored in our refrigerator.

00:56:33.540 | So far, Kurt, it's been phenomenal.

00:56:35.540 | So I definitely encourage anyone to try this.

00:56:38.380 | It does seem to work.

00:56:40.220 | - The only thing I'll add here is that

00:56:42.860 | because we've been starting to do a lot of Amazon Fresh

00:56:45.620 | and Whole Foods delivery,

00:56:47.500 | the one thing I love about online grocery delivery,

00:56:49.860 | and I feel like I just said this a few days ago,

00:56:51.820 | but maybe it was on another podcast,

00:56:53.740 | is that when things do go moldy quickly,

00:56:56.740 | it is so much less hassle

00:56:58.260 | and so much easier to return things online

00:57:01.780 | than to drive all the way to the grocery store

00:57:04.060 | if you have three, four, $5 tin of raspberries

00:57:07.300 | and half of them are moldy.

00:57:08.620 | So one hack here is that buy your groceries online

00:57:12.500 | because at least with Amazon,

00:57:14.340 | it makes it so, so easy to return things

00:57:16.860 | if they spoil, go bad, or in some cases,

00:57:19.900 | they just show up moldy already, which is unfortunate,

00:57:22.940 | but definitely save some time or at least save some money.

00:57:27.260 | - This is actually goes against what Chris had said.

00:57:30.020 | Yes, buying fruit online is much easier

00:57:33.340 | if you do get bad fruit and you ask for a refund.

00:57:37.060 | That said, you don't have the ability

00:57:39.700 | when you're purchasing fruit online

00:57:41.980 | to be able to actually look at the fruit quality

00:57:44.780 | and choose the right berry carton

00:57:47.500 | that looks the most fresh.

00:57:49.860 | And so it's kind of a blessing and a curse.

00:57:52.580 | - I don't have that skill.

00:57:53.580 | That's the problem is I come home sometimes

00:57:55.340 | and I'm like, look, I got this in New York.

00:57:56.580 | Why did you get those?

00:57:57.420 | These are like moldy or soft.

00:57:58.980 | So I think it plays better to someone like me

00:58:01.020 | who doesn't know how to pick fruit

00:58:02.300 | at the grocery store than you.

00:58:03.820 | - That's fair.

00:58:04.660 | And quick tip,

00:58:06.420 | for those who don't know how to pick fresh berries,

00:58:08.660 | call it blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries.

00:58:13.660 | If you go to the store, pick up the crate

00:58:15.740 | and tip it upside down.

00:58:18.060 | If the fruit sticks to the top of the carton

00:58:20.900 | when it's upside down, do not purchase it.

00:58:23.740 | - Meaning when you turn it back, does it stay stuck

00:58:26.300 | or what are you looking for exactly?

00:58:27.500 | - No, when you pick up the fruit,

00:58:29.740 | all the fruit sits at the bottom of the carton.

00:58:32.380 | Flip the carton upside down.

00:58:34.780 | And if the fruit is still stuck now

00:58:37.300 | to what is the top of it, which used to be the bottom,

00:58:40.580 | do not choose that carton of berries.

00:58:43.460 | - All right.

00:58:44.300 | So maybe I can do this now.

00:58:46.100 | I've probably been told that like five times

00:58:47.940 | and still don't remember.

00:58:48.980 | Anything else we're gonna see, give us a feedback.

00:58:51.460 | You can always email us, podcast@allthehacks.com.

00:58:54.200 | Use the contact form on the website.

00:58:56.040 | Hit us up on social.

00:58:57.540 | Let us know, what do you think of this episode?

00:58:59.780 | Should we do more like this?

00:59:00.860 | Amy, should she come back?

00:59:02.740 | Should we keep doing these?

00:59:04.020 | I don't think Amy would be offended at all

00:59:05.940 | if you were like, have me on or don't.

00:59:08.020 | - Yeah, let me know.

00:59:08.980 | I won't be offended.

00:59:10.500 | - Anything else on your mind, send a note.

00:59:12.460 | That's all we got right now.

00:59:14.060 | We'll see you on Wednesday with another travel episode

00:59:16.540 | all about going to France.

00:59:18.420 | And it's a great one.

00:59:19.620 | So that's it.

00:59:21.180 | - Bye.

00:59:22.020 | (laughing)

00:59:23.780 | - See ya.

00:59:24.820 | (upbeat music)

00:59:26.300 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

00:59:28.100 | Thank you so much for listening.

00:59:29.860 | If you haven't already left a rating

00:59:31.380 | and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts

00:59:33.860 | or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

00:59:36.500 | And if you have any feedback on the show,

00:59:37.940 | questions for me, or just wanna say hi,

00:59:40.300 | I'm Chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

00:59:44.580 | That's it for this week.

00:59:45.660 | I'll see you next week.

00:59:46.820 | (upbeat music)

00:59:49.780 | (electronic beeping)

00:59:52.860 | (electronic buzzing)

00:59:55.940 | [BLANK_AUDIO]