50 Money Hacks That Will Save You +$10,000/year

00:00:00.000 | If you're looking to optimize your life without spending more time or money than you have to,

00:00:04.380 | this episode is just for you. Because after 230 episodes and thousands of hours of research I'm

00:00:10.000 | doing, I've pulled together the 50 most impactful things I've learned, tested, and used, spanning

00:00:14.920 | travel, money, points and miles, investing, productivity, relationships, and more. These

00:00:19.960 | are real strategies and tactics I rely on every day to earn and save more and be more intentional

00:00:25.360 | with my time. Some are quick wins, others are deeper mindset shifts, but they're all actionable

00:00:30.060 | and they're all designed to help you level up. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode,

00:00:34.300 | please share with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life,

00:00:38.820 | money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. It's hard to believe that it's been four years

00:00:44.260 | since I started this podcast, but I'm really loving it more than ever. And in the past 230 episodes,

00:00:51.340 | I've been lucky enough to talk to some of the smartest people I could ever find and meet about

00:00:55.920 | building wealth, leveraging cards, points and miles, traveling better, optimizing time, living a more

00:01:02.400 | intentional life. And I've tested a lot of those strategies myself along the way. I've shared some

00:01:08.280 | of that in the 55 different solo episodes I've done, which I'm really enjoying. You'll probably see a lot

00:01:15.140 | more of them on the podcast coming forward because I just, I really like being able to take the

00:01:20.040 | hundreds, thousands of hours of research. I'm doing all the tinkering in my life and share some of that

00:01:25.680 | with you, as well as using those episodes to share some of the questions you all have. So keep those

00:01:30.200 | coming and some of the hacks you've picked up and you share. I love doing that as well. So in this

00:01:35.360 | episode, I decided I was going to go back in time and find my top 50 hacks from the entire journey,

00:01:41.180 | spanning travel, points and miles, money, investing, productivity, relationships, and a lot more.

00:01:48.740 | So these aren't just going to be generic tips. They're the exact ideas, tools, mindsets, tactics

00:01:54.000 | that I'm using to get more out of life without spending more time or money than I have to.

00:01:59.000 | Some of them might be really quick wins. Others might be big mindset shifts, but I think all of

00:02:04.520 | them are grounded in action. And I really hope that at least a few of them become a part of your own life

00:02:09.460 | strategy. Also throughout this episode, there are going to be a lot of references to other episodes.

00:02:13.780 | So I'll include links to all of them in the show notes. And just so you know, when I mentioned an

00:02:18.200 | episode number, it serves two purposes. One, if you're on the podcast app, it makes it easy to scroll

00:02:23.180 | back in time. The episode number should be in the little summary for each one. But also if you go to

00:02:28.440 | allthehacks.com slash 91, it'll jump straight to episode 91. So you can always use that number as a

00:02:34.620 | way to get to the episode page where on that episode page, you can find links to the episode

00:02:39.540 | in your favorite podcast app or YouTube. So I'm going to start with travel, which I'll split into

00:02:46.180 | credit card points and miles side first, and then general travel after. So the first thing is that

00:02:52.520 | welcome bonuses always win. So it's fun to sometimes think about what credit card is the best one for

00:02:59.280 | earning the most cashback or points or whatever you want. When it comes to a category, you spend a lot

00:03:04.540 | on like dining. But I think the most important thing to remember is that there is hardly a welcome

00:03:10.280 | bonus on a new card that earns anything less than 5%. I would say the actual average of the top welcome

00:03:17.780 | bonuses when I did the analysis for episode 170, which was about cashback versus points, was around 17x

00:03:25.120 | points on the average welcome bonus. And not the average of all welcome bonuses, but the average I think of

00:03:29.820 | the top 10 or 20 at the time. So yes, you can earn 4x points on dining or 5x points

00:03:34.460 | on flights. But the average welcome bonus is going to give you 17x points on all of your spend on that

00:03:41.200 | card up until you hit that minimum spend. So welcome bonuses always win. The next one is that in math,

00:03:48.340 | we've learned from the time we were kids that 1 plus 1 equals 2. But in the points game, 1 plus 1 is

00:03:54.720 | definitely able to be more than 2. And that's because you can play this game with your spouse,

00:03:59.700 | your partner, your parents, your family, your friends, your children. And in addition to both earning welcome

00:04:05.580 | bonuses, when you refer people, you can usually for many card issuers earn a referral bonus as well. So if you were

00:04:12.560 | going to say open a card that had a 80,000 point bonus, and then refer your partner to a card that also had an 80,000 point

00:04:19.320 | bonus, you could get not only the 160 plus maybe 20,000 points for the referral. I'm using some round numbers to make this

00:04:26.060 | easy, but it's somewhere in that order of magnitude. It also means that you can take advantage of a really

00:04:31.320 | huge opportunity multiple times. If you were playing this game with a partner, maybe you were also helping

00:04:37.100 | your parents. That's four people that could take advantage of a 100,000 point welcome bonus, not just

00:04:42.280 | one, plus any referrals that stack on top of that. So I know one of the pieces of pushback I get a lot of time

00:04:49.020 | here is that if you open up tons and tons of cards, you go for welcome bonuses, you do it with your partner, what is

00:04:54.480 | that going to do to your credit? In episode 221, I did a deep dive on credit and credit scores. But one of the highlights

00:05:00.940 | I'll share is from a story from someone who posted online pretty publicly, but said they opened 26 credit cards in

00:05:07.940 | 2017. And the entire time they tracked their credit score for them and their partner, not only did the two of them

00:05:14.140 | accumulate 2 million points, but their credit scores both went up and his partner's score went up by over

00:05:19.600 | 100 points. And they ended this in the high 700, low 800 range, starting from below that for both of them. So

00:05:27.800 | this is not necessarily something that will ruin your credit. In fact, in many cases, it will improve it.

00:05:32.740 | The next one is that every one of us can be a travel agent. And I say this because one of the challenges with

00:05:39.820 | earning points and miles is that most of us don't want to keep spending more and more money that we

00:05:44.560 | don't need to spend. So what I love doing is anytime I'm taking a trip with family or friends, or maybe

00:05:50.480 | it's a reunion or a bachelor party or even something at work, I've always volunteered to be the travel agent

00:05:56.960 | for the group. I'll book the hotels, I'll book the flights, and I'll go as far as to reach out to the

00:06:02.080 | airline and try to get a group fare or the same thing with the hotel. Turns out most people hate doing

00:06:07.720 | that kind of work. I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you like that. And if that's

00:06:12.480 | true, this gives you an opportunity to say, I will take all that logistical overhead off of all of your

00:06:17.920 | plates. All I ask for in return is I'm going to book it all on my card. And then I'm going to ask you

00:06:22.940 | to Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, whatever it is, the cost of that trip. I've used that to get lots and lots of

00:06:30.160 | travel bookings on my cards that weren't necessarily for me and accumulate a ton of points.

00:06:35.620 | The next big one in the points and miles world is to take advantage of award search tools and

00:06:41.520 | their alerts. In episode 166 and 167, Greg from The Frequent Miler and I went down and looked at every

00:06:48.620 | single hotel and flight booking service there is out there. So I'm not going to recap all of them,

00:06:54.460 | but these tools have gotten so good and made it so easy for you to really maximize your points that if

00:07:03.000 | you're not using them and you have points and miles, I think you're really doing yourself a

00:07:07.340 | disservice. And there's a massive opportunity for you to take advantage of tools that make it so easy

00:07:13.760 | to find flights that can give you such outsized value for your points. I know in a couple weeks,

00:07:19.420 | I'm going to do an episode on probably somewhere around 15 or 20 different award search tricks

00:07:24.460 | to make it easier for you to book flights with points and miles. One of those is award search tools,

00:07:28.860 | but we'll cover a lot of things. And then the other thing is these tools also come with alerting.

00:07:32.960 | So not only does it make it easy to say, help me find a flight from California to Asia, but also

00:07:39.660 | help me set an alert so that if a better price comes up or a better route comes up, you can send me a

00:07:44.540 | notification and I can rebook it or book it then. Next one is not all of us have points. Some of us

00:07:50.980 | have been playing the cashback game for a really long time. Some of us just find an amazing points deal,

00:07:55.320 | but don't have the points to do it. Well, you can buy points. In episode 170, I did cashback versus points

00:08:01.800 | and talked about the difference between the two. And one of the biggest takeaways for me is that points go on

00:08:07.080 | sale all the time. And so there are opportunities to buy points, even if you don't have them. So my favorite

00:08:13.800 | example of this is we stayed at this incredible resort called Caprocot in the island of Majorca in Spain.

00:08:20.220 | And it's part of the small luxury hotel group. And that's part of Hilton. And so Hilton had this hotel

00:08:26.280 | available for 120,000 points a night. Now, the cash rate was something around $3,000. So already, this is an

00:08:33.780 | amazing value for Hilton points, which are often considered worth around half a cent or $600. So this

00:08:40.080 | is like five times the normal value. But not everyone has 120,000 Hilton points. And yes, you can transfer

00:08:45.880 | from Amex, but maybe you don't have points that can go to Hilton. Well, at the very time we were booking

00:08:51.440 | this, Hilton points were on sale, something that happens at least six to 12 times a year, if not more

00:08:58.080 | frequently. And so you could just go to the Hilton website, buy 120,000 points for half a cent each

00:09:04.260 | or $600, and then immediately book that hotel. So if you're ever on a hotel site searching for hotels,

00:09:10.120 | even if you don't have enough points to use, you might as well toggle that little thing that says

00:09:14.400 | use points and see what the points price is. And if you notice that the points price is such a better

00:09:20.400 | deal, take a look at buying those points if you don't already have them, because there are sometimes big

00:09:25.280 | opportunities there. The same thing is true with airlines. I know Avianca LifeMiles, which is a Star

00:09:31.140 | Alliance partner of Air Canada, United, Lufthansa, they often have points on sale for such an incredible

00:09:37.400 | price that if you were to find an amazing flight on United going to Europe, there's a decent chance

00:09:42.980 | that if you were to buy Avianca LifeMiles points, you could get a way cheaper price than the cash

00:09:48.660 | price for that flight, especially if it's like a long haul international business class flight. So keep

00:09:53.400 | that in mind anytime you find a great deal with points, or maybe you want to look for a great deal

00:09:56.980 | with points, even if you don't have them. Next is making sure you take advantage of all the credit

00:10:01.160 | card benefits that you have. Now, some of the most common ones are purchase protection,

00:10:06.040 | things break. Your credit card company will often cover that. Lots of travel protections depending on

00:10:10.360 | the card. I did an episode a few years ago, number 113, that went through all the different hidden

00:10:15.800 | benefits of your credit card. But I realized in prepping this episode, that one was a little bit

00:10:20.320 | out of date. So I'm going to be redoing that episode in the coming weeks. So keep an eye out for

00:10:25.760 | that. But there are so many benefits and I would be blown away if almost every single person listening

00:10:31.300 | didn't go download their guide to benefits from their card issuer. If it's a Visa card,

00:10:37.180 | there might be a Visa Infinite or Visa Signature or MasterCard World Elite. Not only look at the

00:10:42.160 | benefits that come with your card, but go to the MasterCard World Elite website, go to the Visa

00:10:46.260 | Infinite site and look at those benefits. There are all kinds of things you might not know existed.

00:10:50.820 | Unfortunately, the one I'll share right now is gone. But for a while, having a Visa Signature or

00:10:56.680 | Infinite card included wine tasting two-for-ones in Sonoma County. So just all kinds of crazy benefits

00:11:02.140 | that you won't know until you look. And then the last points in Miles 1 is that if you are active

00:11:07.700 | duty military or a spouse of someone who is active duty military, and depending on the issuer, that may

00:11:13.420 | include reserves, you can get most of your credit card fees completely waived. And I know this firsthand

00:11:20.420 | because a listener emailed me a copy of both their earning summary from their active duty

00:11:25.900 | in the reserves, as well as a spreadsheet of all the credit card annual fees that were getting waived

00:11:32.080 | because of it. And both numbers were somewhere around $7,000 or $9,000. But the funny part was that

00:11:38.480 | they were actually getting more fees waived than they were getting paid to be a reservist. So it basically

00:11:46.320 | more than doubled their income from that perspective. Now, they probably wouldn't have had all these

00:11:51.060 | credit cards if the fees weren't getting waived. But there are some cards that have free nights,

00:11:55.580 | free hotel credits, priority pass, global entry, clear, all kinds of benefits and perks. And so if

00:12:02.700 | those fees are getting waived, it can be a huge, huge benefit for anyone who serves or is married to

00:12:08.760 | someone who does. Okay, moving on from credit cards, let's talk general travel. And this is more of a

00:12:15.280 | mindset shift from episode 187 with my good friend Lee Rowan. We talked in that episode about a bunch

00:12:21.080 | of travel planning tips and hacks. But one that keeps sticking with me is asking the question,

00:12:25.260 | are you planning the trip or is the trip planning you? And there are lots of times in this world where

00:12:31.580 | we see a deal or we find this awesome thing. And it's not necessarily a bad thing if you find an

00:12:35.820 | amazing flight deal or a hotel deal and want to build your entire trip around it. But just make sure

00:12:40.900 | you're conscious about what you're doing. Because sometimes we get down in this rabbit hole where we

00:12:45.500 | start finding a deal and the next deal and all of a sudden we're building a trip. But we never pause

00:12:50.240 | to step back and say, is this actually the trip we want to take? And I've found myself in that situation

00:12:55.020 | a few times. And so my new mindset is think in advance whether this is a trip where we want to be

00:13:00.940 | very intentional about the kind of trip or where we just want to get out. And we're okay letting the

00:13:05.480 | deal or the opportunity plan the trip for us. Here's a small quick one, but it's really fun.

00:13:12.600 | And there's actually a company that built an entire business around it, which is that you can reverse

00:13:17.220 | image search places on Airbnb or VRBO and find other places that property is being rented. So you could

00:13:25.280 | just go take the image, go to Google image search and put the image from the Airbnb site or the Vrbo

00:13:31.100 | site and search for it. But there's a website, hichee.com that does this for you. You can paste

00:13:37.960 | in the link from Airbnb and they'll go and see if they can find that property somewhere else for you

00:13:42.300 | to book. I've never used that site. I have no affiliation with them, but I just want to share

00:13:45.780 | because they've kind of productized this functionality. And when we were going to Paris,

00:13:50.400 | we found a vacation rental and then we were able to find another place to get the exact same property

00:13:55.720 | for about 20% less that wasn't going through Airbnb. And I presume had less fees for the

00:14:01.880 | person who owned it. Now, another one is that once you book something online, you can monitor for price

00:14:08.300 | drops. And so you could do this for rental cars, hotel prices, airline fares, and there's a lot of

00:14:13.880 | different sites that do this. You can go to Google flights and set a price alert. And so if the fare

00:14:18.580 | drops, you'll get an alert. You can do that whether you've bought the flight or not. There's a great car

00:14:22.960 | rental site I love to use called Auto Slash. I had the founder on talking about ways to get rental car

00:14:28.140 | deals. But even if you don't use them to book a rental car, you can go tell them, here's my rental

00:14:32.880 | car summary. Here's how much I'm paying. And if they find a better deal, they'll message you and you can

00:14:38.200 | basically go and rebook it. And since lots of rental cars are cancelable, it's pretty easy.

00:14:42.520 | They launched something called Hotel Slash, which does the same thing for hotels. There's a service

00:14:47.800 | called Autopilot that will monitor, I think, United, Delta, and American flights. And so if

00:14:53.020 | the fare drops on any of those flights that you've booked, not only will they let you know that it

00:14:58.300 | dropped, but they're actually going to go out and rebook the flight for you so that you don't even

00:15:03.320 | have to think about it. Now they do take, I think, 25% of the savings. So keep that in mind, but they

00:15:08.680 | will go out and just say, we'll monitor your flight. And if the fare changes, we'll just rebook it for you.

00:15:12.460 | And you won't even, you'll get a flight credit for the difference or a refund if you booked a

00:15:15.580 | refundable fare. TripIt also does something very similar. They don't charge you a fee or do it for

00:15:20.860 | you, but they will send you an email and say, hey, we noticed this fare dropped. You could rebook it and

00:15:24.940 | save. And that's something that depending on the airline can be really easy to really difficult to

00:15:29.860 | do. Some of them like Southwest, it's often as easy as just changing your flight to that same flight

00:15:36.100 | and then getting a credit right away. Now those credits do expire now. They used to not.

00:15:41.080 | So keep that in mind. But I always say, if you book a flight for $200 and you can change it to

00:15:46.000 | $150 version of the same flight and get a $50 credit, even if you don't use the credit, it didn't

00:15:51.240 | cost you anything. So you might as well do it. Now, similar to not just getting a better deal on the

00:15:55.360 | price. One of my favorite tactics that I've heard hundreds of people listening to this podcast use

00:16:00.760 | is just sending an email to the hotel. And I won't say you're not asking for an upgrade,

00:16:06.880 | but essentially you're sending an email that says, hey, I'm really excited to stay at your hotel.

00:16:11.760 | Here's who we are. If you're traveling with your family, if you're celebrating something and just let

00:16:15.980 | them know who you are. Always book directly with the hotel when you're doing this, because

00:16:20.000 | if you just book from some of the third party booking sites that are powered by Expedia or

00:16:24.940 | Travelocity, that reservation might not even be associated with your name in the system until a lot

00:16:30.060 | closer to check-in and hotels are in the hospitality game. So they want to treat customers with a ton of

00:16:35.900 | hospitality and try to build a long-term relationship. And if you book directly with them, you're giving

00:16:40.400 | them a lot more opportunity to do that. So book directly, send an email. If you can't find an email,

00:16:45.800 | call up the hotel and ask for an email for someone at the front desk or someone in manager, a sales

00:16:51.520 | manager, and just shoot them a note. And then maybe three days before, if you haven't heard from them,

00:16:55.560 | send a follow-up. I have heard stories of room upgrades, better views, free champagne, free

00:17:01.280 | chocolate, decorating a room for a child's birthday, embroidering initials on pillows, like you name it.

00:17:07.280 | Someone has emailed me about a perk they've gotten for doing this. And it's so easy. This episode is

00:17:12.540 | brought to you by Copilot. If you're looking to get your finances organized this year, you have to

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00:17:54.140 | Thanks to Copilot, I have never had a better grasp on our spending and cash flow, which I'm pretty

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00:18:04.260 | spending, subscriptions, and investments, go to chrishutchins.com slash copilot or click the link

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00:18:16.600 | Again, that's chrishutchins.com slash copilot and the code hacks two for a free two month trial of my

00:18:23.320 | favorite personal finance app. This episode is brought to you by NetSuite. What does the future

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00:19:04.200 | future with actionable data, which is exactly what I'd want as a CEO. Speaking of opportunity, you can download the

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00:19:17.680 | chrishutchins.com slash NetSuite or click the link in the description. Next, if you're traveling internationally, getting

00:19:24.500 | data from eSIMS has gotten so, so, so easy. So if you're on a plan that includes unlimited international roaming, then

00:19:33.040 | obviously you're all set. But if you're still on an AT&T or a Verizon plan that charges $10, $20 a day or even more, I'd highly

00:19:41.580 | encourage you to go look at eSIMS. They are like those SIM cards you just put in your phone, except you can do it all

00:19:47.040 | electronically. So there are marketplaces. One I've used in the past is called AIRALO, A-I-R-A-L-O. And you could just go say, oh, I'm going to

00:19:55.400 | Japan. And they'll say, oh, 20 gigabytes for $10 for seven days or whatever the different plans are. And you can get them and

00:20:02.120 | activate them without even having to go into a store locally in the country. And it's such a cheap way to get usually

00:20:08.500 | very inexpensive high-speed data.

00:20:10.660 | And then also, when traveling international, if you're looking to save money and actually just get a great experience, free walking

00:20:17.040 | tours are incredible. Obviously, I love free. I love saving a deal. They're not really free because almost every time, if you had a

00:20:25.640 | great experience, I would strongly encourage you to tip the tour guide. That's how they make their money. But it turns out that people who make their

00:20:32.540 | money off tips really try hard to do a good job to earn those tips. And I've had amazing experiences with our family going on these free

00:20:40.780 | walking tours in other cities. And we love doing it right when we get somewhere in a city we've never been to. And it kind of helps to

00:20:47.120 | orient yourself in the city. And you get to ask questions about what should I do while I'm here and get some inspiration.

00:20:53.000 | So I love that. And then the last one when traveling is something we talked about way, way back in episode five with Scott Kyes, who

00:21:00.740 | started a newsletter way back in the day called Scott's Cheap Flights that turned into a whole company now called Going.

00:21:07.180 | And we talked about the peak end rule. And it's just something I try to think about when traveling. And it's this idea that the thing

00:21:14.420 | that you remember after a trip is the peak, the highlight, and the last thing. So I always try to make sure that we do something really

00:21:22.540 | memorable towards the end of a trip, because that's just how our brains work. You know, we're going to remember this, this really

00:21:28.540 | big highlight moment of the trip, which of course we are, but we're also going to usually remember the end of the trip more than

00:21:34.160 | the other parts. So save something special for the end, try to make a magical thing happen somewhere in the middle, and maybe

00:21:39.580 | make magic happen every day, of course. But I try to remember the peak end rule when I'm trying to lay out an itinerary for a

00:21:45.260 | trip. So that's travel. I wasn't counting off numbers, but we're at 14 right now. And next, I want to jump into money.

00:21:52.080 | And it's a topic that I love talking about. And I've broken down the money section into two buckets. One is on expenses. So how do you

00:21:59.660 | save money and spend less money? And then one is on investments and income. So how do you generate more money or invest your

00:22:06.160 | money and grow better? So on the expenses side, the first one is to audit and reduce your bills regularly. So one great example, in

00:22:15.200 | episode 104, I talked at length about specifically just insurance policies, making sure you're going through and

00:22:21.500 | repricing both with your current carrier or potentially with other carriers. I have found that almost every time I have

00:22:28.520 | gone and done that, I've found some way to get something comparable or better for less money. And I think the current

00:22:35.220 | total is $14,000 that I've heard of one listener wrote in and said, I went through the process you outlined in

00:22:42.060 | that episode. And I saved $14,500. It's one of the quotes on the website that just listening to one episode

00:22:48.800 | saved them that much money because they found that they're wildly overpaying for insurance, probably had a

00:22:53.960 | very nice home or car to save that much on insurance. It's more than I think most of us are paying on our home

00:22:59.020 | or auto insurance or definitely not so much that there's a margin for that. But nonetheless, awesome

00:23:04.260 | thing. But I do this with all bills. We all have probably talked or had a conversation about doing

00:23:09.400 | this with Comcast or your cable bill. But just something to keep in mind all the time that if there are

00:23:14.760 | regular bills you have to pay, you should audit them. And one of the bills that I'd really encourage

00:23:19.040 | you to push back is a medical bill. So if you want to go back and listen to episode 34, Marshall Allen and

00:23:24.940 | I went deep on the process of negotiating your medical bills. And from his experience talking to

00:23:31.280 | hundreds of people, I would say it's almost certain that if you have a high medical bill that you don't

00:23:36.260 | think is correct, you can push back and fight it on number of different ways. We walked through some

00:23:40.920 | of them. He also wrote a book about this process. And I would be surprised if you weren't able to get

00:23:45.660 | almost any medical bill reduced. Or if you're paying out of pocket, make sure you tell the health

00:23:51.160 | provider that and they often have cash prices. It's just a great opportunity to cut a bill

00:23:56.400 | significantly down. I know I had one bill where I was trying to be charged for an out of network doctor

00:24:02.500 | that was working at an in network hospital. And I pushed back. And sure enough, I was able to get

00:24:07.200 | that covered. Now, one of the biggest expenses most of us have is on housing, whether we're renters or

00:24:11.880 | owners. There are so many different ways to hack our houses. And if you go back to episode 14,

00:24:17.440 | we talked all about house hacking. I have done this at various stages of my life. For example,

00:24:22.760 | our first home purchase was actually a three bedroom condo. But we bought a specific unit that

00:24:27.920 | had a separate entrance in one of the bedrooms that had its own ensuite bathroom. And we changed the

00:24:33.460 | doorknob that connected that room to the house to turn it into a studio, rented it out, and we're able

00:24:38.940 | to significantly subsidize the cost of owning that condo. So much so that we could buy something that was

00:24:46.200 | bigger than we needed at the time. And then as we grew, the family had a child, we were able to take

00:24:52.220 | back that room. And we went from a two to a three bedroom condo without actually having to change homes

00:24:57.660 | because it had basically gone from a two bedroom with a rental to a three bedroom that we had.

00:25:01.560 | We changed the doorknob so that we couldn't lock ourselves in and everything worked really well.

00:25:05.420 | That is not the only way to house hack. We went deep on that episode. But if you're looking to offset

00:25:09.500 | that expense in your life, there are so many ways to do it. And I definitely encourage you to listen

00:25:14.460 | if that's something that's interesting. Also in the home, many, many different states, counties, and utility

00:25:20.320 | companies give you ways to save by changing your energy plan. And so this might not be valid

00:25:26.080 | everywhere in the country. Some places, there's just a fixed price for energy, and that's it. But I know

00:25:31.760 | here in the Bay Area with PG&E, there's like five, six different plans. And depending on which one you

00:25:36.520 | pick and when you use your energy, especially if you have an electric vehicle, you can get wildly

00:25:41.320 | different bills. And so in episode 135, Matt Farrell and I talked deeply about all the different ways to

00:25:46.840 | make your home more energy efficient. But not only do you want to make your home energy efficient,

00:25:51.880 | you want to look at changing your energy plan to see if you can pay less. Next is probably one of the

00:25:56.600 | biggest mindset shifts. And it's going to be very hard to do it justice in a short period of time in

00:26:02.180 | this episode. But it's adopting a die with zero mindset. So back in episode 91, which I think might have

00:26:09.800 | been the most popular episode of all time, I sat down with Bill Perkins, who wrote a book called die

00:26:15.420 | with zero. And the general principle of the book is that you should focus on net fulfillment over net

00:26:22.860 | worth, meaning, how do you get the most out of life, not how do you accumulate the most amount of money.

00:26:27.960 | And one of the most important things to think about is, if you live your life in various seasons,

00:26:32.620 | there are seasons where it might make more sense to spend and do things than it does to save. And if you look at

00:26:40.180 | the data, many people in retirement don't spend nearly as much as they thought, often because they saved all

00:26:46.720 | these adventures and travels and ideas for retirement. But it turns out that some of those things we just can't

00:26:53.520 | physically do when we're older. So if you have a dream to go hike Mount Kilimanjaro, waiting till you're 75 and

00:26:58.880 | retired might be the worst time to do it. And so before that episode, I probably had this mindset

00:27:03.940 | of the only goal in life is to increase net worth. And I don't mean the only goal, but it was definitely

00:27:08.360 | a topic of conversation with my wife, Amy. After that interview, almost on a dime, I thought, maybe

00:27:14.940 | that's not the goal this year. Maybe this year is not the increased net worth year. Maybe this year is

00:27:20.360 | the have experiences with our young kids year. And next year can be the increased net worth. It was wildly

00:27:26.420 | impactful conversation. I highly encourage you to listen or read his book and think about spending

00:27:32.620 | money on what matters and when it matters to you. And that's going to be different for everyone.

00:27:37.640 | Along the lines of spending, something that we've adopted in our relationship that's made things

00:27:42.460 | really easy and really help streamline decision making is just creating money rules. So this idea

00:27:48.020 | came to me, at least from Ramit Sethi, who wrote a book called I Will Teach You To Be Rich. He came on

00:27:53.860 | way, way back in episode nine to talk about this. Then we talked again a couple of years ago about

00:27:58.440 | money and relationships. And we're actually going to be talking in a few months about a recap on all of

00:28:03.360 | this and thinking about how my perspective on money rules and living your rich life has evolved.

00:28:09.920 | But to give you a couple of concrete examples, he creates rules that make decisions really easy with

00:28:17.520 | money. So for example, never question spending money on books, appetizers, and donating to a

00:28:23.360 | friend's charity fundraiser. And it might seem so obvious, but I think we've all been in a situation

00:28:30.080 | where there's some kind of purchase where we're like, oh, this book I heard was really good. Should

00:28:34.600 | I buy it? Well, it's $19. His idea was, let's take a category of things that I have a strong opinion on

00:28:39.740 | and create a rule so that I never have to think about it. For him, business class on flights over

00:28:44.520 | four hours. For us, we don't have that rule. I've taken plenty of longer than four hour flights in

00:28:50.240 | economy. But if we're crossing an ocean overnight, we use points to fly business. And we've never been

00:28:56.340 | in a situation yet where we couldn't find the ability to use points. So we haven't had to figure

00:29:01.020 | out what we do if that were to mean buying business class flights at face value. But we have a similar-ish

00:29:06.640 | rule. And so he's got a ton of them. I'll put a link in the show notes to a blog post he wrote about

00:29:12.140 | some of those money rules. We'll talk about them a bit in a few months. But setting money rules and

00:29:16.840 | creating them with your partner or yourself have been super impactful for us. The next one is to

00:29:21.180 | just negotiate almost everything. And I don't want to sound like someone who's, you know, I'm not in at

00:29:27.080 | a restaurant asking if I can get a discount on, you know, the dinner I'm having. But there are so many

00:29:32.600 | things in life, your salary, your Airbnb. I didn't realize until talking with a few Airbnb owners that

00:29:40.280 | people negotiate Airbnbs all the time. I felt like I was a sucker having never done it. And so one time,

00:29:45.020 | we were looking to book this Airbnb, and I actually found a property that had only the number of nights

00:29:49.720 | we needed available in their calendar. So I knew, you know, if you have five nights open, someone could

00:29:53.960 | book three or four or two, but we wanted to book the whole five. And I reached out and said, look,

00:29:58.140 | we found a lot of properties. There are a few others that are a little bit similar, but cheaper.

00:30:02.580 | We really liked yours. We want to book the exact five nights that fill your calendar. Could you do it for

00:30:07.660 | X price? It was definitely less than the list price. Instant, like within hours. Yes, totally. And we

00:30:13.760 | booked it. So that's one. If you haven't started negotiating your salary, we've talked about that

00:30:19.160 | in a bunch of different episodes. You should definitely consider that. We've gotten so many

00:30:23.340 | emails from people who've managed to negotiate their salary, negotiate their co-workers' salaries,

00:30:27.960 | and all kinds of stuff. If you're on a website buying something, go to the live chat. You might not

00:30:32.220 | be negotiating the price, but you could ask, hey, are there any deals right now? Are there any

00:30:35.840 | promotions? In the county we live in, you actually have the ability to negotiate or appeal the valuation

00:30:41.600 | of your home for property tax purposes. And we were actually able to lower our home's valuation on the

00:30:46.780 | record by about 25%, which in turn lowered our property tax by 25%. So that's definitely something

00:30:54.140 | that I encourage everyone to do. Just if there's a major expense in your life, or if there's something,

00:30:58.880 | just ask yourself, is it possible that this is flexible? I don't negotiate at the grocery

00:31:03.400 | store, but anytime I see that it might be a possibility, I'm absolutely doing that. So for

00:31:08.380 | example, one thing that we probably all spend a lot of money on is Amazon. I'm not necessarily

00:31:12.740 | negotiating prices on Amazon, but what I am doing, and this is my next tip, is I install the Keepa

00:31:18.540 | extension, and there's probably a dozen extensions that do this. I like this one, but I don't have any

00:31:23.520 | affiliation with them. And they just show you a trending price graph of all the different prices.

00:31:28.440 | This has been over the last, I want to say 90 or even 365 days. So you can see, I'm not going to

00:31:34.500 | negotiate with Amazon, but if I see that this thing I'm buying is always $30 and today it's 35 and it

00:31:40.000 | goes on sale nine out of 10 days, well, I'm going to wait a day or a week and see when the price comes

00:31:44.960 | down and buy it then. And whenever I'm buying anything, my next favorite tip here is to always

00:31:50.360 | stack deals. So you might not negotiate to get the price lower, but there's a series of things that I

00:31:56.500 | would encourage you all to look at anytime you're making a major purchase. So I don't think that I'm

00:32:01.420 | going out and doing this for a $5, $10, $20 purchase. But if we're buying, you know, a new dresser, if

00:32:07.020 | we're buying a new appliance, I'm absolutely going to see how many things I can stack to get a better

00:32:12.600 | price. And so those things could be coupons, whether you find them or whether you find a website, like,

00:32:18.340 | I don't know if it's still alive, but there was this website, savendeals.com. If it's alive,

00:32:23.200 | I'll put a link in the show notes. And they were selling Home Depot and Lowe's coupons for a few

00:32:27.460 | dollars. So one, you can put a coupon in, you can also go through a shopping portal to earn points or

00:32:33.060 | cash back. You can look at your credit cards, whether it's Amex, Chase, Citi, Bank of America,

00:32:37.640 | there are a lot of different card linked offers, like spend $49 at Chewy and get $15 back,

00:32:44.140 | which is one we just used. And gift cards is another one. So you can buy gift cards at a

00:32:49.080 | discount. And then finally, whatever you're putting the payment on, if it's your own credit

00:32:53.340 | card, you can earn credit card points. So it's possible. And one of the best examples of doing

00:32:57.180 | this was we bought this Japanese Toto toilet seat, built-in bidet, seat warmer, everything. It was

00:33:02.460 | awesome. And we bought a coupon online. We went through a shopping portal and got one or 2%. There

00:33:08.360 | was a card linked offer for Lowe's. We bought Lowe's gift cards on sale. And then we put the

00:33:13.920 | remainder balance because usually you buy gift cards in like $100, $250 denominations. And we

00:33:19.060 | put the remainder on a credit card that had purchase protection and earned cash back or points. I don't

00:33:24.400 | actually remember which credit card it was this time. So we stacked all of that. We saved like 35%

00:33:29.380 | on the purchase. Another site I really like is SaveWise, which will kind of let you set up alerts

00:33:34.080 | for when some of these shopping portal deals come up. So you could say, hey, if Lowe's is ever more

00:33:39.920 | than 5% off, let me know. I'll put a link to SaveWise and any of these things in the show notes.

00:33:46.060 | is brought to you by Facet. Finding good and actionable financial advice is not easy, especially

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00:33:56.740 | because when I shut down my financial planning firm a few years ago, we did a ton of research

00:34:01.440 | on who to recommend to our clients and we landed on Facet. Facet makes professional financial advice

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00:34:12.980 | annual membership fee with investment management included. With Facet, you'll get access to a team

00:34:18.480 | of CFP professionals and specialists providing guidance across retirement planning, tax strategy,

00:34:24.160 | estate planning, and more. So head on over to chrishutchins.com slash facet, F-A-C-E-T,

00:34:30.960 | to learn more about which membership option is best for you. That's chrishutchins.com slash facet.

00:34:37.280 | This episode is brought to you by Delete Me. And if you prefer not to have your identity stolen or have

00:34:42.200 | your phone number, home address, or email showing up all over the internet, you really need to check

00:34:46.640 | out Delete Me this year. Unfortunately, there's hundreds of data brokers online that are constantly

00:34:51.460 | sharing and selling your personal info and keeping track of all of them is like playing whack-a-mole.

00:34:56.640 | But fortunately, if you go to them one by one, you can get them to remove your data.

00:35:00.700 | However, that process can take hours and hours to do yourself. I know I tried it two years ago

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00:35:10.840 | I gave up and started using Delete Me and I haven't looked back. Since then, I've signed up my

00:35:16.120 | entire family because Delete Me will not just find and remove your personal info from hundreds of data

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00:35:33.860 | customer in their first two years. And to date, they've done over 100 million data removals for

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00:35:43.500 | chrishutchins.com/deleteme and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. Again, that's

00:35:49.980 | chrishutchins.com/deleteme or click the link in the description. The next one is maybe you could argue a

00:35:56.220 | sub-bullet of stacking deals, but it's enough worth calling out that you want to install at least one

00:36:02.100 | or two browser extensions for shopping online just to make sure you're not missing on obvious deals.

00:36:07.380 | So for me, that's the Rakuten extension and the Card Pointers extension. And what the Rakuten

00:36:12.620 | extension does is it's one of the shopping portals. Obviously, if you go to Cashback Monitor, you might

00:36:18.780 | find that there's 20 or 30 different shopping portals. And Rakuten's not always the best one.

00:36:23.740 | But I hate having pop-ups on the browser all the time. So if I'm making a big purchase, I'm definitely

00:36:29.820 | going to go to Cashback Monitor and see if there's a better place to get cash back or points. But for

00:36:35.340 | general purchases, even if it's just $5, there's no reason not to have one shopping portal extension and

00:36:42.060 | just load it. And even if all you're getting back is $0.50, it takes not even a second to click

00:36:48.380 | a button and let the page reload. So I use the Rakuten extension primarily because they typically

00:36:53.580 | have good deals and you can convert your Rakuten cash back to Amex points. But I also use the Card

00:36:59.340 | Pointers extension. And I use that because Card Pointers, anytime I'm logged into any of my credit card

00:37:06.380 | websites, whether that's Chase, Amex, Bank of America, Card Pointers will go and activate all

00:37:11.260 | those card-linked offers. They'll remember which ones you had on which card. And then if you're on

00:37:16.220 | a website, they'll pop up and say, "Hey, definitely use your Citi Premier card because on this website,

00:37:23.900 | right now you have a spend 50 get $15 back." And I can't keep in my head the thousands of card-linked

00:37:31.660 | offers that have been activated. And I can guarantee I've saved hundreds of dollars just from this

00:37:36.780 | extension. And a lifetime membership is way less than that. And you can get 30% off at allthehacks.com/cardpointers.

00:37:43.980 | Big fan of the Card Pointers app. There's a lot more to unpack there, but I will save that for

00:37:48.380 | another episode. And next is another one that maybe you could argue was in the stacking deals

00:37:52.060 | because it's gift cards. But I want to think about gift cards differently. In episode 212,

00:37:56.300 | we went really, really deep on gift cards. And I tried to do some math. I think the average person

00:38:01.740 | could save thousands of dollars a year, at least with the gift card deals that were happening when

00:38:06.460 | that episode was recorded. Right now, we're in a little bit of a lull for gift cards. But I think as we

00:38:10.940 | get towards the end of the year around the holidays, we'll probably get into another gift card boom.

00:38:15.500 | But if you think about the fact that gift cards go on sale all the time with all kinds of promotions,

00:38:21.420 | and there is a whole market of people buying those gift cards and reselling them at a loss because they

00:38:26.380 | got a good deal on them. Well, if you're ever looking to buy something, you could pay for it with

00:38:31.020 | a gift card that you bought on sale. And there are websites that make this easy to go buy those gift cards,

00:38:36.220 | like rays and flus. We built our own gift card site that about every two to three months, I launch for a few days

00:38:44.380 | in the newsletter, all the hacks.com slash email, and we announced that gift card sites going live. But even if

00:38:49.340 | they're not on sale, you might earn a lot more points on your spending at office supply stores or grocery stores.

00:38:55.180 | And so it might make sense to pick up a gift card at the grocery store, earn the bonus points so that you can use that gift card to buy

00:39:02.220 | something somewhere else. One more thing to keep in mind for purchases that might have issues where you

00:39:07.820 | really want to take advantage of your extended warranty or your purchase protection, which are common credit

00:39:13.020 | card benefits that you get. Those are ones where I try to avoid buying them with gift cards. So for example,

00:39:17.900 | if I'm buying a computer or a cell phone where I want to be able to get an extra one or two year warranty

00:39:22.940 | because I put it on a credit card that offers that benefit, I'm not going to make that purchase with gift cards.

00:39:28.220 | But if I'm buying groceries from Amazon Fresh, absolutely don't need the purchase protection

00:39:34.220 | or return protection. And I'm happy to use gift cards to buy those groceries. All right,

00:39:37.820 | a couple quick last ones before I talk about income and investment. So first, I love Library Extension.

00:39:43.420 | There's also an app called Libby. You can connect both of them to your local libraries. And anytime you're

00:39:49.340 | browsing Amazon for a book, Library Extension will pop up and say, "Hey, you could just check this book out

00:39:54.460 | right now, the ebook version of it from your local library and read it immediately." Libby is like an

00:39:59.900 | app that has an ebook store that you can just search your local library's books and read them right away

00:40:05.180 | on your iPad or your iPhone, or they might even have a Kindle version. I'm not sure. This next one's one of

00:40:09.980 | my favorites. Shout out to my friend, Mike, who pointed out that a lot of hotels don't give you free bottles

00:40:15.340 | of water in your room, but they do give you free bottles of water in the gym. And so anytime you're at a hotel

00:40:20.860 | with a gym, just check out what they've got going on in there. Some of them even have some fresh fruit.

00:40:25.980 | And so if it's an amenity for those working out, that doesn't mean it's only if you work out. If the

00:40:31.180 | hotel is going to offer it to anyone in the gym, go check out what's in there. Grab yourself a free

00:40:35.580 | bottle of water, grab yourself a banana, and be excited that you found it for free.

00:40:40.220 | Next one, if you have an expense category, if you have complicated taxes, your tax bill can be one of

00:40:45.260 | your biggest expenses. And I want to encourage people who maybe have the mindset I did a handful

00:40:51.260 | of years ago, which was I kind of loved getting in the weeds on my own taxes using TurboTax to do

00:40:55.820 | it all myself. And then I got to the point where I said, okay, I know I'm saving money by doing this

00:41:02.620 | over the cost of hiring an actual CPA. That's very proactive and really looking at things holistically.

00:41:09.900 | I'm saving money on the tax prep, but I might not actually be saving money on the taxes.

00:41:14.780 | And so if you have complicated taxes at a minimum, take a look at a CPA and see if there's one that

00:41:21.260 | makes sense. We've done a handful of episodes on saving money on taxes. Episode 147 comes to mind,

00:41:27.260 | which is all about saving taxes. And then at the end of the year, for the last few years,

00:41:31.180 | we've done episodes on kind of an end of the year tax checklist. If you need a recommendation,

00:41:36.220 | um, personally, I use Gelt. They are a sponsor and partner of the show, but I've been using them since

00:41:41.980 | before they were a partner and sponsor. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you want to check them out,

00:41:45.980 | I've been really happy working with them. Okay. On the investments and income side, first off,

00:41:50.380 | automate everything. Um, I really like to not think a lot about my investments. And so recurring investments,

00:41:58.380 | recurring savings. I use a robo advisor because I like to have my investments rebalanced automatically.

00:42:03.340 | I like tax loss harvesting to happen automatically. I just don't really want to think about my finances.

00:42:07.900 | In fact, when I was working at wealth front, we built this product called autopilot and I think now

00:42:12.860 | it has a different name, but the entire idea was, can I just tell you to automatically keep three months

00:42:19.580 | of spending in my emergency fund and then max out my Roth IRA every year and then put the rest of my

00:42:24.940 | taxable investment account. It was like everything that I wanted in a product was why I was excited to

00:42:29.580 | work on it. And I just love automating all these rules. If you have an account where your paycheck

00:42:35.340 | comes, find a financial institution or a FinTech service that will let you say, Hey, as soon as my

00:42:40.780 | paycheck comes in, move 20% of it to savings or whatever rules you want to create. If you can find

00:42:46.300 | ways to automate them so you don't have to spend time on your money. I think that's amazing.

00:42:52.060 | When it comes to investing, personally, I like to passively invest in low cost index funds.

00:42:57.580 | In episode 168, I sat down with the co-founder of the financial planning firm I started,

00:43:02.220 | gosh, probably a decade ago at this point. And we just talked about how to build an investment

00:43:06.540 | portfolio to grow and protect your wealth. But for me, the core fundamental piece of that is I'm not

00:43:12.060 | trying to time the market. I'm not trying to pick stocks. I want to create a diversified portfolio

00:43:17.100 | that invest in low cost index funds. And I want my money to grow at what has historically been a

00:43:23.180 | consistent rate that can set me up for success in the future. So very excited to not be spending time

00:43:30.140 | trying to pick stocks and you know, win in the market. That's not my game. Love the low cost index

00:43:35.820 | fund strategy. It's exactly how I think I want to be investing and encourage lots of people to consider.

00:43:41.980 | That said, where I do like to optimize is not necessarily what's in the investment portfolio,

00:43:45.820 | but what kind of account I'm investing from. And so there are a lot of different types of tax

00:43:50.780 | advantaged accounts. In episode 144, I sat down with my friend Katie and we went through every different

00:43:55.580 | type of tax advantage account. Some of my favorites are 401ks at work. If you have them, especially if

00:44:02.140 | your company matches, take advantage. If you don't have access to them, you can open a Roth IRA.

00:44:07.580 | IRA. You can even if you're aren't eligible from your income, there is a backdoor method to contribute

00:44:12.940 | to your Roth IRA that we talked about. If you contribute any money each year to charitable causes

00:44:18.380 | or charities, then I would encourage you to take a look at a donor advised fund. We talked deeply about

00:44:23.820 | that in episode 50. And if you do have a donor advised fund, or even if you don't, if you're donating

00:44:29.420 | to charity, I'd strongly encourage you to donate the most appreciated stocks or other assets you have in

00:44:35.100 | your portfolio instead of cash. Because let's say you have $100, and then you have a stock worth

00:44:40.060 | $100 that you bought for $50. When you donate the $100 to charity, you get the $100 write-off,

00:44:45.580 | and you lose $100. That's it. That makes sense. You donated the $100. When you donate the $100 of stock,

00:44:51.740 | you get the same $100 deduction. You don't have the $100. But if you held onto it instead of donated it,

00:44:57.580 | when you sold it, you would pay taxes on the gains you have. When you donate it, that's not true.

00:45:02.780 | So you can donate that $100 position of some stock to a charity. They get the full $100. You get the

00:45:09.100 | full write-off. And then if you want, you can take the $100 you didn't donate and buy that stock right

00:45:14.140 | back at the same price, because the wash sale rule doesn't apply to charitable donations like it would

00:45:20.140 | if you were buying and selling. And for those not familiar, I won't take you down that rabbit hole right

00:45:25.260 | now. But now that stock will be at the price you bought as the cost basis. So it'll be at $100.

00:45:31.180 | So if you bought it at $50 and it goes to $150, you're going to owe taxes on that $100 gain. But now

00:45:36.140 | that you've bought it at $100, you're not going to owe taxes on anything until it goes above that $100 price.

00:45:43.180 | And then last, one of my favorite investment accounts is an HSA, because you can put money in

00:45:48.220 | pre-tax. That money can grow without having to pay taxes on it each year. And then you can take that

00:45:53.180 | money out without paying taxes. And so contrary to how I would use an FSA, which is a flexible spending

00:45:59.020 | account, specifically an FSA for health, is I would try to make sure you maximize it because you lose it at

00:46:04.380 | the end of the year. For my HSA, I max it out as much as I can because I have an eligible health plan.

00:46:10.140 | And then I leave that money there. I don't touch it because what other account do I have that's

00:46:15.980 | pre-tax money that can grow tax-free that I can take out tax-free later. So I'm letting my HSA grow

00:46:21.820 | as much as possible. I plan to use that money, you know, when I'm very old and have probably plenty of

00:46:28.220 | medical expenses. While not tax-advantaged, one account that I think is often overlooked as a source

00:46:34.220 | of income is your main account, your checking account. Even your savings account at many

00:46:39.340 | financial institutions earns almost, if not nothing. The average savings account rate in America right

00:46:45.500 | now is something like .03%. And so I would encourage you to try your best to earn interest on all of your

00:46:54.060 | cash. And if you go back and listen to episode 177, I went through, gosh, I probably opened 25 bank

00:46:59.500 | accounts to try to find what I think was the optimal bank account setup to earn interest on

00:47:04.060 | all your cash. It is possible to have an account that earns interest. And from that account,

00:47:09.900 | you can receive your paycheck. You can pay off your credit cards. You can write checks. You can do

00:47:15.260 | everything that you could do from a traditional checking account. In some cases, they even are

00:47:19.340 | checking accounts, but there are multiple different options for accounts like this where you can earn

00:47:23.340 | interest on all your cash. So I really just want to make sure every dollar I have is being put to work

00:47:28.620 | in some way, shape or form, especially right now when the average yield on treasuries,

00:47:34.460 | high yield savings, money markets is kind of up in the 4% range.

00:47:38.940 | Now, when it comes to cash that you don't need direct access to day in and day out to pay bills, maybe

00:47:45.820 | that's your emergency fund. Maybe that's your savings for a down payment. Maybe it's just cash

00:47:50.460 | savings that you don't want to put in the market right now. If you are in a high tax bracket and you live in a high

00:47:56.540 | tax state, there are some advantages to putting that money into treasuries or short term U.S.

00:48:02.620 | Treasury ETFs instead of a high yield savings account because the income from those treasuries will not

00:48:09.340 | be subject to state taxes. Some states also have their own muni, which meaning municipal California,

00:48:15.980 | for example, has their own ETFs for California treasuries. Those would actually be state and federal

00:48:22.060 | tax-free, but the yields on them are often a lot less. And so depending on your tax bracket and your

00:48:28.380 | state, there are a few different options. But I'd encourage you to look at places like U.S. Treasuries

00:48:33.980 | that you can get a little bit of a tax advantage over something like a savings account where you're not

00:48:39.100 | going to get that tax advantage. Now, the most popular episode from the last year by YouTube

00:48:44.780 | standards, not necessarily audio, but definitely took off on YouTube like no other episode we've done was

00:48:50.460 | episode 181 where I sat down with my now good friend Kai who runs a podcast talking all about deals. And we

00:48:59.260 | talked about how easy it can be to make as much as $3,000 a month just from online deals. And I know this

00:49:07.500 | sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't heard that episode, but it is possible to take deals that you're finding online

00:49:13.820 | and turn them into your own side hustle. We talked about everything from bank bonuses, brokerage bonuses, meal kits,

00:49:20.540 | cell phone offers, buying groups, gift cards, there was a ton in that episode. But Kai himself is someone who's kind of

00:49:28.460 | done the fire thing, retired early, and then uses this as a way to make that possible even earlier. And in 2023, I think he

00:49:36.860 | earned over $36,000 finding all these deals, spending small like 10-20 hours a week on it.

00:49:44.460 | And then on top of that, he earned over 2 million points taking advantage of credit card offers.

00:49:49.580 | So really, really interesting episode to kind of inspire you to the fact that a side hustle doesn't

00:49:56.300 | always have to be a business. If you have an extra 10 hours a week, you could still generate thousands

00:50:01.340 | of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars a year without doing what would traditionally be a side

00:50:06.060 | hustle, like starting consulting or starting to sell things on Etsy or some kind of business. But if you want

00:50:10.940 | the easiest way to find some money that is not surefire, but certainly works for lots of people,

00:50:16.940 | go look in the unclaimed money database for your state.

00:50:20.940 | Now, if a company owes you money because maybe you got a refund or you canceled your cable bill,

00:50:27.340 | but you'd already prepaid for the month, and they can't, for whatever reason, find a way to get you

00:50:31.260 | that money, they turn it over to the state. And the state maintains a database, each different state has

00:50:35.980 | one, of all of the unclaimed money out there. And for some people listening, you've already heard this

00:50:41.420 | tip, you've already searched, there's nothing left. I can promise that someone who's listening

00:50:46.140 | has not yet done this search. And maybe they haven't done it for them, but maybe they also

00:50:49.500 | haven't done it for their partner, their children, their parents, their brothers, their sisters,

00:50:53.500 | their friends. And I did a survey in my newsletter a few months ago, and I was blown away that about 10%

00:50:59.020 | of the people who searched for unclaimed money found over $500. I think that was the number,

00:51:04.220 | don't quote me on it, but it was a significant amount of money. So go, if you live in Delaware,

00:51:09.020 | go to Delaware unclaimed money on Google, find that site, put in your name, search. I'd actually

00:51:14.060 | be surprised if someone listening hasn't found at least $10,000. Maybe not for them, maybe collectively

00:51:19.260 | across everyone in their family, but it is wild how much money is out there just sitting around

00:51:25.260 | waiting for the right person to claim it. Okay, two more. One is that there's probably a way to pay

00:51:30.380 | every single bill you have with a credit card. It might not be obvious. Sometimes you might find,

00:51:35.260 | oh, I can pay my taxes with a credit card, but they're going to charge me 1.75% fee.

00:51:40.060 | Oh, I can pay my rent, but they might charge me a fee. Well, in that case, you should get the built

00:51:44.380 | card because they won't charge you a fee and you can earn points on rent. I'll put my built referral

00:51:47.820 | link in the show notes if you want to do that. Big fan of built and earning points on rent.

00:51:51.420 | But there's also a site called Plastique. There's another one called Melio and Zill Money

00:51:56.460 | that allow you to pay bills. So Plastique in particular will let you pay your mortgage,

00:52:01.740 | your HOA, your tuition, lots of different places that don't all accept credit cards. They will make

00:52:08.140 | it possible for you to pay that bill with a credit card. Now they do charge a fee and that fee is around

00:52:12.940 | 2.9%, which may not make sense if you have a credit card that earns 2x points or 2% cash back,

00:52:19.420 | but it might make sense if you are able now to open up a new card that has a 100,000 point signup

00:52:26.220 | bonus, but you need to spend, let's call it five or $10,000 in 90 days. Well, if you don't have enough

00:52:32.780 | spend to meet that bonus, then you probably wouldn't open it in the first place. But maybe this is

00:52:37.020 | something that makes that possible. Maybe you do have the bills. You just didn't realize you could pay

00:52:41.500 | some of them with a card. And like I mentioned, the average return on welcome bonuses is something

00:52:46.140 | like 17%. And so would I pay a 2.9% fee if I'm earning 17%? Absolutely. Now, if I had another

00:52:53.580 | way to meet that welcome bonus spend, then maybe I wouldn't, but it is an option that I think sometimes

00:52:59.180 | people don't realize. And for the right card, earning the right amount and the right welcome

00:53:03.260 | bonus, it might make sense to pay a fee to put something on a credit card where I don't think it

00:53:07.180 | ever makes sense is to pay interest. So if you're not able to pay your bill in full each month, I would

00:53:13.180 | strongly discourage you from playing the points game unless you're optimizing 0% intro APR cards.

00:53:19.100 | Finally, last one in the money category, if you're spending all this time and energy to save money,

00:53:23.820 | invest your money and grow your wealth, and you want to be intentional about what happens to that money,

00:53:28.940 | if you were to pass away, I would strongly encourage you to look at setting up a will.

00:53:34.220 | And in many states, especially at the probably around $100,000 level of assets when you pass away,

00:53:41.580 | your money might go through a probate process that can be public record, it can slow things down.

00:53:46.700 | And so if you cross that threshold in a lot of states, it also might make sense to set up a basic revocable

00:53:52.380 | living trust. This is not something super complicated where it takes years and lawyers and attorneys and

00:53:58.540 | requires you to, you know, put money in places you can never access it. There are trusts that allow

00:54:04.460 | you to mitigate taxes further that are complicated, but a basic will or a basic estate plan, something

00:54:11.340 | that you can set up in hours and maybe just need a signature or a notary, which you might even be

00:54:16.460 | able to do online is something I'd encourage every parent for sure to do and allows you not just with

00:54:22.140 | your money, but to set the intentions for who's going to look after your kids, who's going to be

00:54:26.220 | their guardian if something happens to you. So that's one last thing that I think everyone should look

00:54:30.460 | at. Episode 62, we kind of went deep on it and talked to a bunch of people about estate planning.

00:54:35.260 | So if that's interesting, you can go deep there. Okay, the last category here, we did travel,

00:54:40.780 | we did money is about life. And I broke this into a few categories. I didn't necessarily want

00:54:47.020 | you to think of these categories as I tried to find something for all of them. They're just more of a

00:54:52.220 | grouping that kind of helped me organize the content in this episode. So a handful of them are related to

00:54:57.900 | time. And the one that I've been using the most in the past year is just leveraging AI for everything.

00:55:05.500 | Whether you like ChatGPT or Gemini or Cloud or Perplexity, I'm impartial to what tool you use.

00:55:11.100 | But for travel planning, for research, I feel like I have an army of interns at my disposal to go do

00:55:18.780 | all kinds of stuff. Can you draft this? Can you review this legal doc? Can you help me come up with

00:55:22.860 | an itinerary? Can you go research something for personal life, for work? Can you help me summarize

00:55:28.060 | this? It's just such an amazing tool. I can't imagine how much longer it would take me to do all kinds of

00:55:35.580 | work in my life than it does now. And if you're not using any of these tools regularly, I would

00:55:41.740 | strongly encourage you to give them a try. I would encourage you to find someone in your circle of

00:55:46.300 | friends that probably uses them more than you and ask them how they're using them because I'm

00:55:50.460 | constantly getting new ideas of ways to do things. This morning, my daughter asked, "How many sprinkles

00:55:56.380 | are on my pancakes?" And there were more than enough on her plate than I wanted to count. And we're like,

00:56:00.780 | "Oh, I wonder if ChatGPT could answer." It's at a number of about 4,000. So I will say that's not

00:56:05.740 | the best example of something you can do, but I'm always experimenting for ways that some AI tool could

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00:57:34.860 | find the link in the description. Now, the next tip is not one that I've actually used one of these AI

00:57:38.860 | tools for. Maybe I could, but it's to go do a calendar time audit. So in episode 99,

00:57:44.380 | I sat down with Sahil Bloom and we talked about how to plan your year ahead and to do an annual

00:57:48.940 | review. And we might be halfway through the year, but I would say better late than never. But one of

00:57:53.900 | the things he loves doing is a calendar audit where you go back and you look how you actually spent your

00:57:58.460 | time. And then you color code things for like, did it give me energy? Did it take energy away?

00:58:03.020 | And look, with our work, there are things that might not give you energy, but you have to do and that's

00:58:07.580 | okay. But there's usually some of these things that we're doing in our own lives. And we might realize

00:58:12.860 | that we're allocating time differently than how we would want to. And so just going through that audit

00:58:17.420 | process is really helpful for me to think about how I want to spend my time going forward.

00:58:23.580 | And when I do think about how I'm going to spend my time going forward, one of the things I like to do

00:58:29.020 | is a tip from two guys I worked with, Jake Knapp and John Zeradsky. They wrote this book called Make

00:58:33.740 | Time. And we talked together in episode 185. And they were like, you should highlight one thing each

00:58:39.580 | day. And it's a simple thing. But in the morning, I say, okay, what's the thing I want to accomplish

00:58:44.380 | today? What's going to be the highlight of my day today? Write it down. And it's so helpful for making

00:58:49.500 | sure you have an awesome day and you get done the one thing that's most important.

00:58:52.780 | Arguably, one of my favorite filters for whether something should be on the docket for today is

00:58:58.300 | applying the hell yes or no filter. And back in episode 109, I talked to Derek Sivers who wrote

00:59:04.460 | a book called Hell Yeah or No. And we had this amazing conversation. It's one of the more interesting

00:59:10.460 | episodes because I didn't have an agenda going into the episode. We didn't have a specific topic we

00:59:16.220 | wanted to focus on. So often I'm like, oh, I want to learn about gut health or I want to learn how to

00:59:20.380 | rethink elite status. In this one, I was just like, Derek Sivers is such a great modern philosopher.

00:59:25.420 | Let's just talk. And this perspective of if you don't really want to do something, don't do it.

00:59:32.380 | It's a little bit like the Marie Kondo. If you don't love this thing, get rid of it. But applying the

00:59:37.740 | hell yes filter to anything in life has been such a powerful way for me and Amy to decide how we want to

00:59:44.860 | spend our time. Oh, we got invited to this thing. Is it a hell yeah? Because if it's not, let's just

00:59:49.820 | pass. I love that filter. I'd encourage you all to adopt it. He wrote a whole book on this if you want

00:59:54.660 | to read it. It's excellent. I'll put a link in the show notes. Now, one thing that I think many of us

00:59:58.780 | forget that we can apply that filter to is our email. And so I was having a conversation with a

01:00:03.020 | friend of mine the other day who was like, oh, this guy emailed me and I'm trying to figure out how do I

01:00:06.940 | reply? And I was like, do you have to reply? And he's like, well, he emailed me. And I was like,

01:00:12.500 | just because someone sends you an email doesn't mean you owe them a response. Now, you might have

01:00:17.960 | people with whom you have a relationship or your boss where yes, you do owe them a response. But I

01:00:23.120 | sometimes feel like when someone invites us to dinner, we have the ability to say no. But when

01:00:28.840 | someone sends us an email, even if we don't know that person, we sometimes and I catch myself doing

01:00:33.380 | this feel like we are obliged to reply. And I encouraged him to realize that he is in charge of

01:00:38.700 | his own inbox. He doesn't have to reply to every single email. And in this particular case, this was

01:00:43.900 | one where he didn't need to reply and he just archived it. So I would encourage you to think

01:00:47.740 | about, do I really feel like I have to give a response to every single person? We've all sent

01:00:54.180 | emails and not gotten replies back. Usually those are to people who maybe are better at managing their

01:00:59.960 | time than we are. Maybe not. But don't forget, you don't owe a reply to every email you get.

01:01:04.960 | And finally, on the notion of time, you can outsource things you don't enjoy to buy back your time. So in

01:01:12.620 | episode 98, I sat down with Dan Martell, we talked about buying back your time. And he is excellent at

01:01:19.400 | finding things that are not a good use of his time, because he has a lot of business opportunities,

01:01:24.860 | or finding things he just doesn't enjoy, and outsourcing them. And so one experiment that we

01:01:30.100 | tried, probably around the time of this episode, was we realized with two young kids and a lot going

01:01:35.580 | on with work, this is before the podcast was our full time thing. And my wife and I had two full time

01:01:40.500 | jobs and a podcast and young kids. We thought, what is something that we just feel like we never have

01:01:46.120 | time for and we didn't enjoy in the moment. And at that time, it was having to stop work early to prep

01:01:51.800 | dinner for the family. And we cared about eating good food. So we didn't just want to do carry out

01:01:56.220 | every single night, we wanted whole foods that we could make. So I put an ad on Craigslist and said,

01:02:00.900 | I'm looking for someone to prepare meals a few times a week. Now I was not looking for a chef to come

01:02:07.100 | over and create Michelin star meals. I was looking for someone who enjoyed cooking could be someone who's

01:02:13.440 | retired could be someone who doesn't work anymore. And I just wanted them to find some fun recipes,

01:02:19.480 | pick up some groceries and make them for this period of time where work was crazy.

01:02:23.480 | And for way less than the cost of ordering out food, we actually got home cooked meals. And this

01:02:31.360 | person would drop them off two meals at a time. So on I think Monday, they drop off two dinners at a

01:02:36.940 | quantity that there was enough leftovers that we would also have some food for lunch the next day.

01:02:41.820 | And so we had really healthy food that we could control what it was and what was going into it.

01:02:46.700 | We didn't have to take the time to cook it. And then when things freed up time a little bit more

01:02:50.460 | at work, we actually felt like cooking was something we wanted to do again. And we had the time to do it

01:02:55.060 | and it wasn't stressful. And we decided to start doing more of the cooking ourselves. And so you can find

01:03:00.260 | windows of your time where outsourcing things make sense. If you don't love cleaning the house,

01:03:04.540 | is that something you can outsource? If you don't love mowing the lawn, is that something you can

01:03:07.940 | outsource? Buying back your time is something that we can't always do, but there are areas where you can.

01:03:12.820 | And so hopefully that's a little bit of inspiration to think about anything that you could buy back time

01:03:17.480 | for in your life. Okay, the next couple are in relationships. And the first one is to just stop

01:03:22.720 | talking. This is not only a negotiation tactic, but I think it's a really valuable relationship building

01:03:28.060 | tactic. And in episode 190, I was talking with Sahil Bloom, and he talked about these three levels of

01:03:33.120 | listening. Level one is kind of me listening. Level two is you listening. And level three is us

01:03:37.640 | listening. And he pointed out that very charismatic people are very good at level two and three

01:03:42.460 | listening. And so I've just learned that for my personality, I always try to jump in and help.

01:03:47.780 | And I've learned to just help myself stop talking. And that's sometimes one of the best tactics.

01:03:53.180 | With my wife, one of the most valuable episodes I've ever done was number 43, which interestingly enough

01:03:59.400 | is this is tip number 43 of the 50 for this episode. And that was unintentional.

01:04:04.080 | But it was an episode with Nate and Kaylee Klempp, who together wrote this book about what they called

01:04:09.400 | the 80 80 marriage. And the premise is simple. But the execution, there's some nuance. But the idea is

01:04:16.300 | instead of keeping track of everything, you know, we have this 50 50 marriage where I'll do the bedtime,

01:04:21.300 | you do the bedtime, I'll do the bedtime, you do the bedtime, or I did bedtime last night. So you do the

01:04:25.580 | dishes and you're keeping track of all this stuff. If you can evolve to a place where everyone's trying

01:04:30.320 | to do 80% they won't always get there never going to happen perfectly. But you can kind of stop keeping track and it was a

01:04:36.560 | totally new model for a happier relationship. And we adopted it and we stopped keeping track and it made things so much

01:04:43.880 | better. So it's strongly encourage anyone who feels like that is a problem you sympathize with to consider whether you can stop

01:04:51.160 | keeping track of what's going on and really just try to focus on everyone's trying to do as much as they can.

01:04:58.480 | Now, the last one's a fun one. And I did this episode number 68 with Nick Gray, who's become a good friend of mine. And he wrote

01:05:06.660 | this book called the two hour cocktail party. And Nick, if you were here right now would make a very strong case for down with

01:05:13.840 | dinner parties, down with long backyard parties. It's all about the two hour cocktail party. And not only just doing one, but

01:05:21.880 | making it so dead simple that you can have it on the calendar, have a recurring event every one, two months. So anytime you

01:05:30.660 | meet someone, you say, Oh, I've got this cocktail party next month, do you want to come on over? And he has a formula for creating and

01:05:36.660 | running these cocktail parties. And when I say cocktail parties, it doesn't have to be something fancy. I think that's the term he came up with it.

01:05:43.480 | But it could be just a, you know, a happy hour. But the idea is, you make it so dead simple and easy to do. You have a formula for how it

01:05:51.700 | goes well. And it's such a valuable tool to build relationships, especially when you're in a new environment, you moved into a new

01:05:58.540 | city, you joined a new school, you joined a new church, just different ways that you might want to build and foster community and

01:06:05.220 | relationships. It was so awesome. We've been trying to use that anytime we have people over and instead of necessarily doing dinner parties, which can be

01:06:13.120 | with young kids and bedtimes, can we do an afternoon cocktail party before dinner on a Sunday afternoon, could we invite

01:06:18.840 | kids to come and play in the backyard. So those three tips I love for relationships. Now health is so particular and

01:06:26.900 | specific that I decided not to go deep down the health path on this episode. But there are two tips that I want to share

01:06:34.440 | that I picked up that are very simple and have been really impactful for me. So one is before I go out to

01:06:42.400 | dinner, if I'm trying to be healthy, I'll look at the menu for the restaurant. And I will pre order in my head what I'm

01:06:49.020 | going to order. And I find that maybe right after lunch, when I'm not that hungry, it's way easier to commit to, I'm going to get

01:06:56.640 | this salad tonight, it looks great. Then when I get there, and I'm hungry, I'm like, that burger actually sounds a lot

01:07:03.520 | better. Now do I always make the decision I pre ordered? Not always, but it definitely helps to kind of have that

01:07:09.680 | commitment ahead of time. And I make healthier decisions. The next simple tip to make healthier decisions, you can see that I might

01:07:15.100 | have a challenge personally making healthy decisions, both at a restaurant and at home is I give myself permission to do

01:07:22.480 | the unhealthy thing. But I make myself do it in five minutes. And so my wife, Amy loves to bake. Sometimes there's

01:07:29.920 | banana bread, sometimes there's cookies and all kinds of stuff. And I don't have a lot of self control. And so instead of

01:07:36.120 | saying no, which just doesn't work for me that well, I say yes, in five minutes, I find that if there's three dozen

01:07:41.880 | cookies sitting on the counter, and I say, Hey, I can have one of these, I just have to wait five minutes. In that five

01:07:47.020 | minute period, I've moved on, I've gone to do something, and I've completely forgotten about the cookie. Now, maybe I

01:07:52.740 | come back, maybe I repeat the thing, maybe I reward myself with a cookie. But it's such a benefit to me, and it's

01:07:58.960 | prevented me from binge eating a lot of cookies, which is something that I often have found myself doing in the

01:08:05.120 | past. Okay, I think we got four more in two little categories, one on security and one on decision making. And so when it

01:08:11.420 | comes to security, I've got two things, it's freeze and delete, and they both fall under the theme of

01:08:15.940 | locking down your financial information, your personal data. So first one is freeze everything. So

01:08:20.100 | freeze your credit. There's this crazy report called the work number. If you go read up on it, you can

01:08:24.660 | find it. It's wild. It has all this information about every one of your pay stubs and your salary and your

01:08:29.880 | bonus. You can freeze all of those things. So I would encourage you to go freeze your credit, freeze your

01:08:34.180 | work number report, and anything else like that. And then second, I'd encourage you to make sure that

01:08:39.000 | your personal data is not on the internet. Now I like to do this not just for me, but for my family.

01:08:43.440 | And then the second is to delete all of your personal data. And I think this is important because

01:08:47.620 | especially in a world we are in right now with AI tools, and AI agents, and the ability to listen to

01:08:53.980 | someone's voice and clone it, I want to make myself as little of a target as possible. And if you just go

01:08:59.900 | online and search for your name, and maybe the city you live in, you'd be surprised that there's probably

01:09:04.140 | multiple websites with your address, your phone number, your personal information on there. That

01:09:08.020 | information is being shared by lots of data brokers. But also if you go to the MLS or Redfin or Zillow,

01:09:14.460 | you'll see that maybe the house you purchased has 45 pictures of every single angle of inside the house.

01:09:20.440 | You can request that be removed. Most of those data brokers, you can request they take your personal

01:09:24.960 | information down. Or there are a ton of services you can use that for a really nominal amount of money,

01:09:30.940 | they will go make all those removal requests for you and update it on an ongoing basis. After I use

01:09:36.900 | delete me, I decided to partner with them on the show, you might have heard an ad for them earlier.

01:09:40.580 | They're a tool that I actually pay for for my family. And so I've been really happy working with

01:09:45.780 | them in the past, I don't know, two or three years we've been working together. It's been great to be

01:09:50.600 | able to search my name and not find my address on the internet. So I really care about security.

01:09:55.260 | I did an episode back number 78, which was basically a list of all the things you could do to protect your

01:10:00.540 | identity, your accounts, your credit, your family, everybody should be using password managers, come up with a

01:10:06.440 | safe word amongst your family so that if your parents get a call, and they're not sure if it's really you, they can

01:10:11.980 | ask about it, I might do an updated version of an episode like that in the future, just because I care so much

01:10:17.160 | about it. Finally, last two things are around decision making. And one of the most exciting

01:10:24.600 | conversations I had in the past handful of years was episode 105 with a guy named Matt Higgins, who

01:10:30.580 | wrote a book called Burn the Boats. And it really just pushed me to overcome the fear of jumping into

01:10:38.060 | something. And the idea being that there are battles that were won because soldiers decided to burn the

01:10:45.200 | boats. So they had no choice but to stay and fight. And how having a plan B sometimes holds you back, even if

01:10:51.500 | it's just in your mind. And so that was really impactful to have this burn the boats mentality. Anytime I'm

01:10:57.300 | thinking here's something I really, really want to do, how do I really help myself do it? Well, you don't have to

01:11:03.280 | actually burn any boats to make this happen. But there are tactics that you can employ to say, I'm not going to

01:11:08.920 | spend time thinking about plan B, I'm going to focus on plan A, and that might make it more successful in the

01:11:14.080 | future. And then last, when it comes to decision making, a perspective I like to have every time I

01:11:21.200 | think about what I should do is I ask myself what advice I would give my friend in this circumstance.

01:11:26.060 | And for whatever reason, it always comes to me more clearly when I think through that lens than when I

01:11:32.420 | think, what should I do? When I think, what should I do? I make a spreadsheet, I try to optimize, I think all

01:11:37.420 | these ideas. And when I think, what should I tell my friend to do? Well, maybe I'm not going to go build my own

01:11:41.740 | spreadsheet for my friend. So I give him kind of my off the cuff gut reaction to what I think they should

01:11:46.520 | do. And very often, that's probably what I should do also. And so my last takeaway from the last 200

01:11:52.440 | plus episodes that I'm going to share today is that when you're not sure what to do, when you're trying

01:11:57.200 | to figure it out, ask yourself what advice you would give to a friend. And so along that lines, I'm going

01:12:03.440 | to ask everyone listening, if there's anything you think I left off, if there's anything you think maybe I

01:12:08.660 | don't even know that you want to share, podcast at allthehacks.com is an email that I check all the

01:12:14.220 | time. I read everything that comes in. I'd love to hear if there are things you think I forgot or

01:12:18.520 | there are things you want to share. I'll try to bring them up maybe in a future episode and recap some of

01:12:23.120 | the fun ones that you all shared with me and share those with everyone else. Thank you so much for

01:12:27.500 | listening. That's it for this week. I will see you next week.

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