How to Make an Extra $3000/mo by Hacking Deals

00:00:00.000 | Today, I want to introduce you to a side hustle you might not know exists,

00:00:03.440 | but you might need.

00:00:04.560 | The secret world of finding profitable deals,

00:00:07.480 | some of which are repeatable,

00:00:09.160 | and that any one of you can use to generate thousands

00:00:12.320 | or even tens of thousands of dollars of side income all in your spare time.

00:00:16.800 | Last year, we made $36,000, along with two and a half million points,

00:00:21.040 | just from deals that we did online, spending about 10 to 15 hours per week.

00:00:25.880 | The year before, it was $32,000 and a million points.

00:00:30.080 | Hello, I'm Chris Hutchins.

00:00:31.520 | This is All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:35.120 | Today, I'm talking to Kai.

00:00:37.120 | He is an expert that runs a private Discord and podcast

00:00:40.600 | dedicated to finding these repeatable, profitable deals.

00:00:43.880 | He's not only going to share how you can do all this too,

00:00:46.200 | but also how you can make even more playing in multiplayer mode.

00:00:50.200 | If you sign up, get $100, and then you refer your spouse,

00:00:54.200 | they get $100, but you also get $100 for signing them up.

00:00:57.760 | So now it becomes $300 instead of just your $100.

00:01:01.640 | However, it could be also your cousin or your friend.

00:01:04.920 | So let's learn how to find all these deals.

00:01:06.840 | And if you enjoy what you hear, please give us a thumbs up,

00:01:09.440 | click subscribe, or leave a comment below.

00:01:13.320 | Kai, thanks for being here.

00:01:15.320 | Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Been excited to do this.

00:01:17.680 | So when I first found your content, the thing that really blew my mind

00:01:20.920 | was this fundamental shift in the idea that deals could kind of replace income.

00:01:27.840 | And so I've talked to lots of people about side hustles

00:01:30.520 | and starting businesses to make a few thousand dollars a year,

00:01:33.080 | even more than that, and grow it into a real thing.

00:01:35.920 | And I've talked to lots of people about finding the best deals.

00:01:39.760 | What you've done, and it seems so genius to me,

00:01:43.000 | is you've actually turned the deals into a side hustle

00:01:46.360 | so that you can generate income.

00:01:48.280 | And from my quick looking, to the tune of like tens of thousands of dollars a year.

00:01:53.880 | So first off, where did this idea come from?

00:01:56.200 | And can you give a little bit of overview of how you think about it?

00:01:58.520 | For sure. Yeah, it started during the...

00:02:01.240 | Well, it's been a couple of decades of doing this,

00:02:03.880 | but primarily really ramped up when my wife and I did the FIRE,

00:02:07.800 | the early retirement thing.

00:02:09.560 | And we wanted a way to kind of supplement our income

00:02:12.840 | because you're on a kind of a tighter budget when you do FIRE.

00:02:16.200 | And so profitable deals sort of just kind of...

00:02:19.960 | It's one of those things where you can tackle

00:02:21.560 | a whole plethora of things that people often don't think about.

00:02:25.960 | Credit cards, I think, are the main things people think about

00:02:28.760 | when it comes to sign up bonuses.

00:02:30.120 | But there's this whole avenue of bank bonuses,

00:02:33.240 | brokerage bonuses, meal kit that you can do

00:02:36.360 | that can really make you a lot of money.

00:02:38.360 | And that's for us, like in the last couple of years,

00:02:40.840 | I think 2023, we made somewhere around, let me see,

00:02:44.280 | like $36,000 doing these profitable deals

00:02:48.920 | and 2.5 million points.

00:02:50.600 | The year before it was $32,000 and a million points.

00:02:54.520 | So it's been slowly kind of climbing up in that sense.

00:02:57.960 | And I think we're on track to make even more this year.

00:03:00.520 | Yeah. Look, you write these great summaries each month

00:03:04.440 | and you do an episode about them on your podcast, The Daily Churn.

00:03:08.920 | And this year, I summed up 4 months in,

00:03:11.560 | you're already at $32,000 and a million points.

00:03:14.200 | So you're kind of what you did in 2022,

00:03:16.680 | you've now done in 4 months.

00:03:18.120 | So definitely looks like you're on path to eclipse

00:03:22.120 | everything you've done in a year before.

00:03:24.040 | So my question though is,

00:03:25.880 | how much time do you need to be spending per year

00:03:28.680 | to have a side hustle of these profitable deals

00:03:33.000 | that generate tens of thousands of dollars?

00:03:35.880 | Yeah. I think that's kind of the beauty of it

00:03:37.640 | is that it's really kind of a choose your own adventure thing.

00:03:41.800 | How much time you want to dedicate

00:03:43.640 | is going to be based on your priorities.

00:03:46.120 | Because there is, as you said,

00:03:47.640 | pretty much an endless stream of these deals

00:03:50.200 | ranging from massive things

00:03:51.960 | that can give you thousands of dollars

00:03:53.240 | to like really small things

00:03:54.520 | like you can get a free pack of water.

00:03:57.000 | So depending on what your goals are,

00:03:58.920 | I think it's really important to hone in on

00:04:01.480 | is it that you want to fly first class for free

00:04:03.960 | and stay at really extravagant hotels?

00:04:06.280 | Maybe that's your priority and you can focus on those.

00:04:08.840 | Or it's like, do you want to have side income

00:04:12.840 | that comes in that helps bolster your budget,

00:04:15.560 | whether you're doing fire or for other reasons?

00:04:17.640 | Or you just want to like save money on groceries.

00:04:19.560 | So it's really important to like figure out

00:04:21.560 | what it is that you actually want to get out of it

00:04:24.040 | and then focus on that

00:04:25.080 | and then spend an adequate amount of time.

00:04:27.400 | So for us, an adequate amount of time

00:04:29.560 | is like 10 to 15 hours a week

00:04:31.640 | is what we do to make $30,000 plus.

00:04:34.600 | So the sky's your limit though,

00:04:36.360 | because I also know people that spend 40, 50,

00:04:39.160 | 60 plus hours a week doing this

00:04:40.760 | and it becomes a full-time job

00:04:43.240 | where you could be making six figures

00:04:45.320 | easily doing profitable deals.

00:04:47.560 | But is that what you want to be doing?

00:04:49.320 | That's going to vary based on person.

00:04:51.400 | And for us, it's more of a side hustle

00:04:53.560 | versus a full-time job.

00:04:54.760 | And we're trying very hard to keep it that way

00:04:56.920 | because so many of these deals keep coming up

00:04:58.760 | and there's always a temptation

00:05:00.360 | to do more and more of them.

00:05:01.640 | Is there a power law in these deals

00:05:04.760 | where if you look at last year, $36,000,

00:05:08.120 | was it about slowly spending 10 hours a week

00:05:12.280 | getting through these deals?

00:05:13.480 | Or was it about making sure

00:05:14.920 | that when the two or three really big ones happen,

00:05:18.040 | that you were aware and ready to go?

00:05:19.600 | - Definitely a little bit of both

00:05:22.600 | because I think 80/20 rule definitely applies here

00:05:25.800 | where doing just 20% of the top deals

00:05:28.680 | is going to yield 80% of the income

00:05:30.920 | that you're going to get that year.

00:05:32.200 | But at the same time,

00:05:33.720 | if one of your priorities is like,

00:05:35.880 | "I want to cut my grocery bill down by 90%,"

00:05:38.280 | and that's one of your goals,

00:05:40.600 | then doing something like meal kits

00:05:42.840 | could be a good thing to pursue.

00:05:44.520 | Even though it's not the most profitable thing,

00:05:46.680 | it meets the goal of like,

00:05:47.880 | "Well, I only spend $100 total in a month on food now

00:05:51.960 | thanks to one of these things."

00:05:53.240 | So it can really vary.

00:05:54.840 | - And can you maybe give an example

00:05:57.720 | of just one or two things

00:05:59.560 | to kind of wet the palate of someone listening?

00:06:01.400 | We don't have to go into all the details,

00:06:03.320 | but just so people get a sense

00:06:04.600 | of what some of these deals are.

00:06:06.280 | Because before we started talking and recording today,

00:06:10.040 | we talked about how to even describe

00:06:12.200 | the kind of bucket of things you do.

00:06:14.440 | We came up with this term "profitable deals"

00:06:16.600 | because that was the closest thing we could have,

00:06:18.440 | but there isn't a perfect descriptor.

00:06:19.960 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:06:21.640 | It's so diverse.

00:06:22.920 | I think people may think of credit card bonuses.

00:06:25.640 | That's the first one that comes to mind.

00:06:27.000 | And I think credit card bonuses are very lucrative.

00:06:29.320 | And I think even on your show,

00:06:30.920 | you've extensively covered the points and miles game.

00:06:34.280 | But an aspect that people often don't think about

00:06:36.600 | that's also very profitable are bank signup bonuses

00:06:39.720 | and brokerage signup bonuses.

00:06:41.880 | Those can yield a lot of just straight cash,

00:06:45.080 | liquid cash that you can use

00:06:46.920 | as like a buffer for your finances.

00:06:49.080 | But then there's also like a plethora

00:06:50.440 | of other little things.

00:06:51.320 | Saving money on cell phones.

00:06:53.880 | I mentioned meal kits.

00:06:55.000 | You can find ways to try and generate spend

00:06:58.760 | for your credit cards

00:07:00.040 | so that if you're someone that's not spending

00:07:02.520 | a million dollars a year on your credit cards,

00:07:04.920 | you can still meet a lot of these signup bonuses

00:07:07.400 | and get a lot of points and cash that way.

00:07:09.640 | There's just so many things.

00:07:11.640 | There's buying groups you can participate in,

00:07:13.640 | reselling gift cards.

00:07:14.760 | It's hard, I think, to pin it down.

00:07:19.000 | So I think profitable deals is a good descriptor for it.

00:07:22.280 | And I think it will be good for us

00:07:24.840 | to go into some of the more specific ones

00:07:26.760 | if you feel like people will be curious.

00:07:28.120 | Yeah, let's jump through some of these categories

00:07:30.760 | and give people a good understanding

00:07:32.600 | of what kinds of deals are out there

00:07:34.200 | so they can figure out what might fit their profile.

00:07:36.440 | And I think starting with banks makes sense.

00:07:38.280 | We were just talking about it.

00:07:40.360 | The society we live in is like,

00:07:41.720 | these companies always want to attract new customers.

00:07:44.280 | Capitalism, consumerism,

00:07:46.520 | they're always looking for new people

00:07:47.800 | to join their bank or institution.

00:07:50.440 | And so they offer lucrative signup bonuses

00:07:52.680 | for you to sign up and deposit money with them.

00:07:55.800 | And so like in the past,

00:07:57.080 | I've done ones where Wells Fargo was offering $2,500

00:08:01.160 | to move over to Wells Fargo.

00:08:02.680 | Right now, Bank of America is offering $1,000

00:08:06.600 | if you deposit $30,000 with them

00:08:08.920 | and you leave it there for 60 days.

00:08:11.240 | So just by leaving your money with these banks,

00:08:13.880 | they can give you really massive cash bonuses

00:08:17.000 | paid out in a few months.

00:08:18.760 | And that's really the essence of bank bonuses

00:08:20.760 | is like, do you value getting cash

00:08:23.160 | versus some other things you can spend your time on,

00:08:26.280 | you know, like doing credit card bonuses

00:08:27.880 | where you get miles and points?

00:08:29.400 | Yeah. So I just heard, I'm thinking $1,000

00:08:31.960 | on $30,000 in 60 days is like 20% interest.

00:08:36.680 | So like...

00:08:37.160 | Exactly. Exactly.

00:08:38.600 | That's better than anything you can get.

00:08:40.120 | I mean, it's like 5% right now in a CD

00:08:42.840 | or high yield savings account.

00:08:44.360 | 20% is about as good as it gets.

00:08:47.240 | And with a lot of these bank bonuses,

00:08:48.760 | I see them all the time.

00:08:49.560 | I get a letter from Chase that says,

00:08:51.400 | you know, open up the checking and savings

00:08:53.480 | and combined, you're going to get $900.

00:08:56.600 | The Wells Fargo one right now,

00:08:59.560 | I think there is a Wells Fargo $2,500 one right now still.

00:09:02.920 | What are the requirements here?

00:09:06.440 | Yeah, it varies based on bank bonuses.

00:09:10.200 | Usually it requires you opening a new account with the bank

00:09:13.080 | and not already having an existing account of that type.

00:09:16.440 | But the way to get around that

00:09:17.800 | is once you do one of these bank bonuses,

00:09:20.120 | typically within a year,

00:09:21.400 | you want to try and cancel that bank bonus

00:09:23.560 | so that you can do it again a couple years later.

00:09:25.560 | These are very repeatable deals.

00:09:27.640 | A question I often get is like,

00:09:29.000 | "Aren't you just going to run out of banks?"

00:09:31.480 | And the answer is no,

00:09:32.600 | because first off, there's a lot of banks in the US.

00:09:35.080 | But two, you can keep doing these.

00:09:37.240 | They have a limitation and it varies again by bank.

00:09:39.640 | But typically within 12 months to 24 months,

00:09:42.120 | you can do the same bonus again

00:09:43.880 | if you close the old account.

00:09:45.240 | Yeah. And unlike credit cards

00:09:48.280 | where you have a credit score

00:09:49.720 | and banks, one, every time you apply for a credit card,

00:09:51.960 | they're adding an inquiry to your credit.

00:09:54.280 | Every time you're opening an account,

00:09:55.560 | they're checking your credit to see,

00:09:56.920 | "Oh, how many cards do you have open?"

00:09:58.920 | Do any of those things apply here

00:10:01.080 | when it comes to opening up a new bank account?

00:10:03.160 | Yeah. So banks also have a checks system,

00:10:06.440 | which is like credit scores for banks.

00:10:08.600 | Most banks are pretty lenient with your checks record,

00:10:13.320 | especially with the more fintech-y app banks

00:10:15.960 | that you see nowadays.

00:10:17.240 | They don't check your checks score at all.

00:10:19.560 | But the more traditional banks,

00:10:20.680 | like a Bank of America or like a Chase,

00:10:22.920 | they will pull it.

00:10:24.200 | For the most part,

00:10:25.080 | unless you're opening 20-plus bank accounts

00:10:27.960 | in the period of a year,

00:10:28.920 | my success rate is very high.

00:10:31.960 | I rarely get denied.

00:10:33.320 | And I have been opening 20-plus bank accounts in a year.

00:10:36.840 | Okay. So I'm looking at a Doctor of Credit post right now.

00:10:40.200 | It's best bank account bonuses for May 2024.

00:10:42.840 | The list goes down.

00:10:45.080 | There's easily over 150 banks with bonuses.

00:10:49.320 | And all the way at the bottom,

00:10:50.280 | you're down to $100, $400.

00:10:52.440 | What would you say on average?

00:10:54.680 | You said you've opened about 20.

00:10:56.040 | What's the average return for opening a new bank account?

00:10:59.160 | And what would you say is the average requirements to do it?

00:11:02.040 | Yeah. So I think it kind of depends

00:11:05.960 | on how much effort you're willing to put in,

00:11:08.440 | because there's a lot of really easy ones.

00:11:10.360 | Like you mentioned at the bottom of the list, $100 ones.

00:11:12.840 | Sometimes those can be really lucrative

00:11:14.760 | because it's an app bank

00:11:16.840 | that takes two minutes to open on your phone

00:11:19.400 | and you get $100 with very minimal requirements.

00:11:22.440 | And that could just make sense

00:11:24.360 | from just the time value of money standpoint.

00:11:26.680 | But the bigger ones, typically,

00:11:29.080 | I try and shoot for ones that are in the 500-plus range

00:11:33.080 | because those are the ones coming from the big banks,

00:11:35.560 | like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, et cetera.

00:11:38.120 | And those ones are going to require you to deposit

00:11:40.760 | anywhere from like $5,000 to $30,000

00:11:44.360 | in order to get that bonus.

00:11:46.120 | And what about moving over your paycheck?

00:11:48.200 | I remember when I was helping our au pair

00:11:50.200 | open an account at Chase,

00:11:51.480 | part of the bonus required

00:11:52.840 | that you got a regular direct deposit.

00:11:54.520 | Yeah, exactly.

00:11:55.880 | So it definitely helps if you have an employer

00:11:57.640 | that lets you change direct deposit options easily.

00:12:00.280 | But even if you don't, there are workarounds for that

00:12:03.080 | because when they say direct deposit in the requirements,

00:12:05.560 | they prefer it to be employer direct deposit.

00:12:08.680 | And a couple of banks are pretty strict about that.

00:12:10.600 | But for the most part,

00:12:12.120 | any kind of like ACH direct deposit

00:12:14.760 | from another of your bank accounts

00:12:16.680 | will trigger a lot of these bank bonuses.

00:12:18.840 | But it can vary.

00:12:19.880 | And so that's where a doctor for credit

00:12:21.320 | is really kind of like the Bible for this stuff

00:12:23.640 | because people post their comments.

00:12:25.080 | And in the comments, they're going to be like,

00:12:26.600 | "Oh, you know, I just moved over money

00:12:28.440 | from my Chase account to my Ally account

00:12:30.600 | and I got the bonus."

00:12:32.040 | Whereas someone else might've been like,

00:12:33.560 | "No, this bank really required

00:12:35.480 | an employer direct deposit payroll to come through."

00:12:38.440 | And that's kind of your filter for it.

00:12:40.040 | I'm just doing the quick math.

00:12:41.240 | You said, you shoot for things that are over $500.

00:12:43.800 | You did about 20 of them.

00:12:45.160 | That's about $10,000.

00:12:46.280 | And it lines up a little bit right now.

00:12:49.240 | I'm looking 2023 at your total.

00:12:51.080 | It was about $7,500 between you and your player too.

00:12:54.920 | So this seems pretty lucrative.

00:12:57.480 | This is a great, great option.

00:12:58.920 | And opening these accounts doesn't take that much time.

00:13:02.360 | I will just mention the one cost

00:13:05.160 | is depending on where your money is.

00:13:09.160 | And I don't know if you factor this into your tracker.

00:13:12.360 | If you were earning 5% and you dedicate $30,000

00:13:16.280 | to moving into different bank accounts for bonuses,

00:13:18.840 | you're not earning that 5% anymore.

00:13:21.560 | So there is a little bit of cost

00:13:24.360 | of whatever interest you would have

00:13:25.880 | otherwise earned on that account.

00:13:27.640 | But like you pointed out,

00:13:29.240 | if you're earning 20% APY equivalent with these bonuses,

00:13:34.200 | it's totally worth it.

00:13:35.560 | Exactly.

00:13:36.120 | And I think it's this transition to this thinking of money

00:13:40.200 | in terms of keeping it static in one place

00:13:42.680 | where it's earning interest

00:13:44.040 | or thinking of the monetary gains

00:13:46.760 | from the velocity of money moving to different places.

00:13:49.800 | So if you keep that money moving

00:13:51.400 | and you keep tackling bank bonuses,

00:13:53.400 | you're gonna get much higher yields

00:13:56.040 | at the cost of time on your part.

00:13:58.440 | How much time do you wanna spend

00:13:59.720 | versus just leaving it parked at Wealthfront for 5.5%.

00:14:03.880 | Yeah.

00:14:04.360 | So I'll link to the Doctor of Credit post.

00:14:06.760 | There's a website called Bank Bonus

00:14:08.760 | that I know the guy who started

00:14:10.920 | and he set up a page, allthehacks.com/bankbonus

00:14:13.800 | that lists out a bunch of them.

00:14:15.320 | If you use those links, it supports us.

00:14:17.160 | So if there's anything there that's as good as other deals,

00:14:20.200 | by all means, we'd love you to use them.

00:14:21.800 | If there's not, go to the Doctor of Credit post,

00:14:24.600 | go deep in the forums.

00:14:25.800 | I want everyone to get the best deal,

00:14:27.240 | but I'll just share that.

00:14:28.600 | They do allow you to sort.

00:14:29.960 | And sometimes, which is really interesting,

00:14:32.200 | sometimes they've managed to negotiate exclusive bonuses

00:14:35.400 | just for their site that you won't find in other places.

00:14:38.200 | And I won't get to the nuance of how they do that,

00:14:40.440 | but it's pretty interesting.

00:14:41.720 | So that's banks.

00:14:43.880 | What about brokerages?

00:14:45.000 | I look at last year and your brokerage total was $23,000.

00:14:49.160 | Yeah.

00:14:50.520 | So brokerages last year was particularly good

00:14:53.000 | for a separate reason,

00:14:54.280 | which I think we'll get to as well,

00:14:55.640 | which is referrals.

00:14:57.240 | And I had a lot of brokerage referrals

00:14:59.160 | because one of the brokerages

00:15:00.440 | was offering some crazy referral bonuses.

00:15:02.840 | But even outside of the referral aspect,

00:15:05.480 | I think it was about 10 grand from brokerages.

00:15:08.200 | And in my opinion,

00:15:10.280 | I think brokerages are like the sleeper profitable deals

00:15:13.000 | that everyone should be doing,

00:15:14.600 | even above like credit cards and banks.

00:15:16.440 | Because with brokerages,

00:15:17.480 | they pay you bonuses to transfer your stocks

00:15:21.240 | over to their brokerage.

00:15:23.240 | And the stocks, when you're not selling these,

00:15:25.640 | they literally move the stocks over.

00:15:27.400 | So your stocks are still invested in the market,

00:15:29.960 | but then the brokerage pays you a cash bonus on top of that.

00:15:33.560 | So you can think of that as just an additional yield

00:15:36.440 | on your market returns,

00:15:37.560 | which anyone giving you a free percent point or two

00:15:40.600 | on your market returns.

00:15:41.560 | I mean, that's a no-brainer, right?

00:15:43.640 | Yeah.

00:15:43.960 | Right now, the current bonus that Robinhood is offering

00:15:47.640 | is 1%.

00:15:48.040 | Unlimited, no cap, anything you transfer over.

00:15:51.800 | And I've moved some brokerage positions

00:15:55.880 | around different institutions,

00:15:57.720 | not actually for the bonuses.

00:15:59.240 | I've moved them in the past to qualify

00:16:01.160 | for lower mortgage rates or just to consolidate.

00:16:03.480 | But I'm looking at this and I'm like,

00:16:05.480 | "Wow, my expectation for what I'll return from the market

00:16:09.320 | in a given year is probably about 6%, 7%."

00:16:13.640 | Obviously, we've had better runs,

00:16:15.000 | but 1% would be a massive boost.

00:16:18.280 | And you probably know better than I do,

00:16:20.040 | you do have to keep your positions there longer

00:16:22.600 | than about 60 days, right?

00:16:24.440 | Exactly.

00:16:25.000 | They typically require anywhere from six months

00:16:27.720 | to two years.

00:16:29.320 | I think the most recent Robinhood 3% bonus

00:16:32.440 | on your retirement funds required a five-year lockup.

00:16:36.120 | So holding your retirement funds at Robinhood for five years,

00:16:39.400 | but in return, they would give you 3% free

00:16:43.320 | immediately after you transfer.

00:16:45.000 | So if you're someone who moved over $500,000

00:16:47.960 | to Robinhood from your traditional IRA,

00:16:51.560 | that's $15,000 that Robinhood gave you immediately

00:16:54.760 | just for doing that.

00:16:55.640 | And it took literally two, three minutes

00:16:57.640 | for us to move all of our retirement funds over.

00:17:00.280 | I think the thing with Robinhood is people have mixed opinions,

00:17:03.000 | obviously, with Robinhood.

00:17:04.120 | And I think that's probably the main reason

00:17:06.920 | that some people haven't done it.

00:17:08.680 | But from a pure profit perspective,

00:17:11.400 | it's such an easy deal.

00:17:13.720 | And it was so lucrative.

00:17:14.920 | Sadly, the 3% is gone,

00:17:16.600 | but they are now still offering 1% on brokerage transfers,

00:17:20.280 | as well as traditional IRA, any retirement funds, really.

00:17:24.040 | Yeah.

00:17:24.360 | And I'm looking right now and I hate to bring up deals

00:17:26.600 | that'll probably not be around when we publish this.

00:17:28.840 | But just to give people an example,

00:17:30.280 | the brokerage platform Webull right now,

00:17:33.160 | for the next one day and 15 hours,

00:17:35.320 | unless they extend it again,

00:17:36.600 | is offering you 3.5% on all transfers of retirement accounts.

00:17:41.800 | So Webull and Robinhood have been going

00:17:43.400 | head-to-head with their promotions.

00:17:45.080 | And that's the beauty of all of these deals, really,

00:17:47.720 | is that these companies try and outdo each other.

00:17:49.880 | And this is why things have been escalating over the years.

00:17:52.040 | But Webull, their one is better than Robinhood.

00:17:55.000 | The downside is they were paying that 3.5% out

00:17:58.360 | over the course of five years,

00:18:00.200 | whereas Robinhood was paying that out immediately.

00:18:03.160 | Yeah. And then clawing it back in the form of

00:18:06.200 | if you tried to withdraw more money,

00:18:07.960 | they would claw it back.

00:18:08.920 | Yeah. But this isn't limited just to fintech banks, right?

00:18:13.480 | I can imagine some people listening or thinking,

00:18:15.960 | "Webull, it's not a public company,

00:18:18.280 | not a longstanding company.

00:18:19.400 | I'm not sure I really trust them

00:18:20.600 | with all my retirement savings."

00:18:22.520 | But even like Schwab City, E-Trade, Tasty Trade,

00:18:27.560 | all also have brokerage bonuses.

00:18:29.560 | And so have you seen good brokerage bonuses

00:18:31.880 | outside of the fintechs as well?

00:18:33.560 | Yeah. So it depends on how you define good.

00:18:36.440 | I mean, free money is always good.

00:18:38.120 | And they're always offering some amount of free money.

00:18:40.280 | And so the issue with them is like the major institutions,

00:18:44.200 | they'll give you a nice juicy bonus

00:18:46.200 | for moving over like $5,000 or $10,000.

00:18:48.920 | They'll give you like $100, $200.

00:18:50.680 | That's a good return on that 10 grand.

00:18:52.840 | But once you scale up to higher amounts

00:18:55.000 | that you can transfer over like a million dollars,

00:18:57.880 | it starts to not look as great.

00:19:00.440 | They'll give you $1,000 or $2,000 for moving over a million.

00:19:04.600 | And that's not nearly as good

00:19:06.120 | as a percentage-based one like Robinhood.

00:19:08.600 | However, I think these institutions

00:19:10.760 | are a bit more trusted.

00:19:11.640 | And I've also heard that if you call in sometimes

00:19:14.280 | and you're saying that I will be willing

00:19:15.960 | to move over a million dollars,

00:19:17.960 | they will often extend you an offer

00:19:20.120 | that isn't publicly available

00:19:21.720 | because now you're sort of in their

00:19:23.640 | private premium client user base.

00:19:25.640 | Yeah, that's super interesting.

00:19:27.800 | Where would you go online to find people's reports of that

00:19:31.000 | to kind of get some ideas?

00:19:31.960 | Is there a doctor of credit comment forum similar?

00:19:35.400 | I think doctor of credit definitely.

00:19:37.320 | Plus, Boggleheads often has discussions around brokerages

00:19:41.480 | and people with high net worth will sometimes comment

00:19:43.720 | being like, "I got offered a better one over the phone."

00:19:46.440 | They're not really publicly displayed.

00:19:48.760 | Some of the more public "private client" ones

00:19:51.480 | are ones that you can find online like with Chase.

00:19:53.560 | They have a private client program.

00:19:55.480 | I think that gives you up to $3,500

00:19:58.440 | if you move over like a million dollars.

00:20:00.520 | So definitely in the high net worth kind of a category.

00:20:03.960 | Yeah, I'm looking at the tasty trade bonus right now.

00:20:06.920 | And at $100,000 moved over, you're gonna get $2,000.

00:20:11.080 | So it's still a 2% return.

00:20:13.080 | It basically looks like it's about 2%

00:20:15.160 | up until that threshold.

00:20:16.680 | And then it scales back down to half a percent.

00:20:20.280 | But I don't think you have to leave things there

00:20:22.360 | for 2 years like you did for the Robinhood deal, right?

00:20:25.800 | So is it important to also compare the time horizon?

00:20:29.480 | Robinhood might give you 1%.

00:20:30.600 | Someone else might give you half a percent,

00:20:33.240 | but in a shorter period of time.

00:20:34.600 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:36.120 | And I think that, again,

00:20:37.160 | comes down to sort of just like where you fall

00:20:40.040 | in how hard you want to go with these things.

00:20:42.520 | Like one of the attractive parts

00:20:43.880 | about leaving your money with Robinhood for 5 years

00:20:46.040 | is you don't have to tackle any other brokerage bonuses

00:20:48.200 | for 5 years.

00:20:48.920 | They pay it up immediately

00:20:50.280 | and you don't have to worry about it.

00:20:52.200 | Whereas if you're someone who wants to maximize things,

00:20:55.320 | yeah, it's gonna be more profitable

00:20:56.680 | to move over every 6 months, every year

00:20:59.400 | to a different brokerage and get another bonus.

00:21:01.560 | And you may, over the course of 5 years,

00:21:03.400 | end up making more than what Robinhood's 3%

00:21:06.360 | was gonna pay you.

00:21:07.400 | But that requires you to do that work

00:21:09.640 | and that takes time and energy.

00:21:11.560 | And maybe that's for you and maybe it isn't.

00:21:14.120 | Yeah. I'm looking right now at this tasty trade one.

00:21:16.920 | If you could find 5 brokerages

00:21:18.840 | that would offer you $2,000 to transfer over $100,000,

00:21:22.760 | over 5 years, you'd make $10,000.

00:21:25.800 | Whereas in Robinhood, you might only make $3,500.

00:21:28.840 | But you don't have to think about it.

00:21:31.160 | Exactly. Exactly.

00:21:32.600 | And yeah, everything just comes down

00:21:34.040 | to how much effort you want to put in

00:21:35.400 | because there's literally an endless supply

00:21:37.640 | of these profitable deals.

00:21:39.080 | And so it's so important going in

00:21:40.680 | to figure out what are my goals here?

00:21:42.600 | How much money do I need to make from this

00:21:45.720 | for me to feel good about it as a side hustle

00:21:48.520 | or for me to book this vacation that I want to do

00:21:50.920 | or whatever your scenario is.

00:21:53.080 | Yeah. I love it.

00:21:53.960 | So okay. So if you have money,

00:21:56.120 | obviously one of the challenges here

00:21:57.480 | is if you don't have a huge portfolio of stocks,

00:22:00.200 | it's really hard to take advantage

00:22:01.320 | of these brokerage bonuses.

00:22:02.600 | On the bank bonus side, for the most part,

00:22:05.240 | you mentioned some up to $30,000

00:22:07.080 | but there are plenty of bank bonuses under there.

00:22:10.200 | Let's move out of the deposit accounts,

00:22:12.680 | banks and brokerages and talk about

00:22:14.280 | other profitable deals you can find.

00:22:16.760 | And I think a fun one is talking about meal kits.

00:22:19.160 | Yeah. Meal kits.

00:22:21.080 | I stumbled into this during the pandemic, basically,

00:22:25.560 | because we're all getting our food delivered.

00:22:27.320 | And it turns out there's a lot of meal kit companies.

00:22:30.760 | And these meal kit companies are fighting really hard

00:22:33.480 | for you to use their meal kit service.

00:22:36.040 | And for you to do that,

00:22:37.800 | they're trying to attract you

00:22:38.680 | with these promotions of,

00:22:40.360 | "Hey, come join us and we'll give you the first box free

00:22:43.880 | and a discount on later boxes."

00:22:46.200 | I think the mistake people make with meal kits is that,

00:22:49.160 | because I think at this point,

00:22:50.120 | we've pretty much all tried a meal kit.

00:22:52.280 | But the mistake is that you keep the meal kit

00:22:55.080 | past the first box.

00:22:56.920 | And what I mean by that is the first box discount

00:22:59.640 | is usually the box that you're going to get for free.

00:23:02.600 | All the other discounts,

00:23:04.120 | sometimes you'll see blue apron,

00:23:05.480 | here's $200 off the next eight boxes.

00:23:08.440 | The discount keeps scaling down and down

00:23:10.680 | as these boxes progress.

00:23:12.120 | The first box though, is typically free.

00:23:14.360 | And so you want to just join for the first box

00:23:16.600 | and then cancel.

00:23:17.640 | And then once you cancel,

00:23:18.840 | they start sending you mailers being like,

00:23:21.240 | "Hey, come back."

00:23:22.440 | And the mailers are often also quite lucrative.

00:23:25.080 | So it's this cycle where you need to do the first box,

00:23:27.720 | cancel and just repeat that

00:23:29.320 | and keep doing the signup offers

00:23:30.680 | that they keep sending you

00:23:31.960 | and spread that across different meal kits.

00:23:33.960 | And next thing you know,

00:23:35.160 | you could just live off of meal kits entirely,

00:23:37.800 | which is what we did.

00:23:38.680 | I think we did over a thousand meal kit meals

00:23:41.160 | over the course of like three years during COVID.

00:23:44.600 | And paid about how much of them?

00:23:46.200 | I think typically,

00:23:47.560 | sometimes they'll charge you a shipping fee of like $10,

00:23:50.280 | but sometimes they even waive that.

00:23:52.280 | So for the most part,

00:23:53.640 | they were free or $10 per box.

00:23:56.600 | Wow.

00:23:57.720 | Okay, so you've saved a ton of money on groceries.

00:24:00.280 | Any favorites in the meal kit camp?

00:24:02.040 | Absolutely.

00:24:03.640 | We've tried pretty much all of them

00:24:05.240 | under the sun at this point.

00:24:06.280 | HelloFresh.

00:24:07.400 | I think has the best offers to taste ratio.

00:24:10.760 | They have pretty decent like meals that you can pick

00:24:14.040 | and their offers are really good.

00:24:15.320 | Their comeback offers are particularly good.

00:24:17.480 | Green Chef as well.

00:24:19.000 | I think they're owned by the same company.

00:24:20.600 | If you like more vegan food,

00:24:22.120 | Green Chef has amazing meals.

00:24:24.120 | They're a little pricier than HelloFresh,

00:24:26.360 | but it doesn't really matter if your first box is free.

00:24:29.320 | And then the most recent one

00:24:31.160 | that we've kind of stumbled on is Marley Spoon,

00:24:34.040 | which is I believe being sponsored by Martha Stewart.

00:24:37.720 | The meals are really, really good.

00:24:39.800 | It's like equivalent to going to a farmer's market

00:24:42.040 | and buying a box of food,

00:24:44.200 | like box of like potatoes

00:24:45.480 | and all of this like fresh ingredients

00:24:47.240 | that comes in the box.

00:24:48.200 | They're not even individually packaged.

00:24:49.960 | It's literally just a box of like vegetables and meat.

00:24:53.320 | And then you cook the recipes

00:24:54.440 | and they're like Martha Stewart quality.

00:24:55.880 | You know, they're really good.

00:24:57.160 | I love it.

00:24:57.640 | Yeah, so I'm one of the people

00:24:59.160 | who did not do the proposed path you chose.

00:25:02.760 | We signed up for Green Chef

00:25:04.040 | and we've just been paying full price each week.

00:25:07.000 | Now I will say it's so easy

00:25:09.000 | that each week three of our meals come in the mail.

00:25:11.240 | We never have to think about it.

00:25:12.440 | Some weeks we don't even pick the meals

00:25:14.840 | and like their default selection has been good

00:25:17.320 | for people who've listened for a while.

00:25:18.680 | You know, we partnered with Green Chef for a while.

00:25:20.760 | We still to this day get a Green Chef box each week.

00:25:25.640 | But what we're not doing well is trying other things out,

00:25:28.920 | you know, and seeing what kinds of better deals we can get.

00:25:32.520 | So what I'm going to do,

00:25:33.400 | I'm going to get you to share whatever the best deals are

00:25:36.600 | out there right now for new customers.

00:25:38.680 | And I'll just find a link for each of those

00:25:40.520 | and put them in the show notes

00:25:41.800 | so people can go and get started.

00:25:43.560 | And then it's on you guys to do the retention offers

00:25:46.200 | and kind of cancel and wait and see what they mail you.

00:25:48.360 | So I love that you've cooked a thousand meals

00:25:52.360 | for what I'm going to say is probably pennies per meal.

00:25:55.080 | Yeah, it's like sometimes I read the lean fire forums

00:25:59.320 | where people make fun of lean fire,

00:26:01.560 | like, you know, retiring early with a limited budget

00:26:03.880 | because you're like, you're going to just be eating

00:26:05.800 | rice and beans and all this stuff.

00:26:07.080 | And I'm like, yeah, that's true.

00:26:08.680 | If you haven't discovered deals,

00:26:11.080 | you know, you could be traveling extravagantly.

00:26:13.160 | You can be eating meals that as good as restaurant quality.

00:26:15.960 | You just have to cook them yourself

00:26:17.560 | for less than a dollar per meal.

00:26:19.320 | So there's just so many hacks that you can do

00:26:21.400 | to kind of supplement your income that way.

00:26:23.560 | Love it.

00:26:24.120 | What about cell phones?

00:26:25.160 | Yeah, cell phones.

00:26:27.000 | Cell phones is an interesting one

00:26:28.280 | because I feel like a lot of us

00:26:30.040 | have this weird preference for like Verizon,

00:26:33.240 | AT&T is like the big carriers

00:26:35.880 | and they've really sold us on the idea

00:26:37.480 | that like it's worth paying $150 or $200

00:26:41.240 | for two people per month on one of these carriers.

00:26:43.480 | And we were those people.

00:26:44.280 | We were paying almost $200 a month on Verizon

00:26:47.080 | because we'd grandfathered

00:26:48.200 | into their like unlimited data plan

00:26:50.280 | and I didn't want to get rid of it.

00:26:51.480 | Cause I'm like, what if I needed unlimited 5G data,

00:26:54.280 | which I never did.

00:26:55.720 | And eventually we were like, you know,

00:26:57.960 | let's try some of these smaller carriers,

00:26:59.960 | these MVNOs, you know,

00:27:01.320 | these sub-carriers to the big carriers

00:27:03.080 | like Mint and Visible.

00:27:05.240 | And they have amazing deals,

00:27:07.240 | particularly during Black Friday

00:27:08.840 | where you can get cell phone service

00:27:11.160 | for as low as like $10 a person.

00:27:14.280 | And you also get deals on the cell phones themselves.

00:27:17.800 | So with these cell phone deals,

00:27:19.400 | it's kind of twofold.

00:27:20.600 | Like, are you looking to get a brand new iPhone 15 Pro

00:27:24.680 | for basically free?

00:27:26.040 | Like you just want to upgrade your phone

00:27:27.720 | or do you want to save money on your cell phone plan?

00:27:30.600 | Like literally save thousands of dollars a year

00:27:32.600 | on your cell phone plan.

00:27:33.640 | You can do both or either.

00:27:35.160 | And the kind of deal you tackle

00:27:36.600 | depends on what's your priority there.

00:27:38.600 | Yeah. So for anyone not familiar,

00:27:41.480 | so one, I did an episode 138 on cell phone plans.

00:27:44.280 | I went pretty deep on some kind of some nerdy stuff,

00:27:46.920 | but also how a lot of this works.

00:27:48.680 | And all these MVNOs are just the same carrier, right?

00:27:51.160 | So if you're on Mint Mobile,

00:27:52.280 | you're just using T-Mobile's network.

00:27:53.560 | If you're on Visible, you're using Verizon's network.

00:27:55.960 | There's some nuance to how you're,

00:27:57.800 | you might not have the same priority

00:27:59.640 | if you're kind of at a major sporting event

00:28:01.800 | or concert or something like that.

00:28:03.480 | But for the most part, it's pretty comparable.

00:28:07.000 | What are some of the requirements here

00:28:10.120 | that people should be thinking about?

00:28:11.480 | Is it wait till November?

00:28:13.320 | Can you do this throughout the year?

00:28:15.480 | Are there, you know,

00:28:16.120 | what if you need a cell phone right now

00:28:17.560 | and you're under contract?

00:28:18.680 | What are some of the options?

00:28:19.640 | Yeah. So Black Friday definitely

00:28:22.920 | is gonna be the best time for you to

00:28:25.720 | either buy a new cell phone or switch cell phone plans.

00:28:29.160 | You can do it at other times during the year.

00:28:31.000 | You can also time it with when a new iPhone is released.

00:28:34.040 | Typically, everyone does sales

00:28:35.800 | when a new iPhone is released.

00:28:37.240 | But that also typically lines up with Black Friday

00:28:39.400 | 'cause Apple usually does iPhone releases in September.

00:28:42.600 | So I would wait would be my advice there.

00:28:46.920 | You can do some deals where like,

00:28:50.280 | for example, Costco used to have a T-Mobile stand

00:28:54.040 | where you could get $800 back

00:28:57.000 | if you buy an iPhone and sign up

00:28:59.560 | at the Costco stand with T-Mobile.

00:29:01.400 | And T-Mobile doesn't have any contracts.

00:29:03.720 | So you could just sign up, buy the iPhone,

00:29:06.440 | get $800 back from T-Mobile,

00:29:08.360 | which takes two, three months.

00:29:09.560 | You're paying two, three months of T-Mobile.

00:29:11.400 | And then you just cancel T-Mobile

00:29:12.760 | and move to whichever carrier you want.

00:29:14.600 | And they've basically given you $800 for free.

00:29:17.960 | If cell phone service is the cheaper thing,

00:29:20.760 | then Mint, I think they do a buy three months,

00:29:24.360 | get three months free around Black Friday.

00:29:26.600 | But even without that, if you pay for a year,

00:29:28.760 | I think it is like $10 per line for five gigabytes of data,

00:29:33.000 | $15 per line, I think for 15 gigabytes of data.

00:29:36.120 | So that's the difference too,

00:29:37.640 | is that it's not like the shift is away

00:29:40.840 | from "unlimited data" with Verizon.

00:29:44.680 | But if you just examine your cell phone bill,

00:29:46.600 | I think it's going to be pretty surprising

00:29:48.760 | how little data you actually use

00:29:50.600 | compared to how much you think you might need

00:29:52.360 | from an unlimited plan.

00:29:53.720 | So just gearing towards a data allotment

00:29:56.280 | that makes sense for you and your family,

00:29:57.800 | I think is a better approach than paying $100

00:30:01.080 | for an unlimited plan

00:30:02.200 | that you're not really fully maximizing anyway.

00:30:04.920 | And as someone who had one of those overpriced,

00:30:07.480 | kind of big carrier unlimited plans,

00:30:09.320 | where are you now in terms of which carrier?

00:30:12.600 | And what are you seeing?

00:30:14.200 | Are you noticing any difference in quality?

00:30:16.840 | - Yeah, so we're with Mint.

00:30:19.080 | I love Mint, by the way, because it's so cheap

00:30:21.400 | and it's part of T-Mobile

00:30:22.680 | and T-Mobile in our area works quite well.

00:30:25.160 | The only complaints really,

00:30:26.440 | I think you mentioned this earlier with MVMNOs,

00:30:28.520 | is if you're in a big city with a lot of congestion

00:30:30.920 | or you're going to these events,

00:30:32.440 | that's when you have lower data priority

00:30:34.200 | and it kind of affects how quickly

00:30:36.200 | you can pull up websites.

00:30:37.880 | But outside of that, it really has made

00:30:41.320 | no noticeable impact on my life to be on Mint

00:30:44.360 | versus being on a premium Verizon plan.

00:30:46.680 | - I love it.

00:30:47.640 | Yeah, I mean, we switched some lines to Mint

00:30:52.200 | and some lines to T-Mobile.

00:30:53.880 | And it's been fantastic.

00:30:55.560 | T-Mobile, I would say has the better

00:30:57.800 | bring a line over and get a cheap phone.

00:31:00.680 | And Mint has the better pricing.

00:31:02.360 | And so we partnered with Mint on the show.

00:31:04.680 | So if you're going to switch to Mint,

00:31:06.200 | allthehacks.com/mintmobile.

00:31:07.800 | Are there any requirements for some of these carriers

00:31:10.760 | that have these great deals to get new phones

00:31:13.240 | that might be relevant,

00:31:15.000 | things people need to do in advance?

00:31:16.440 | - Yeah, often they will require you to port over a number

00:31:21.000 | from a "real carrier".

00:31:23.080 | They don't want to see you port over a number

00:31:25.640 | from like Google Voice.

00:31:27.160 | But a real carrier where you're paying a monthly bill,

00:31:29.800 | if you port a number over,

00:31:31.480 | that's how you're eligible for some of the free phone deals,

00:31:34.040 | like on Visible, for example.

00:31:35.480 | But it's pretty easy to just get a free number

00:31:38.680 | if you don't want to move over your main line.

00:31:41.080 | If your goal is just to get an iPhone

00:31:42.760 | and you're pretty happy with,

00:31:44.040 | let's say being on Verizon,

00:31:45.720 | but you really want to do this Visible deal

00:31:48.040 | that gives you a bunch of money off an iPhone

00:31:49.960 | and they require you to port over a number,

00:31:52.840 | what you could do is you could just go to Target

00:31:54.920 | and buy a SIM card for like $1, $5.

00:31:57.880 | And that will get you on a "real cell phone plan".

00:32:01.400 | And then you just port that over to Visible

00:32:03.000 | to get the offer so that you can get the cheaper iPhone.

00:32:06.120 | And you never have to leave your main carrier.

00:32:08.600 | So for those that are concerned about like,

00:32:10.600 | "This is the line I use for everything.

00:32:12.680 | I don't want to be moving that constantly."

00:32:14.760 | You don't have to do these deals,

00:32:16.760 | but you do have to do an extra step in that process

00:32:19.240 | to activate some of these workarounds.

00:32:21.240 | I love that you can save on cell phones.

00:32:23.080 | I went deep on that episode a few months back.

00:32:25.240 | What about other kinds of discounts and freebies?

00:32:28.440 | Yeah, that's a big category actually each month

00:32:30.840 | because I'm a person that likes scrolling slick deals.

00:32:35.320 | So if you use slick deals,

00:32:36.920 | there is an infinite supply of discounts and freebies

00:32:40.200 | every month that you can do.

00:32:41.720 | And I wouldn't recommend people necessarily go do that.

00:32:44.520 | It's more if you're already inclined to be like,

00:32:46.680 | "Hey, it'd be cool to get a free burger."

00:32:48.360 | Or like, "I want to know that Starbucks on some Fridays,

00:32:51.240 | you can get a free Starbucks if you buy one of their drinks."

00:32:53.880 | You know, those are the kind of like the scale

00:32:55.880 | of some of those deals.

00:32:57.160 | But on a bigger scale,

00:32:58.600 | I think something that everyone should do

00:33:00.520 | with discounts and freebies

00:33:02.040 | is at least download and use a cashback portal extension.

00:33:06.600 | A really easy one, a very reliable one is Rakuten.

00:33:09.960 | Just install that on your browser

00:33:11.640 | and you will get cash back

00:33:13.080 | when you're just shopping organically.

00:33:14.760 | There's no additional effort needed.

00:33:16.760 | And Rakuten constantly runs sales during holiday weekends

00:33:20.360 | where they increase the cashback amount.

00:33:22.120 | So Memorial Day just passed.

00:33:24.040 | Every Memorial Day, they increase the cashback for everything.

00:33:26.600 | So like PetSmart, where we buy all of our pet food,

00:33:30.040 | they were going up to 20% cashback,

00:33:32.920 | which is 20% back basically on all the pet food you buy.

00:33:36.600 | And you can buy PetSmart gift cards at a 10% discount elsewhere.

00:33:40.920 | And PetSmart has like an auto ship program

00:33:43.800 | where they'll give you 20 bucks off of your auto ship.

00:33:46.760 | And so you end up saving over 50% on anything you buy at PetSmart.

00:33:50.600 | And that's just an example of one retailer,

00:33:52.680 | but it applies across many different ones

00:33:55.080 | where Rakuten really just juices up the returns

00:33:58.280 | on things that you're going to shop for anyway.

00:34:00.600 | Yeah. And there's kind of 2 double bonuses

00:34:03.240 | I'll mention on Rakuten.

00:34:04.360 | One, if you get a referral,

00:34:07.000 | depending on the time of the year,

00:34:08.760 | they always switch their referral program.

00:34:10.920 | Sometimes it's $30, sometimes it's an extra 10%,

00:34:13.400 | and sometimes it's $40.

00:34:15.000 | And so you'll get a $40 referral and someone else

00:34:18.680 | and whoever referred you will.

00:34:20.440 | And so right now, I'm not sure what the referee gets right now,

00:34:25.960 | but I just looked at my referral link

00:34:27.880 | and you get an extra 10% cash back right now.

00:34:30.840 | But I would say if you can sign up during one of those windows

00:34:34.120 | where it's an extra $40, it's an awesome boost.

00:34:37.720 | So...

00:34:38.120 | Exactly. Those windows happen all the time.

00:34:40.440 | All the time. Yeah.

00:34:41.480 | Usually, whenever there's a $40 boost,

00:34:44.360 | I'll put it in the newsletter.

00:34:45.800 | So keep an eye out there

00:34:47.400 | or just keep refreshing allthehacks.com/rakuten,

00:34:51.560 | which is just my referral link.

00:34:52.840 | And you'll see when that happens.

00:34:54.600 | The other thing is if you do have an Amex account,

00:34:57.560 | you can link Rakuten with your Membership Rewards account.

00:35:00.520 | And instead of earning $10 cash back, you'll earn 1000 points.

00:35:05.080 | And so depending on how you value Amex points,

00:35:08.280 | hopefully it's more than a penny a point,

00:35:11.560 | then you'll actually be getting an even better return from Rakuten

00:35:15.080 | because you can earn points.

00:35:16.200 | Exactly. Exactly.

00:35:18.280 | And we like to get cash back just because one of our priorities

00:35:21.400 | is to have more of a financial cash buffer for the fire thing.

00:35:25.560 | But I know a lot of people that go the Amex route instead with their points.

00:35:30.600 | Well, I mentioned in a points versus cash back episode,

00:35:34.520 | were you to open the Schwab Platinum card,

00:35:38.840 | then you could still convert those points to cash back for a bonus 10%.

00:35:43.160 | Exactly.

00:35:44.280 | Because they're worthwhile.

00:35:45.000 | I've just been stuck in Amex pop-up jail on that card for a long time

00:35:50.440 | where they don't give you the signup bonus for it

00:35:52.680 | because I've opened too many Amex cards with them.

00:35:55.640 | But if you're willing to forego that bonus,

00:35:57.560 | you can still get past the pop-up and still get the 1.1%.

00:36:01.960 | So that is on my list to do.

00:36:03.160 | That's a good reminder.

00:36:04.360 | Yeah.

00:36:04.860 | What are some other fun discounts and freebies?

00:36:07.560 | I know for the last almost 2 months,

00:36:09.880 | there's been a great Shake Shack deal

00:36:11.640 | where you could get free food every once a week.

00:36:13.640 | Exactly.

00:36:15.000 | And even just like this weekend,

00:36:17.320 | we went and got free burgers at Wendy's

00:36:19.240 | because it was National Hamburger Day.

00:36:21.400 | And before that, it was National Cheeseburger Day.

00:36:23.560 | And then Shake Shack was doing some...

00:36:25.240 | I think March Madness promo.

00:36:27.000 | I mean, literally every week, every day,

00:36:29.720 | there's something in the discounts and freebies land

00:36:32.360 | if you just go on Slick Deals.

00:36:33.720 | I mean, guaranteed, even if you just go right now,

00:36:36.520 | you're going to see something that you can get for free.

00:36:38.440 | And I went to Slick Deals and I just went to it right now.

00:36:43.080 | And there's just so much stuff that I don't need.

00:36:46.760 | It just seems like you could get lost scrolling indefinitely.

00:36:50.760 | I just scrolled like 7 pages down and I'm barely through today.

00:36:55.400 | Yeah, that is the curse, I think, of this endeavor

00:37:01.240 | is that there's this constant FOMO of things

00:37:03.720 | that you could be doing because there are so many things.

00:37:06.520 | And then it's like, how do you filter out the ones that matter to you?

00:37:09.080 | At least with Slick Deals, you can set up alerts.

00:37:11.240 | So I would definitely recommend doing that.

00:37:13.080 | On my end, both my wife and I,

00:37:16.120 | instead of scrolling social media,

00:37:17.960 | going on Instagram and scrolling that,

00:37:19.720 | we get our dopamine hits scrolling Slick Deals and Doctor of Credit.

00:37:23.240 | That's sort of like my bathroom activity is I just scroll that.

00:37:27.080 | For me, it's like the same kind of dopamine.

00:37:29.720 | You're scrolling a thing, you get the same reward system,

00:37:32.120 | but you also have the potential of making money through discounts

00:37:35.560 | or with Doctor of Credit, just far bigger deals.

00:37:38.200 | And so, yeah, it's just my substitute for playing crosswords is I scroll deals

00:37:45.560 | and then I record a podcast episode on the deals that I do.

00:37:49.400 | Yeah, I love it.

00:37:50.040 | So here's one thing I'm going to start doing.

00:37:51.640 | I'm at least going to start scrolling these deals.

00:37:54.440 | And we sent a newsletter out on Saturdays.

00:37:58.440 | I'm going to start posting deals that are relevant.

00:38:01.160 | We already do this in the newsletter.

00:38:03.160 | We got a section for latest deals.

00:38:04.680 | I'm just going to spend a little bit more time

00:38:06.280 | for the next month or two scrolling for deals.

00:38:08.360 | So all the hacks.com/emails, the newsletter, it's free to subscribe.

00:38:12.520 | I'll start sharing some deals as I find them.

00:38:15.000 | And let me know if you find that valuable if you're listening.

00:38:19.080 | So I think there's a couple categories left.

00:38:22.360 | And one of them, I thought for a moment, I was like, "Let's not go too deep on it."

00:38:26.520 | It was credit cards because we could talk at length about,

00:38:29.960 | "Oh, sign up for credit cards, get welcome bonuses, earn points and miles."

00:38:33.480 | And we've certainly covered that topic on the show.

00:38:36.600 | But there was one particular thing that you did that made me realize that

00:38:40.680 | you're playing this game a little bit differently.

00:38:43.240 | And you talked about opening up a few US bank credit cards.

00:38:46.760 | Talk about that and how you generally think about credit cards and earning points.

00:38:50.760 | Yeah, I think the difference, the different way we think about credit card points

00:38:55.880 | is that a lot of people think of it as what card should I open

00:39:00.760 | that gives me the best percentage rate on my regular spending?

00:39:04.680 | You know, am I getting 3% or 4% back?

00:39:07.160 | With us, we take a different approach, which is every dollar that we spend,

00:39:11.640 | ideally, is going to be put on a credit card where we're earning a signup bonus.

00:39:16.280 | Because the signup bonuses are far, far larger than the percentage that you'd get

00:39:21.800 | just through your usual spend without a bonus.

00:39:24.760 | Because these signup bonuses are like, "Hey, spend $5,000, get let's say $500 back."

00:39:30.360 | That's a 10% return, which is three times higher than any other cashback that you'd get

00:39:35.720 | just through regular spend.

00:39:36.760 | And so, we try and focus on opening cards and always having a card open

00:39:41.640 | that has a minimum spend going on.

00:39:43.960 | And with the U.S. bank cards recently, they increased their signup offers by quite a bit.

00:39:49.480 | And so, I needed more cards to do the minimum spend on.

00:39:53.160 | And we ended up opening, I think, three of those.

00:39:56.040 | We applied for three of them in a single day.

00:39:58.040 | And all three of them ended up getting approved.

00:39:59.880 | I think you could have actually applied for four of them in a single day.

00:40:03.000 | I just forgot about one of the cards.

00:40:04.760 | That's the only reason why we didn't get four at a time.

00:40:07.160 | But yeah, we're constantly opening new credit cards.

00:40:10.280 | Yeah.

00:40:10.680 | And so, you could take it even further because one of the cool things about

00:40:14.680 | a lot of these U.S. bank cards was one, they were business cards.

00:40:18.600 | So, they don't show up on your credit report.

00:40:20.520 | So, they're not going to impact your ability to get other cards, at least from other issuers.

00:40:24.600 | They might impact your ability within U.S. bank.

00:40:27.160 | And they only hit your credit once for four cards.

00:40:31.400 | So, the only real impact doing four instead of one would potentially have

00:40:37.160 | is your ability to get another U.S. bank card in the future.

00:40:40.280 | Is that probably fair?

00:40:41.160 | Exactly.

00:40:42.440 | And even then, they're pretty lenient.

00:40:45.480 | And again, this varies wildly between different card issuers.

00:40:49.000 | But U.S. bank will even let you have the same card

00:40:51.960 | multiple times and get the same bonus multiple times.

00:40:54.920 | They don't necessarily advertise that.

00:40:56.520 | But in practice, that is what you can do.

00:40:59.240 | And yeah, they will combine your hard inquiries into one inquiry,

00:41:03.480 | if you do them all on the same day.

00:41:04.920 | So, the cost of doing four applications versus doing one application,

00:41:08.760 | there is no cost, other than the fact that now you have four cards

00:41:12.680 | that you need to meet minimum spend for, which could be challenging

00:41:17.320 | if you don't have other ways of generating

00:41:19.960 | that amount of spend in the course of three months.

00:41:22.200 | Yeah.

00:41:23.080 | But what were the bonuses, for example?

00:41:25.480 | Because I know a lot of times people feel like

00:41:27.400 | cashback bonuses aren't that exciting.

00:41:29.800 | No, they're pretty exciting.

00:41:32.120 | I think the U.S. bank leverage card was $900 for spending $7,500 in three or four months.

00:41:39.720 | So, U.S. bank actually gives you a longer time frame, depending on the card.

00:41:42.760 | It goes from three, four, five, even six months.

00:41:44.840 | Triple cash, I think, gave $600 for spending $4,500 in four months.

00:41:52.360 | I may be butchering the time frames, but you kind of get the rough idea where

00:41:56.280 | it's at least a 10% spend to bonus ratio.

00:42:00.520 | Yeah. And so opening four cards and hitting the minimum spend

00:42:03.960 | probably netted you a few thousand dollars.

00:42:05.960 | Yeah, it was about $2,000.

00:42:07.480 | Just over $2,000 worth of bonuses, provided I could spend about $20,000.

00:42:14.760 | We'll come back to the "spend $20,000" because

00:42:18.760 | I know that as someone in the middle of financial independence,

00:42:21.400 | you're not just spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year

00:42:25.080 | of your own money and buying things you don't need.

00:42:27.400 | But I know a fear a lot of people have is just opening up too many cards.

00:42:32.120 | It just doesn't work and now you're stuck.

00:42:34.120 | And then you actually find a card you want and you can't get it.

00:42:36.840 | How many cards would you say you've opened up in the last 12 months?

00:42:40.680 | Yeah, let's see here.

00:42:43.000 | I think I tallied it before.

00:42:45.240 | It was definitely over 30.

00:42:47.160 | I think around 35 cards between myself and my wife.

00:42:50.680 | And after 30, you were still getting approved for those other five.

00:42:56.920 | So I think a common misconception is that

00:42:59.560 | there's a cap that is much smaller than most people

00:43:03.960 | think about the number of cards they can open.

00:43:06.040 | So I think this could be a whole episode.

00:43:08.600 | And so I'm actually...

00:43:09.560 | Maybe you can come back and we could do it together.

00:43:12.360 | But thinking about what are all the card application rules?

00:43:16.440 | How do you want to sequence things if you want to open up multiple cards?

00:43:20.120 | And then the follow-up, which we can talk a little bit about today,

00:43:22.840 | is how do you generate the spend so that you're not stuck having to spend the money?

00:43:28.600 | Right?

00:43:28.840 | If you opened up 35 cards,

00:43:30.680 | let's say on average, they had a $7,000 minimum spend to get the bonus.

00:43:37.480 | We're talking about $245,000.

00:43:39.080 | I know that you don't spend $245,000 a year

00:43:42.920 | because we've talked about your fire lifestyle.

00:43:45.720 | It's probably a fraction of that.

00:43:47.800 | How do you think about that?

00:43:49.160 | Yeah, I think that's what trips a lot of people up to

00:43:51.800 | when they're pursuing these cards,

00:43:53.320 | is they feel like it's limited by how much income and how much expenses they have.

00:43:58.280 | There are so many avenues for just generating that spend to meet the bonuses

00:44:04.600 | that you may not initially think of, but are pretty obvious in hindsight.

00:44:08.840 | Let's just go through them at a high level right now,

00:44:11.240 | just because I think it's really important for people to understand where this comes from.

00:44:16.920 | And then I think it would make sense to do a deeper dive on the topic.

00:44:20.360 | So stay tuned for an episode on a much deeper dive

00:44:23.560 | on welcome bonuses and meeting minimum spend.

00:44:25.960 | Yeah.

00:44:27.080 | So the high level ways, I think the most obvious one,

00:44:31.240 | let's start with paying taxes,

00:44:32.600 | because I think you've mentioned that before as well in your show,

00:44:34.840 | where you can pay your taxes using a credit card at the cost of,

00:44:39.080 | I believe it's like 1.8% to use one of their credit card processors.

00:44:43.880 | And so if you have taxes to pay,

00:44:46.360 | definitely should be putting it on the credit card

00:44:47.880 | because the 1.8% cost is a fraction of the 10% or 20% return

00:44:53.560 | you're getting through the signup bonuses.

00:44:55.880 | Yeah, I think that's something that was interesting

00:44:58.280 | as I was talking about paying taxes on a credit card in the past was,

00:45:01.240 | if you look at it through the perspective of using a credit card

00:45:05.240 | and paying taxes to earn points, not a welcome bonus,

00:45:09.640 | you're like, "Well, VentureX card is going to give you 2x points,

00:45:13.240 | but you're going to pay 1.8 cents for every point you earn.

00:45:16.920 | So maybe if you get enough value from your points,

00:45:19.480 | you're earning on the margin, but is that really great?"

00:45:22.760 | When I looked at the top welcome bonuses a few weeks ago

00:45:26.760 | for the points versus cash back episode,

00:45:29.320 | the average return was 16 points per dollar.

00:45:32.920 | So if you're earning 16 points per dollar and paying 1.8 cents for them,

00:45:38.840 | or like you've done with some of these earning 10% or 15% cash back,

00:45:44.040 | paying 1.8 cents for every 15 cents,

00:45:47.240 | well, you could do the math there and say that's a really good deal.

00:45:49.720 | And so as long as you're paying taxes to earn these welcome bonuses,

00:45:53.880 | it seems like a no-brainer.

00:45:55.880 | Absolutely. Yeah, it's such an easy thing that anyone can do.

00:46:00.440 | And the thing with the IRS too is if you end up overpaying your taxes,

00:46:04.920 | they will refund you the money.

00:46:06.760 | And so keep in mind though, they will be keeping your money

00:46:09.800 | until the tax filing deadline.

00:46:11.720 | But that's also an option too, because you can pay quarterly taxes.

00:46:14.920 | And I think there's three different processors you can use.

00:46:17.640 | So you can pay your quarterly taxes through three of them.

00:46:20.200 | If you end up overpaying because you need to spend,

00:46:22.760 | you'll get the money back during the tax refund season.

00:46:25.560 | Yeah, you can even go into your employer and potentially reduce your withholdings

00:46:30.200 | so that you're able to have more money that you put on a card

00:46:34.120 | that doesn't actually need to be refunded.

00:46:36.440 | So you actually get more paycheck back each pay period

00:46:39.800 | and then make those payments to the IRS.

00:46:41.720 | Now, you got to keep managing it.

00:46:43.240 | It's going to make your tax filings a little more complicated,

00:46:46.520 | but not that much more complicated.

00:46:48.040 | So taxes is an easy one, as long as you're going for welcome bonuses.

00:46:51.960 | Exactly, exactly.

00:46:54.440 | And then outside of taxes, it's an easy one,

00:46:57.400 | but it's not my preference because of the 1.8% fee.

00:47:02.200 | It's a small fee, but I would rather not pay it.

00:47:05.800 | And so there's other avenues as well.

00:47:08.920 | The ones that come to the top of my mind are like funding a bank account,

00:47:12.840 | buying groups, gift card reselling.

00:47:14.920 | So we can dive into any of those if you'd like.

00:47:16.920 | Yeah, maybe let's just give a quick overview of a few of them.

00:47:19.720 | The best way to think about a buying group is like a reselling business almost.

00:47:26.120 | You know, if your friend wants an iPad and you buy the iPad,

00:47:29.960 | then you give him the iPad and he pays you for the iPad.

00:47:32.680 | You basically generated $1,000 of spend at no cost to you

00:47:38.760 | because your friend reimbursed you.

00:47:40.200 | And so if you scale that higher than just your friend,

00:47:42.680 | there are companies that just want to buy iPads and other goods from you

00:47:48.200 | because they're limited to how many of these iPads they can buy.

00:47:51.560 | Using iPads just as a generic example here,

00:47:54.520 | but like you typically can't buy more than like four of them at a time on Amazon

00:47:59.400 | when they get released because Amazon doesn't want to sell directly to these resellers.

00:48:04.280 | But a reseller might want to ship like a thousand of these iPads to Dubai

00:48:08.280 | where the iPad hasn't been released yet.

00:48:10.200 | And so they source people like you and I to buy these iPads for them

00:48:14.120 | and they reimburse you for it.

00:48:15.720 | And the advantage for you is that they're paying usually at cost.

00:48:19.800 | So if the iPad costs $1,000, they'll reimburse you $1,000.

00:48:23.000 | But if you're putting it on a credit card that earns 4% then or 5% on Amazon,

00:48:28.040 | you're essentially making a 5% profit on all of the things that you're buying through there.

00:48:32.440 | Plus, if you're trying to meet a minimum spend, that's even more lucrative on top.

00:48:37.080 | Yeah. And depending on where you live in the country, this can be an even better deal.

00:48:40.680 | If you live in states with no sales tax, it can be even more lucrative.

00:48:45.800 | I had the, I guess, pleasure of going to one of these buyer group warehouses

00:48:50.600 | from a company called Max Out Deals and I walked through it and it was wild.

00:48:54.280 | Like if you're watching on YouTube, I'll put a picture up

00:48:56.280 | or I'll at least link to it in the show notes on the podcast as well.

00:48:59.720 | It's like you're walking in the storeroom of either like a Best Buy or an Apple store

00:49:04.600 | and there are just thousands and thousands of products

00:49:07.960 | that are getting geared up to ship out.

00:49:09.880 | And so this warehouse was right next to the LAX airport,

00:49:12.760 | presumably because it's really easy to ship things out.

00:49:15.800 | It's a low cost industrial part of town with a ridiculous amount of security.

00:49:19.720 | And so I tried this once, right?

00:49:22.280 | I went into the buyer's group site.

00:49:24.520 | They were looking for AirPods.

00:49:26.120 | I bought some AirPods while they were on sale at Costco.

00:49:28.920 | I shipped them to the buyer's group warehouse.

00:49:32.280 | And about a couple weeks later, they sent me some money.

00:49:37.000 | And I didn't make any money, but I didn't lose any money.

00:49:39.800 | So I think the profit, and if there was a profit, it was like incredibly small.

00:49:44.200 | But I got all the points from the purchase.

00:49:47.000 | And so especially if you have a card like the Amex Business Gold card,

00:49:52.120 | where you can get some elevated points from electronic stores, I think.

00:49:56.760 | Or if you're buying on Amazon, and you're using Amazon Prime card,

00:49:59.720 | there are some options to get anywhere from 2-4 points and 2-5% cash back,

00:50:05.560 | and then sell something at cost.

00:50:07.800 | So you're making a little bit of profit and getting all the points.

00:50:10.360 | Exactly.

00:50:11.800 | Exactly.

00:50:12.360 | And even better when you have a minimum spend that you're tackling with a credit card.

00:50:16.120 | I think one thing I want to caveat to with the buyer's group

00:50:18.520 | or that comes up when I introduce my friends to the concept

00:50:22.360 | is the more savvy ones are like, "Do you have to pay taxes on this?

00:50:26.280 | Because you're buying and they're paying you out money."

00:50:29.640 | And the short answer, unless you're in a couple of very specific states,

00:50:33.480 | you don't, because you're not, again, making actual profit on these shipments.

00:50:38.680 | Because you're shipping direct to the buyer's group.

00:50:41.560 | It's not even often coming to your home first.

00:50:43.640 | You just enter their address.

00:50:45.400 | And some of these buyer's group, I think like Buy For Me Retail,

00:50:48.440 | which is a really popular one.

00:50:49.960 | They've got like four or five different locations across the U.S.

00:50:53.400 | in no-sales tax states.

00:50:55.080 | And you just ship directly over there.

00:50:57.000 | And you don't owe anything from a tax perspective because you didn't make a profit.

00:51:01.720 | What you made a profit on were your points.

00:51:04.440 | And the points, as the IRS have ruled, are not taxable.

00:51:07.720 | So it doesn't end up impacting you.

00:51:09.640 | Unless I think you're in like Washington state or some other one

00:51:12.360 | where they are trying to tax every kind of sale.

00:51:15.560 | It's a little complicated, but just try not to be in one of those states if you're doing it.

00:51:19.560 | Yeah.

00:51:19.800 | I was listening to another podcast.

00:51:22.200 | I think it was either Churning Life or Churner's Digest.

00:51:24.440 | And you can see where this goes to an extreme.

00:51:28.360 | And the host was talking about how he ordered something like 200 Amazon Echo Dots

00:51:34.040 | and loaded them in his car to try to go take them to the warehouse.

00:51:38.200 | And I was just like, at some point, it felt to me like maybe this was too far.

00:51:42.920 | But I think that it's basically his full-time...

00:51:47.800 | Felt like it was his full-time job.

00:51:49.080 | So you can choose how far you want to take this.

00:51:51.400 | Do you want to get a sign-up bonus around a season where new iPads or iPhones are coming out

00:51:57.160 | and be able to meet that minimum spend easily and do that once or twice a year?

00:52:01.240 | Or do you want to be driving to a warehouse in Oregon three times a week,

00:52:06.920 | filling your car with iPads, Echo Dots, Fire Sticks, and whatever other products are hot for resellers?

00:52:14.760 | Yeah, exactly.

00:52:15.560 | And fundamentally, I think that's sort of just how this whole game is.

00:52:20.200 | Is that it's a broad spectrum of how much effort you want to put into it.

00:52:23.800 | And at the high end of the spectrum, where you want to put a lot of effort,

00:52:27.320 | it really is just a full-time job where you're starting pretty much a real business,

00:52:31.480 | like a reselling business.

00:52:33.000 | Legitimately, people start reselling businesses on Amazon,

00:52:36.440 | not to make money on Amazon, but to just be able to generate spend

00:52:40.520 | buying the stuff so that they can then resell on Amazon to recoup the cost.

00:52:44.360 | So it's really just like, how much of an investment do you want to make into your side hustle?

00:52:49.800 | And do you want it to become a full-time business?

00:52:52.920 | Yeah, I talked to this guy who has a reselling business that he operates at basically no profit.

00:53:00.760 | So best you could tell, it's an unprofitable, terrible, terrible business.

00:53:05.960 | However, he puts millions and millions of dollars a year on a credit card.

00:53:10.600 | And for him, it's focused on living his life.

00:53:13.000 | So he's earning cash back.

00:53:14.520 | And I think he was doing it all on the Bank of America Premium Rewards card,

00:53:18.440 | earning 2.625 cash back on everything.

00:53:21.000 | And if you stacked it all up, I think he said he was doing like $10 million a year.

00:53:27.720 | And so at 2.625% back, he's earning a couple hundred thousand dollars to live off of that,

00:53:35.080 | by the way, is tax-free because it's treated as a rebate.

00:53:40.440 | So it was a really interesting mindset shift of like run an unprofitable business

00:53:46.040 | so you can generate enough spend so that you can generate credit card rewards

00:53:51.880 | that would pay your lifestyle.

00:53:54.040 | Which surprisingly, had his business generated $265,000 of profit,

00:54:00.520 | he would have had to pay taxes on that.

00:54:02.360 | But had he taken that profit and allowed him to increase volume

00:54:07.880 | so that he generated more spend, he wouldn't pay taxes.

00:54:10.440 | So it was really, really interesting to read that story and think about this

00:54:15.800 | and how it could become more than a side hustle.

00:54:19.080 | But that's not what you do.

00:54:20.280 | You're keeping it at 10 to 15 hours a week.

00:54:22.600 | Trying to, trying to.

00:54:23.720 | Because a lot of these buying groups and these gift card reselling buying groups,

00:54:26.920 | they started as that guy that was like, "How do I scale up?"

00:54:31.480 | And they ended up becoming a broker, essentially, because that's the next level in scale.

00:54:36.520 | But for us, yeah, we're trying to keep it a little more low key at 10 to 15 hours a week.

00:54:41.000 | Yeah.

00:54:41.400 | And so you mentioned gift cards.

00:54:42.600 | My understanding is that similarly, gift cards go on sale all the time, right?

00:54:47.560 | Every time I'm checking out of the grocery store,

00:54:49.160 | it seems like there's some deal or coupon in the Safeway app

00:54:52.520 | for 10% off this one type of gift card.

00:54:55.720 | And so you could just buy gift cards and then sell them to gift card buying groups.

00:55:01.000 | One of them is Aligned Incentives.

00:55:02.760 | Is that the general premise there?

00:55:04.600 | Exactly.

00:55:05.640 | Kroger will often have a 4x fuel points thing where you get their fuel points,

00:55:10.520 | which is their reward system.

00:55:12.040 | And then you buy gift cards and they run that promo all the time,

00:55:14.520 | which effectively ends up being a 10% to 15% discount on the gift cards.

00:55:19.080 | And most of these gift card buying groups, like Aligned Incentives,

00:55:22.680 | they'll pay in that 90% range of how much a gift card's face value is.

00:55:28.440 | And that can vary based on gift card.

00:55:30.360 | But the same concept, you buy the gift cards, you send it over.

00:55:33.480 | And this has been happening a long time.

00:55:36.040 | This gift card game with Staples and Office Depot.

00:55:39.400 | And it used to be more physical.

00:55:41.400 | You have to go into the store and it can be a pain to go buy the gift cards.

00:55:45.160 | There's a new app.

00:55:46.680 | Every year, there's a new app on the block that comes around thanks to VC funding.

00:55:51.080 | Pepper is the one that everyone's been hammering recently

00:55:53.640 | because you can buy these gift cards at a 10% discount just on the app.

00:55:58.120 | So you never have to leave your couch.

00:55:59.960 | And then you can send those gift cards over to a buying group who then reimburses you.

00:56:04.520 | And then you're earning your cash back and your points and your minimum spend.

00:56:08.280 | I love it.

00:56:08.840 | And then the last one you mentioned that we can hit on,

00:56:11.560 | and then we'll wrap up, is on bank funding.

00:56:14.440 | Yeah.

00:56:15.320 | So that's my personal favorite, actually,

00:56:17.320 | because it's the least amount of effort at zero cost.

00:56:20.680 | With bank funding, the beauty of bank funding is that

00:56:24.280 | you can just fund a bank account using your credit card.

00:56:27.800 | And then that money shows up in your bank account immediately,

00:56:30.440 | which then you can transfer out to go pay the credit card.

00:56:33.400 | So it doesn't have this period of time where your money is held up elsewhere.

00:56:38.040 | And it doesn't have the 1.8% cost because it's usually free to fund your bank account.

00:56:42.520 | The only friction I think there is that

00:56:45.560 | there's not many banks that let you fund bank accounts.

00:56:48.840 | Sometimes a unicorn will come around where they allow unlimited credit card funding.

00:56:53.640 | And that happened earlier this year.

00:56:55.640 | There was a credit union that allowed unlimited Amex credit card funding

00:57:00.760 | into the bank account directly.

00:57:02.440 | And as you can imagine, that only stayed alive for about a month or two

00:57:05.640 | because people started funding.

00:57:07.800 | I think someone mentioned they put over a million dollars

00:57:11.640 | funded through a credit card, which they could just then withdraw.

00:57:14.680 | And so that's the rare scenario.

00:57:16.920 | And if you come across one of those, definitely go hard and heavy on that.

00:57:20.680 | But there's also a lot of like more chill ones

00:57:23.320 | where like right now you can open a US Bank business bank account

00:57:27.480 | and fund that with $3,000 on your Amex card.

00:57:30.840 | And anyone can do that.

00:57:32.280 | You can open a checking and do it, a business checking,

00:57:34.200 | and open a business saving and do another $3,000.

00:57:36.760 | So if you just need to like hit $5,000 on an Amex card,

00:57:40.520 | you could go on US Bank right now and do it.

00:57:42.440 | But that's the rare one that you got to like find those

00:57:46.040 | and really scout those out.

00:57:47.560 | And the top ones that allow unlimited ones,

00:57:50.040 | those are the ones that people don't really share

00:57:52.360 | outside of their very small private groups.

00:57:55.000 | Yes. Yeah. I've been working to try to get into these small private groups.

00:57:58.760 | They seem tricky, but with huge payoff.

00:58:01.640 | If you could put a million dollars in,

00:58:03.480 | you just earned a million Amex points and it cost you nothing

00:58:06.280 | because you fund your account, use that account to pay off the Amex,

00:58:09.800 | you fund it again, and then you just go through this cycle.

00:58:12.200 | It's pretty wild.

00:58:14.280 | So stay tuned as I learn for more rabbit holes to go down

00:58:18.440 | and how to find these things.

00:58:19.560 | I think I would probably get it shut down if I put it in the newsletter.

00:58:22.440 | But it's the kind of thing that maybe I'd share with members in all the hacks.

00:58:26.760 | All right. Thanks for running through a few of those.

00:58:28.280 | We could probably go really deep on gift cards and other ways to meet minimum spend.

00:58:32.200 | So stay tuned for an episode on all of that.

00:58:34.600 | I do want to come back to the point about doing this with a partner.

00:58:38.280 | Because when I looked at your table,

00:58:40.520 | it looked like somewhere around a third of all the money you're making

00:58:43.880 | from all of these deals is from your partner.

00:58:47.400 | And so how do you think about the value of a player 2 in this game?

00:58:52.520 | And how do you think about doing it maybe if your player 2 isn't that excited?

00:58:56.680 | I think getting a player 2 on board is probably the biggest thing you can do

00:59:02.680 | for tackling profitable deals from just a sheer monetary benefit perspective.

00:59:08.600 | Because so many deals have referral bonuses where it ends up being a situation

00:59:14.440 | where it's not like a 1+1=2 situation.

00:59:17.880 | It's now 1+1=3.

00:59:19.800 | And what I mean by that is if you sign up for a bank that has a referral bonus,

00:59:23.160 | let's say $100, you sign up, you get $100.

00:59:26.040 | If someone else signs up, they get $100.

00:59:28.120 | But if you sign up, get $100, and then you refer, let's say, your spouse,

00:59:32.600 | they get $100, but you also get $100 for signing them up.

00:59:36.120 | So now it becomes $300 instead of just your $100.

00:59:40.200 | And that's how you can scale things quite a bit.

00:59:42.760 | And yeah, I think last year, about a third, over $10,000 was through my P2.

00:59:47.560 | And the way I do it with my P2 is that she's not very excited about the deals in the way that I am.

00:59:52.840 | She appreciates all the benefits that come from it,

00:59:55.320 | but doesn't want to do the management of that, which I totally understand.

00:59:59.240 | And so I do a lot of these deals for her.

01:00:01.880 | And you can easily do that if you have access to their address,

01:00:06.600 | their social security numbers.

01:00:07.960 | This is where a partner or spouse makes more sense.

01:00:11.080 | Because you're just sharing your social security number.

01:00:13.880 | It's probably not something you should do with random strangers on the internet.

01:00:16.920 | However, it could be also just like your cousin or your friend that you've

01:00:21.240 | been friends with for a decade.

01:00:22.680 | There's so many ways to acquire a P2 or a P3 or P4.

01:00:26.600 | There's some people that I chat with that have 10+ players.

01:00:30.200 | And for them, it really is a full-scale business where they're managing multiple players,

01:00:35.160 | doing multiple bank bonuses, all these bonuses.

01:00:37.720 | Because if you imagine I'm just making $36,000 between me and my P2.

01:00:42.520 | If you had 10 players, that's over $150,000.

01:00:46.040 | And maybe you were working on this 40 hours a week instead of just 10 or 15.

01:00:49.320 | So I love this.

01:00:51.240 | And this is something where like, yes, you could do it with friends.

01:00:53.880 | You could do it with family.

01:00:55.160 | I know my parents probably don't want to play this game.

01:00:57.240 | But maybe I say, "Hey, you know what?

01:00:59.480 | If my immediate family all lets me manage their deals for the year,

01:01:03.720 | maybe I'll pay for the vacation we all take."

01:01:06.840 | Which might come from a fraction of that cost.

01:01:09.320 | So that'd be really, really cool.

01:01:10.440 | Especially when it comes to referring for some of these things.

01:01:15.080 | I know you mentioned $100.

01:01:16.680 | But there are a lot of times where whether it's Chase or Amex,

01:01:19.880 | some of the referral bonuses are just wild.

01:01:22.360 | So we didn't really talk about referrals above,

01:01:25.000 | but maybe highlight a couple of the crazy referral bonuses you've seen.

01:01:28.760 | Yeah.

01:01:29.640 | So the one that really paid off last year was the Moomoo brokerage referral bonus

01:01:35.000 | because they were giving $300 for each party for bringing someone onto their platform.

01:01:40.760 | And that person only had to deposit like $1,000 or $5,000.

01:01:44.120 | It's like a pretty small amount.

01:01:45.640 | And you didn't have to leave the money there or anything.

01:01:47.720 | It was just like, I think in 30 days, they were going to pay out $300.

01:01:51.640 | And so on my end, I ended up referring, I think, like 40, 50 people.

01:01:56.120 | And so that's why my brokerage number is so much higher from last year

01:01:59.160 | was that I think I made over $10,000 just referring folks on the Moomoo app.

01:02:04.520 | But I want to say that obviously me having a podcast helped drive a lot of those referrals,

01:02:10.280 | but you don't have to have that.

01:02:12.360 | I was making a lot of money even before I started the podcast during the pandemic

01:02:17.080 | through these referrals.

01:02:18.120 | And they're going to vary a lot based on the institution offering them.

01:02:23.000 | The most recent lucrative one that everyone was doing

01:02:26.040 | was that Amex was offering a 10x boost on your points earning when you spend on dining.

01:02:33.000 | If you refer someone to an Amex card.

01:02:35.080 | So if you refer someone, they open an Amex card.

01:02:37.800 | The card that you referred from gets a 10x boost on dining up to $25,000.

01:02:43.880 | So if you were able to spend $25,000 on dining,

01:02:47.480 | Amex was going to give you 250,000 points for free

01:02:51.080 | just because you referred one person to an Amex card.

01:02:54.200 | Yeah, it was a shame that didn't stack.

01:02:56.360 | And you could refer 10 people and get 100x points on dining.

01:02:59.080 | Yeah, exactly.

01:02:59.720 | Yeah, that's amazing.

01:03:02.120 | And I'm actually going through just as a recap in my mind,

01:03:05.720 | all these categories as they apply to a P2.

01:03:08.840 | When it comes to bank accounts, you might not get a referral,

01:03:12.200 | but that means for every awesome bank account deal, you can open it twice.

01:03:16.040 | It means for brokerages, you might have a shared brokerage to transfer your positions,

01:03:21.560 | but it means double the retirement accounts for those bonuses.

01:03:24.600 | For meal kits, do the meal kit companies catch on

01:03:28.520 | to the fact that you have the same address,

01:03:31.160 | but maybe you and your Player 2 can order meal kits to your home?

01:03:35.080 | It depends on the meal kit company.

01:03:37.080 | But for the most part, the meal kit companies,

01:03:39.480 | I'd say like 95% of them don't have a household restriction.

01:03:43.160 | So you can order...

01:03:44.200 | In theory, you could have as many roommates or pets as you want in your household,

01:03:50.120 | and you can order meal kits to them.

01:03:51.640 | And they don't care that you share the same address.

01:03:53.960 | The exception to that, I think, is Marley Spoon,

01:03:56.840 | who does care a little bit about how many people you have living in your home.

01:04:01.560 | But like HelloFresh, Green Chef, no issues whatsoever.

01:04:04.520 | So having a P2, having roommates, having pets,

01:04:07.320 | that really can scale up how many of these things you end up getting.

01:04:10.680 | Yeah, I will say in the past, I've found that sometimes

01:04:13.160 | it helps to use a different credit card when you sign up for you and your Player 2.

01:04:17.720 | So keep that in mind.

01:04:20.360 | And another hack that I learned in the past was

01:04:23.000 | if you're trying to sign up for a deal twice at your same address,

01:04:28.280 | I just think back to the fact that I used to live at a home where it was...

01:04:32.920 | It looked like a normal address, not an apartment building,

01:04:34.920 | but there was like an apartment 1 and an apartment 2.

01:04:37.480 | So maybe you have three apartments at your home,

01:04:40.680 | and you just add unit 1, unit 2, unit 3, they're all going to get there.

01:04:44.200 | So it's not too big of a deal.

01:04:46.280 | So those are a couple little tricks to get around some of those restrictions.

01:04:50.520 | I went through cell phones just means you can get 2 iPhones.

01:04:54.360 | Discounts means you can get 2x the freebies if you have 2 people.

01:04:59.720 | 2x the burgers. Yeah.

01:05:01.080 | Yeah. 2x the burgers.

01:05:02.360 | And then on the credit card stuff, the referrals are really, really lucrative.

01:05:06.680 | You mentioned 10x points.

01:05:09.000 | But pretty regularly, there are referrals where you earn

01:05:12.280 | anywhere from 10 to 40,000 points for referring a partner.

01:05:16.360 | So I always tell everyone listening, "Look, all the Hacks.com/cards.

01:05:19.960 | We have links. They support the show.

01:05:21.880 | They're how me and Amy are able to do this full time.

01:05:24.760 | But I want you to get the most points."

01:05:26.280 | And so if you have a referral link from a partner, use that, get more points.

01:05:30.760 | If you don't, we'd love the support.

01:05:32.680 | But that's true across the board.

01:05:35.800 | And finally, while I wouldn't call a business a player 2,

01:05:38.760 | in the credit card space and in the bank account space,

01:05:41.800 | if you wanted to earn points from Chase,

01:05:44.840 | you can do that with a business and without.

01:05:47.080 | And I just want to flag to a lot of people that

01:05:49.640 | having a business might be a lot more accessible than you think.

01:05:54.440 | I know there are a lot of people that think, "Oh, I'm not eligible for a business card

01:05:58.520 | because I don't have a business that I've registered."

01:06:01.880 | And I'm like, "Well, have you ever done any consulting?

01:06:04.280 | Have you ever sold anything on eBay?

01:06:06.120 | Have you ever started blogging?

01:06:07.960 | Do you post on social media?"

01:06:09.480 | Is there a requirement that that business is profitable today?

01:06:14.600 | No. It has to be a business.

01:06:16.680 | So I'm not encouraging people to lie about having a business.

01:06:19.480 | I just think there are a lot of people that might have a business

01:06:21.800 | and not really realize it.

01:06:24.200 | So that business for a lot of people might be creating content online.

01:06:27.960 | And one day that'll turn into a thing like it has for you and I.

01:06:31.480 | I don't think you and I started posting things on the internet

01:06:34.600 | with the intention of it being a business and that just happened.

01:06:37.480 | And so in those early days, that was a business.

01:06:41.480 | If you do any kind of 1099 work, that's a business.

01:06:45.240 | So honestly, if you want to go drive for Uber for one hour a year

01:06:50.200 | so that you qualify as a business, then that unlocks a ton of deals.

01:06:55.080 | So I'm curious, actually, right before we wrap,

01:06:56.920 | how much of the money you make, the $30,000 plus,

01:07:01.640 | do you think came from business versus personal?

01:07:05.000 | And how important do you think it was for you guys to be able to have a business?

01:07:08.440 | That's a really great question.

01:07:10.360 | I don't think I tallied that in my end of year thing.

01:07:13.960 | But if I were to guess, I'd say probably half of it is through businesses

01:07:18.200 | because the business bonuses are often so much more lucrative than personal bonuses

01:07:23.560 | because companies want to attract businesses,

01:07:25.640 | whether it's through bank accounts or credit cards.

01:07:28.040 | But on top of that, the business ones don't affect your credit card status.

01:07:33.400 | So opening these business credit cards means that you're not capped

01:07:38.040 | by how many credit cards you open.

01:07:39.720 | So outside of getting a P2, I think a business is the next one,

01:07:43.880 | maybe even on par in terms of things you can do to improve

01:07:48.040 | the amount of profitable deals that you can tackle and how much money you make from them.

01:07:51.640 | This is amazing.

01:07:53.800 | We went through so many different ways to get profitable deals

01:07:58.040 | and actually build income with it.

01:07:59.960 | I think anyone here who's thinking,

01:08:01.960 | "How do I add a few tens of thousands of dollars to my income each year?"

01:08:05.400 | can hopefully do that and scale it even further with friends, family, or a business.

01:08:10.360 | And so this has been awesome.

01:08:12.360 | You have an incredible podcast that opened me to the world of this called The Daily Churn.

01:08:16.120 | I hope everyone checks it out.

01:08:17.320 | It's really incredible.

01:08:19.320 | Anywhere else you want to send people?

01:08:20.680 | Yeah, I think a couple of the ones we mentioned today

01:08:23.800 | are going to be really useful if you want to get into the game.

01:08:26.360 | Doctor of Credit is the Bible of all the deals you could tackle under the sun.

01:08:30.760 | Slick Deals is great if you're into discounts and freebies.

01:08:34.520 | Miles Earn and Burn, if you're trying to get into how to generate spend more effectively,

01:08:40.360 | they kind of focus on that.

01:08:41.560 | And a couple of podcasts you mentioned, Churning Life and Churner's Digest,

01:08:44.840 | are great for also the generating spend side of things.

01:08:47.720 | And of course, my show, The Daily Churn podcast,

01:08:50.600 | where you can get these monthly recaps.

01:08:52.520 | I have a live tracker on the website that I update in real time with notes and data points,

01:08:57.880 | what I'm doing that month.

01:09:00.040 | And so that way, you don't have to wait for one of those episodes.

01:09:02.200 | You can find that plus the newsletter, all that stuff from my end on thedailychurnpodcast.com.

01:09:07.960 | It's a great listen.

01:09:09.480 | Everybody check it out.

01:09:10.680 | Kai, thank you so much for being here.

01:09:12.680 | Thank you, Chris.

01:09:13.400 | Appreciate it.

01:09:13.960 | I really enjoyed this.

How to Make an Extra $3000/mo by Hacking Deals

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