100+ Amazing Tools That Save Me Time, Money, and Sanity

00:00:00.000 | So I just turned 40 and I realized there weren't a lot of things I wanted for my birthday because

00:00:05.280 | I have spent so much time finding and researching the best products and services, but it got me

00:00:10.320 | thinking that since so many of you have asked me about what I use in different areas of my life,

00:00:15.280 | it would make the perfect topic for an episode to talk about all of those things, from tech to

00:00:20.800 | finance, health to our home, my business. I'm going to share my top picks across over a dozen

00:00:26.240 | different categories of products, apps, services, and more. You can find links to everything I'm

00:00:30.720 | discussing in the description, which I also will put up at allthehacks.com/stuff. And just to be

00:00:37.200 | clear, none of the brands I'm talking about here have paid to be included in this episode. That

00:00:41.920 | said, where I could find an affiliate link, I did add it to the description and to the website,

00:00:47.440 | so if you want to support me and the show, I'd love and appreciate if you want to use the links

00:00:51.760 | that you can find there, which I also included any discount codes I could find for all these

00:00:56.800 | products as well. Quick reminder, before we jump in, we do have timestamps in the show notes,

00:01:02.080 | so you can jump around. A couple of listeners recently told me that they don't work on every

00:01:06.320 | platform, and my hosting provider doesn't make it possible to work on certain platforms like

00:01:11.680 | Overcast and Apple. I am working on that, but at least we have the time codes in there, so if you

00:01:16.160 | want to jump ahead, you can find them. On some platforms, you can just click them and it'll work,

00:01:20.480 | so I would love that to work every platform, so hopefully that will be done soon. All right,

00:01:24.480 | to kick us off, I thought I'd talk a little bit about technology. So first off, iPhone 15 Pro is

00:01:30.320 | my core device. I send so many texts from my Mac. I could never really have an Android as much as I

00:01:36.320 | tried a few times. Honestly, because of that iMessage integration is probably the most important,

00:01:41.680 | but also now that I've just gotten so tied into it and then watching all these PCs crash during

00:01:46.720 | this CrowdStrike rollout, haven't had any issues on a Mac. Love my Macs. Love my iPhone. Probably

00:01:53.040 | won't change that in the future. I really love AirPods. I actually lost my third-gen AirPods,

00:01:59.600 | and I'm still happy enough with the second-gen ones, so I've just kept them. I did try the

00:02:04.480 | Pro AirPods, and the AirPod Maxes didn't like those, returned them. On the computer side,

00:02:09.280 | I use an M2 MacBook Air. Really love it. Got a great sticker on here. My other vehicle is a 401k.

00:02:15.520 | Love that. Thanks to the Playing With Fire team who printed those stickers. I've had them on my

00:02:20.000 | computer ever since. Then let's see. I use a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Trackpad. I don't use an

00:02:24.480 | actual mouse. I really want the new Magic Keyboard that has the built-in Touch ID, but I don't have

00:02:29.920 | that right now. I kind of wish I did, but it's one of those things that doesn't feel absolutely

00:02:34.320 | necessary. A couple other tech products I love that I have here. I've got this Anker Prime

00:02:40.640 | charger, but I just love their products when it comes to charging your phone, battery backups,

00:02:45.840 | everything like that. I have one of the, I guess this is the GAN Prime. I've just had great success

00:02:52.160 | using them. Really big fan of those. I also have this great, Mercury sent me this Moft iPhone

00:02:58.400 | wallet that holds three cards and a couple dollar bills. It's a MagSafe charger. I really love this

00:03:04.000 | because you can fold it up and you can rest your phone on it sideways and up and down. Really love

00:03:09.840 | this little tiny thing. On my desk, you'd see three other products. You'd see some Bose desktop

00:03:14.560 | speakers. Honestly, I just like having good quality sound and my primary computer, I didn't even

00:03:18.720 | mention this, is actually a Mac Mini. And so because it doesn't have audio built into it,

00:03:22.480 | I need some speakers. But the other two things, I have another Anker charger. I believe that this

00:03:27.600 | Anker charger is called the Anker Wireless Power Wave. It's a magnetic charger. Also charges AirPods

00:03:34.240 | if you had a MagSafe case, which I don't right now. And then I have an Elgato Stream Deck.

00:03:39.440 | Now this is primarily a product made for gamers, but I absolutely love it. It's this tiny little

00:03:45.680 | device that sits on your desk and has 15 little LED buttons that you can control what they do.

00:03:51.600 | And so for me, if I look at it right now, I do a lot of recording and so I have it able to switch

00:03:56.880 | cameras. So if you were to watch a video of this, you'd actually see that we have three cameras,

00:04:01.520 | one looking at me, one looking at the desk from one side and one looking at desk from the other

00:04:06.320 | side. And so I can control that. I can control the microphone. I can mute myself. I can switch

00:04:11.760 | between headphones and speakers. I can pause Spotify. I can mute my video or audio in a Zoom

00:04:17.200 | call. So I have that over here too. I control the lights in this room if I wanted to. I've put all

00:04:23.280 | of these things in here. I have a couple of websites that'll quick pop open. One button just

00:04:27.760 | tabs to a couple of pages. I probably use it 50 times a day. I would highly recommend people that

00:04:33.920 | are kind of productivity efficiency people take a look at it. There's a bunch of different versions

00:04:38.320 | of Stream Decks, but I think I have the MK2 in black and I really, really like it. As for what

00:04:44.720 | is on my desk, I'm working at an Uplift desk. I got one of these back when we had a startup and

00:04:50.160 | it's just been a really solid desk for rising up and down. I like standing sometimes, sitting

00:04:55.760 | sometimes, well-built, no issues there. I'm sitting at a steel case gesture chair, which I tried a

00:05:03.120 | bunch of chairs a long time ago. And then when we were running a startup, we found this guy that I

00:05:08.160 | guess sells chairs, like premium desk chairs for offices. But we never asked where he got them. He

00:05:15.200 | rolled up in like a beat up minivan and had these like $1,500 chairs for $500. And so we figured

00:05:21.600 | that we were hiring a bunch of people to sit at a desk all day, every day during the week that we

00:05:26.240 | should invest in quality chairs. And so when the company wound down, I took one of these steel case

00:05:30.800 | gesture chairs home and I really like it. A few other AV things here that I'll get back to

00:05:34.800 | when I start talking about the podcast setup and all of that. I'm also only really trying to

00:05:40.480 | highlight my favorite things. So yeah, I might have a surge protector on this desk, but if it's

00:05:46.000 | not something I really, really like, I'm not really going to highlight it because that doesn't

00:05:49.920 | make sense. You might have a better recommendation than me. But when it comes to using the computer,

00:05:55.360 | I want to talk about some software on here that I really, really like. So first off,

00:05:59.440 | I've gotten a couple emails recently about what storage backups I use. I don't think I have a

00:06:04.320 | perfect solution for the cloud. So for a while I use Dropbox. And then when I started recording

00:06:09.840 | videos for the podcast, we ran out of space. So I switched to Google drive because I got more space

00:06:15.280 | with our Google workspace account for my phone. I back everything up on iCloud. I use photos and

00:06:21.440 | iCloud backup for messages and all that. So that's how I back up there. But the recent purchase that

00:06:26.720 | I made that I am really, really happy with is the Synology 923 plus. It's a network attached

00:06:34.720 | storage device. So it's called a disk station, DS923 plus. And imagine a little device that just

00:06:42.400 | has a bunch of hard drives in it that you can plug into your network at home. You can attach it to

00:06:46.480 | your computer as like a network storage drive. But the thing I love about it is that it syncs

00:06:50.880 | everything instantly with the cloud. So for example, if I'm finishing recording this episode

00:06:55.760 | and I take the audio and video files and I put them on that network drive, it's really fast

00:07:00.480 | because it's local and it's connected via ethernet. But then that device backs everything up on it in

00:07:07.440 | a few folders with the cloud. So I also have three or four 22 terabyte drives in there in what's

00:07:14.320 | called a RAID array. So it doesn't actually use up all of the drives. I think I have three 22

00:07:20.560 | terabyte drives, but I only get 40 terabytes and it backs everything up such that if one of those

00:07:26.480 | drives failed, I didn't lose anything. So a lot of that archival footage from old VHS tapes,

00:07:32.080 | old photos that are not in my current library, I put all of them there. Some of those folders

00:07:37.280 | get auto backed up to Google drive. Some of them don't, but that is how I back up all of my

00:07:42.560 | important things on the computer. I'll try to get through this fast because I know not everyone is

00:07:47.760 | a Mac user, but I have an app I use every day, all the time called Alfred, which replaces the

00:07:53.360 | spotlight search, just has a bit more functionality than superhuman for email. It's totally the

00:07:58.800 | fastest email I've been using it for a long time. Highly, highly recommend everyone check it out.

00:08:04.880 | I think you could probably get back according to their website, four hours a week, maybe more.

00:08:08.960 | It is so fast. Some of the new AI features they've added, letting you query your email and just,

00:08:15.680 | you know, auto write emails are so good. If someone said superhuman was going away,

00:08:19.920 | it might be one of the few products that I'd be like, no, like what? No, I don't want you like

00:08:24.880 | some things I could find alternatives with. For example, I use a loom to record a ton of videos

00:08:29.760 | for work. I love loom. It's cross platform. Basically think of it as a really quick way

00:08:34.640 | to record your screen. So if you're trying to explain to someone how something works or how

00:08:38.720 | to do something or ask a question, I record a loom video. I send it to them. I use it a lot

00:08:43.600 | of times for async meetings. Someone says, Hey, I'd love if we could meet so you could review this

00:08:48.000 | project I'm working on. And then I'll just review the project, record myself for 10 minutes, send

00:08:52.560 | them the video. And now we've avoided a 30 minute meeting. I can record it whenever I want. I do

00:08:57.920 | that a lot. Uh, I love when people do that for me and we can kind of be more efficient. I recently

00:09:02.720 | found this app called code Piper, which basically, if you have an iPhone and you've noticed when you

00:09:07.360 | get those two factor authentication codes, it auto pastes them into the, whatever you're doing,

00:09:13.520 | whether it's, you're trying to fill it out on a website. It does that for the Mac. Also really

00:09:17.520 | love the code Piper app. If you have an iPhone and you know, when you get one of those six digit

00:09:21.520 | two factor authentication codes, code Piper does what happens on the iPhone naturally on your

00:09:26.480 | computer. So if you get a text and you need to put it into the browser and you're using Chrome or

00:09:30.640 | any other browser, it solves that. Another app I couldn't really live without is called rectangle.

00:09:35.440 | It's basically a way to move things and manipulate things on your screen. So I press command option,

00:09:42.080 | right? And it jumps the window I'm looking at currently to the right side. And if I press it

00:09:46.720 | three times, it cycles between the right third, the right middle and the right two thirds. And

00:09:51.360 | so if I'm trying to quickly split my screen between two apps, I can do it in a couple seconds.

00:09:56.400 | I love the rectangle app. It's absolutely free. They do have a pro version, but I don't even think

00:10:00.880 | I have the pro version. The free version is awesome as is really also love the paprika app.

00:10:06.000 | I've talked about this app a bunch of times. It is a recipe database, meal planning and grocery

00:10:11.920 | tracking. I know there are a lot of apps out there that do this, so I'm not going to knock whichever

00:10:15.840 | one you use, but I really, really love the paprika app. And you know, Amy and I are both logged in on

00:10:22.000 | both of our phones. We rate recipes. If we find recipes online, we save them. You could dump all

00:10:26.960 | the ingredients from the recipe into the grocery list. Even if we're both at the grocery store at

00:10:30.880 | the same time, we can be checking things off together. And then we can kind of meal plan out

00:10:34.880 | for the week. So really love this app. It's on all platforms, so anyone can use it. Also really love

00:10:41.920 | another all platform app called one password. You guys have probably heard me talk about it for

00:10:46.160 | years. I've probably been using it for kind of seems like almost a decade at this point. I've

00:10:51.280 | forced everyone in my family to switch over. It is my favorite password manager. They natively

00:10:57.040 | support a bunch of new stuff as it comes. They supported two factor codes as a replacement for

00:11:01.840 | Google Authenticator. They now support pass keys. Really solid product. I really don't think anyone

00:11:07.440 | should have passwords that they have to remember other than their one password. There are other

00:11:11.440 | password managers. This is just the one I've been using forever, and I see no reason to switch.

00:11:15.600 | Another app I couldn't live without is the arc browser. I've switched full time from all my

00:11:20.560 | devices, even my iPhone to using arcs browser. The ability to have your tab bar on the left

00:11:27.840 | and have tabs kind of in this both primary and ephemeral space is really incredible. I wish

00:11:33.760 | there was an easy way for me to explain how good it is just in audio form, but it's a free app. So

00:11:39.920 | go check it out. You can use it. I think they now have a windows version and a Mac versions,

00:11:43.680 | really great browser. Also really love Nord VPN. You could basically choose almost any country in

00:11:49.520 | the world and really quickly connect to them. I don't necessarily think it's necessary with the

00:11:54.960 | advent of HTTPS. However, there are so many cases, and I'll give you a couple examples when having a

00:12:00.720 | VPN has been helpful. Number one, watching the Olympics. If you want to make sure that you get

00:12:05.600 | access to different versions of the Olympics, maybe you don't have a peacock subscription.

00:12:09.520 | You could just VPN over to the UK and use the BBC one. You can VPN over to Australia and use

00:12:15.360 | their now nine, I think it is. So I've been able to do that to watch some of the Olympics. Sometimes

00:12:20.640 | if you are trying to be a little sneaky and maybe there's a product you use and they have a referral

00:12:25.680 | program. And if you refer someone, you get a bonus and you want to just refer another email address.

00:12:30.480 | I tried that today and it didn't work because it said, Oh, you're in the same IP. It didn't say

00:12:34.720 | that. It just said you can't refer yourself, but jumped open a Nord switch to a VPN over in Texas

00:12:40.960 | and connected pretty quickly. And then boom, all of a sudden it's like, Oh, you are a new person.

00:12:45.360 | Thank you. So love Nord VPN for anything, especially if you're traveling internationally

00:12:50.400 | and want to be able to access things in the U S um, you want to make sure your device seems like

00:12:55.600 | it's in the U S awesome product. Um, that's the main stuff. I'm going to talk briefly about Chrome

00:13:01.120 | extensions because yes, apps are great, but there are some Chrome extensions that are really,

00:13:05.840 | really great. So one library extension, when you're browsing Amazon, it'll just show you

00:13:11.600 | all of the libraries that have that book in either checkout or ebook form.

00:13:15.840 | Second is a app called points path. So when you're browsing Google flights, it actually

00:13:22.400 | shows you all of the cost in points for the major U S airline. So like United American and Delta,

00:13:28.400 | and it'll say, Hey, actually, you know, this flight's three 39, it's going to be 34,000

00:13:32.560 | points. You should use cash, but Hey, this flight's three 39, and it's only 14,000 points

00:13:38.240 | and $6 in taxes. Great deal. You should use your points. Love that because anytime you're shopping

00:13:43.600 | online, you could basically earn cash back. Sometimes it's like 15, 20%, sometimes it's 2%,

00:13:48.800 | but almost every time it's some percent that you wouldn't have got back otherwise.

00:13:53.440 | And if you link your Amex account to Rakuten, instead of earning pennies, you can earn Amex

00:13:57.760 | points. So if you would have gotten a hundred dollars in cash back, it would have actually been

00:14:02.080 | about 10,000 Amex points, which I think Amex points end up being worth more than a penny.

00:14:07.040 | So I think it's a great deal. Love the KIPA extension. Basically it's an Amazon price

00:14:15.200 | tracker. So if you're looking at a product on Amazon, you can go look at a historical graph

00:14:20.240 | of how much that product has cost. So I'm looking right now at that Anker magnetic charging stand

00:14:26.880 | I have on my desk. And you can see right now it's $39.99, but it was $32.99 for a few days

00:14:32.720 | in early July. My guess is it'll probably be $32.99 again. If that was something that you

00:14:38.800 | didn't really need urgently, it seems like it's gone on sale twice in the last couple months.

00:14:43.120 | Also really like this don't F with paste browser extension. The F is short for the expletive.

00:14:49.520 | I love it because what it does is every time you go to a website, it's not going to allow you to

00:14:54.880 | paste something in, which often happens on a bank website that says, what's your account and routing

00:15:01.600 | number? Oh, but you can't paste it in. And presumably it's because they don't want you to

00:15:05.520 | mess it up, but I'm actually usually copying it from the source. So I'm more likely to mess it up

00:15:10.640 | if I have to type it and don't F with paste goes in and allows you to paste when you otherwise

00:15:16.320 | wouldn't. If you have a Capital One card, the Eno browser extension is amazing because it lets you

00:15:21.280 | create virtual cards for all of your cap one cards. So venture X, two X points everywhere.

00:15:27.280 | One of my primary shopping cards online, if not my only shopping card online. And so I can still

00:15:32.560 | earn two X points, but I can create virtual cards either because I just don't want to give some

00:15:37.920 | e-commerce site, my regular credit card number. Maybe it's a weird kind of sketchy e-commerce site

00:15:42.320 | or if I'm signing up for a trial for something. And I want to make sure that if I forget to cancel,

00:15:46.720 | I don't get charged. I can use my venture X card on a virtual card and set it to expire the next

00:15:52.800 | day so that by 14 days, it won't work. Uh, also the card pointers browser extension. I'm going

00:15:58.800 | to talk in a little bit about, um, travel points and miles. I probably should have put points path

00:16:03.840 | there, but I'll bring up card pointers again on my iPhone. Love superhuman arc. A lot of the

00:16:09.120 | main stuff. One that I use a lot, which I'd be curious if someone has a better recommendation,

00:16:13.760 | I'm all ears is the best parking app. If you're ever in a city and you need to find a parking

00:16:18.160 | space, it basically just gives you a map of the price of all the parking garages nearby

00:16:22.320 | chat GPT. It's my shortcut button. So if I just press the button on my iPhone, it is chat GPT.

00:16:28.320 | I use it all the time. I use it on web and on mobile. Uh, it's fantastic. Another one that

00:16:33.520 | I've recently really been loving is the Morty app. Um, I have a pulled up right now and it's

00:16:39.200 | basically a directory of escape rooms. And so only interesting if you love escape rooms, which

00:16:43.680 | I happen to really like, but you can open it up. You can sort by the community score and you can

00:16:48.320 | get access to all of these rooms. So if you're in San Francisco, according to this, the number one

00:16:54.880 | escape room in the whole area is Robo topia at I'm escape in Sunnyvale. I have not done that room.

00:17:00.800 | I would love to, Oh, I filtered out a couple of the ones I've done that I thought were fantastic

00:17:04.640 | that I've already done, but the Edison escape room up at palace games. Excellent. I could go

00:17:08.800 | on about escape room. So I will not also another app I use a lot as infatuation. It's a kind of

00:17:13.840 | like a food site, like eater or Yelp, but I just really liked the editorial they put in there.

00:17:19.200 | And then for listening to podcasts, it's funny. I used to use Spotify and then I had a couple

00:17:25.840 | private RSS feeds that I subscribed to through Patreon and Spotify didn't support them.

00:17:30.720 | So I tried Apple podcasts. I like listening to my podcast at like 2.1 X, which I know is pretty fast

00:17:36.720 | and Apple caps out at two. So recently I've been trying to overcast and I I'm not ready to commit

00:17:42.560 | that it's the best out there, but it's pretty close so far. I really like it. Um, that said,

00:17:48.800 | I still pay for Spotify. So I'm going to move on from talking about apps and software and talk a

00:17:54.000 | little bit about subscriptions. So on the subscription front, uh, I pay for some and get a

00:17:59.920 | bunch for free also. So Amazon prime still happen to be on my parents subscription. Uh, I do pay for

00:18:05.600 | YouTube premium Spotify and masterclass all have really great content. Um, Apple TV plus love the

00:18:12.720 | content there. Get it for free with T-Mobile Netflix. Love the content. Also free with T-Mobile

00:18:18.400 | Disney plus kids love the content free with an Amex platinum digital entertainment credit,

00:18:23.680 | uh, Paramount plus not even sure I watch it, but Amex platinum gives you free Walmart plus and

00:18:29.440 | Walmart plus gives you free Paramount plus. So I do have a subscription, uh, to Paramount plus,

00:18:33.760 | but I'm not even sure if I ever use it. A new subscription in my arsenal is a product called

00:18:39.440 | stable and it is a virtual mailbox. Now I'd say primary reason many people might want this is for

00:18:46.720 | their business. Instead of getting a bunch of mail sent to your home, instead of having your home

00:18:52.480 | address show up all over the internet, uh, because business addresses are made public switch to

00:18:57.680 | something like stable, send all your mail there. They'll scan it or ship it back out to you. So

00:19:04.160 | easy to manage. It's basically like the only business address you ever need. And the greatest

00:19:08.560 | thing is I also use it for a lot of personal stuff, but if you really just want to make sure

00:19:13.360 | you get a little bit more privacy on the personal side or the business side, or you just want the

00:19:17.680 | convenience of accessing mail, even when you're traveling, I used to use this service called

00:19:22.640 | I postal one, pretty much a disaster. I finally did tons of research cause I didn't want to mess

00:19:28.400 | this up again. And I switched to stable and it's been an incredible service. Speaking of getting

00:19:33.680 | your information off the internet, I will talk for a second about another service I love called

00:19:38.160 | delete me. Basically anytime you put your name, address, email, phone number, all that stuff,

00:19:43.600 | there are a ton of companies that resell all that data. And unfortunately, when they resell that

00:19:47.920 | data, it ends up on so many data broker websites. So I use delete me to get rid of it. I'm looking

00:19:52.800 | at one of my reports now and they've reviewed pretty regularly about 20,000 listings. And it's

00:20:00.080 | an ongoing service that every time I get a report, they've removed sometimes two or three things,

00:20:05.200 | sometimes 40 things. I've now bought it for almost my entire family. So a really big fan there.

00:20:11.120 | I also pay for premium Twitter now to remove all the ads. It's really my primary source of news.

00:20:17.600 | I don't use the for you at all. I just follow all the news accounts that I would normally want to

00:20:21.680 | follow. And then I could just use it as a quick feed. Um, I follow a small enough number of

00:20:26.720 | people that it's not really messy and I'm never looking at the for you tab. So, um, that's not

00:20:31.680 | there. And I do pay for chat GPT also love chat GPT. Um, the new four is really good and I'm sure

00:20:38.400 | there are other models that are going to be faster and freer, but I think once you start using one,

00:20:42.960 | it's hard to want to switch though. I really wish they would have just some easy way to search.

00:20:47.200 | So that's mostly subscriptions. So let's talk a little bit about money. Um, when it comes to the

00:20:52.320 | best bank accounts, episode one 77, I already covered all of this. So I'll just refer people

00:20:56.960 | there, but wealth front Mercury fidelity kind of came up at the top for banking and brokerage. So

00:21:03.680 | that's that. Um, when it comes to software tools for your money, I want to talk about a few things.

00:21:09.440 | First is a product called Kubera, which is in my opinion, one of the best ways to monitor your net

00:21:15.680 | worth. Think of it like if you built an app that was an amazing net worth tracking spreadsheet,

00:21:20.720 | it would automatically connect to all of your accounts. They use multiple providers. So things

00:21:25.120 | don't fail as much as they do other ways. I love it. If you're a member of all the hacks, what you

00:21:29.840 | can do at all the hacks.com/join, you get your first year of Kubera for $1. Um, it's a really

00:21:36.080 | great product when it comes to doing a little bit more modeling. Um, I really like projection lab.

00:21:41.280 | You can basically build your own financial plan. They actually have a way to go simulate and play

00:21:45.440 | it and use it for free. So highly recommend that. I think we do have a discount, but you don't even

00:21:50.160 | need to pay to get started when it comes to tracking your spending. I use co-pilot it's

00:21:54.640 | only on iPhone and Mac, but they are building a web and an Android version. And I think it's one

00:21:59.680 | of the easiest ways to make sure you categorize and monitor all of your spending and use it to

00:22:06.640 | retroactively build a budget. But I did cover all the apps that I compared when I decided to use

00:22:11.200 | co-pilot in episode one 33 and talked a lot about how I manage that cashflow process. Um, when it

00:22:18.000 | comes to being charitable, I use Daffy. I interviewed Daffy's founder, Adam Nash in episode

00:22:23.200 | 50. It is really the way that we give money. So we donate all the money to our donor advised fund.

00:22:30.080 | And it's just a really centralized place that makes it super efficient for taxes. That's primarily

00:22:34.720 | how we do all of our charitable giving. And then when it comes to tax advantaged accounts,

00:22:39.920 | because we run our own company, we've moved all of our old 401ks into a solo 401k that we have at

00:22:47.520 | carry. Um, and so we, that we found to be the best way to manage our 401ks and, and our self-directed

00:22:54.560 | IRAs at carry, and then not really a app or a tool, but, uh, I've talked about guilt a lot.

00:23:00.720 | There are CPA for how we manage everything personal taxes. And then when it comes to

00:23:05.760 | business stuff, I'll get to that later when it's both finances and other stuff.

00:23:09.360 | Also, when it comes to managing all of your financial information,

00:23:12.960 | I really like the trustworthy product. Basically think of it like your digital vault for everything.

00:23:18.480 | They put all of your tax returns, IDs information. Think if something were going to happen to you

00:23:25.120 | and someone needed to just know where everything is, all your accounts, what are all the account

00:23:29.040 | numbers? What places are they at? Pictures of passports, insurance cards. I love it. Um,

00:23:34.880 | they have a mobile app. So if you're at the doctor's office and you need a picture of your

00:23:38.080 | insurance card or something like that, it's, it's easy to access all of it.

00:23:42.960 | So another recommendation there next, I want to talk about health fitness and all the different

00:23:48.640 | services there. Cause I spent a bunch of time thinking about this and some of them are gonna,

00:23:53.040 | I'm going to punt on for an episode I'm working on. And some of them I'm just going to share. So

00:23:56.560 | at home, got a Peloton really love it. I've had it for a long time, but I actually really want

00:24:03.440 | a tonal and I'm, I'm not yet convinced that I will use it enough, which is why I've held out.

00:24:11.760 | But I feel like I've been trying to get back into the strength game, especially after doing a DEXA

00:24:17.440 | scan and realizing I could really increase my muscle mass. So tonal is something that if we

00:24:22.880 | had a wall, that was an obvious place for it. I might get, it's not cheap, but I really don't

00:24:28.400 | have the space for a whole regular setup. What I do have the space for are two products that

00:24:33.040 | I really like, which are the Bowflex select tech adjustable dumbbells. They're fantastic.

00:24:39.520 | So if you want a really small space, but you want all different weights, really love that.

00:24:44.320 | I also have an adjustable kettlebell, but it's about 10 years old and I'm pretty sure the model

00:24:49.200 | we have has been discontinued and improved. And it's not that great. It's a great product

00:24:54.000 | conceptually, but I wouldn't get that specific version. A couple other health and fitness

00:24:59.920 | products. I really love wearing my aura ring for fitness, sleep tracking. It's fantastic.

00:25:05.200 | Even though I had a gen two, I actually just upgraded to the gen three. So really love that.

00:25:10.560 | These headphones right here are the shocks open run pro. I love these headphones. When it comes

00:25:17.600 | to working out, I think they're fantastic. If you're going on a run, they're open ear. So if

00:25:23.360 | you I'm putting them on right now, so you don't have something in your ear. So if you're going

00:25:27.600 | on a run, you'd obviously hear all your surroundings. If you're going on a run with

00:25:31.120 | someone and you wanted to be able to talk to them super easy, the open run pro highly recommend

00:25:36.640 | these headphones, couple other kinds of health related products. When it comes to running,

00:25:40.880 | I love the Nike vapor five, three shoes. They're really expensive. I actually asked for them. I

00:25:46.960 | think it was Christmas or my birthday because I, my parents were asking what do you want? And I

00:25:50.800 | couldn't come up with anything. And I'd been eyeing these, but I just couldn't pull the trigger.

00:25:55.280 | But they're nuts there. I don't even know how to explain it because I was pretty diligent at

00:25:59.920 | recording all of my runs in the Peloton app. And I use these shoes and I'm not joking was like five

00:26:07.520 | to 7% faster wearing these shoes. Then I started doing all these research about how they almost

00:26:12.720 | got banned from the Olympics because they're just that amazing. And so if you're trying to shave

00:26:18.800 | off time running, they're fantastic. There are probably shoes that are equally as good. Um,

00:26:24.640 | but for some reason now I'm like, gosh, if I wear another pair of shoes, I'm going to go up in time.

00:26:29.040 | So I got to keep these shoes going. A few other things around the house. We do have a plunge

00:26:33.680 | cold plunge. I looked at a lot of cold plunge. I really liked the plunge ones. And then we recently

00:26:38.960 | added a sauna from Haven. They have not launched officially yet, but if you go to Haven sauna.com,

00:26:44.720 | you can put your name in the wait list. They build these really beautiful saunas at home,

00:26:50.080 | and they've got some really cool stuff coming soon. A couple more health things. So for doctors,

00:26:55.520 | we use one medical for the whole family. It's pretty convenient to be able to schedule

00:26:59.360 | appointments last minute, do virtual calls. There might be other things happening in this

00:27:04.080 | space soon. It feels really weird that Amazon, because they acquired them is now my doctor,

00:27:08.400 | but all these concierge doctors I've been looking into doing research are, you know,

00:27:13.920 | 5,000 to $25,000 a year, which is just way out of our price range and budget.

00:27:19.760 | I do spend $19, I think, a month for Peter Attia's premium podcast feed and access to his premium

00:27:27.440 | show notes. Really like the Attia podcast, The Drive, and highly recommend it if you want to

00:27:33.360 | dial in your health or his book that he recently wrote called Outlive. When it comes to doing a

00:27:37.920 | lot of health diagnostics, I'm actually working on an episode, so I'm going to pause and not go down

00:27:43.280 | that rabbit hole of blood tests, other things like that. I think that's it for health and fitness.

00:27:48.640 | Maybe the only other thing is kind of like workout gear. It's probably no surprise to

00:27:53.120 | people who've been listening for a while that pretty much everything I wear when I'm exercising

00:27:57.200 | is Viore. That goes for non-exercising, like recording a podcast, I have some Viore pants,

00:28:02.480 | I have a Viore shirt. Three of my favorites, which was really hard to think about narrowing down to

00:28:07.840 | the Sunday Performance Joggers, the Strato Tech Tee, and the Core Shorts. Those three products,

00:28:13.040 | I own multiple of all of them. I wear all of them at least once or twice a week.

00:28:18.400 | I recently got another hoodie from Viore, and it's incredible. I just can't say enough about

00:28:22.480 | their products. I wear them 90% of the time, and they're fantastic. When I'm not wearing Viore,

00:28:29.360 | there are a couple other brands. I might as well go here because I don't have a big fashion section

00:28:33.840 | in this podcast. If I want to dress it up a little more, there is one shirt that's basically become

00:28:39.840 | my go-to, and it's the Bonobos Riviera short-sleeve dress shirt. It's basically like I know my exact

00:28:46.400 | size. I know my exact fit and length. Someone actually asked me a couple of weeks ago, "Where

00:28:52.400 | do you go to buy non-workout gear? What's the adult thing to do? Do I really need to go to the

00:28:58.000 | mall now?" My suggestion was go to a Bonobos store, and they'll measure you for every fit,

00:29:05.360 | and you can just buy everything there. Now, this doesn't work for women as well as men,

00:29:09.440 | but I just found it to be so easy. Now, I have all my sizes there. If I need things, I can just

00:29:14.800 | order them, and they have free returns. Those Riviera shirts are incredible. I probably have

00:29:20.000 | six or seven of them. Almost everything I wear is more athleisure. If I'm going out,

00:29:26.720 | it's probably more in the Bonobos Riviera with a pair of jeans. Then, if I really need to dress up,

00:29:32.960 | I have a couple of suits that I got 12 years ago for our wedding, custom-tailored suits from

00:29:39.040 | Indochino. I still wear the two suits I got from my wedding, and they're the only two suits I have.

00:29:44.800 | They've lasted 12 years, and it's been fantastic. The only other thing in that camp is Gooder

00:29:50.800 | sunglasses. I probably own five or six pairs of Gooder sunglasses, and they're great for working

00:29:56.480 | out. They're cheap enough that if you lose them, it's not the end of the world, and you can replace

00:30:01.520 | them pretty easily. That's kind of in the clothes camp. Everything else is like I buy socks at

00:30:07.200 | Costco. I really like Mack Weldon underwear. I would never pay as much as it costs, but because

00:30:14.320 | I have a platinum card, I use my Saks credit every six months to buy overpriced underwear

00:30:20.400 | from Mack Weldon on the internet. Maybe I'm just cheap. Maybe underwear should cost $30 per pair.

00:30:26.000 | I don't know. It seems expensive, but I like their underwear. I just don't want to pay for it,

00:30:31.360 | so I do pay for it, but with the Saks credit from the Amex platinum card. Next, let's talk about

00:30:37.520 | travel. I didn't have that many things for someone who likes to travel a lot and is a

00:30:42.720 | core topic of the show, so I thought I'd highlight a few. One is the Flighty app. It's really

00:30:47.280 | fantastic. They have a great sheet to show up on your iPhone when you're waiting for a flight,

00:30:53.120 | so you can just kind of keep an eye on it. When anything happens, I usually get an alert from

00:30:57.840 | Flighty before I've even gotten an alert from the airline. Each flight, they give you an arrival

00:31:02.880 | forecast, so it shows you how frequently is this flight early, on time, 45 minutes late.

00:31:08.960 | Where's the plane coming from? What kind of plane is it? They give you the detailed timetable of

00:31:13.760 | not just departs at 2.30 for this random flight, but taxi scheduled for 10 minutes. It's going to

00:31:20.240 | depart at 2.40. It's going to land at 11.07, gate arrival 11.22. Here's how long it's going to be

00:31:26.640 | in the air. Here's my history on the route. I pulled up a random flight from LA to New York,

00:31:31.360 | and it says, "Hey, you actually took a flight, United 82, from LA to New York on June 5, 2010."

00:31:36.880 | I don't think I could go in and find out whether it was delayed or not, but it's also great for

00:31:42.240 | sharing your flights with others. When it comes to packing a bag, I've got a lot of options.

00:31:46.800 | For suitcases, we have one Away's bag. I love their Weekend bag also. We've got a Manos bag.

00:31:53.520 | I can't really tell you which one is better than the other. They're pretty similar.

00:31:56.800 | If I have a backpack, it's going to be a Tortuga backpack. They're so well built.

00:32:01.680 | They're really, really quality. Everything from even the tech organizer that you can get from

00:32:06.880 | them to the day packs are just fantastic. Love them. As for where to go, I'm not going to go

00:32:12.000 | down the path of hotel chains and that kind of stuff. Then one other travel product that I love,

00:32:16.480 | and I'm holding it in my hands right now, is this tiny little travel router. Based on my search on

00:32:21.440 | Amazon, there are some better ones now. This one is the GLiNet 300M Mini Smart Router. The reason

00:32:28.880 | I love this product is because if you ever join a hotel Wi-Fi and you notice that usually you have

00:32:33.200 | to authenticate with your room number and some sort of login, well, that's fine if you're on a

00:32:39.040 | phone or a computer, but there are a bunch of devices that can't do that. Whether that's a

00:32:43.840 | Roku stick or we travel with our camp baby monitors that are on Wi-Fi, they can't do that.

00:32:50.400 | You bring this little travel router that costs less than $30, and you can either connect it via

00:32:55.040 | Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and it will repeat the Wi-Fi out with its own Wi-Fi network so that you can

00:33:02.000 | have all those other devices join the router's Wi-Fi network. Through your laptop or your phone,

00:33:08.480 | you can log into the router and go through the authentication. Basically, use your computer to

00:33:14.400 | sign into your hotel Wi-Fi on this device through the web, and then all these other devices that

00:33:21.440 | can't do that can get online. If you are staying at some old school property that limits how many

00:33:27.040 | devices you can have, which I have stayed in a few like that, this also gets around that restriction.

00:33:32.240 | For $30, anytime we're traveling, at least with all the kid stuff that needs to hook up to Wi-Fi,

00:33:37.760 | or if we're going with family where there's going to be more than two or three people in a room,

00:33:42.640 | always bring this travel router. Love it. If anyone knows a better one, let me know,

00:33:46.960 | but I can at least say that this one, which is linked in the show notes, is fantastic.

00:33:51.600 | On the points and miles front, so many episodes, so I'll just breeze through a few things.

00:33:57.920 | Go to episode 152 if you want to know what cards are in my wallet. Another travel one is the app

00:34:04.080 | and browser extension Card Pointers. Specifically, if you have Card Pointers Pro, whenever you're

00:34:09.440 | logged into your Chase, Amex, Bank of America website where they have card-linked offers,

00:34:14.880 | like add this to your card, spend 200 on Delta, get 50 bucks free, those kind of offers,

00:34:20.160 | Card Pointers will automatically load all of those offers into your Amex account or your Chase

00:34:28.640 | account so you don't have to manually add them. Then, anytime you're shopping on those websites,

00:34:35.040 | it'll pop up and not only say, "Hey, this is the best card to use," but also, "Hey, you have an

00:34:40.720 | offer that you should use on this site. Make sure to use this other card because you're going to

00:34:45.440 | get a bonus." Love the Card Pointers offers because they log all the ones you register.

00:34:52.160 | Let's say I'm at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I can open up my app in Card Pointers, search Bed,

00:34:57.360 | Bath & Beyond. It'll let me know if I have one of those offers loaded so I know which card to use.

00:35:02.320 | I've easily saved hundreds of dollars because of these card-linked offers and big fan of Card

00:35:07.680 | Pointers Pro. Shout out to Emmanuel, who's a listener of the podcast and also the guy behind

00:35:12.720 | Card Pointers Pro, for which, in the show notes, there's a discount, as there is for a lot of the

00:35:17.120 | products I mentioned. When it comes to tracking your points and miles, I don't think there's a

00:35:23.200 | great solution because so many of the airlines have blocked the ability for people to log in

00:35:28.960 | and see your balance. But the best of all the products out there is Award Wallet. When you

00:35:33.360 | combine it with their browser extension, they get through most of the way. You can even forward some

00:35:39.200 | of your monthly emails such that they'll get a full picture. It's not perfect, but it is the

00:35:44.560 | best out there. I guess when it comes to optimizing which cards to use, I use the optimizer tool that

00:35:48.800 | I built. You can get it at allthehacks.com/cardtool. When it comes to all the other award search tools,

00:35:53.840 | I'm not going to cover them in this episode. Go check out episode 166 and 167 with Greg from The

00:35:59.280 | Frequent Miler. We went through all of them. I wasn't sure where to put auto stuff, but I guess

00:36:03.680 | if we're talking about travel, maybe it fits in there. We own a Tesla. Love it. I can't imagine

00:36:09.280 | owning a different car. Basically, I've now become accustomed to the interface and how good it is,

00:36:14.960 | and I get in family members' cars. I'm like, "Why are there all these buttons?" If you do have a

00:36:18.720 | Tesla, there is one product I do love a lot called TeslaFi, which basically you can auth to your

00:36:25.760 | Tesla account. It'll log all your drives, give you all kinds of stats about what you're doing.

00:36:31.280 | I've used it for so many reasons, primarily to track business versus personal, but it is just

00:36:36.480 | great for, "Oh, how long did that drive take? Oh, I can go look." It's like if you basically had

00:36:41.360 | a odometer tracking, but with all the information out there. I imagine if you had kids and a Tesla,

00:36:47.280 | it would be a great way to keep an eye on where the car is. When it comes to car insurance and

00:36:51.200 | really any insurance, go back and check out episode 104, all the nuance of all the research

00:36:56.080 | I've done trying to optimize all my insurance policies are there, including homeowner's

00:36:59.600 | insurance. On the topic of smart home, I think I'll start with my favorite, which is Ubiquiti.

00:37:05.200 | Ubiquiti makes all the Wi-Fi gear we need. It's professional grade, and it just doesn't have the

00:37:10.160 | problems I've had with everything else in the past. No rebooting, no bad Wi-Fi quality, fast

00:37:15.520 | internet is always there. Love Ubiquiti. I would say it's not the easiest to set up for someone

00:37:22.320 | who's not very technical, but man, once you get it going, nothing beats it. We've tried Eero,

00:37:27.520 | we've tried Netgear. It's incredible. We also use Ubiquiti cameras, which are all local.

00:37:32.560 | Some of them are Wi-Fi, some of them are hardwired, but they're all local. All the

00:37:37.760 | camera footage isn't getting uploaded to the cloud. It's going to the Dream Machine Pro,

00:37:42.400 | which is our router and network storage for cameras in our pantry. Love Ubiquiti.

00:37:50.640 | They don't do an alarm system, so we use Ring for alarms, we use August for locks. I wish they were

00:37:56.560 | all in one platform, but they're not. I tried to sync them all to Apple Home, which is as close

00:38:02.080 | as we've gotten. Other smart home stuff. We recently bought a Samsung Frame TV and absolutely

00:38:08.080 | love it. It's fantastic. It has enough services hooked up to it that we don't even need an Apple

00:38:13.440 | TV, so we only have an Apple TV for old TVs. I can't say enough good things about the Frame TV.

00:38:20.080 | It looks great in the living room when it's not on, which is most of the time.

00:38:23.680 | Also, speaking of TV, I love the app TV Time. It seems to break all the time and not be the

00:38:30.000 | most reliable, but I haven't found a better way to track all the shows you like and get

00:38:35.040 | recommendations for other ones and track the schedule of what's coming up, so I love that.

00:38:39.680 | Open to recommendations if there's something better. As I am for always, if you hear this

00:38:44.720 | and you're missing out on a certain product or service, absolutely let me know. Reach out. Podcast

00:38:49.840 | at allthehacks.com. I'd love to hear your suggestions. When it comes to music, we have

00:38:54.320 | Sonos speakers all over the house. Love Sonos. Hate the new Sonos app. It is terrible. I wish

00:39:00.240 | they would revert to the old one. So many problems, but you know a product's good when you're willing

00:39:05.280 | to put up with a terrible app just to use the product because you think the product's that good.

00:39:10.400 | On the topic of home energy, we have a Tesla Powerwall and solar. It was here when we got

00:39:16.560 | the house. One of the products that was also here when we got the house, which is really cool,

00:39:21.600 | is called Sense. You hook it up at your electrical panel, and it monitors all the usage of your

00:39:28.480 | electricity, but it also uses some sort of intelligence to figure out what devices there

00:39:34.000 | are on your system and kind of intelligently identifies them. It's really cool. So if you like

00:39:38.640 | monitoring your energy usage, the Powerwall does it at a macro level, but this does it at a micro

00:39:44.320 | level of which devices are on. You do have to label them, but it's pretty cool. If you want

00:39:49.440 | to spend a little bit more, and I haven't come around to it yet, but I would love to get a span,

00:39:55.040 | and that is a smart home energy panel, replaces all your circuit breakers with something really

00:40:00.880 | intelligent. You can monitor your usage and basically turn off a circuit from your phone

00:40:07.040 | if you're fixing a light or a plug or something like that. So really would love a smart panel

00:40:12.400 | from span, but I haven't decided to make that investment. It's one of those like would be cool,

00:40:18.160 | but I'm not quite sure if it's worth the cost. I'm sure if I had it, I would love it.

00:40:23.360 | And then the last home thing is we have an eight sleep pod cover, and I love it. Amy loves the bed

00:40:29.440 | nice and warm. I love the bed to cool at night, and it's just game changer for sleep. So highly

00:40:35.680 | recommend the pod cover. I guess this is home, but maybe more on the entertainment side. I'm

00:40:41.280 | going to share a couple of things. One, Monopoly deal, fantastic game. I guess it's kind of in the

00:40:46.400 | home camp of things we play around the home. I'm actually not going to go through every game I

00:40:51.360 | have. I have 40 plus board games, so I'm going to find a way to share more about those in a future

00:40:56.160 | episode and some of my recommendations, but I'm just sharing the two that are small enough to

00:41:00.000 | fit on my desk that I could just kind of hold up in the video version of this. And the other one

00:41:04.160 | is coup, kind of like a small, fast playing card game for two to six people that requires a little

00:41:09.840 | bit of deception. So if you've ever played mafia or werewolves kind of in that realm.

00:41:14.480 | And then one other thing in the game camp that's not a board game is the games magazine. Someone

00:41:19.360 | told me about this and I got a subscription and I'm so happy I did because it's basically just a

00:41:24.800 | bunch of puzzles in one magazine. And anytime we go on a trip, I bring it along. And, you know,

00:41:31.200 | if I have a couple minutes to myself, maybe the plane's taking off and, you know, there's not much

00:41:36.400 | going on. I'll just do some puzzles and learn about new types of puzzles I didn't know about.

00:41:41.280 | Also in the home is like food and kitchen stuff. We get most of our food from Costco,

00:41:45.840 | Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods. So we don't go to the grocery store that often, but we do go to Costco

00:41:50.960 | seemingly every week. Love Costco. And if we're not cooking or going out, we're usually eating

00:41:55.360 | Green Chef. We get about three meals a week. We've had over 100 meals from Green Chef. Love them

00:42:01.040 | healthier and tastier and kind of more flavors than some of the other meal kits we've ever tried.

00:42:06.240 | Really love Green Chef. Another product that's kind of new to us that I really have been loving

00:42:11.680 | and actually convinced to become a sponsor after using the product was Dram. It's a sparkling

00:42:18.080 | beverage with really great natural flavors. And it's basically replaced all of the sodas,

00:42:25.200 | soft drinks, everything in the house there. It's just really good. I'm drinking the mushroom cola

00:42:30.000 | right now, which might sound crazy to some people that maybe don't like mushrooms, but is so good

00:42:36.000 | in the kitchen. As for cooking stuff, unfortunately, it's not still available,

00:42:41.440 | but we got a June Oven, which is a company a friend of mine started almost 10 years ago and

00:42:46.880 | use it every day. Loved our June Oven. Recently acquired a Ninja Creamy, which has a great price

00:42:54.080 | at Costco and have loved it for making protein ice cream. I'll link to a protein ice cream

00:43:00.480 | recipe in the show notes. Shout out to Sahil Bloom, past guest who turned me on to this.

00:43:05.840 | And it's amazing, right? Just like milk, a little sugar-free Jell-O or some xanthan gum

00:43:12.160 | and protein powder. And it tastes just like ice cream. It's like a McFlurry, if that's your thing.

00:43:18.000 | And I can't say enough of it. We have not used it for almost anything except for making protein

00:43:23.520 | ice cream. Another product I love is the Breville Tea Maker. Now, think of a kettle that can boil

00:43:29.760 | water. It does that, but it has a basket for loose-leaf tea. And you can set what kind of tea,

00:43:35.200 | and it'll boil the water, drop the basket with the loose-leaf tea in it, down, steep the tea,

00:43:41.440 | bring it back up, keep it warm. We got this when I was working at a startup for the office 14 years

00:43:48.400 | ago, maybe. And that is the one we have. This thing has worked every year for 14 years in a row.

00:43:54.960 | Makes me really love Breville, to be honest. I'll put a link to a couple other Breville products

00:43:58.720 | we've since acquired, immersion blender, regular blender, and big fan of Breville. No affiliation,

00:44:04.560 | just love the product. Another product we have that I got as a gift, I don't remember when,

00:44:10.800 | is the Waring Pro Double Belgian Waffle Maker. And we love making Belgian waffles in this house.

00:44:18.320 | Girls love them. Sometimes we use the Kodiak protein pancake waffle mix in it. Sometimes we

00:44:25.360 | go off the cuff and make it from scratch. But this is a double Belgian waffle maker. And there's

00:44:30.480 | just something about Belgian waffles that are great, but making them one at a time when you

00:44:33.760 | have a lot of people eating is slow. And so this one does two at once. Love this Belgian waffle

00:44:38.320 | maker. Another fun one that I read an article about, I'll probably, if I can find the article,

00:44:43.200 | link to it as well, is the Dash Rapid Egg Cooker. Now, this is a great example of a product that I

00:44:49.600 | love because it's so good, even though it makes something I don't enjoy. So I don't like hard

00:44:53.840 | boiled eggs. Amy does. But I learned about this product that is supposed to be like the best egg

00:44:59.200 | cooker. And people call it like the egg machine, but it's actually called the Dash Rapid Egg

00:45:04.640 | Cooker. It's less than 20 bucks. And throw a little water in, throw eggs, you poke a little

00:45:10.400 | hole in them that it comes a little poker, and you get perfect hard boiled eggs every time.

00:45:15.600 | It is so simple. One button. Love this product. Would make a great like white elephant gift,

00:45:21.120 | honestly, if you need one up in the upcoming holidays, but really cool little product.

00:45:26.480 | All the water bottles in our house are slowly getting replaced by Hydro Flask.

00:45:31.680 | I think if Amy could be sponsored by one company, it would be Hydro Flask. It's like

00:45:35.600 | her favorite company ever. Love their water bottles. And then last, Coravin. We've really

00:45:41.360 | scaled back drinking alcohol in the house pretty significantly, but we still have all these bottles

00:45:46.640 | of wine. And so the Coravin is this fantastic device that basically puts a little needle

00:45:51.520 | through the cork, lets you pour a glass of wine out of a bottle and into a glass, enjoy it without

00:45:58.720 | ruining the bottle. So you can pour a glass out and then pour the next glass out a week or a month

00:46:03.360 | later. So really great way to be able to drink the wine you have, but not need to drink the

00:46:08.800 | whole bottle every time you want a glass. So that's most of the house stuff. I left kids for

00:46:15.840 | last because I know not everyone has them, but there are a couple of kids' products that at

00:46:20.640 | least for our stage of life have been invaluable. So the Hatch Rest Plus is our light and sound

00:46:26.560 | machine for the girls. Red light means it's bedtime. Don't get out of bed. Green light means

00:46:31.120 | it's morning. You can get out of bed. White light means I'm trying to make the room really bright

00:46:34.720 | because you didn't get up on your own. Can you please wake up? Worst case, we'll come in there.

00:46:38.800 | But the sound machine built in also, great product. Nanit cameras, love them. We have them

00:46:45.280 | in and above the beds for both girls. And then when we're traveling, we have the travel stands

00:46:50.480 | and we use our travel routers so that we can use them anywhere. Really love the Nanit product.

00:46:54.960 | As for toys, I love Love Every. They make this subscription box that comes every three or four

00:47:00.640 | months, starting from a small age all the way up until toddler. And you get these like well-crafted

00:47:07.040 | kind of Montessori-inspired, at least, toys for kids with a little guide of how to use them,

00:47:12.880 | how to educate your kids about them, how to help them learn. And just can't say enough things.

00:47:17.680 | We've actually saved all of them. And so we've got this really cool collection that I don't know

00:47:22.160 | what we'll do with it. Maybe we'll put it on Facebook Marketplace when the kids are old

00:47:26.560 | enough. But really love, love every. When it comes to getting around in the car,

00:47:33.520 | we got two car seats from our neighbors and we've loved them. So I can't say anything about buying

00:47:39.360 | them, but the Clek Foomph and Flow car seats. Really big fan of them, even though we didn't

00:47:45.360 | originally purchase them. Shout out to Shannon and Joe for those car seats. Appreciate that.

00:47:50.800 | And then if we're traveling, the Ride Safer Travel Vest is an amazing way to be able to keep your

00:47:57.040 | kids safe without having to lug a car seat everywhere. So have loved that product. Before

00:48:02.880 | our daughter was big enough, we use the Costco Scenera Next car seat, which is really light and

00:48:08.160 | portable. But the Ride Safer Travel Vest, now both girls are big enough to have one of those and we

00:48:13.600 | don't have to carry car seats with us or rent them. Two other quick things for kids. The Tony's Box

00:48:19.680 | is a huge hit in our house. The little box where you put a bunch of characters on it through some

00:48:24.880 | kind of RFID. And it is like a speaker that plays all these different stories from the different

00:48:30.560 | characters. Actually talked in a previous episode about how I use Chat GPT and 11 Labs to generate

00:48:38.560 | a story for kids that included our kids. So we'd have this story that was about them and their

00:48:44.240 | favorite things, and then used voice to narrate it in my voice. And so one of the Tony's is Daddy

00:48:52.320 | Tony, one of them's Mommy Tony, and they have stories that we created for the girls that we're

00:48:57.440 | reading, but was done all with AI. So that was really cool. And then the last is, I've talked a

00:49:03.360 | lot about how we have a au pair in the house, and we're going through the process of looking for our

00:49:07.600 | next au pair now. And for the next one, we've used Cultural Care as an au pair agency, and it's been

00:49:13.120 | really great. You can filter on as many criteria as you want, connect with au pairs, interview them,

00:49:18.240 | they kind of do all the sourcing so you don't have to worry about it. And they take care of all the

00:49:21.600 | logistics and the visa and that kind of stuff. So we've had a really great experience with all our

00:49:25.440 | au pairs from Cultural Care. Not really a child, but we do have a dog. And three things that I

00:49:30.400 | thought I'd flag there. One, Sunday's dog food. And we tried this new dog food Sundays a couple

00:49:36.640 | years ago, and all the problems were gone. You know, everything was nice and solid going forward,

00:49:42.160 | and we have never even considered another dog food for that reason. So big fan of theirs. I don't

00:49:47.600 | even know the brand, but we have this burrowing dog bed that's kind of like an igloo, if you would,

00:49:52.320 | but it's really just pops up a little and the dog can like kind of snuggle under it. Our dog's a

00:49:57.040 | visual and absolutely loves this dog bed. And then last, there's a really cool product called

00:50:02.720 | the Night Eyes Rad Dog, and it's a collar leash combo. If you're ever spending a lot of time in

00:50:08.240 | like an off leash dog park, it's a collar, but it has a dog leash attached to the collar. So

00:50:13.840 | really like that product. I think that wraps up almost everything except for the business stuff

00:50:19.760 | and the podcast stuff, which I thought I'd leave at the end. So if you're interested in everything

00:50:23.760 | we use to run our business and run this podcast, stick around. If not, reminder that links for

00:50:30.000 | everything are in the show notes, a lot of discounts in there. So 20% off, 30% off, even if

00:50:35.840 | you're an All The Hacks member, first year free, or 50% off. So definitely worth checking out the

00:50:42.400 | show notes, allthehacks.com/stuff, or in whatever player app you're on, or just at allthehacks.com.

00:50:49.360 | So last two sections, business. So there's a bunch of products, services, and companies that

00:50:53.920 | I work with on the business side. For all of our banking, I think my favorite picks are Brex and

00:50:58.480 | Mercury. For our amazing third member of our team, we worked with Oceans, which is a staffing agency,

00:51:05.200 | and that's how we found Possany, who is the most incredible... Started out as an assistant,

00:51:11.360 | but has now grown into so much more, making sure everything's running. So shout out to her and big

00:51:16.400 | shout out to Oceans. If you want to explore delegation and hiring an assistant, check out

00:51:21.600 | the delegation guide I'll link to in the show notes. For taxes, I mentioned Gelt for personal,

00:51:26.560 | we use them for business as well. We use QuickBooks Forever, which I hated, and we finally

00:51:31.200 | just switched to an awesome new bookkeeping software called Kik, kik.co. Love it. We do a lot

00:51:37.280 | of our payment processing and invoicing on Stripe. We send all of our emails through ConvertKit.

00:51:42.160 | We run all of our email addresses on Google Apps. We run the whole podcast, and I actually run most

00:51:49.360 | of my life in Notion. Probably deserve to be mentioned outside of the business section because

00:51:54.800 | we plan trips, we organize family, vacations, schedules, the girls' school, all that's in

00:52:01.200 | Notion. So use that all the time. For scheduling stuff, we use Calendly, though Superhuman just

00:52:08.000 | launched scheduling built into email. So the days of Calendly might be dwindling and that'll be

00:52:14.240 | another subscription I can save some money on. And then last is Zapier. I love Zapier. So this

00:52:20.000 | is like a nerdy optimizer's dream. It is basically a product where you can link up anything and

00:52:26.240 | everything and create all these rules to do things. So new episode comes out, go ahead and add it to

00:52:33.440 | our newsletter. Person makes a purchase on Stripe, send them an email on ConvertKit.

00:52:38.480 | Someone checks off a to-do in Notion, send an alert to Slack. You can integrate with thousands

00:52:46.880 | of different services, and it's just so amazing. I could probably get lost in Zapier and just start

00:52:53.440 | building crazy stuff if I didn't have a little more self-restraint. Can't say enough great

00:52:59.360 | things about Zapier. We use it for basically putting together all the pieces of all of the

00:53:04.400 | products we have. At one point, I was taking data from Notion, creating spreadsheets to track it,

00:53:10.080 | using the numbers in the spreadsheets to create payment samples in Brex. And so it was tying in

00:53:15.920 | the bank, the spreadsheet, Notion, and even I think at the time, it was also adding to QuickBooks. So

00:53:21.520 | really awesome product there. For the podcast, for anyone interested, we have a bunch of different

00:53:27.360 | things we use. For remote recording, we're recording on Riverside. For editing the audio

00:53:32.480 | and the video, I'm doing all of my side on Descript. The amazing team at UpFire, which

00:53:38.880 | if anyone needs a podcast production company, would love to introduce you, shoot me a note,

00:53:43.360 | podcast@allthathacks.com. They use a whole suite of more sophisticated things for audio and video.

00:53:48.080 | But for basic audio editing of a podcast, Descript is fantastic. As for hardware,

00:53:55.920 | I'm using a Shure SM7B right now to talk to. That is going through a Rodecaster Pro 2,

00:54:02.240 | which is overkill. But because we do the studio in person behind me, I wanted something that could

00:54:07.760 | handle three different mic inputs because there's two back there. For recording this, I have a

00:54:16.080 | teleprompter at my desk so that that acts as a second screen so that I can look directly into

00:54:21.680 | the camera. I also use it for some Zoom meetings and that kind of stuff. Really love the teleprompter

00:54:27.520 | for getting really high-quality videos. That video is coming from a Sony A7C, which is connected to

00:54:35.120 | the computer I'm on with a Elgato Cam Link. It's a Cam Link 4K, so you get 4K video from a really

00:54:42.160 | high-def camera with great depth of field. For headphones, I really love the Audio Technica

00:54:50.480 | M50X. They're over-the-ear headphones. They are fantastic. Maybe overkill if you're not

00:54:58.960 | editing audio or want to listen to music in a really great way, but really love them.

00:55:03.360 | I actually have multiple cameras, so if you're watching the video of this, I have one camera over

00:55:09.760 | my left right now. Normally, I don't have three, but I have one camera over my left in case I wanted

00:55:13.680 | to show something on the desk. Then I have another camera over the right to show something on the

00:55:18.000 | screen. Mostly, I got two extra cameras for the studio, and then I thought, "Why not mess around

00:55:23.840 | when I'm recording these solo episodes?" I went on Facebook Marketplace and got two $500, $600

00:55:30.320 | Sony cameras, one ZV-E1 and one A6400. Those are my two backup cameras that we also use in

00:55:37.440 | the studio. For lighting, I've got an Elgato Ring Light on one side, which is pretty small,

00:55:42.320 | and then a really big Godox Light that's four feet wide and three feet deep and sits about six

00:55:50.960 | feet up in the air and really creates a lot of light, which I think is really, really important.

00:55:55.600 | Let's see what else. If I'm traveling, I take the Shure MV7, which honestly, I would suggest

00:56:01.760 | to almost anyone because it's USB. It doesn't need an audio interface. It's cheaper. Great,

00:56:08.160 | great microphone. Even if you just want to sound better on your computer, it's a fantastic

00:56:13.840 | microphone for not that much. If you want an even cheaper option, the first 50 episodes of the show

00:56:18.560 | were recorded on the ATR2100X, which I think is about $100 or less for a mic with a stand. I know

00:56:26.320 | a few people when I was working at Wealthfront that picked one up just because the audio quality

00:56:30.000 | was so good. A few other things for the podcast nerds in the room. I host the show on megaphone,

00:56:37.600 | though I'm seriously considering transistor as an alternative. I use chartable for a lot of

00:56:42.720 | analytics. Then for video, I recently got this device called the ATEM Mini Pro ISO,

00:56:49.360 | which is a bit overkill, but I really like redundancy here because the last thing I want

00:56:52.960 | to do is record an episode and lose it. All the camera feeds route through this little device,

00:56:58.560 | and it's hooked up to a Samsung SSD or a solid state drive, and it records all the camera feeds

00:57:06.000 | separately from the SD cards that are in the camera just in case there was an SD card failure.

00:57:11.040 | If you go back to episode one with Lee Rowan on Travel Tips, you will find that that was the

00:57:17.840 | second time we recorded that podcast because the first time the SD card failed, and there was

00:57:23.840 | nothing I could do. I sent it to a repair company up in San Francisco, tried to salvage the data,

00:57:28.960 | couldn't get it. Ever since then, every bit of audio I record, every video I record,

00:57:34.560 | everything's redundant. We're getting two recordings for everything. That's how we're

00:57:40.080 | doing it. I think that's it. I think I've covered all the highlights of the products I use and love

00:57:46.480 | on a daily basis. There are so many more things. I'm sure if I just walked around the room,

00:57:50.960 | there'd be other things. I'm curious if there are any categories I left off that people want to

00:57:55.280 | hear. I can save that for a future episode. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening.

00:57:59.600 | I hope this was interesting. You can find links to everything I talked about in the show notes,

00:58:03.840 | including discounts and promo codes. Thank you so much for using them. Some of them are. Some

00:58:09.200 | of them are not affiliate links, but the ones that are obviously help support me in the show.

00:58:13.600 | Thank you so much. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I will see you next week.

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