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Again, that's longangle.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited you're here today for another episode where I get to answer all the questions you've sent in. And first off, thank you so much for taking the time to write them.

I'm clearly not doing these often enough, because if I answered all the questions I got, we'd have a two or three hour episode. So I had an idea. Now, whenever I'm describing the show to someone, I talk about how it's about a third travel points and miles, about a third money, investing, and other personal finance topics, and about a third life, which includes health, work, relationships, family, and everything else.

And I intentionally didn't make the show about any one of those specific topics, because I don't think most of you want a weekly podcast about just one of them. I know I really enjoyed talking about relationships on episode 43, but I just don't have the time or frankly, the interest to talk about relationships every single week.

So I'm going to try doing a Q&A episode once a month and rotate between the topics of travel, money, and life each time. So keep your questions coming. As most of you who've written in know, I usually try to respond by email to anything that's timely or that I won't get to answer soon on an episode like this.

You can send them my email, chris@allthehacks.com. You can DM me on social, or I just added the ability to record a voice message on the All The Hacks website. So use that if you want to hear your questions live on the next episode. And don't hold back on these questions.

They can be personal. I'm happy to answer almost anything you want to know about my life, finances, credit cards, travels, or anything else. But today I'm going to start with talking about money. First, we'll get into the current market and talk about where to put cash. Then I'll tackle investing, questions about dollar cost averaging, tax loss harvesting, and backdoor Roth.

Then we'll jump into a bit more personal finance. I'll talk about tracking your net worth, making a financial plan, and saving money on gas. I'll also share a few listener hacks I've used lately to save money and some great deals I've recently found. But since we're talking about investing, I have to remind you that I work at Wealthfront.

All opinions expressed by me are solely my own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Okay, let's jump in. While it didn't dominate the questions as much as I'd expected, it seems like I couldn't start a money episode like this without talking about the current state of the market.

Now, my rule of thumb has always been that if I need money in the next 3-5 years, I keep it out of the market and in some type of high-yield cash account. So, while I would prefer the market not to crash like it did this year, I don't need the money I have invested for a long time, so as long as the markets continue to go up in the long run, which they have for the past 100+ years, I'm okay.

Also, I certainly don't think I'm capable of timing the market, so I'm not even trying, and if you want to hear more on that topic, check out episode 59 with Nick Mejulie. As for what to do with the money you need in the next 3-5 years, now that we're seeing some pretty crazy inflation data, it's more important than ever to try to make sure you're not just earning the 0.01% you might get in your bank account.

So, what options do we have? One of my favorites is the U.S. government Series I savings bonds, which are more commonly known as I-bonds. I discussed them a bunch in last week's episode with Jacob Goldstein, so I'll keep this short. They have a current rate of 9.62%. You heard that right, 9.62%.

You do have to buy them on the terrible Treasury Direct site, your money is locked up for at least 12 months, and if you hold them for less than 5 years, you forfeit the last 3 months of interest, though at 9.62% interest, I'm not sure that matters. And finally, you're limited to $10,000 per person or entity per year, so if you're married with a revocable trust, which is our situation, that's $30,000.

It is hard to find a return that good, but one where the only major risk is the financial insolvency of the U.S. government is like a unicorn for short-term savings, so I'm a huge fan of I-bonds right now. We should also talk about high-yield savings accounts. Given that the effective Fed funds rate is now at 1.58%, high-yield savings rates are rising too.

I know the cash I have in my Wealthfront cash account is already earning 1.4%, and according to the FedWatch tool, which I'll link in the show notes, there's a 99.5% chance that the Fed rate goes up by another 0.75% by July, and an 86% chance it goes up by another 1.25% by the end of the year.

If that holds true, it wouldn't surprise me if high-yield savings rates don't rise above 3% by the end of the year. And given that most of these accounts are all FDIC-insured, if rates really do get above 3%, I think this is going to be the best risk-adjusted place to store cash that you need in the next 3-5 years.

So those are some options for cash, but let's talk a little bit about investing, because Sam asked what I would do with a windfall in this market, and Sachin asked about the best way to start dollar-cost averaging. So I'll start talking about a Vanguard paper that was written about 10 years ago on this exact topic, and I link to it in the show notes.

Now, mathematically, if the market goes up, on average, in the long term, then the average daily return will be positive, and therefore, you should invest all of your money right away not to miss out on the returns. And any mathematical argument against that would probably have to assume that you can time the market or that markets won't go up.

The former, I just assume you can't do, and the latter, I think you wouldn't be investing in the market in the first place if you didn't assume it would go up. So that's kind of the mathematical answer, but if you really want to answer the question, you need to factor in emotions, and for that, dollar-cost averaging has some psychological advantages you really can't ignore.

For example, if investing everything all at once and seeing it drop 5 or 10% over the next few days, which has happened a few times so far this year, would make you miserable and worried and stressed out, then it might be worth investing that money over time, however, if you're going to dollar-cost average, I would strongly encourage you to make a plan and commit to it, because too often, I hear people say things like, "Now that the market is going up, I'm just going to wait for it to go down a little bit more before I keep investing," and I've seen people wait years and years and miss out.

So in the past, I've typically done dollar-cost averaging over a shorter period of time, like 3 to 6 months, but given that I'm actually going to have some cash to invest in the next 6 months, I might as well share exactly what I plan to do. Well, first, I'm going to set aside all the money I need to for taxes and put that into a high-yield cash account.

I think all too often, people forget that when you buy something and sell it at a gain, you have to pay taxes and no one's withholding that. I know a lot of people out there who are self-employed and used to making quarterly estimated payments are familiar, but for people who are used to their employers taking out their taxes every paycheck, sometimes you can forget that when you sell something at a huge gain, you owe those taxes.

So for the leftover money, I plan to invest it in my Wealthfront account and I'll likely do that over a 3-month period and I'll split it 1/3 each month. However, knowing myself, if after that first investment, the market starts to go down, I'm likely going to start accelerating the rest of my investments.

While I don't think you can time the dip, I'm not afraid to buy it if I find myself right in the middle of it. Okay, on the topic of investing, I got a few other great questions. But before I get into them, I want to let anyone know who doesn't already get my newsletter that I'm doing a two-part series right now all about investing.

The first email last week was all about the fundamental considerations you need to build a foundational investment mind. And next week, I'll get a bit more advanced and technical about investing. I know you all get a lot of emails, but I only send mine every 2 weeks and in each one, I spend a ton of time going deep on something and share all the best deals I've found in the past few weeks.

So if you're not already subscribed, you can go to allthehacks.com/email to sign up right now and read any of the past issues. Okay, the first question is about tax loss harvesting, which I know sounds boring. But before I get into the question, let me give a quick primer on it.

Let's say you buy $10,000 of VTI, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF last year, and it's down 23%. If you sold it while it was down, you'd have a $2,300 loss that the IRS will actually let you deduct off your income up to $3,000 a year or against any other capital gains you have, up to the total value of those gains.

And if you have extra losses, you can carry them over to future years. It would obviously be great if you could harvest that $2,300 loss now, but I assume you don't want to actually get out of the market. Unfortunately, there's a rule called the wash/sale rule that prohibits you from selling an investment for a loss and replacing it with something substantially identical within 30 days.

So you can't just sell VTI, capture the loss, and then buy VTI right after. But the trick is that you can sell VTI, take the loss in 2022, and buy another index fund like SCHB, which is Schwab's U.S. Broad Market ETF. They're not substantially identical, but they're almost perfectly correlated.

So you get the same exposure to the U.S. markets, but you also get to take advantage of the losses this year. That's tax loss harvesting. And Derek Horsmeyer at the Wall Street Journal published an article last year where his research found that on average, an investor facing a capital gains tax rate of 25% can juice their equity portfolio's annual return by 1.1 to 1.42 percentage points, meaning if you had an expected return of 5%, tax loss harvesting could increase it to 6.1 to 6.42%.

So you can see how tax loss harvesting can be really valuable. And if you have a simple portfolio of a few index funds, you could easily search online for the tax loss harvesting pairs of other very correlated, but not substantially identical funds, and then sell one whenever it's down and replace it with the other.

But the question I got from Phil took it one step further. He said, let's say I'm invested in 10 individual stocks and throughout the year, seven have positive returns and three have negative. I could definitely sell the three and harvest those losses for tax savings. But let's say I wanted exposure to something similar to an index fund like the S&P 500, if I invest in SPY, it's most likely going to have positive returns for the year, even though a portion of the stocks that make up the S&P 500 had losses.

Is there a way to invest so that I get exposure to an index fund, but that can tax loss harvest from the losing stocks of that fund? Is that even possible since the funds are constantly rebalanced? That was a great question from Phil. And while you can't achieve what he's talking about with a mutual fund or an index fund, what he's asking about is called direct indexing.

And it's where instead of buying the S&P 500 index fund, you actually buy the entire 500 stocks in the S&P 500. The only catch is that with 500 stocks, each weighted differently, it would be a nightmare to manage on your own. So I really only suggest trying to do this with a software based investing platform.

Wealthfront offers it for accounts over $100,000, or you can search around the web and there are other investment firms that offer it. Another added benefit to direct indexing is that you're not paying the expense ratio of the index fund. Now, a lot of broad market US index funds have very, very low expense ratios, so it's not a huge benefit, but it is a benefit and worth sharing.

There are a couple of white papers out there online if you search for direct indexing or stock level tax loss harvesting, where you can get a sense of how it works and the extra benefit. It is something that I personally have enabled and I think adds value over the long run, but you should definitely do your homework before you get started.

And since Wealthfront has come up a lot, I just want to be clear that while I work at Wealthfront, they are not a sponsor of this show, this show is not part of Wealthfront, I'm not getting paid to talk about Wealthfront, and I don't get any extra time off to work on the show.

I do, however, love the product, which is probably why I'm still working here almost three years later. And in fact, I actually spoke to at least 30 fintech companies before deciding to go to Wealthfront, and I ended up making that decision because I thought they had the best products in the market.

In fact, I was already using the product before I started working there, and I am certainly going to be a user long after working there if or whenever that happens. So if you ever want to sign up for Wealthfront, I'd obviously love it if you want to use my personal referral link, allthehacks.com/wealthfront, you'll get your first $5,000 managed free.

It'll help me reduce my fees. And yes, even though I'm an employee, I do happily pay fees to Wealthfront also. I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day, but the reality is that I am definitely not. So I love having an easy way to get my daily nutritional insurance, which is why I kickstart my day with Athletic Greens, and I am excited to be partnering with them for this episode.

I started taking it because I wanted to see what all the hype was about, and I've kept it in my daily routine for months. Every morning, I mix it up with some cold water, add a few ice cubes, it tastes so good when it's cold, and I head to my office feeling focused and energized for the day, which is a feeling I absolutely love.

I also love that it's made from 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, and super foods, and contains less than one gram of sugar. It also has no GMOs, nasty chemicals, or artificial anything. To make giving it a try easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

All you have to do is visit allthehacks.com/athleticgreens. Again, that's allthehacks.com/athleticgreens to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking.

It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place and makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every purchase. You can also load it on your partner's phone so they always know the best cards to use.

The app automatically tracks every category bonus and recurring credit from over 5,000 cards, and they also track and help you use your Amex, Chase, Bank of America, or Citibank offers to save even more money every day. With their browser extension, you can actually activate every single Amex and Chase offer in just one click.

Because of that massive credit card database, you can do all of this without having to give up any personal or banking details. The app is free to download, and many of the features are free as well, but if you want to try out the pro version, there's a free trial.

And if you decide you want to sign up after the trial, which you probably will, you can go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers to get 20% off. Again, that's allthehacks.com/cardpointers. Okay, I got another good investing question about backdoor Roth IRAs. Robert wrote in asking to clarify if it's still possible to do backdoor Roth contributions, even if your household income exceeds all contribution limits for both Roth and traditional IRAs.

Also, he and his wife have fully maxed out their 401k at work. Obviously, I'm not a CPA, so I'll suggest that you talk to one first, but yes, you are able to do backdoor Roth contributions. Even if your household income exceeds all contribution limits, the way it works is that you make a non-deductible contribution to a traditional IRA first, which has no restrictions on income or other retirement contributions because the money is after tax and you will end up having to pay taxes on the gains.

So practically making non-deductible contributions to a traditional IRA has very little benefits, except that you can roll those funds over to a Roth IRA with no taxes due when you roll it over, since the original contributions were not pre-tax. And once the funds are in a Roth IRA, you won't owe any taxes on the gains.

However, the most important consideration is that if you already have funds in a traditional IRA, things can get really complicated because you can't specify which of the funds you want to roll over to the Roth IRA. So if you're in that circumstance, you should definitely talk to an accountant first or do some heavy reading online.

When I first learned about the backdoor Roth, I had never made any contributions to a traditional IRA, so it was really easy. I put the max in a traditional IRA, which this year is $6,000, and then I waited a couple of days till everything cleared, and then I rolled it over right away to a Roth IRA.

There were also a couple of years when I was working at Google that I got really lucky and I got to take advantage of something called the Mega Backdoor Roth. This is something that's pretty rare because your employer has to explicitly allow it in their 401(k) plan, but what it lets you do is make after-tax contributions to your 401(k), which you'll want to do after you make all of your pre-tax or Roth contributions.

But again, like making a non-deductible after-tax contribution to your traditional IRA, there isn't a ton of benefit to doing this on its own because now you've just made contributions with less liquidity and no tax benefits, except, just like with the Backdoor Roth, those 401(k) plans usually let you roll over those contributions to Roth contributions.

Now, why is this so exciting if you could already make a Roth contribution to your 401(k)? Well, when we often talk about the maximum contribution to a 401(k), we just hear the number $20,500, but that's actually the tax-advantaged contribution limit, so that's how much you can put in pre-tax or into a Roth 401(k).

The actual limit for contributing to a 401(k) is $61,000. So if you've already maxed out your $20,500 and your plan allows you to make after-tax contributions and your plan allows you to roll those after-tax contributions over into a Roth 401(k) or out of your 401(k) into a Roth IRA, then you can conceivably invest about $40,000 more into your 401(k) and convert them into Roth investments and not owe any taxes on those investments.

So if you have the income and the savings rate to support this, a Backdoor Roth or a Mega Backdoor Roth can be an amazing way to set aside money in an account where you won't have to pay any taxes on the gains. And you don't just have to put those accounts at a brokerage firm like you're used to, if you look online at self-directed IRAs, there are actually a handful of companies out there who will let you use your Roth IRA to invest in lots of different things, be it crypto or other illiquid assets.

So there's really a lot of flexibility with Roth IRAs. And because you can choose where you invest the money, you're not going to find the same fees that you see in 401(k)s, which many times can be really, really high. Okay. I know that was a lot. So feel free to go online and just Google around for Backdoor Roth, Mega Backdoor Roth, and read a little bit more about it or send me follow-up questions.

I'd love to help out. Okay. Final question on investing was from Noam, who asked me if I knew any great resources for sophisticated investors who want to continue learning. I'll give a shout out to my two favorite investing podcasts here. First is Animal Spirits, which is co-hosted by Ben Carlson, who I interviewed on episode 42, and it covers a lot of personal finance, markets, and investing topics.

Second, Macro Voices. It's a much more technical investing podcast that's primarily for professional finance, high net worth individuals, and sophisticated investors. But I really love it. And I've learned a lot about oil, gold, inflation, and so much more. So definitely check those out. And if you have other recommendations, please send them my way and I'd love to share them in a future episode.

Okay. So this next question hit a sore spot for me. Ruth asked, "If I want someone to help me make a complete financial plan, which would include investing, tax strategy, and retirement planning, is there such a person or company? It seems like you have to go to your tax guy, your investment person, and a retirement person all separately." So the reason why this one made me a bit sad is that my last Startup Grove was built to do precisely this.

We helped clients make a comprehensive financial plan. We wouldn't necessarily file their taxes or set up their estate plan. But we would advise on all of it. And our goal was to leverage software to make this process much more efficient and affordable than anything else out there. But unfortunately, it turns out most people who want to do financial planning don't actually want to prioritize doing it right now.

And so it was just way too hard to acquire customers. We would have people sign up and say, "I really want to get started." And we'd say, "All right, so let's get started." And then months would go by before anything happened. So the business didn't actually work. However, just because it's not a good venture capital-backed software business doesn't mean it's not a good business.

And there are a ton of good financial planners out there who do exactly this. I would say you should expect to spend about a few thousand dollars to go through the comprehensive financial planning process. And if you're looking for someone to help, I recommend finding a CFP or Certified Financial Planner.

And there's a great directory of many of them at xyplanningnetwork.com. And I'll add that link in the show notes. The great thing about getting a CFP is they're almost always acting as what's called a fiduciary, which means they are legally required to act in your best interest. It's the best question that you should ask anyone who's helping you with your finances and especially your investments.

It's just, are you a fiduciary? If the question is yes, that's great. That means they're going to help you out and be acting in your interest. And if the answer is anything else, like I always look out for my customers, but it doesn't actually include a yes, you should be concerned.

If you want a specific recommendation for someone to work with, and I'm not getting paid for this, I'm a bit partial to a guy named George Gallet at Wealth Foundry. I'll link to it in the show notes. He was one of the top financial planners at Grove and he left to start his own firm.

He's a CFP who also has his master's in taxation. I think he's definitely worth having an intro call with. If it sounds like it'd be a good fit and make sure to say hi for me, because I think he's fantastic. Okay. Next question is about tracking all of your finances.

Hrishi asked specifically about whether there was a tool to track crypto investments across multiple apps and wallets, but I want to expand that to tracking all of my accounts, including crypto. The unfortunate news is that there isn't a perfect solution. I could spend a whole episode talking about why account linking between different apps is so broken.

And between my colleague, Ben and I, if we don't have a lot of gray hairs yet, at least half of all the ones we do, you can probably attribute to working with account linking providers and fixing all the issues that come up with it. So I've tried everything out there from what I helped build at Wealthfront to Mint, to Personal Capital, to the premium app, Kubera, to the crypto focused asset dash, and ultimately there's no perfect solution for everything.

And it really depends on what you need. I'm less focused on budgeting and more focused on seeing my net worth across all my banking and investment accounts, including my home and my mortgage. And for that, I think Wealthfront is the best and I use it to model out my future net worth, factoring in retirement and my kids' college educations.

However, I haven't found a tool that does that and crypto, so I also use asset dash to track my wallets and NFTs and I add them manually to Wealthfront. Unfortunately, no one seems to support BlockFi either, so I have to manually add that as well and update those balances when they change.

I used to keep a spreadsheet to do more analysis for everything, but I realized I wasn't actually getting any real value from all that tracking, so I just stopped. And it's so much easier. And if you're listening and there's an app or a service or a tool that you think does this better, definitely reach out and let me know.

And if you're really the kind of person that loves tracking this in Google Sheets, one app you should check out is called Tiller. I'll link to it in the show notes. And it basically lets you link all of your accounts and import all that data directly into a Google Sheet.

So if that's you, definitely check that out. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be. I get it. Life comes at you fast, but trust me, your friends are probably desperate for a good hang. So kick 2024 off right by finally hosting that event. Just make sure you do it the easy way and let our sponsor Drizly, the go-to app for drink delivery, take care of the supplies.

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So whatever the occasion, download the Drizly app or go to drizly.com. That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals, so please consider supporting those who support us.

Okay. Moving to something else, I want to talk about spending money on gas. This one is fun, but I should caveat that while the only gas power vehicle I have is a Vespa with a two gallon tank, I am well aware of how high gas prices are right now.

And in fact, I don't think I've seen anything under $6 a gallon in the Bay Area. So when another Chris wrote in asking for hacks on saving money on gas, I wanted to pull all my favorites together because it wasn't that long ago that I didn't have a Tesla and I was spending money at the pump.

So number one, does it make sense to take the cash discount when you're buying gas? Most of the time, it's around 10 cents a gallon, and I used to think that that was worth considering. But when you look at $6 a gallon gas, it works out to less than 2% of a discount.

So I would much rather prioritize getting rewards on a credit card. But so many people ask, what is the best card for gas? And I'll give you two options. So my favorite card for gas is the Citi Premier because you get three X points on gas and Citi has 14 airline and two hotel transfer partners.

So the points can be really valuable. But it's not just three X on gas. You get three X on restaurants, airlines, hotels and groceries. It's one of the best lineups out there, and it only has a $95 annual fee. And best of all, it currently has the highest signup bonus the card has ever seen at 80,000 points for spending 4,000 in the first three months.

The points guy value Citi points at 1.8 cents, which makes that signup bonus worth $1,440. So if you want to learn more about that card or just sign up, go to allthehacks.com/citi or you can find it at the top of allthehacks.com/cards, where I link to all my favorite cards and the top signup bonuses right now.

However, if you already have a Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex card, this Q3, July to September, you can get 5% back or if you have a Chase Sapphire card, that's actually five X points on the first $1,500 you spend on gas. You just need to enroll at chasebonus.com. OK, number two, aside from just optimizing your card spending, I'm a huge fan of Gas Buddy.

And every time I rent a car, I have the app pulled up. It's crazy how you can find massive differences in gas prices without having to go too far out of your way, especially when you're returning a rental car. And by the way, we're going to be having some amazing rental car hacks on next week's episode.

Number three, there are a lot of fuel reward programs out there, and if you can find one at a station where you don't have to pay a premium, then I'm all for it. I know for myself, I bought a ton of gas at Safeway and Costco in the past.

Number four, finally, I definitely recommend considering an electric vehicle. I know it's not a quick fix, but some electric companies like PG&E out in California have special rate plans if you have an EV, which actually make our entire energy costs so much cheaper. So it's a double win. On the topic of money, I want to share two great money hacks that I've gotten from listeners, and I've actually used both myself in the past few months.

The first is an example of stacking deals for a purchase I made that was inspired by a bunch of tips I got from Mike. So if you're listening, thank you so much. It was for a purchase at Lowe's, but if you don't live near one, it's a Home Depot competitor, and the principles of this deal can apply to so many other retailers.

So we're remodeling our bathroom in our house, and I really wanted to put a nice Japanese toilet in the bathroom. And if you know what I mean, you totally get it. And if not, I am so excited for you to have that experience someday in the future. Anyways, the purchase was going to come out to a thousand and sixty dollars, and obviously I wanted the best deal.

So first, I went to LowesCouponCode.com, which I found searching online, and I bought a 10% off coupon for $1.99. They also had Home Depot, Crate and Barrel, and all kinds of other coupons. Then I went over to Cashback Monitor to see who offered the most cash back at Lowe's.

Turns out this time it was RetailMeNot with 3% back. So I clicked the Lowe's link from their site. And then finally, I searched for the item and added it to my cart. I applied the coupon, brought the total down to $953.87. So I didn't stop there. I went to Amazon and I bought $950 of Lowe's e-gift cards, which get delivered immediately and can actually be used in-store as well.

Now in Q2, the Chase Freedom bonus was 5x at Amazon, but otherwise I would have used my Amazon Prime Visa for 5% cash back, which is fantastic because stores like Home Depot and Lowe's almost never get a bonus on spending. So a few minutes later, when the email comes in, I put the gift cards on the Lowe's site and bring the final balance down to $3.87, which I put on my Capital One Venture X.

Now you can actually buy a Lowe's gift card on Amazon for the exact amount you need, but I wanted to leave a little balance because you're actually covered for purchase protection and extended warranties on credit cards if you have at least some of the purchase on your card. Then I just checked out, I was done, and the whole process probably only took 10 minutes tops.

But the result, if I had put the whole purchase just on my Venture X, I would have paid $1059.85, but after the coupon and cash back, I ended up only paying $923.82 for $130 savings, which is about 12%. And because of the 5x at Amazon, I'll earn an extra 2,600 points.

And that doesn't include any of the satisfaction I got for getting a great deal. Not bad for a few minutes of work, but just to be clear, if this was a 10, 20, 100, or even $200 purchase, I probably wouldn't have put in as much work. The other hack I got was from JB.

He had heard me talking about how it can be a huge pain to use up any of those Visa or Amex gift cards that someone gives you as a gift, and he shared that you can actually add any amount from a card to your Amazon gift card balance. So I've had this Amex gift card sitting in a drawer for a few years with less than $5 on it because I couldn't bring myself to throw it out.

I also didn't have any purchase that was like $4.70, but in just a few seconds, I pulled up on Amazon, added the exact balance to my account, and I could throw the card away. Thank you so much, JB. Okay, in the spirit of sharing deals, there are a bunch of free premium subscriptions, statuses, and perks you can get right now just by being a member of certain cards or services.

So I want to make sure I share them all so you can sign up if you're eligible. I know I've already signed up for a few, and I'll put the links to anything you need in the show notes so you don't have to go searching for them. So first, if you're an Amazon Prime member, you're eligible for a free one year Grubhub Plus membership, which gets you $0 delivery fees.

I love this deal because I have the Amex Gold, which has a $10 monthly credit eligible for Grubhub. Huge shout out to all the Hacks listener, Austin, who emailed me and happens to be the PM on this deal. Next, if you have Disney Plus, which includes those of you like me who get it for free with their Verizon plan, you can get six months of free Uber One, which also gets you $0 delivery fees on Uber Eats and 5-10% off eligible Uber rides and Uber Eats orders.

This one also pairs well with the Amex Gold and also the Platinum, because both of those cards give you an Uber credit each month that I end up using almost exclusively on Uber Eats. You just need to sign up by August 17th. Okay, if you have a Capital One card, this one is pretty amazing, and I'm 100% going to be using it.

Cardholders get a free six-month membership to The Cultivist, which I'd never heard of before, but it gives you and three guests free access to over 100 museums around the world. But they're not just random museums. They include the Louvre in Paris, the MoMA in the Guggenheim in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and a lot more.

But after the six months free, you'll start paying $40 a month, so make sure to set a reminder to cancel. And also, the offer is available through June 2024, so I'd wait to sign up until you're sure you're ready to use it. The last two are for Chase cardholders.

First, you can get free Instacart Plus, which gives you $0 delivery fees, lower service fees, and 5% back on pickup. The length of the free membership depends on your card. Sapphire Reserve gets 12 months, Sapphire Preferred gets six months, and Freedom, Freedom Flex, and Freedom Unlimited all get three months free.

Next, if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can get three months of free Marriott Gold status, which is their second elite tier, and offers you 2 p.m. late checkout, 25% bonus points, upgrades to non-suite rooms, and a welcome gift of bonus points at check-in. While three months isn't that much, if you can complete three stays within three months of registering, which you have to do by the end of September, you'll keep that status through February 2024.

But if you have an Amex Platinum, you already get Marriott Gold for free, so this probably won't be very interesting to you. I hope at least one of those deals helps you save money or get a cool upgrade. The only other big deal I wanted to share this week was the Citi Premier card because it has a huge sign-up bonus, but I already talked about it earlier in this episode, so don't forget to check that out or visit allthehacks.com/citi if you're interested.

Also, I want to give a big shout-out to Stephanie, who used the hotel email hack we discussed in Episode 1 and that Julia Menez shared a template for in Episode 55 to score big on a recent trip to Santa Cruz. With just one single email, she got hooked up with free parking, an upgrade to a room with an amazing view, three coupons for a free breakfast, a voucher for food and drink at the bar, and two craft cocktails delivered to her room.

If you're not using that hack for your next hotel stay, you absolutely should. So way to go, Stephanie. Also, thank you to everyone listening, writing in, reading the newsletter, subscribing on YouTube, and just supporting the show in general. It means so much to me, and I'm so excited to keep helping you all upgrade your lives, money, and travel over the years to come.

As always, if there's a topic you want me to cover or a guest you want to hear on this show, please let me know. And I do have one favor to ask you all, and it'll only take you a minute and doesn't cost a thing. I'm up for the People's Choice Podcast Awards, and I really think I have a shot at winning with your help.

The site is a bit of a pain because you have to create an account, but it's really quick after that. You can get there by going to allthehacks.com/vote, and you can vote for all the hacks in the People's Choice Award and the Education category. As silly as it may sound, being an award-winning podcast really helps with recruiting the best guests for the show.

So thank you so much in advance for your help. And that wraps up this mailbag episode, or should it be a Q&A or an AMA? I'm not sure, but I really enjoy doing them. So please keep those questions coming. The next two I'll do will be on travel points, miles, and everything else from life to work to relationships and everything in between.

You can send any and all questions to me, chris@allthehacks.com, or DM me on Instagram or Twitter, my next episode will be a huge deep dive on everything you could ever want to know about saving money on rental cars. So I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.