Over the past year, I've released over 60 episodes of this show packed with strategies to help you upgrade your life, money, and travel. And today I'm distilling all of that into 10 powerful takeaways, the most impactful insights from all the research I've done myself and the conversations I've had with incredible guests in 2024.

Whether you're looking to invest smarter, save more, master award travel, level up your credit cards, or build habits that stick, these takeaways will give you actionable ways to make 2025 your best year yet. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review.

And if you wanna keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. Okay, so the first three takeaways are in money. And number one is that there is no one right way to invest. Investing is so personal and the right strategy depends on your situation, your risk tolerance, your long-term objectives, and a lot more.

And so in episode 199, I sat down with Tad Fallows who started this group called Long Angle, which is a private network for high net worth investors. You should definitely check it out, longangle.com. And I got to attend their summit where we talked about the 10 lessons we took away from the conference.

And it was so interesting that despite that there were so many people, so smart, focused on investing, there was no one right answer. And even in the sessions where different types of alternative investments were being presented and shared, there was no perfect answer between those either. And it wasn't just that diversification was the only answer, it depended on how important liquidity was to you, how much risk you wanted to take on, how interested you were in exploring the topic because some types of investments take a lot of time and energy and education.

So that was one really big takeaway for me because I think I've always been hearing, oh, real estate's amazing, let's chase that. Oh, this is awesome, private credit, angel investing. And you could chase that strategy of trying to find the best thing, but the reality is everyone is different, everyone has different ideas.

This takeaway also showed up in episode 186 a lot when I talked to Brian Feraldi about 25 money rules and when to break them. Because despite that there are some great rules of thumb that help you think about personal finance and investing, like you could take the rule of 110, where you subtract your age from 110, and that's a rough percentage of how much you should keep your portfolio in stocks.

But that really depends on who you are. And in episode 189 with Karsten, we talked about the 4% rule and how yes, it's a great rule of thumb for how much you need to retire early. There are so many factors and variables where for you it might be the 3% rule or the 5% rule.

We also talked about how the percentage of your portfolio that you want in stocks as you retire might be really dependent on the market situation at your retirement. And going back a little bit further than 2024 to episode 19 with my former boss and mentor, Andy Ratcliffe, we talked about becoming a better investor.

And he is not really a fan of a lot of speculative investments, picking stocks, investing in crypto, but he said, "Look, if you have to allocate 10% "of your portfolio to that," which showed up in the Brian Feraldi episode as the 10% rule, that's okay if it allows you to kind of stick to the portfolio you want with the other 90%.

And so these rules can be helpful as guidelines, but they really aren't definitive. And most of them have caveats. But if there is one right way to invest, and I know the takeaway is that there isn't, it's the way that you can stick with. The key here is consistency.

If you can find a strategy that you can stick with for the long run that you're excited about, then maybe that is the right way, but that doesn't mean it's the right way for someone else. And when it comes to something you can stick with, simplicity can often be a lot better than complexity.

And overthinking your investment decisions can lead you to this analysis paralysis, which I think we've all been in some way, shape or form. And so finding that perfect investment can be really tough. We talked about this in episode 191 with Ben Carlson, when we talked about 11 lessons that every investor needs to know, and thinking about simplicity.

And then I sat down with my old co-founder, Chris Doyle, in episode 168, talking about building an investment portfolio. And we talked about how you personalize your portfolio. We went really tactical on how to do that. But at the end of the day, it was like, is 65, 35, 70, 30, 68, 72, which one's right?

The answer is, if it's gonna delay your time trying to pick a number, then any number is fine, because there's that old adage of time in the market is better than timing the market. Well, time in the market is also better than sitting on the sidelines for years because you can't pick the perfect thing.

The actual tracking error between a 68 and a 69% stock portfolio is probably very minimal, and won't really affect the long-term outcome. And if it would, who knows which one would have been better. So the big takeaway here is that there's no one size fits all approach for everyone when it comes to investing.

And what works for someone else, who by the way, might have a different net worth, savings rate, level of investment experience, risk tolerance, it might not be right for you. And so take the time to figure out what suits you best, and then try to find a simple version of it that you can stick with for the long run.

Takeaway number two is that deals can be a side hustle. And this one really was wild because I'd always thought about side hustles and building a business, like we discussed in episode 154 with Noah Kagan about building a company. You know, I've always been in the tech world, starting companies and raising money and that kind of stuff.

It never really crossed my mind that a side hustle could actually be something different than a business in the traditional sense. So in episode 181, I sat down with Kai from the Daily Churn podcast, and we did an episode about making $3,000 a month from online deals. And it totally changed my mind, sent me down a hundred different rabbit holes that I'm not even gonna go to right now.

But it just really opened my eyes that a side hustle doesn't have to be a business. It could just be anything that generates extra money or reduces your costs. And so whether that's opening up a bonus with a bank account, a credit card, and in episode 177, we went really deep on bank account and brokerage bonuses, whether that's finding a way to get deals on meal kits to reduce your grocery costs, whether that's finding cell phone deals to reduce your cell phone bill, whether that's doing things like buying groups or gift cards or buying and selling gold, which is something that I did an episode on 206 with Trey from Pure.

And so all of these different things can be a side hustle that can generate a lot of income. And from listening to Kai's podcast and a few others, it's incredible how much money can be generated in the form of savings, offers, deals, points. And I think Kai doing this 10, 15 hours a week is generating well over 30 to $40,000 a year.

I explored a few of them again in episode 184, we did five tactics to save $50,000 a year. And I just really love this concept and it's really opened my eyes and in some ways it's taken over a lot more free time than maybe it should. And so each week if I find something new that's exciting, whether it's an opportunity or a deal, I'll put it in the newsletter 'cause it doesn't always make the podcast given how much easier it is to slot something in at the last minute.

So if you're not subscribed, allthehacks.com/email, perfect way to find some of these cool deals as they come up. But the big takeaway here is that anything that generates income or reduces your spending is effectively a business or a side hustle. So in 2025, take a fresh look at your spending.

I know Amy and I just ran through all our expenses and co-pilot, we've got a nice summary for the year and find a few creative ways that you can save or earn extra cash because these deals, no matter how small they might seem individually can really add up to huge wins over time when you do a lot of them together.

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That's 50% off your new digital mailbox at chrishutchins.com/stable or the link in the description. Okay, the next three takeaways are in travel and number three is moving past checklist travel. And this one got really highlighted in episode 42 with Lee Rowan, who's been a guest on this podcast a lot.

He's a good friend of mine and we talked about how optimizing a travel experience or a trip doesn't mean you have to over plan and check all the boxes and how important it is to leave room for flexibility. This is so much more true with kids as I've seen the past few years.

And so we actually went through three rules of thumb for creating an itinerary. First is just kind of managing expectations and trying not to overload. Second is to build a framework for the trip, maybe set up your scaffolding of a hotel and a flights and some key activities. And then three is to kind of visualize and adjust things.

So map it out, use paper, do it digitally. We like to do ours in Notion and I share that with Amy, we kind of collaborate but organize everything together, whether you put it on a spreadsheet or a calendar and really just try to understand what's there, leaving space and looking for balance.

And another interesting point came out of this and that was from Harry Mitsidis, the world's most traveled man. I think he's been to every country in the world twice. We talked about in episode 179, how your second and third trip to a destination is always better than the first because you get to experience and understand a place a bit deeper.

And as much as I'm always thinking, oh, I would love to travel to a new place, I wanna see something new. That is an exciting part of travel, but there are a few countries like Japan and France where we've gone back over and over again. I can't explain how awesome it is to go back to see a place where you don't feel the pressure of needing to check off all these options of places that you have to see, these must-see destinations.

And you can just really immerse yourself in the place, get lost roaming the streets, stop for a meal that you weren't planning on. It just makes every trip awesome. And I think the exciting thing is I'm starting to reframe my mind that you can just do that anywhere. It's okay to go to a country and not see all the marquee destinations.

You can always go back. I was listening to an episode of the Frequent Miler podcast where one of the hosts was talking about going to Australia or New Zealand and how they only had a week and they thought it needed two. And they ended up deciding to take the trip anyways, even though it wasn't enough time to do all the things they wanted because they had this idea of if we love it so much and we need to see the other things, we can go back.

And that trip was a giant unlock for all travel for their family because it opened their eyes to this concept of you don't need to wait until you have enough time to do all the things because you can always go back. And one other thing that I think really highlighted this was when we took our group trip to Iceland this year.

So for anyone who doesn't know, we planned an All The Hacks Iceland trip. You can actually go on the trip this year in 2025. There are a few spaces left. If you go to allthehacks.com/iceland, you can learn a lot more. But we went on this trip and every single person was absolutely amazed.

I think we got 100% five-star reviews. You can see some of the testimonials in the trailer on the page I just mentioned. But what was amazing is that everyone that went is a listener, they're a watcher, they're part of this community, and they're used to planning everything. But for this trip, they didn't plan anything.

We planned the trip for them and it was so incredible to see people just get to enjoy something and not feel the stress of trying to make sure they got to see all the things. And so it was just really awesome. So whether you hire a guide, whether you just give up on needing to see everything, or whether you join us on this trip in Iceland this year, there are a lot of different ways to embody this type of travel that isn't just all about checking off all the boxes.

So if you have big plans this year, try to make it more about creating meaningful, enjoyable experiences, maybe at a slower pace than normal, whether it's a weekend getaway or a big trip abroad. Okay, takeaway number four, award travel is still the best deal in travel. So I have countless experiences myself, including the summer trip to Europe, where we saved over $20,000 booking things with points and miles, primarily at a hotel that's incredible called Caprocot, where we use Hilton points.

We used Hyatt points at the Paris Madeleine Hotel. And then we got an incredible deal on business class flights in United and Air France. We actually documented how we did all of that in episode 192. And so I still think that the best way to travel is to use points and miles.

And if you're just a little bit flexible, you unlock this outsized massive return. And we talked all about it in episode 175 with Nick from The Frequent Miler about how to get the most value. And flexibility doesn't have to mean just one thing that you're not flexible in. So a lot of times people say, "Well, I'm not flexible on dates." Well, maybe you're flexible with where you go.

Maybe you're flexible with how far out or how close to leaving you book. Maybe you're flexible with how many stops. There are a lot of different ways to be flexible and you don't have to be flexible on all of them to get a great deal. And so I think this actually has gotten even easier and better in 2024 and hopefully 2025, it just keeps getting better because there are so many incredible tools that we didn't have three, four years ago for doing all of these searches for award flights.

So it's never been easier. In episode 166 and 167 with Greg from The Frequent Miler, we actually went through all the flight search tools and the hotel search tools. And we even talked about award booking services. If you don't wanna do all this yourself, you can just hire companies for 100 to $200 a passenger and they'll just do all the searching for you.

And if they're able to take points that you would have otherwise used for a $5,000 flight and get you a $20,000 flight, well then yeah, it's probably worth that $200 cost if you weren't gonna do it yourself otherwise. And so if you have just a little flexibility, the big takeaway is that using points and miles to book flights and hotels is really the best deal on travel.

And I hope you get to put that to use for some amazing trips this year in 2025. I know we absolutely will. Takeaway number five, cashback can be better than points. Now, this might seem completely contradictory to what I just said about award travel. But 2024 was the year that I really processed and understood that you can disassociate earning points from redeeming points because points are constantly on sale.

So you could completely focus on cashback and then use the cashback you earned to buy points. So I talked a lot about this in episode 170 where I talked about cashback versus points. And I did a little bit of analysis for this episode right now where I looked at some of the most popular transfer partners where I'm often taking my points from banks and transferring them to airlines or hotel groups.

And so Aeroplan, Hyatt, Alaska, Avianca, Air France, they're all ones that I've used in the recent past. And I looked at how often those points went on sale. And for that set of just five, and there are lots of other hotels and airlines that have points that go on sale, there were eight, four, eight, 12, and six sales across all of them accordingly, which means anywhere from once a quarter to once a month, these points are going on sale.

And they go on sale for anywhere from a low price of 1.07 or 1.1 cents on Aeroplan and Avianca. In the middle, you've got Air France, which on sale is 1.53 cents. And then on the higher end, Alaska and Hyatt went on sale for 1.74 and 1.92 cents. So anywhere from one to two cents, you can get most point currencies on sale.

Now, if you're not getting them on sale, usually it's anywhere from two to three cents. But that means that if you take a card like the new US Bank Smartly card that earns 4%, as long as you have $100,000 parked at some account there, stocks or cash, you could effectively kind of roll your own transfer partners by taking the cash back and buying points on sale.

Or you could buy points not on sale and then compare the points being on sale to the kind of equivalent of transfer bonuses. And kind of, it's a fun comparison, which I'm actually gonna do an entire episode on this because I went through and priced out all the sales from last year.

I looked at all the transfer bonuses. And so I've got a lot of interesting things to share. But just high level, if you're comparing a card that earns 1.5 or 2X points, you know, the venture card, or there's a lot of cards out there that are in that range.

You're kind of everything else card. And you compare that to a card that earns 4% back, you could have your pick of pretty much every point I just mentioned when it's on sale. Because if points cost anywhere from one to two cents, and you've got four cents to play with, you can get two to four points for every four cents you earn.

And so you're actually coming out way ahead. On top of that, let's say there isn't any award availability and you have to just buy your ticket. I know for those of us with a big pile of points, sometimes it can feel stressful to think, gosh, I have all these points accumulated and I've got to buy this ticket.

What are these points for? That's a great argument for cash back and using that cash to buy points. Doesn't come with some cons, which is that travel just doesn't feel free. Like it actually, to me, when you earn these points that aren't denominated in dollars and you can't convert it easily, it makes travel feel free and that's awesome.

Even though I know there's this opportunity cost, it just doesn't feel as free. And then the other challenge is, you have to buy these points when they're on sale for this to be an incredible deal. Although it's not the worst deal if you don't buy them on sale and that'll break all that down.

And so this is something that I just went really deep on and it's kind of changing my mentality on how I want to use my cards. And sometimes I'm getting a better ROI using a points card. Sometimes it's cash back. But if you'd asked me in 2023, whether I'd be spending a ton of money on cash back cards in 2024, I would have told you you were crazy.

And that's really been a big shift for me. I actually built this tool at allthehacks.com/cardtool, where I spent, I don't know, 20, 30 hours building out a model in Google Sheets to be able to optimize all your card usage. So check that out if you're interested. But the big takeaway is that this year, I want you to consider whether cash back is a better fit for some areas of your spending.

And I know for me, anytime I'm able to get 4% or more cash back, I kind of lean that direction. But if I'm gonna earn 1% or 2% cash back, absolutely, I'm almost always going for points. So it's a little bit of a balance. If you're working on a welcome bonus, it's probably gonna blow any cash back rate out of the water.

But it's just something that I've really been starting to think more about, especially as I see all these points go on sale. This episode is brought to you by Superhuman. Now I've used Superhuman for years, and I think it's hands down the best way to do email, assuming you value your time, which I absolutely assume you do.

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And as we discussed last week in the annual review episode, we talked about people that are boat anchors in your life and bring you down, and it just really highlights how important it is to spend time with the right people. Time is such a limited resource. Sahil had this great blog post where he showed all these charts about how we spend time and how that changes.

And if you look at the time you spend with family, by the time you hit your mid-20s, that's kind of gone. If you look at time you spend with friends, surprisingly, it also diminishes usually as you have kids. Time with your partner is actually relatively consistent, but your time with children chart was the really interesting one, where it peaks for most people in their mid to late 30s, and then it kind of falls off a cliff.

And the amount of time you spend with your kids really goes down, which makes sense. You know, we probably can all imagine how much less time we spent with our parents as we went to college, as we moved out on our own, but it really just got me thinking about how to spend time and making sure it's with the people you want, people that bring your spirits up, people that don't drag you down.

And that just became a big priority for me, being intentional with time and who we spend it with. So the summary is to be mindful of who you spend your time with this year and prioritize relationships that energize you and distance yourself from negativity. And how do you have time for that is where our next takeaway, number seven, comes in, which is you can make time in your life.

And there are lots of different ways to do this. I actually had a whole episode with John and Jake, number 185, they actually have a four-step framework how to do this that's in that episode. Another amazing way to do it is to buy time through delegation and outsourcing. And so if you go way back to episode 98, which technically wasn't last year, I talked to Dan Martell about buying back your time.

But then last year, I did talk to Sam Korkos about scaling yourself through delegation, assistance, and automation. And that was just such an impactful conversation that really helped me level up the way we think about outsourcing in our lives. And so I think a lot of people here know that we use Oceans and that's how I found our incredible team member, Pasany, who has added so much value to work and life.

I actually wrote a whole guide to delegation. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And if you're interested in Oceans, there's also a deal in that guide and in the show notes. Another option here is a company called Faye, findfaye.com. And I don't have any affiliation other than I tried to hire one of the co-founders a long time ago, but they basically pair you up with a part-time family advisor who takes your to-do lists and all the projects and tasks you have and takes them off.

So it's like a part-time virtual assistant focused on families. And with all these AI and language model tools coming out, I think it's gonna be even easier and even cheaper to delegate and outsource so many different projects and tasks in the future, whether they're research-based, they're work-based, they're errand-based.

One little simple thing that I think isn't used as much as I thought was just using Uber for deliveries. And so I remember there was a restaurant we really wanted to order food from and it was only available for pickup. And I looked and sure enough, you could order it for pickup and then order an Uber to go pick it up.

And the cost of that Uber was like 12 or $13, but the restaurant was like 20 minutes away. So from a value of your time perspective, if you have to drive to that restaurant and back, it was a great deal, even if you factor in whatever tip you're offering.

And so I just encourage people to think about their time and find ways to spend it more intentionally. But also when you're in the middle of that time, when you've found the right people, when you've made time for them, I think a really important thing is also use that time to be present, reduce the distractions.

Talked about that with Nate Klemp, talked about that with Sahil, talked about that with Dr. Aditi, and really use that time to have more meaningful interactions. If it's at work, maybe you wanna have interactions that embrace the spirit of radical candor, which we talked about in episode 169. And so the takeaway is to take the time that you've made and then go spend it with the people you care about it and really be present and enjoy that time and make the most of it and build more meaningful relationships with those people.

Okay, takeaway number eight is that prioritizing your health is easier than you think. And in the last takeaway, we talked about how to make time in your day, but if you wanna take a longer term approach to making time, it would just be to live longer, increase your longevity.

And I'm increasingly finding my health to be one of the most important things to spend the time I have on. And so it's no surprise, we did an episode on sleep, on longevity, on breathing, on metabolic health and on nutrition. And one of the common recurring themes across all of these episodes was three foundations, sleep, food, and exercise.

And I'm not gonna go through all three of them, but I just wanna share how good it feels to really start taking these things more seriously. Any one of them you can tackle, whichever one is the most important to you. And if you wanna get started, one way to start thinking about health is maybe just do some diagnostics, whether that's a blood panel, whether that's a DEXA scan, whether it's checking your VO2 max, figure out which area of your health you wanna have the biggest impact on and start there.

And once you've identified that thing that matters the most, you can go deeper. You could do a lot more extensive blood panel. You can work with a doctor specifically on those things. And so last year for me, it was all about cholesterol and really dialing those numbers in to a point where right now, I don't feel like I'm gonna have to worry about heart disease.

And it's not really gonna be an issue for me for the rest of my life because I have it under control. And Amy, I know she feels incredible right now that she took this huge step of doing a preventative double mastectomy after learning she carried the BRCA2 gene. And I actually shared a lot more detail about that process in episode 175 because it was a major surgery, but I'm so proud of her for doing it.

And I know she feels so great about her health. And so the takeaway, your health is your foundation for everything else. Take inventory, address whatever matters the most for you. It's amazing how little simple things, whether it's diet to the way you breathe can actually have really big impacts on your health.

All right, takeaway number nine is that the key to good communication is listening. And this one's hard for me, and it's really counterintuitive. And you'd think that if you wanna be the best communicator, you really need to learn to speak better. But it seems every person I talk to has told me that's wrong.

I had a great conversation with Charles Duhigg in episode 159 about becoming a super communicator. And he effectively said that effective communication all starts with good listening. And while it wasn't last year, I go back to a really early episode, number 17 with Kwame Christian about negotiating. And I remember how we talked about then how important it is to listen as part of negotiating.

But I think I was thinking about it too narrowly back then. It was like, oh, it's just about negotiating, but it's really about all types of communication. We even talked about in episode 162, Dan Pink came on to talk about persuasion. And he talked about how listening can be a really persuasive tool.

Talk less, listen more. It's just something that I'm always working on and trying to do better. And this also made me think about the conversation I had with my mentor, Andy Ratcliffe. It was in episode 174. But he highlighted that one of the things he looks for in people is a learn-it-all mindset instead of a know-it-all mindset.

And he's said that in meetings and conversations, he always sees people getting drawn towards people who absorb more and don't dominate conversations. And so I think applying this takeaway, this idea of listening more throughout your life in 2025 will pay so many dividends. And one of the things that's actually helped me think about being a better listener in the coming year is these three levels of listening that we talked about in episode 190.

You go from me listening to you listening to us listening and the impact kind of being aware of those types of listening can have. And one fun tip for trying to get better at this is when you're sitting in a conversation with anyone, ask open-ended questions to really foster a deep connection and give yourself an opportunity to listen better.

Ask someone a question about their childhood, about an experience they have, a place they've been, where they can spend a lot of time answering, usually on a topic they're excited about. And so in the year ahead, try to practice really active listening in all of your conversations, whether it's with partners, kids, co-workers, or even strangers, and see how it impacts your relationships.

Okay, final takeaway, number 10, building good habits takes time, but it's absolutely worth it. And one of the most important habits I built last year was waking up early. And I've never really been a morning person. I've always been a little bit more of a stay up late and get stuff done.

And I was able to create this uninterrupted time in my schedule, anywhere from one to two hours, depending on when I woke up, when the kids woke up. And I've used that time for exercise, for work, for cold plunges, and a lot more, and it feels easy now. And the trick for me was that it wasn't about when I woke up, it was about when I went to bed.

And so I made my habit at night. So in episode 159, Charles Duhigg, who kind of wrote the book about habits, talked about this three-stage cycle and how you can repeat it to really build new behavior. So you start with a cue and the signal that triggers your brain to act, and you look at the automatic action and how the behavior comes from the cue, and then think of a reward to reinforce the behavior you want.

And so as silly as this sounds, for Amy and I, we had this reward that I didn't even realize was happening, which was as soon as we got to bed, we'd watch a show for half an hour before we go to sleep. And to everyone who says that's not the best path for sleep, yes, I get it, but it's what happened.

And it really worked well for this habit because that was our reward. So the cue was that our girls fell asleep and the automatic action was, okay, girls are asleep, let's get in bed. And the reward was we got to watch a show together and that was really fun.

And so we did that. And now we're regularly and consistently waking up anywhere from five to six in the morning. And we have a lot of time on our hands in that morning window that we use way more productively than the extra one or two hours we were using at night before.

And so a few tactics to support this. What I really like is just focus on keystone habits that can create this kind of chain reaction of other behaviors. So for example, waking up early might create this chain reaction that you go exercise. In fact, exercise can be a keystone habit that might inspire healthier eating or more confidence, which can affect your work or your life, your relationships.

So that keystone habit idea is really great. And because habits like this take time, I would encourage you to try something that Sahil Bloom suggested, which is this 30 for 30 approach, which is commit for 30 days and 30 minutes for those 30 consecutive days and see what happens after that.

For me, once I've done something for about a month, it no longer feels as hard as it did in the first place. So the takeaway, building good habits can be challenging at first, but the results are totally worth it. So start small, focus on keystone habits because they create a ripple effect in your life.

And let's try to commit all of us to building some better habits in the year ahead. Okay, that is it for this episode. It was so hard to narrow down so many conversations and episodes into just 10 takeaways, but it was actually a really amazing process for me. I learned so much doing it.

I really hope it's helpful for you as well. If you had any other big takeaways from the show from the past year, I would love to hear them. Please send me an email, podcast@allthehacks.com or leave a comment or review wherever you're listening to this now. That is it for this week.

I will see you next week.