Mailbag #7: Listener Hacks, SVB Collapse, Treasury Bills, Bank Bonuses, Top Deals and More

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'm so excited you're here for another Mailbag episode, but this time it's going to be so much more than Q&A because you all have shared so much. So we're also going to have great deals, hacks, and some insurance tips and wins from you all. And as I was preparing this, also I realized there is way too much for just one episode. In fact, there was way too much for two episodes, so here's how I'm going to break it up. Today I'm going to cover all the best and latest deals, but when it comes to hacks and questions, I'm going to focus mostly on money, saving, and investing, which includes a very timely discussion about how I'm thinking about banking and investing in light of what happened last week with Silicon Valley Bank, which, fun fact, happens to actually be our bank for checking and our mortgage. So yeah, it's been an interesting last few days. I'm also going to talk about where to store cash, bank account bonuses, shopping for tires or engagement rings, and a lot more. Then I'm going to take all the amazing travel points and miles, hacks and questions and talk about those in a few weeks. So feel free to send anything else over for that episode. And then I'll take all the relationship, family and kids hacks and questions and do another episode. But this time I'm going to have my wife Amy join me so you can get her perspective too. So if you have any questions you want the two of us to tackle, please send them our way as well. But before we jump in, I want to chat about a few things. First for everyone who had an email out to me that I hadn't responded to for a few weeks, I'm so sorry. I ended up getting hundreds of listener emails in 2023 so far. But as of last night, I think I've caught up on every single one of them. So to everyone who engaged, asked questions reached out, thank you so much. I really appreciate your support. Keep it coming. And also to the 18 people who've joined the all the hacks membership. Thank you so much. Though, however, I did get an email from a listener named Grace who pointed out that she's a bit overwhelmed by creators memberships. So I want to clarify a few things. First, my goal for the membership is to make it something you get way more value from than you put in. For example, I'm trying to see if we can set up a travel agency and make all members subagents so you can get discounts on travel. I'm also working on partnering with brands to get exclusive deals on financial and lifestyle products. That said, I don't want it to become just a coupon book of things you won't use. So I'm going to be really thoughtful about what goes into it. In fact, Spotify just launched a new feature to ask your audience a question. So if you're listening there or you want to, you should see a pop up. Please let me know what perks or benefits you'd want to see. But like I said, I don't have those perks all yet. Right now the membership is really three things. It's a monthly video call for members where we can discuss whatever is top of mind, whether that's me live screen sharing, searching for flights, giving advice on a credit card, or giving my take on a financial question or decision you have to make. Second, I want to invite you behind the scenes with the podcast. So when I book guests, I'm going to send an email out to solicit questions you want to propose I ask them in the interview, or I might get your take on a new idea like when I was considering launching city or country travel focused episodes. And third, I'm going to flag members in my inbox so I can get back to you guys as fast as possible. I still plan to reply to every email I get so it's not going to be a gate. Don't worry. So if that sounds like it's worth it to you, which right now is $10 a month or $100 a year, I'd love to have you join at allthehacks.com slash join. But please don't feel the pressure to join right now if you don't want to. I mean, you're also welcome to join if you just want to support me in the show, but there are so many other ways you can do that by sharing the show with your friends or colleagues, leaving a rating a review, using the card links I have on the website, checking out our sponsors, or even just listening every week. So to grace and anyone else feeling exhausted with people pitching you to join their membership, please do not feel any pressure here. And hopefully I can add enough value to the membership that you want to join and even save money each year by being apart. So with that aside, we have a lot to cover, but one quick thing, huge, huge congratulations to my editor, Ben, who welcomed his first child into the world last week. If you notice the audio quality on this has dropped a little from our normal episodes. That's because I was doing it myself. So as soon as Ben's back, things will get a lot better. Let's jump in right after this. So the first thing I want to tackle is a follow up to the episode I did a few weeks ago on insurance. I got a few emails from listeners and I just wanted to share some of the experience they've had and update you guys on where I ended up. So ultimately for some reason that I don't understand, we thought we were going to go with travelers, but their underwriting team thought that our home, which is not in a wildfire area, was at too high of a risk for wildfires and said no. So we ended up going with USA a, which I actually anticipated being more expensive. But it turns out that the bundled pricing for auto insurance at USA is something they can't quote in advance and even mistakenly told me wouldn't exist. But by the time I ended up getting the home policy set up and adding auto, the total price was less than it would have been with travelers and the entire experience online getting everything set up was so easy. And I'm pretty excited that they're in the number one or number two spot on consumer reports. Obviously I haven't had any claims yet in a few days, but I'm feeling really happy with the decision to move over there. And it just feels nice to have all my insurance policies in one place. One good tip, when you go to cancel insurance policies with your next insurance carrier, if you're in that situation, they will generally at least Geico and lemonade were fine backdating to the date that the new policy kicked in because at least in one case, it took me a few days to get things organized and give them a call. So that's one thing to know. Also I'm feeling good because Billy is a listener who reached out and said he's been a USA member for 18 years. And while his rates have gone up a little over time, which I think is true of every carrier, he said the service has been amazing and they've gone above and beyond and he's been so impressed. So I'm very happy. If anyone has any questions about my experience, let me know. I'll update you if anything happens. But so far I'm very excited to have everything set up there. A few other things people wrote back. So funny enough, I got an email from John who said he actually was a USA member for 20 years and the rates kept getting so much more expensive that he ended up deciding to shop around and he was using policy genius and had a great experience. So if you're looking for a broker online, John wrote in and is now saving more than $1,000 a year on all of his policies. Funny enough, I think John's also in the Bay Area. So for him, switching carriers away from USA was a lot of savings. For me switching to USA was a lot of savings. I think it just undermines the necessity for everyone to go out there and price this themselves. So definitely recommend that I've used policy genius in the past and gotten some good results. But do keep in mind not all carriers are able to price through policy genius. So for some, you're going to need to go price on your own if you really want to do an exhaustive search. And unfortunately, it also means that just because I found the best rates at travelers or USA doesn't mean that even if you live in the same part of the country might have the same experience because it's so much driven on so many factors that are outside of your and my control. When it comes to pet insurance, though, I did get two emails from Adam and Ia, both of which highly recommended embrace for pet insurance. They both said that it was so easy to work with them. They paid back their claims very quickly and they've been so happy. Yeah, actually sent me her referral code and said, if anyone listening needs pet insurance, I really recommend embrace and here's my referral code if someone needs it. So I'm going to put her link in the show notes. I'm actually going to link all the hacks.com slash embrace, e m b r a c e to Ia's referral code. So if you want to send her some love and you're looking for pet insurance, definitely check that out. I don't have any personal experience, but reading Ia and Adam strong endorsement makes me think that if I'm getting pet insurance, I don't even know if I need to look around. I might just start there because they had such strong things to say. One more thing from Jeffrey, who by the way, just came back from a trip to Milan where he pointed out that he was able to fly in business for 150,000 points and some fees, had an amazing trip to Italy, used point dot me, had a great experience, but he said that the firm he works at practices in the area of significant personal injury and he wanted to emphasize how many times a catastrophic event happens and clients are left with almost nothing because the person who entered them was either not insured or only had the state minimums. He said, it is really, really important that people consider getting the maximum amount of uninsured and underinsured motor as possible, which in California is limited to the amount you carry on your own liability. Jeffrey said the cost is so minimal and it would have made such a huge difference so many times. So he really wanted to emphasize how much people should consider making sure they have that coverage. Finally, I got a long email from Joel. Thank you for everything. Just to highlight how important disability insurance was. He's actually had multiple people in his life, colleagues and family members who have been in the unfortunate situation of needing to rely on their disability insurance and he's very thankful that the ones that had it had it and just wanted to point out that disabilities can be more common than people realize everything from accidents falling off a horse, things at work that workers comp doesn't cover enough of, be out a certain time frame that he had a lot of experiences where people really benefited from having it and wanted to make sure that people had another data point since I personally don't have any of those experiences to share. So that's a little recap from the insurance episode. Now I want to talk about deals because there's a handful of deals happening right now that I think are worth knowing about. First, very timely because you have to book it by tomorrow, which is March 16th. Southwest is doing a sale 20% off all award flights. You have to fly by May 24th, but the promo code is Save 20 now. So if you're looking at a Southwest flight and you have points to do it, you can get 20% off as long as you book today or tomorrow. Chase Freedom, if you have a Freedom card starting today, you can go to chasebonus.com and you should be able to register for the next bonus, which for Q2 is on Amazon and Lowe's. That's 5% cashback up to $1,500 of spend. But if you also have a Sapphire card, you can actually take that cash back and convert it to points. So it's a great combo card. And if you have any home improvement projects, maybe Q2 is the time to pick stuff up at Lowe's and we're probably all shopping on Amazon. So it might make sense to use your Freedom card if you have one for Amazon for the next three months, starting April 1st, of course, not three months starting now. There are also a few card bonuses that are worth sharing right now because they are a lot higher than I've seen in recent past. In fact, the Inc. business cash and unlimited bonuses are the all time best I've ever seen. Now you might be thinking, I don't have a business, but I want to be clear that you probably do have a business. You know, technically, if you sell something at a yard sale or on eBay or you do any consulting or writing or handyman services or have a rental property or have ever driven for Lyft or done, task rabbit, any of those things, even if you don't have an LLC, even if you don't have a business set up, are still considered a sole proprietorship and so you can qualify for a business credit card. In fact, when you apply for a business credit card, you can use your name as the business name, your address as your business address, your phone number as your business phone number, and your own social as the business tax ID because sole proprietorships actually don't have their own tax ID. So you might be way more eligible for a business card than you think. And right now, the Chase Inc. business cash and Inc. business unlimited both have a $900 bonus. But like the Freedom Card, if you have a Chase Sapphire card or an Inc. business preferred, you can use that $900 bonus cash as 90,000 ultimate rewards points, which is an awesome bonus. Both of the cards, by the way, also have no annual fee. So we're talking about a no annual fee card with a 90,000 point sign up bonus, really, really great cards. The business unlimited earns one and a half percent on everything, which like I said, if you pair with the right cards is one and a half points and the Inc. business cast gives you 5% cash back or 5x points at office supply stores and on internet, cable and phone services, and you get 2% back or 2x points on gas and restaurants. So two great opportunities for both of those cards. You need to spend $6,000 in the first three months. So I think this could be a great opportunity if you're eligible. The Inc. business preferred does have a 100,000 point bonus sign up or $1,000 if you redeemed it on cash, but you need to spend $15,000 and there's a $95 annual fee. So yes, it's more points, but to get just 10,000 less points for no fee and not needing to spend that much in the first three months, I think it's a great opportunity. One other thing I did read online is that usually you can't get a card that you already have and you can't qualify for the bonus if you've had it in the last 24 months, but I've read a couple reports online that these rules don't apply to chasing cards. So some people have even been able to get a card for the same business that they already have and get the bonus. So definitely a lot of opportunities right now. The reason I'm talking about this now is that these bonuses expire March 21st. So get in in the next week if you're interested. I'll put the links to all these in the show notes or you can go to allthehacks.com slash Inc. cash slash Inc. unlimited or slash Inc. preferred or just go to all the hacks.com slash cards and find the links there. Few other card bonuses worth considering. If you've been thinking about getting a chase sapphire preferred, there has been a rumor posted around online that the bonus is going up to 80,000 points, but you're only going to be able to open that card with an offer from a branch starting on March 19th. So if that's something you're considering, like I always say, use the best offer you can get. It doesn't have to be mine. So in that case, sign up for this chase preferred in a chase branch. If you can find a branch that has that offer there after March 19th, a few other quick ones, the Amex Gold and Platinum offers right now are really high for referrals. So that's 90,000 points for gold and 150,000 points for platinum. That means again, my links aren't going to work, but I have found some referral links online. I can't promise how long they'll all work for, but I'll put them in the show notes or at allthehacks.com slash Amex Gold or Amex Platinum. If you have referral links yourself for either of those offers, the 90,000 gold or the 150,000 platinum, please feel free to send them to me and I'll replace those redirects and then links in the show notes to your offers because I'd love you guys to earn points. Unfortunately, my referral bonuses when I log into Amex's site are much lower and I'd rather you guys get the most points. So I just found some referral links online at the end of the day, as much as I want you guys to be able to support me in the show, I want you to get more points. So I'm always going to find the best links I can last two other cards to consider. One timely one is that the IHG Premier card has an all time best offer of 175,000 bonus points. The points guy values IHG points at about half a cent. So this is about a $875 value offer, which is pretty high. But if you are looking at doing some bookings at IHG properties, you can probably make those points go a little bit further. So something worth considering because this is the best offer I've ever seen on that card. Only Delta launched an amazing perk for all of their Sky Miles cards. And that's that you get 15% off the points you need for an award flight when you have a Delta card. So for example, if you and your partner are looking to book a trip to Europe and it's going to cost 150,000 points total, you're actually going to save 22,500 points for that booking just by holding a Delta Amex. So if you go to all the hacks.com slash cards, you'll see all the Delta Amex cards. They do have 70 to 90,000 point sign up bonuses right now, which is pretty decent. But the real big perk there is that you get 15% back. So I'm actually considering getting the Delta Platinum card myself right now. Yes, it has a $250 annual fee. However, you get 90,000 bonus miles when you get the card, you get a free companion certificate each year. You get that 15% off anytime you book with Delta and you get your first check bag free for you and up to eight other people on a reservation. All those things combined, I think will more than make up for the $250 annual fee, not to mention we've got a few trips coming up where I think we're going to be flying Delta. So that 15% off would actually come in a lot of handy. So that's one I'm really considering. That's all for cards right now. I'm hoping we get some really big great monster bonuses over a hundred thousand later this year and I will be sure to tell you about them a few more deals. It is astonishing how much of our personal information is online. And in the last few months, I've been trying to remove as much of Amy and my info as possible. I also did the same for our parents and in total after reviewing over 20,000 listings, we found over a thousand pieces of personally identifiable information. Thankfully, it's all getting removed and instead of spending 50 plus hours searching and filing requests to do that, it only took a few minutes because I used Delete Me from A-Bine and I am so excited to be partnering with them for this episode. Delete Me is an amazing service that will not just find and remove your personal information from over 500 data broker websites, but they'll continuously scan for new data that shows up and get that removed as well. On average, Delete Me finds and removes over 2,000 pieces of data for a customer in their first two years and to date, they've removed over 35 million pieces of data for their customers. So if you want to get your personal information removed from all these listings on the internet, go to allthehacks.com slash delete me and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family. Again that's allthehacks.com slash delete me. Are you also wasting money on subscriptions? Turns out 80% of people have a subscription they forgot about. Maybe for you, it's an unused Hulu account that never gets streamed. For me, it was a newspaper subscription I stopped reading. Unfortunately, I figured that out with a great app I use that helps me track all my expenses and because of it, I'm no longer wasting money on subscriptions I don't use. You might have heard of it, it's called Rocket Money and I'm excited to be partnering with them for this episode. On average, people are saving hundreds of dollars a year with Rocket Money and that's because you can see all your subscriptions in one place, then you just keep the ones you want and cancel the ones you don't right from their app. That's right, the Rocket Money Concierge will actually cancel those subscriptions for you. Many humans, no difficult conversations. Now I usually pride myself on being pretty financially optimal but Rocket Money just reminded me that my $1 a week newspaper subscription went up almost 10x after the first year intro price so canceling it will save me over $500 a year. How many apps do you have that could save money like that? I know I don't have many so I'm loving Rocket Money and it's not just me, they've helped over 2 million users save over $100 million. So start canceling your unused subscriptions today at allthehacks.com slash Rocket Money. Go right now to allthehacks.com slash Rocket Money, it could save you hundreds a year. Allthehacks.com slash Rocket Money. So first, I can't remember if I already mentioned this but I don't think I'd personally signed up for it so now I did. You can get lift pink for free as a chase F.I.R. reserve member, get to you some free cancellations, priority pickup, three scooter or e-bike passes a year, unlimited 45 minute classic bike rides as well as free grub hub plus for a year. So you get two years of that as a chase F.I.R. reserve member, I'll put a link to the show notes where you can sign up for that. There's also two transfer bonuses to Virgin right now from Capital One and City. The City one expires in a few days, the Capital One at the end of the month but you'll get 30% extra points transferring to Virgin. So if there's a trip you want to take and Virgin Miles are the way to do it, definitely we're checking that out. I'll also link in the show notes, Virgin Atlantic just launched this really cool reward flight finder on their website where you can put in a city pair and it'll show you for any month when there are seats and how many there are in different classes makes it really easy to search for availability on Virgin or on Delta flights to the UK. It doesn't look like you can search for flights from the U.S. so just search for London to the U.S. and then as soon as you get to the search results you can hit return and see the other way as well. Last set of deals, there are a ton of offers on Amex and Chase's site that I think are worth considering and then I'll talk about why I don't actually have to think about a lot of them. So on Amex there's an offer for 10% off insurance bills up to $30. Fortunately I have a lot of insurance bills so I'm going to use that one. If you need anything electronic that you can get from Dell that costs over $600 you can get $120 back if you are going to a Hilton resort there's a $20 off $1,000. We just did the episode on Japan and I saw an offer on Zip Air for $150 off $750 so if you're looking to make a last minute trip to Japan there's a great deal. 50% off Dropbox deals on tax act and TurboTax $60 off $300 at Marriott and then there's a $15 off phone bill offer as long as your phone bill is over $115 and I think you can use it a few times. So those are the Amex deals on Chase. Similarly you can get deals on TurboTax and tax act. My Southwest card on Chase also has a 10% off Southwest deal so I'm looking at Southwest flight right now for later this year so I think I'm going to buy that soon and then there's a deal on Panera Bread and I only say Panera Bread not because I think everyone listening is going to Panera Bread but I was with my parents and that's what we ended up doing for lunch and I didn't think to go to Chase before I went to Panera and add the offer but sure enough I noticed that I got credit for a Panera Bread discount and that is because I signed up for card pointers and if you use card pointers and their browser extension anytime you log into Chase or Amex's website they will automatically add all these offers to your cards. So I think three or four times now I've spent money at a retailer on my card without adding the offer or at least without knowing that I added the offer but then I've gotten the credit back. Amex had one where it was like $5 off restaurants during a certain month and it was automatically added. So I love that card pointers does this but there's one thing that I think a lot of people don't realize card pointers does which is even better which is they will simultaneously hit the Chase and Amex APIs and request adding those offers to every card at the same time which is important because if you've ever tried this yourself you might see an offer on multiple cards but as soon as you add it to one it usually doesn't show up with the other cards but card pointers request it all at the exact same time and so you're actually able to load those offers on multiple cards which means you can redeem those offers multiple times. So if you have a 10% off your insurance bill up to $30 back you could go make a $300 payment on every single Amex you have and get $30 for each one. So I've got a ton of value out of this already probably more than pays for the annual fee if you want card pointers pro there is a 20% discount on card pointers pro for all the hacks members just go to all the hacks.com slash card pointers and make sure you check out the extension if you want to auto enroll in all these offers every time you log in and I think hopefully over the course of a year I'd be surprised if you didn't find at least one thing that you earned cash back for without even realizing it. So that's a lot of deals right now hopefully that's helpful hopefully something in there will help you save some money or get some extra points. Let's jump on to hacks and questions but first I just want to share a couple wins because I love hearing these stories. So when it comes to unclaimed money I keep getting these amazing stories and I'm just going to share them because a few people actually said hey I didn't think it was going to work so I didn't do it finally I did and wow I have one listener got $93 back but then became obsessed with checking unclaimed money for their friends and family and at one night found over a thousand dollars and one person had over 500 owed to them. Then Jeff reached out and said hey you've mentioned this a few times I was super careful I'm always running spreadsheets to make sure I change everything I didn't think it would be me. Finally I added it to my list and I found a $250 insurance refund and then another $320 from a state he and his wife used to live in. He said all three of those places should have had their updated address but somehow they sent the money to the state instead and Jeff's message to everyone listening is that if an ultra careful guy like him can find $600 everyone needs to go on the hunt he would have bet anything that no money would be there when he searched and $600 later he was wrong. Jeff I'm glad you found that money Cameron I'm glad you found another $80 and then $450 for your friends and then Emilio I am the most happy for you because he found that is undergraduate school where he graduated 15 years ago had $1,359 waiting for him in his state's unclaimed money pool so he had to go through a little bit of hassle creating an account verifying his email uploading some personal documents but two months later he got over $1,000 from the state of Virginia so I'll just tell everyone one more time if you haven't already searched for unclaimed money definitely go do that definitely worth it. Another hack from a past episode was Michael who long story short got screwed by his insurance and his son wasn't covered after he was born he had a bill of close to $7,000 and he went back and forth followed some of the tips from my episode with Marshall Allen and got the bill down to $1,800 paid off a thousand still owed 800 and asked them if he paid 500 do they call it even and they said yes so it just goes to show yes insurance would have been great but if you're in a situation where you have a medical bill please make sure you fight back and negotiate go back and listen to episode 34 of all the hacks if you need some tips but there's always a way to get that price down and finally had an awesome Apple review from a listener fit gravity who said love the show I'm so glad I discovered this podcast love the content the topics and getting real practical tips I just saved $260 on the purchase of a washer and dryer from Home Depot using a hack I learned on the show that I want to share I was about to buy a 15% off coupon from save and deals which is a side I've shared before that I'll put in the show notes but then they realized it couldn't be applied to a purchase on sale so they quickly chat up with customer support and boom they were offered a discount that was actually eligible for the sale price already and finally made the purchase through the capital one shopping portal with a 5% cash back offer from Home Depot to sweeten the deal that is so awesome I love stumbling upon stories like this in reviews and speaking of them I'm at 904 reviews on Apple podcasts and I have a goal to get to $1,000 so any help would be greatly appreciated thank you so much. Okay I keep saying we're going to get the hacks and here we are I want to share a bunch of awesome hacks that I've learned from you all that you've sent in and then I want to answer a bunch of questions and come back to the big elephant in the room which is how am I rethinking about money now that my primary bank has more or less collapsed although maybe not but I'll get to that but here are some hacks that I want to share first from Ben he started off sharing a hack that I think I've shared before which is that if you want to make large purchases you can always take a card that gets you a bonus at the grocery store and buy gift cards but he pointed out that if you're going to Kroger and oftentimes this is also true in Safeway if you use their app you can activate bonus points for fuel every time he's had these big purchases he buys gift cards activates the 4x fuel points and has been doing this a lot funny enough he doesn't even have a car that uses gas but he keeps adding these deals to his father-in-law's account and he said his father-in-law has been tracking the amount he's saved filling his car with diesel gas and last year he saved over a thousand dollars so this is probably true even if you're just buying groceries but don't forget to use that grocery app to add fuel points if you're making purchases but also don't forget to add the deals every time I'm going to Safeway I look in the Safeway app and they have deals that you don't see in the store always that are so much better just yesterday I added a five dollar off coupon in the past I've added a free gallon of milk a free carton of eggs one dollar strawberries a free avocado all kinds of stuff so definitely recommend checking out the grocery store apps because there's some deals in there that are awesome when it comes to renting a car Ed wanted to share that as much as it might seem ridiculous if rental cars are expensive don't forget to look at you haul he said yes it might have been inconvenient but he has definitely rented a 10 foot box truck in the past because rental cars were more expensive so Ed great tip now I want to share another hack for getting a deal on phones two things one's mine and one's from fadra so fadra pointed out that every now and then AT&T and Verizon have really really high values on trade-ins so she was able to get a thousand dollars off a new iPhone by trading in any phone on a list of approved devices one of those was a Samsung S20 that she went on Craigslist and bought for three hundred dollars and got the full thousand dollar trade-in value so anytime these carriers are running these deals for huge discounts if you trade in your phone even if you don't have an eligible phone definitely go search for it there's another discount that often happens where you get a huge discount for porting a number into your line but it's not just adding a new line the discount comes if you port the number from another carrier now recently I learned that the hack for this is a website called phone barn where you can actually buy phone numbers and port them over so for a few dollars you can buy a phone number port it over and oftentimes get huge savings on a new phone by porting a phone number over from somewhere else definitely something to work out you can even check the eligibility of the number usually before you buy it next concerts on twitter soy henry shared that his favorite hack is buying tickets minutes before or even after an event has started said people end up panic selling and there's great opportunities this is something i've used a lot in new york for going to Broadway shows there used to be a FedEx office store or maybe this FedEx kinkos back then around time square so if we wanted to go to a Broadway show and we looked like there are a lot of tickets on stub hub we would just go a few minutes before and wait and wait and wait for the price to drop because people were quickly dropping them so that they could get sold and not go lost back before you could necessarily do them all on mobile we would just walk into the FedEx store we would print out the tickets and walk into the show having just bought them a few minutes before so that's definitely an awesome hack another one that shawn shared is that he uses the amex emails on early access to concert tickets all the time and his amex platinum got him face value early access to six row red odd chili peppers tickets before they went on sale to the general public so there are a few hacks for concerts this is a little one but i really liked it nirov pointed out that if you're using any apps that can let you reassign keys the carabiner app on mac is one of them he loves reassigning the caps lock key and i'm always thinking about keyboard shortcuts and trying to come up with something really obscure that isn't being used but i never really thought about the fact that i never use caps lock so you've got this big key on your keyboard if you can use an app like carabiner to remap it then you're able to do a lot of cool stuff so he remaps it to actually be the equivalent of f 13 which is not a real key in carabiner and then he can use that to trigger a lot of other things on his computer two more one from sujitha i think you've all heard me talk about how much i love the app paprika for managing recipes but it can get a little expensive and they charge for every single platform and so she pointed out that crouton is a similar app that's less expensive i actually downloaded it today and started importing recipes and i was pretty impressed they have a mac app and an iphone app it was really simple really nice if i didn't already pay for paprika i would definitely consider it because i think if you purchase it within the first 24 hours it's just $10 across all platforms so if you're looking for a recipe and meal planning app and paprika was too expensive check out crouton and finally a big shout out to Mindy from bigger pockets money who said that she has a great hack for target though it works at lots of different places when they have a sale on car seats which happens a couple times a year they often give 20 additional off if you bring in a used car seat she said even if you don't have a used car seat you can typically find them really really affordably or free on craigslist free cycle buy nothing groups or anything target will dispose of them anyways so it doesn't matter what the condition is but you can get an extra 20% off there so another great tip there love that one thank you for sending all these great hacks in i'm gonna keep sharing them i've got a bunch from travel that i'm excited to share in the next time we do this episode but please keep sending them in and let's jump in to questions so jessica wrote in asking for my thoughts on svb and boy do i have some you all know this sound right it's the best kind of notification the sound of another sale on shopify and the moment another business stream becomes a reality shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide and i'm excited to partner with them for this episode whether you're selling japanese tea or custom travel guides both of which i would have loved to share in this episode shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business and they even let you sell across social media marketplaces like tiktok facebook and instagram what's incredible to me about shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow shopify is there to empower you with the confidence and control to take your business to the next level now it's your turn to get serious about starting your business and try shopify today sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at all the hacks.com slash shopify go to all the hacks.com slash shopify to take your business to the next level today all the hacks.com slash shopify there are only a few brands i use almost every single day and viori is one of them and i am so excited to be partnering with them for this episode. Viori makes performance apparel that's incredibly versatile everything is designed to work out in but it doesn't look or feel like it at all and it is so freaking comfortable you will want to wear all the time seriously i'm pretty sure it's more comfortable than whatever you're wearing right now unless it's viori in which case you know what i mean and it's not just for men my wife Amy is as obsessed with viori as i am my personal favorite is the sunday performance joggers i think i have three pairs of them and they're probably the most comfortable pants i've ever owned their products are incredibly versatile and can be used for just about any activity whether it's running training yoga but they're also great for lounging or i even wear their metapants out to a nice dinner honestly i think viori is an investment in your happiness and for all the hacks listeners they're offering 20% off your first purchase as well as free shipping and returns on any us order over 75 dollars so definitely check them out at allthehacks.com slash viori again that's allthehacks.com slash v-u-o-r-i and get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet 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 slash deals so please consider supporting those who support us she wanted to know how to proceed as it relates to everything she's doing with her personal finances she actually had some questions about wealth front and blockfie so i'll get to all of it but first off i will say that the way everything unfolded with svb while slightly terrifying ended up in a place that i'm feeling a lot more confident with what fdic insurance actually means i think i was a little stressed out because we just didn't have access to any of our money and in fact as of recording this on tuesday night i still don't because we tried to wire our money out of svb not knowing the future they ended up debiting all the money out of our account but not sending the wire and we got an email today saying they are slowly working to put the money back in people's accounts and they don't have an eta for when that will be done so as of right now all the money in our checking account is inaccessible and i'm just hoping that it comes back before we need to pay off our credit card bills which normally happens on the sixteenth so we've got two days it's going to be an interesting 48 hours hopefully that all comes through if not i do have an emergency fund earning interest that i can draw from but what a disaster however if you would ask me last week before all this happened how long i thought it would take the fdic to jump in and be able to provide a backstop to a bank that's going out of business i would have measured it in anything longer than one business day but the fact that svb could be taken over by the fdic on a friday and by monday funds were made available except for funds that were wired out on friday and didn't go through is pretty impressive so what changes am i making because of this well i had never put more than 250 000 dollars into any one bank account so that's not a change i'm going to make but you can be sure that in the future even though the fdic decided to come in and protect depositors over the 250k limit i don't want to bank on that happening again in the future so i absolutely will never be putting more than 250 000 dollars into one bank account unless that bank or financial institution is working with program banks to spread that out so one of the great features about the wealth front cash account which i've used to earn interest on cash for years is that there are a bunch of program banks to spread your money out so that you have more fdic insurance than just one bank would offer so i think right now the limit on a single account is two million dollars and on a join their trust account is four million dollars so that's awesome if you're looking for a place to earn over four percent and go over that fdic limit i'm a big fan of the wealth front cash account though i've actually been thinking about whether a high-yield savings account is the best alternative compared to investing in treasuries and so i'll just segue briefly here because it's something i've been thinking a lot about and shout out to my co-founder of my last company chris who answered a few questions before i started recording this today but the main trade-off here is that you can just invest in u.s. treasuries and right now depending on the duration short-term treasuries are paying anywhere from four and a half to about four point eight percent changes regularly so don't quote me on any of those numbers which is a little higher than the four point oh five percent you get at wealth front or what you get at almost every savings account out there however there's a couple added benefits and a few reasons not to do this so one it's not the easiest process so if you actually truly want to go buy treasuries on the primary market meaning buy them when they're issued you need to do it on the treasury direct website which as i've talked about in the past when it comes to iBons is one of the worst websites to use it feels like it's more than a decade old and it's super clunky but that's just one of the challenges the other is that if you don't hold those t-bills to maturity which could be as little as four weeks but could be a lot longer depending on what you decide to buy you can't just easily sell them on treasury direct so unless you really know what you're doing and you want that experience i wouldn't suggest buying them on treasury direct anyways i would probably buy those t-bills directly from your brokerage firm you could do that with shwab with e-trade with wherever you trade stocks and funds however i still don't think that's worth it because the amount of work it is to manage and deciding whether you want to set a limit order because there is a spread on a lot of these securities is difficult so at the end of the day if you're looking to invest in treasuries to earn a yield that might be higher than your cash account or your savings account i think the easiest way to do it is to just use a brokerage account and invest in a short-term treasury mutual fund or ETF my favorite is vanguard's vusxx it's their treasury money market fund focuses on short-term duration when as of recording this the seven-day yield was 4.57 percent but i think this is probably a good time to say why i think this is such a compelling option especially if you live in a state like california or new york and that's the interest on government securities is state tax-free so if you're at the highest tax bracket in california that could mean saving 13 percent on your earnings now other states that might be zero and it might not be as compelling but even if you find the best highest interest savings account out there at five percent it's still probably after that tax savings in a high tax bracket state not going to beat the current you know 4.5 4.6 percent yield that said there are expense ratios right now the expense ratio on that fund is 0.09 percent so yes if you want to go do all this yourself you might save 0.09 percent if you can manage to price things correctly and make the right orders but for me i think the best way to manage treasuries and this is just my opinion is through a mutual fund or an ETF and if i were doing an ETF i think i would probably personally choose s-g-o-v which is the i-shares zero to three month treasury bond ETF but likely what i will use is v-o-s-x-x but one more important caveat is that savings accounts cash accounts are a little more easily liquid you can withdraw money from them instantly you can often send wires from them there's no waiting for anything to close whereas if you're holding a treasury mutual fund you're going to need to sell and wait for that cash to settle before you can transfer that money out so that's just an important thing if you want money somewhere where you don't need to wait two days to get it a cash account or a savings account might be a better option funny enough if you asked me last week if there ever really a time where i didn't have 48 hours notice of needing cash i would have told you no but in the last week the answer has actually been yes so i'm still going to keep a decent amount of very easily accessible liquid money in a high yield savings account but for any long-term savings of cash for the next six 12 18 24 months you know i typically keep cash for anything that i know i'm going to need to spend in the next five years i'm going to move that to vusxx in my interactive brokers account but you could just as easily do it in any brokerage account so for that money that i am leaving in a savings account i have that in my well-friend cash account i have no worries about the security or safety of that money i know that it's spread out to multiple institutions under the fdic limit i've watched firsthand that the fdic can step in quickly to backstop things so i'm feeling very good and confident there on the investment side i'm investing for the long run so none of what's happening right now has changed anything in fact i don't even think i've looked at how my brokerage account has done in the last two weeks because it's just not how i think about investing so nothing's really changed there but i did get a question from kalen which was now that i stopped working at well front am i still keeping my money there or why wouldn't i move it to a place like vanguard where i could save money on all those commissions i wanted to answer that because it's a decision i had to make and right now if you look at the portfolio i have which is five or six index funds i think back to my time before moving that money to wealth front and how slow i was to rebalance because each time i needed to figure out okay how much do i have to sell of this fund then how much do i have to buy of this fund and mix it around like it was kind of messy yes you could probably just build a simple spread sheet to do that and i did but the fact that i had to log in and place those trades and get it all set up always ended up that i kept delaying it and so i didn't want a system where i had to deal with that overhead but the real reason is that i think the automated tax loss harvesting at wealth front in fact i don't even think it i know that it is more than paid for the entire fees that i've paid to wealth front yes you could do some of that tax loss harvesting yourself but then you've got to keep track of everything what's going on in different accounts the idea that i can put my ira's and my taxable brokerage account all in one place that automatically trades things for tax loss harvesting and ends me at the end of the year with a bunch of losses that i can use and just to be clear since we haven't talked about tax loss harvesting in this episode we're not talking about losing money i'm talking about when something is down wealth front will sell that security and buy something very very similar and correlated but not identical so you still have the same exposure to the asset class that you're investing in but you've been able to take that loss while something's down so you can use that to offset capital gains it does lower the cost basis of that investment so you will have to pay taxes in the future but until then you're able to capture those losses and reduce your taxable income so finally i'm really big fan of direct indexing because the impact it has on tax loss harvesting you could do this at other institutions but i haven't found one as accessible in terms of the number of dollars you need to have and the fees but essentially instead of buying the s&p 500 it buys all the individual stocks which gives you the added advantage of being able to sell certain stocks when they're down and do tax loss harvesting on a stock level which has also improved the ability to capture more losses each year and then finally the portfolio line of credit feature at wealth front is great and i know when i was at vanguard i didn't have an option for that so if i need to which actually this week is a prime example of this circumstance i can borrow up to 30 percent of my portfolio without selling anything and yes i do have to pay interest so there is an interest rate that's tied to the federal funds rate which right now is higher than i'd like to pay but knowing that i have access to cash without having to sell things is really really valuable to me so i still kept my money at wealth front i'm not planning on self-managing it i think the overhead that it took me to go manage all the trades and do the tax loss harvesting is just not even close to worth the fee and if you look at the wealth front website right now i think the latest data shows that on average they've added an extra 1.8 percent to automated investing account clients' after tax returns by turning on tax loss harvesting so i haven't done the math to see the exact value it's added to me i probably should that be interesting but i remember at wealth front seeing this data firsthand and i'm a big fan and for the foreseeable future we'll be using it for all my investing if you want to help me reduce my fees you can go to all the hacks dot com slash wealth front that's my referral code and you'll get your first five thousand dollars managed free back to the topic of primary checking accounts i don't actually know whether i'm going to keep the svb account or transfer it somewhere else and if so where so i'll let you know if i find a new bank that i like more but i did get a question from mike about whether checking account sign-up bonuses are worth it and it's something we haven't really talked about on the show so i think now is a great time to bring it up there are a bunch of bonuses you can get and i'm actually going to set up a whole page for you to see some of them so if you go to all the hacks dot com slash bank bonus i'll share a list of bonuses there and you'll see that there are all kinds of deals everything from open up a checking account and get six hundred dollars to get two thousand dollars to get seven hundred dollars really always depends on how much money you're depositing in the account but in some cases deposit ten thousand get two hundred arropair opened up an account at chase didn't even have to deposit that much but did have to get her weekly pay deposit into the account and got a three hundred dollar bonus so i do think that in some cases these bonuses are super interesting and i know there are people listening who have really gained this system and opened and closed many accounts a year and probably earned hundreds thousands maybe tens of thousands of dollars in their life opening up on all these bank bonuses so i'd love to hear from more of you if you've been able to do this and whether you think it's worth the hassle generally if i'm looking at a lot of these bonuses we're talking about low hundreds of dollars for the effort of moving your checking relationship your direct deposit making bill pays sometimes even making debit card transactions for anywhere from three to six months in order to get a few hundred dollars now i don't want to diminish the value of a few hundred dollars but i also know that opening up a new credit card we talked earlier in the show about some of the bonuses right now can generate over a thousand dollars at times so for me i think about if i'm going to go through a handful of these a year what do i want to focus on all that said sometimes the hassle of moving your direct deposit over and making a bunch of payments and having to change all your bill pay might not be worth it for a few hundred dollars when you can get a multiple of that for just opening up a new card which doesn't require all that however in some cases you don't need to make all those changes or maybe you can just split your direct deposit and send a few hundred dollars a month not have to change all your primary bill pay or use the debit card and maybe it is worth it i actually just opened a business checking account at amex and got a 30,000 point bonus and i just had to make five transactions so i will say that there are some interesting bonuses definitely check out all the hacks.com slash bank bonus see if there's anything there that's interesting and please reach out if you've been doing this or if you're interested in it i'd love to hear how that experience goes. A few final questions before we wrap up so first allen wrote in and asked if i've looked into the commercials that discover card has been airing recently about how they say they'll remove your personal data from 10 search sites and was asking if it's worth all the hassle to get a discover card if he's not interested in spending the money for a full service like delete me. Now allen i'm not sure i'm going to give you an answer you like but maybe it will be an answer you like so let's jump through. First off i went through this process a few times so i've now signed up for delete me for myself i've signed up for it for my wife and then this year for christmas we actually bought my parents and Amy's parents a subscription to delete me for christmas so i've now gone through the process and seen the results for six people and on average each person's information was on anywhere from probably 20 to 45 data brokers websites so knowing that if discover's only going after 10 data brokers i don't see how that can be a comprehensive solution sure if you're not going to sign up for anything else and you already have a discover card maybe it's worth just activating it because it's better than nothing and i'm sure they targeted 10 great data brokers but i can tell you that delete me is looking at over 500 data brokers and so i know that it's going to miss things because i know how many data brokers have removed data from my site but i want to present a different way to think about this because the question was is it worth signing up for a discover card to get this if you don't want to spend the money for delete me i'll point out that delete me after the 20 discount you get at all the hacks.com slash delete me is a hundred and three dollars and twenty cents for one year now you can open almost any credit card and get a sign up bonus worth more than a hundred and three dollars and twenty cents so if you don't think it's worth spending the money on delete me but you are willing to open up a discover card to get this deal to help get your data removed i would challenge you to open up any other card get a bonus worth more than a hundred and three dollars and spend that hundred and three dollars on a year of delete me so i know that's not the answer you wanted because you said you don't want to spend the money on delete me but if you're willing to open up a credit card to get something i would say instead of opening up a discover card to get a subpar version of data removal open up another card and allocate part of that sign up bonus to getting something that i think is much more comprehensive and crazy enough i just got my third report from delete me which would be six months later and there is still somehow information on databrogger websites not just like name but like actual siblings names i went and looked at it and it was a full set of information so i wish that you could just remove it once but i can tell you firsthand that there are a few sites right now that somehow got access to the same information that we scrubbed three and six months ago so i'm a huge fan of the product definitely think it's worth checking out three other things one tires ashley said do you have any hacks on getting the cheapest tires for a car or what is the best way to shop for tires so fortunately i called up my brother-in-law Jeremy who owns a few tire shops so if you happen to be in steve oats brings colorado head on over to yampa valley tire pros support my brother and his business so i want to share a few of the things he told me one is that the quality of a tire really matters you might have to replace cheap tires two to three times as often as you would have to replace a really higher quality tire so definitely make sure that you're getting a good tire there are reports on consumer reports you can ask a local tire shop that's one two a lot of these tires have mileage guarantees and all you have to do is things like rotate your tires to be able to be eligible my brother-in-law said that these are the kind of things that many people don't claim but actually could be really valuable so definitely if you end up needing to replace tires before their guarantee is up you can go through that process yourself to get those tires replaced for free to get the most life out of your tires regularly check your alignment because bad alignment can wear out your tires fast make sure they're properly inflated because even over or under inflation can wear out tires faster and then just regularly check them you can use a coin you can use a device that you can buy online for you know a few dollars but definitely do that and also if you're shopping for tires there are times where there are manufacturer rebates and if you look online before you're ready for new tires so if you're checking your tires and you're like we're going to need them in the next six to seven months you could basically go online in advance and see if there are any rebates and continue checking up until the time you need tires these rebates happen regularly enough that you'll probably find a good deal so big question is one how do you pick the best tires I honestly don't have a perfect answer I went on consumer reports and the number one rated tire is the Michelin Pilot Sport 4s so I could say just get those tires they seem to be really highly rated they're not the most expensive tires but if you want more than that I'm going to say you're going to have to do research that I haven't done yet because I'm not in the market for tires or you can go to a tire shop and ask around now a few weeks ago I did actually need to replace one tire on our model 3 and I wasn't going to replace all my tires but being the optimizer I am I wanted to call around to see if I could get a better deal than the Tesla store or maybe I could buy the tire online so I looked online I thought about it the range to replace this tire was anywhere from like 370 dollars to 410 dollars keep in mind that labor rates are probably a lot higher in the Bay Area than anywhere else but ultimately I decided that for 30 or 40 dollar savings just getting done at the dealership for Tesla knowing that if anything happens to the car they're never going to blame me for doing the tires wrong because it was their responsibility and they actually had the tire in stock and could replace it that day made me much more interested in just doing that than trying to get a deal now if I were buying four tires and I had time to plan you can buy tires at Costco or Walmart which my brother-in-law said both do a really good job and you can ship them to yourself or you can even ship them to a lot of tire stores and they'll put them on and so you might be able to save a little bit doing that over buying the tires from the tire shop however there are a few things that I didn't think about that would make me want to consider actually buying from a tire shop in the future so one guidance on which tires to get and how to think about those two at least my brother-in-law said that he manages the entire process for manufacturer guarantees for all of his customers that buy tires from him so if something goes wrong he's going to deal with the manufacturer he's going to get the refund he's going to do that he does free rotating free flat repair for any tires purchased from him so a lot of those extra perks you'll get from buying from a tire shop you won't get if you ship them the tires and so yes you might save you know 20 30 bucks per tire but you got to ask whether that's worth it and it really depends on the savings so I'll let you make that call but I did want to share some of the tips he gave because when I actually wrote the question I was like on many things I might not have a good answer but at least in this case I have a brother-in-law who owns a tire shop so there are other questions for him let me know and I can ask finally I got another question from a reader I'll keep anonymous on the off chance that his girlfriend is listening but he said he's ready to propose to his girlfriend any hacks for buying an engagement ring either where to look cards to put the purchase on or what and I'll share my advice because I went through this process with Amy years ago and as much as I wanted credit card points for this purchase because it was a large purchase ultimately I found that negotiating with cash for things like jewelry can result in a discount that is much bigger than the value of the points you'll get so my strategy was I went into a jeweler I talked I figured out what I wanted I got a price I came back in a few days not looking too desperate and said okay I'll do this but I want this price I low-balled we did a little negotiating little did the jeweler know at the time but I brought all cash like actual cash with me and I said can you do this price I can't actually remember the price off the top of my head now and he said I can't do that price and then I just took that much in cash put it on the table said I will do this right now or no and I think the fact that there is cash on the counter made him realize I was serious and I ended up getting a much better deal now had I paid full price and put it on a card I would have gotten some points but those points weren't worth anywhere close to the discount I got paying cash so that said if there is a very specific piece of jewelry you want and you can only get it one place and there's no better deal you can get paying cash or if you're trying to negotiate a deal and the best you can get paying in cash is 1% off then yeah I would put it on a card I would pick a card that gets two points per dollar like the venture or the venture X or I'd get a new card that I could hit a sign up bonus on and get 7500 000 points from the sign up bonus so that's how I think about it that's what I got for rings last question I have on the docket for today is around block five as people know I had a meaningful amount of money in block five I guess I still do or it's still somewhere and so Amardeep wrote out and said I'd love to know if you could just give everyone an update on what the current status is best you know it and what people should do so for me I got a letter from block five saying this is how much we believe that you have in your account as of the date that they decided was the date they're looking at balances if this amount is right you don't need to do anything if this amount is wrong please file a claim so fortunately for me that amount was right so I didn't file a claim and don't feel the need to and now I'm just sitting back and waiting as they go through this bankruptcy process right now I'm pretending the money doesn't exist because I have no idea what will become of it and I would much rather be pleasantly surprised that I get a lot of it back than expected to be there and be very sad that it won't so I've already kind of mourned the loss of the money for now I am optimistic that it won't be a complete zero but mentally the way I like to handle these things is write it to zero now and get something back instead of assuming it'll be something I'm hoping it'll be more than 50% of what it was but I have no idea if it's gonna happen this year next year or further out so it's a really crappy situation for a lot of people myself included and I'm just hoping that they can figure things out quickly and make people as whole as possible I think that's it I covered a lot obviously if you have follow-ups if you have more questions please reach out to me I would love to hear from you I'd love to include those questions in the next few of these we're gonna do one on travel points and miles I'm gonna do one with Amy on relationships family and kids so lots of stuff to come thank you so much for listening thank you for supporting me and I'll see you next week