Practical Money Hacks with Lisa Rowan #307

the Tampa Bay Times. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, City Lab and many other publications, and now she's recently published her book Money Hacks Plus Ways to decrease spending, increased savings, and make your money work for you. We're excited for an extremely practical conversation today, so Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Lisa. We're really excited to have you. Excited for this conversation and so

many money hacks to get through. It's going to take a while to get through two plus, so be here for eight hours. Listeners, bresh yourselves But before we get into all that, Lisa, you know one thing that and I do every episode is we drink a craft beer one because we like the way beer tastes and too. It's just this way of prioritizing something in the here and now while we're also saving and investing well for the future. So, yeah, what's your sporte? Do you have

a craft beer equivalent in your life? Yeah? Beyond just loving craft beer and craft cocktails, like y'all, the thing that I spend so much money on, I haven't lately

because of pandemic issues. But the thing I used to spend a ton of money on was anything that would get me to the front of the line if I was flying, so uh, you know, I had pre check and global entry, but I also would throw down cash if it would do automatic check in for me if I was flying Southwest, or if I could pay a little extra to sit in the front of the plane.

My whole goal was to be the first person off the plane at the end of the play, because I just wanted to be able to get where I was going. I get restless when I fly, and I always have to fly to see my family because I live quite a ways for my family, and so when I fly to see them, I want to be comfortable. I want to show up not stressed out. Uh So if I can, if I can, just you know, I don't have first class money, but I have headed a line for uh

for economy money. So that's something that I can't resist, this urge to splurge so that I can just be a little more comfortable when I fly. Nice. Well, I'm sure you've seen your savings kind of go up over the past year, like one small bright side. So well, Lisa, before we kind of start talking about money, you used to own a vintage clothing shop. We recently actually talked on the show about posh mark and how difficult it is for folks to make money make a margin in

use clothes industry. But like, what did you learn from that experience? We're really curious. Oh gosh, I learned so much. I mostly learned that I was not destined to be a shop girl, but I was destined to be a writer. I had always been a writer, you know, before and after running my shop, and I really had this this vision in my mind. I think I watched like you've got mail too much or you know, other like fun

shop Girl kind of movies. But I really thought that I'd be able to run my shop and also be able to like be able to like work on fiction projects on the slow day is just sitting at my laptop in my shop when it was slow. Then I realized that, like one, if you have time to lean, you have time to clean your shop. But also if you're not busy, you're not making any money selling things,

So that's kind of like a problem. So I just realized that I was not I was not cut out for the day to day business operations of constantly striving to be able to sell and make money, you know, selling use clothes because like I'm sure you discussed on that Posh Mark episode, I mean, you are telling a bunch of individual things. You can't just do one listing and change the sizes or change the colors. So it's it's a ton of work and there's a ton of variables.

Um and uh yeah, I definitely learned to, uh don't don't try to shy away from your true talents. If if you have a dream, figure out a way to investigate it without sort of going all the way into the deep end. That's now, that's a good point. And I guess you got into it partially because you loved vintage clothing and you're like, how can I make this a full time thing? And then you realized, I don't know, maybe I can love it without making it a full

time thing. Yeah, exactly. I started writing a blog about vintage and thrift clothing when I was just out of college, and then it turned into selling items at markets. This was in the dawning days of Etsy, but well before posh mark existed on other you know, newer platforms like that, like deepop, and so I was sell markets and then uh and online on Etsy and eBay, and then an opportunity came out to have a retail space and I grossly underestimated how much money you needed to be able

to open and run a retail space. Um, they're not joking when they talk about overhead being so high. So so it's just my my dream and my finances didn't quite match up there. And so I was like, well, how do how do I get out of this? Because I got into a ton of debt trying to run my shop but eventually having to close it. Um. And so the way out of debt was to write about financial mistakes a lot and eventually write about, you know,

writing about how to do your finances right. Well, I mean, obviously you have written a lot about money at this point. It let's dive into some of the money hacks that you talked about in your book. It features over seventy five money hacks, which is a lot um. There were definitely a few that I'd never heard of. I wanted to hear from you two, Like, what was the most random money hack that aided into your book in your opinion? Like,

what was the weirdest one? You know, one of the weirdest ones that It's not weird to me now because I've written about it a lot, but it always surprised other people, and therefore it surprised me because we talked about it all the time. Was the hack about finding unclaimed money that might be in your name? Every state has a treasury fund for money that's uh that a company has tried to return to you but couldn't. It might be an old landlord with the security deposit. It

might be an old employer with a last paycheck. I even just got a check from the District of Columbia where I used to live. It was like eleven dollars from CVS refunds that the pharmacy couldn't get to me like five years ago. I mean, thank you, I'll take it. But you know, I knew that these funds existed and that you could search your name, uh and see if there was any money owed to you. But so many people who have read the book and who have talked

to me, they didn't know about it. And so they're coming back to me now and telling me how much money they were able to get. And so that's the one that strikes me as the strangest that I'm like, what do you mean none of you knew about this? Like I wish I had told you all years ago to go look for your money. I know people who have gotten thousands of dollars because they typed their name into the system for their state and found some just

something hanging out in there. And it doesn't mean that you neglected your finances, like you run out on a job or something. I know someone who had a family member and it was stocks from an old job that had gotten like cashed out, but it was several jobs ago, and so like there was a misconnection there and getting the money to her family member and they booked a

trip to Italy like it was the coolest thing. So that's that's lately been my favorite one to talk about and think about because I just think it, uh, it always surprises people, like it's that treasure hunt feeling that everyone craves, but in real life, it's really like finding money in the couch cushions, you know, and you said misconnections that it kind of makes me think it's like

it's like the Craigslist misconnections, but for your money. It's like, you know, it's like, hey, look, you certainly at Leasta in the beginning of your book too, you know, you offered like specific hacks to help with spending problems, and one that you discuss is not trying to cut a problem area of your spending could turkey. So you know, why is that a bad tactic in your opinion? Yeah,

And it's especially at this time of year. I know a lot of people are thinking about New Year's resolutions or they maybe have already like ditched their New Year's resolution. And a lot of times when we make a financial goal for ourselves, it's just completely unattainable. We have set our sites too high and it's just not something that we can stick to. So if you're trying to save money, it doesn't make sense for you to say, well, I'm going to cut out all of my discretionary spending all month.

I'm not going to buy anything nice for myself. I'm not going to go out to eat at all. There are some people who really go like they can do a spending fast and really make it work. But if that is not your game, I really recommend and instead of going cold turkey, instead of just like cutting all of your spending at once, try to change it by percentages. See if you can reduce your spending by ten percent in a month or in a month, and see if

you can make changes that will add up. Because if you can make small changes and then build upon them as you go, then you're going to be able to make more sustainable change rather than have this like Yogo system where you're going back and forth between not spending at all and then probably overcompensating and spending more. So I think if you can, you know, chip away it

a little by little. Yeah, you don't see instant results that are huge in a lot of cases, but what you really want to see is consistent change over time, and that's really going to be a better benefit to your finances. Alright. So hack number fourteen actually encourages people to pay for shipping when they're shopping online. Why is that because most people are man there angling for the

free shipping. I know, and it drives me crazy every time, because I get up to forty eight dollars and you know, twenty seven cents, and I'm like, great, what how can I spend another dollar fifty to get my free shipping? And then twenty seven dollars later, I'm finally checking out, And it creates this whole cycle where I'm just overspending because I think I need to be able to get certain things for for free, like I should get shipping for free, or I should get shipping in two or

three days. Uh, that I should get that free gift of that discount. And so I say, if you're trying to spend less, especially if you're trying to spend less online, put up whatever roadblocks you can so that you are less tempted to spend, whether that is unsaving your credit card from your browser, whether it's sort of like the the old fashioned method of just putting your credit card in a block of ice in your feaser anymore with online shopping, does it, Yeah, don't put your devices in

ice because that's just sunk exactly exactly. But if you can think with that mentality and you know, like don't save your payment information into any you know, e commerce websites. And then especially with the shipping, if you are stuck at a point where you know you're like, Okay, I've

picked out the things that I want. Free shipping doesn't kick in until this particular level, like just check out with what you have now, you're gonna end up spending more than you would have paid on the shipping if you just keep adding items to your car for the

promise of that free shipping. I think, y'all, I think we're going to see that go away in the next couple of years, oh after the holiday season we just have with the postal service, I think, you know, if they're right exactly, it's like you need to decide do you do you really want it now, like do you want it fast free or or you know, it's like that ven diagram of of design, but it's a fast

for your fast, cheaper good. It's like with shipping, like you need to decide how do you want it chucked from the truck on year lawn, Like we can do that. That might be the free version. So definitely think about, you know, do you really need the free shipping or could you just check out with what you need right now spend a couple of bucks and I going back to how I think this is going to go away. Just remember that anyone who offers you free shipping works

that into the prices somehow. That is true, so it's it's never really free. Yeah, Anything to basically increase the friction here, you know, like anything that you can do to make it harder for you to spend money on these sites, Like I mean, it used to be where you had to actually drive to a store and then you had to drive to another store. It was hard

to spend your money. But it is so easy and in some ways it is good, right, Like being able to hop from retailer to retailer, from site to site online gives you the ability to yeah, comparison shop and get the best deal, but it also makes it way too easy to spend all that money. Lisa, you know you you you talk about in your book To the Power of Positive framing. You know, how can that change our perspective on I guess why it is, like, why

does the you know, the different reasons why we're cutting back. Yeah, you know, it's a lot of times when we set a goal, you know, especially when we're trying to cut back or when we're trying to pay off debt, the goal is something that we did that's negative, that we're trying to make up for, and that doesn't really help

motivate you to make change. Right, if you're constantly thinking about the thing that you think you did wrong or that you know really tripped you up, how hard is it going to be to wake up every morning and be psyched to make change to your finances? Right? So, instead, if you know, for example, if you're trying to cut back on your spending, if you can think about the

real reason you want to do it. Maybe it's right now because you're in the hole by a couple hundred dollars, but maybe in the future you want to save money because you want to take a trip, or you want to healthy emergency fund so you have better peace of mind, or you want to be able to, you know, splurge

on birthday gifts for your nieces and nephews. You know, by thinking about the outcome and thinking about the positive impact of changing your money, you can think beyond like that temptation right now, Like if you're thinking, like should I buy one more six pack of craft beer? Like you're like, do I really want this now? Or do I want to be able to do this other thing later?

Just like just think about those priorities and sometimes you're gonna say, yes, I would like a delicious craft beer right now, and my nieces and nephews can wait for their birthday gifts. But if you if you try to think less about the things you've done wrong and the places that you've had challenges and instead think about like how great you're doing by just striving to do better with your finances, that goes a long way and keeping you motivated for long stretches of time when you're working

on this stuff. All right. Another interesting hack that you mentioned in the book is the stranger test. Can you explain what that means? This is one where you have to envision in your mind's eye that you're in a store, You've gone to a store, you're inside the store, and you're within spitting distance of a stranger, which I know for a lot of people as hard. Right now, you're like, I don't want to be in the same zip code as any other people. But just imagine in your mind's eye.

So this is a test to make sure you really want to spend that money on an item to stay. You're browsing and you pick up something and you're like, oh, I want this thing. You didn't plan to buy that thing, but it caught your eye and you're like, maybe I'll

get it. So imagine that somebody in the store, a complete stranger, is standing in front of you and they're holding up that item, and then their other hand they have cash for the same amount of the price tag on the thing you're thinking of buying, and think to yourself, don't imagine that this is your best friend, because this will value you up. Imagine it is a true stranger. Maybe it's like an employee at the store. You gotta think, like, what's going to make you like what would you take

if this stranger gave you both options? Would you take the item or would you take the cash? And just thinking about it in physical form like that, because so often we pay, you know, with card or with Apple pay or whatever anyway, Like, think of it in physical cash. Would you love physical cash in your hand or would

you love this physical object in your hand? And whatever the answer is, that'll guide you like maybe you do want that thing, maybe it would benefit your life, but maybe you know, thirty six bucks or whatever it is could go a lot further in your life and help you stick to those you know, positive priorities that you're thinking about. So imagine that next time you're like maybe at the grocery store and you're, you know, maybe in the candy aisle, Like start small at that, be like

do I want these a reci peanut butter cups? Or do I want four dollars? Start small thing about it that way. I love that It's a great way to rethink how it as we spend our money. And at least all of these sort of tips, all these different hacks that we've gone through so far have to do a spending. We're gonna take a quick break, but after that we're gonna talk about some of the hacks you have when it comes to our savings, and so we'll get to those right after this break. Are we're back

from the break, We're talking practical money hacks. With Lisa Rowan today on the show, and Lisa, let's talk about money hacks for saving money. One that seems counterintuitive is having fewer savings goals. This one that you mentioned, I believe that's money hacked forty eight. So explain why you think it's important actually a fewer goals. Yeah, it's absolutely counterintuitive because we hear all the time that we should give our savings accounts names and have separate saving accounts

for different goals. Right, maybe it's your emergency fund, your travel fund, your tuition fund. But if you have too many goals and too many separate little buckets for those savings goals, you're not going to see fast progress in any of them because you're dividing your money up into too many buckets. So instead, I really recommend having fewer

savings goals. Limiting yourself to two or three. Three might even be too much, depending on how much you are able to save, but just focusing on one or two things. Maybe it's going to be a general savings funder and emergency savings fund, and one up or bucket whether it

be travel or gifts or charity donations. But being able to focus on just a few goals is going to let you see your progress a lot faster because instead of having five or six places that you're divvying up your money whenever you get paid and you go to put money into savings, you can put bigger chunks of money in those goals. You'll hit them faster, and then you can move on to the next goal that you're trying to build towards. Yeah. So, so at the's one

thing too that you mentioned. You talk about earning rebates of you know, for doing the different shopping that you're already doing. I'm aware of some of these programs, I just haven't checked them out myself. But which one should people consider using and how much cash back, you know, can you actually get. Yeah. So, two of my favorites that I've been using for a long time or racket In, which used to be ebates and I bought us. So Racketin is primarily for online shopping through your phone or

your computer browser. I bought. Uh. I don't I'm not sure if it has like a browser interface, but I use it as an app and I use it main when I go grocery shopping. So I'm going to start by saying, look, there's a trade off here, and so by letting these companies pay you for shopping at certain stores,

you're giving over your consumer data. It gets anonymized, but you're basically you need to be willing to show people what else is on your grocery receipt besides the you know, a pack of chicken that you're going to get a cash back rebate on. Right, So that's that's my disclaimer on that. But if you don't really have any like state secrets that you're hiding, um, you're not in the witness protection program or anything, you can use these programs to get some money back. And it's various rates at

certain retailers or on certain products. So I'll give you some you know examples. If you go through racketing and you're shopping online, you can do a little uh extension in your browser that will show you what the cash back rebate is and it could be anywhere between one percent and twelve of your purchase that you can get back on that purchase. It goes into your racketing account with in a couple of days of you shopping, and they pay out quarterly, so you're not going to see

money tomorrow. That's going to show back up in your bank account. But I typically get a check four times a year of about ten to fifteen dollars um and it's just like a nice pocket change to get back on money that I was going to be spending anyway. And it's really great. You know, I just did it for a ton of Christmas gifts, you know, back in November and December, and so I always see like a

little bit of a payout there. So it's you know, if you just paid for shipping on things like I told you to, you can get a little bit of that money back by doing these online rebates. And then I'll tell you for I bought a which is the one I use for grocery shopping a lot. You basically scan your receipt and scan particular items that they're offering cashback rebates for. It could be a gowon of milk

from any brand. It could be a specific kind of cereal that they want you to try that they're testing out, and it's you know, per item on your receipt could be anywhere from a dime to a dollar or more. So that's something where you can cash out once you reached twenty dollars and they send it through PayPal, And so that's something where I probably make a hundred bucks a year just by sharing what's on my grocery receipt and sort of matching up with the things that I

was already planning on buying. Because on our body, you can look at the app after you've bought the items that day and see what's on there and then scan your receipts. So there's some temptation to keep shopping right because it gave a fis getting those rewards. But if you, if you are smart about it, you will not be tempted. Or you just go to a grocery store where you don't have good reception and then you won't need to look at the app. Anyway, I'm looking at my own

grocery store as I say that. Uh, at least at least you talk about pawn shops in the book to you recommend shopping there in order to save more on some of the items that you would potentially buy otherwise, but just getting a better deal there. So, well, what are your best pawnshop scores and why do you love shopping at pawnshops? You know, you know, my favorite pawnshop score was happened back in the day. I was in community college and I needed a graphic calculator for a

math class. And that I mean at the time, I'm showing my age, but that was a solid hundred dollar expense for a college student. I was not feeling it. And it was actually my math teacher and community college who said, hey, call up your local pawn shop and see if they have any And at the time, I think I had to call two and the guy said, yeah, you know, I have one. You know, I'll hold it for you, come on in. And I paid something like twenty bucks for it. So that's that's something. Where do

I don't think I have that calculator anymore. It's probably for the best. But there are things like that, you know, things that you wouldn't think you might be able to find in a pawn shop. Who would have thought you could get a calculator at a pawn shop. And I know friends who have gotten you know, brand new laptops there, you know, barely used, totally legit, you know, above board. These are not items that have been stolen or gotten

through you know, like shady circumstances. They're just people have sold their items that they didn't need and you can really get a huge savings on them. Well, so, Lisa, you mentioned computers an electronics that actually makes me think of in your book as well, you talk about your electronics right. Um. You know, Joel and I we've talked about that song before in the show with you know, with like the help of I Fix It some of

those different sites like that. I'm pretty sure I'm about to take the plunge into the deep end and get one of those kits and start becoming like Mr you know, iPhone handyman around around our house. But I don't think we've mentioned repair cafes. You mentioned them, and so can share with our listeners what those are and how they actually work. Yeah, it's something that's so cool and I have yet to go to one in person, and granted we're in strange times, but this is something that's on

my list that I want to check out. So these places have sprung up all around the world. I think there are more than two thousand of them, and it is an in person experience. It might be held in a church basement or in a literal cafe, but you go and there are experts there who are willing to help you repair your stuff. So if you're someone like me who keeps killing blend or UH engines blender motors and they're on your third blender in three years, maybe you want to figure out how to just fix it

instead of buying a new one. UH. There are people there who will help you figure out whether you can repair your item. And it's great because it's the extension of what we've all tried to do on YouTube, right, you know, we might look to see if we can fix something at home, because really it's so frustrating when you think the only option is to throw away something

and buy a new version of it. But more and more, I think people are getting into the fact that with a little bit of nohow or a little bit of help, you can actually, you know, prevent some of those upfront costs by having to buy a new item and be able to fix it. And in a lot of cases, if you need UH, if you need a part to be able to replace something or a tool or a pair, cafe will have it, or you'll be able to buy the part really cheap because it's probably a used part

that came off something else. Or you might be able to work with a company the item is from, and in a lot of cases they'll send you a part that you need for free or for very low cost. So it might take a little bit of time, might take a couple of visits, you might make a couple of mistakes along the way. But there are communities out there where you can go and you can take your you know, small appliances or small electronics and say hey, please help me, and people are really excited to do that.

So there are these communities. If you search repair cafes, you should be able to find. Um, there's a directory of where they're located, and it's just super fun. That's cool. Yeah, there we've got like one of the repair cafes essentially for bikes close to where we live. And those are in cities across the country too. So if you're not super handy repairing your own bike, there are people out there who would love to help you in there. They

have the tools all in one location. Um, those are the kind of things that, yeah, are helpful for us all to be taking advantage of so we don't have to continue to replace items. By the way, I'm curious, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't ask, what are you doing to your blender that makes it break so frequently, Lisa, if I knew, I wouldn't have this problem. I think. I think my ratio of water and ice to ingredients is always off a little bit. And I'm just I

think I've murdered my blenders with frozen fruit. Okay, Okay, I'm curious about another tip that you mentioned. You You you say that people should fill up their gas tanks on Monday's. Why do people save more money by getting gas on a Monday than they do on any other day of the week. Right, this is wild and it sounds like the hackiest of hacks. Right, It sounds so gimmicky, But it comes from research from gas Buddy. They're the people who make the app that tells you where the

cheapest gas is, so I trust their data. They found that the cheapest time to get gas is on a Monday. The most expensive time to get gas is on Friday and on the weekend. And think about it in your in your mind's eye, think like a marketer, or think like a person who wants to make money on gasoline. So when you get to the end of the week, what do you think about? What the heck you're going to do on the weekend. Where are you gonna go? Are you gonna do errands? Are you going to go

on a day trip? Are you going to you know, grab your friends and go to the beach or go camping, all those things. Take another tank of gas in your car, maybe after you've been commuting all week. So if you grab gas on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, they know that you're trying to have some fun, and they're putting a little bit of a premium on that gas because they know

there's more demand. It might just be a couple of cents, but if you add that up gallon by gallon, that could add up to you know, eventuable dollars that you could be putting towards more fun things on your weekend

aside from filling your tank. Right, so, if you can plan ahead a little bit, if you know you're, you know, taking a road trip on the weekend, maybe top off on Wednesday and then top off again on Monday when you get back, you can sort of play the system a little bit and save just small amounts then the long run are going to add up to you know, considerable savings for you, especially you know, the bigger gas tank is the more you're going to save on this one.

All right, Least we got a few more sans to get to about money hacks that can help people out, including one about kind of an awkward side hustle. We'll get to that and more right after this break. All right, we're back from the break talking with Lisa Rowan about just some practical money hacks, something that we can all do to save a little bit more money. And uh, Lisa, we're gonna round the interview out here, the conversation with a bunch of just a bunch of kind of random hacks,

I feel like. But in Hack one forty you actually talk about taking out loans. You are all about shorter loan terms and we are as well. But the thing is it's incredibly countercultural, right, you know, as loan terms seem to be lengthening everywhere, especially for cars, and so how should people weigh the different loan options that are available to them. Yeah, the trouble is that, you know, lenders want to give you longer and longer to pay

off a debt. But the longer take to pay it off, the more you're going to pay an interest, and the longer you're going to have that obligation hanging over your head. So yeah, you could get a seven year car loan, but maybe you've saved up a bunch of money for a down payment, or maybe you know that your income is super stable and you can do a three year loan or a four year loan or a five year loan. The five year loan used to be, you know, the longest,

and now it seems like the middle of the road. Yeah. Yeah, And take a look at the difference in interest rates because sometimes if you can cut down your payment timeline by one year, you can save a couple of points in interest or at least a few, you know, fractions of a point, depending on what sort of you know, rate environment that we're in. But that could add up to big savings over time. So this is definitely a tip for people who are well on top of their finances.

They are not worried about, you know, the day to day if they're taking out a loan or taking out a cardo. They are they're really able to spend strategically and they're able to maybe spend a little more each month to get out of that debt quicker. If you're in that situation, Definitely look at a shorter loan term. It sort of puts uh, it puts the pressure on

you to like keep up with it. You know, if you know that you would accelerate your payments anyway and just be paying more than the minimum, you know, maybe it's worth looking at one of those shorter terms. Yeah, I agree. I think we we too easily take the longer term loan and then yeah, we are just we're payment buyers and we're in debt far far longer than we should be. Um. One, one more money hack you

mentioned is a way to make more money. It's a side hustle that I'd never heard about before, renting yourself out as a friend. I'm a pretty friendly dude. Does this something I should consider? Well? You know, I will say, renting a friend with something I recommended before a global pandemic. But there will be in time again when you will be willing to share, you know, in closed spaces with strangers. But there is actually a service out there called rent

a friend dot com. It is completely platonic, and it's designed for people who just maybe have an interest or want to do something fun, but don't have anyone that they can call on to do it. With. Maybe your friends are in a different city or they don't have the same interests, and you can you know, set up basically a friend date with someone. Um It starts at around twenty five an hour, So if you are willing to rent out your time and be the friend, you

can make bucks an hour. Plus you are able to take advantage of whatever like fun thing your person that you get matched up with wants to do. It might be a baseball game, and might be a museum. It could be some sort of like awkward dinner with their parents that they don't want to go to alone, and you know, they're like, just pretend you're in my roommate and you're like, cool, that's fine. And it seems strange right to rent a friend, But think about it in

another way. Think about um, you know, Airbnb experiences. People will sign up to take a tour with you through your favorite chops in your neighborhood. Right, So it's sort of like that, um it has you know, a more straightforward may and so it seems a little odd to

be renting a friend like pay for friendship exactly. But if you you know, just think of it as you know, someone wants to pay you to you know, be a great host to them, uh, you know, in a neighborhood or to you know, try out something fun and you could get paid to do that, and it's it's pretty cool. I've never tried it, probably because I'm a little bit of an introvert. I'm extrovert all the way. If I didn't have anything else going on, I might I might

do this. Yeah, if I, you know, maybe lived in a city where I didn't know a lot of people, this would probably be a really fun way to meet people and try out new things and make some money off the same time at the same time. So on the like the social note, I guess you also talk about finding a mentor as like a way to help you in your career. You know, you're not paying for a friend necessarily, but you're paying for somebody, uh maybe

who can help you along. Can you make a case as to why mentors are a good idea for a lot of folks. Here's a money hack that doesn't sound like a money hack, but really it has. It can have some long term effects. So we're always told when we're in high school or college that we should find mentors who can guide us in our careers. There's someone who's a sounding board and a cheerleader and someone who's going to be there for us to you know, support

us through our careers. And one of the ways that they can support us is by helping us advocate for a raise, helping us practice negotiating when we're in job interviews to be able to get a higher salary. Having someone in your corner that reminds you of your self worth and of your expertise and of your skills can really help you get that boost of confidence when it's

time to stand up for yourself and negotiate. So it's one of those things that's hard to put price tag on, uh, And it's it's you know, some people get luckier than others. They just find a great mentor out there. Other people need to go through a matching program or maybe an alumni network to find someone that's really a great supportive mentor for them. But it's something that can have a long term impact. Don't how much you're able to make over the course of your career. Nice, Well, hey, we

we just passed New Year's Day recently. A lot of people made New Year's resolutions, but a lot of us slackers didn't really get around to it right. But that's okay because in your book you suggest that people should do this on their birthday and said so they shouldn't feel bad, they should just know that they it was the wrong time to do it right. So, but why, in your opinion, is it more important to make resolutions

on your birthday as opposed to when the new year hits. Yeah, I think it's more exciting to have a date that's meaningful for you. We all got to January one, and we feel like it's you know, we've got to make a change because everyone else is doing it. It's a new fresh year. But it's a terrible time to make money changes. You're just coming off the holiday season, which is just very expensive. It's the dead of winter. Nobody,

nobody wants to make changes then. So if you can tie financial resolutions to a day that's a little more fun for you, like your birthday, the odds of you sticking with it go up a little bit. It's still gonna take hard work, but you're gonna tie it to this time of like actual rebirth for you, not just turning the calendar page. But you're hitting a new year

in your life, a new milestone. You're blowing out those candles and you can say to yourself, Hey, I've got goals and I'm going to make changes so that i can get to them before my next birthday. So this the caveat here is that if you have an early December birthday like me, this doesn't really help that much. Ray, if you're December January baby, I'm sorry. You should just probably stay to January first out of simplicity. But for everybody else, for the other ten months of the year,

you should think about your birthday. Yeah. I love how much more personalized it is too, And plus, I mean the gyms are likely to be less crowded to new resolution. At least we've got one more question here. Let's end on maybe a more sort of adulting kind of notes. One of the hack you mentioned that I thought was incredibly useful is you talk about doctor menting your possessions in case you need to file UH homeowners or wrinner's insurance claim. And so, how do you feel is the

best way for people to do that? It all depends on how you are going to stay organized, right, which is the answer nobody wants because they're like, well, how do I stay organized. Do I stay organized? But the most important thing is that you have as much evidence as possible if you need to make a claim for

your homeowner's insurance. And think about it, like if if you you know, had your house broken into or your car broken into, that's the last time you want to spend scrambling around trying to find the model number from your computer or the serial number from your whatever has a serial number? Does my blender a serial number? But you don't want to be scrambling around wondering like, oh, like what was that thing and how much was it worth?

So I'm a big advocate of keeping receipts for big purchases, scanning them or taking a picture on your phone so you have a digital copy, and then in some cases taking pictures of items. Uh it might be you know, if you have a laptop that has a bunch of stickers on it, take pictures so that if your laptop gets stolen, it's easier to identify. It's also then easier if you have photos of items for the insurance company to determine how much cash you should get to be

able to replace that item. So if you've got you know, expensive jewelry, some homewars. If you've got some expensive shoes like me, that you want to get the value for, you know, you need to be able to know what the value is. And don't wait until the last minute or until there's an emergency to wonder what was in

your home. If you can make a log, you know, don't worry about the little stuff as much as the big stuff, and just think of those big purchases that you would be upset about if something happened today, and do what you can to chronicle those items so that if the worst case scenario happens, you can easily grab a digital copy of your seat or some photos, or you know, you just have them stashed away in an

envelope somewhere so that you can easily grab them. That is a great tip and probably one that a lot of our listeners haven't done. It reminded me that it was something I need to do to document all the possessions in my house through a walkthrough video. So I'm putting that on my to do list. Lisa, thank you for the reminder. Um And yeah, I love the book Money Hacks. There's so much good information in there. Uh, so many money hacks that we weren't able to cover

in this conversation. Where can people find out more about you and the book? Yeah, you can find Money Hacks wherever books are sold. You can find more about me, and you can find a link to buy the book at Lisa Rowan dot com. And just remember that, you know, there's a lot of hacks in here, and not every one of them is going to apply to you, but I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find a handful that you can implement in your life and make some

lasting changes. Most definitely, Well awesome, Lisa, This is a fun conversation. Thank you so much for talking with us today. Hey, thanks for having me all right, Matt, that was a great conversation with Lisa. I love the idea behind money hacks. Hack is such like a common term that we use now in our society in articles on the internet. Hack is like the frequent word um. I feel like word

toys when it comes to shaking something up in your life. Um. And and Lease offers just a lot of great tips really when it comes down to it in this book. So I was glad we were able to cover some but I want to know ak a sneaky, actionable tip exactly. That must be the definition of it, right right. So what was your big takeaway, your big hack from this episode? Yeah, yes, well so yeah, my big takeaway is when she was talking about the Stranger test. I love the Stranger test

Man and so quick recap. Basically, if you're ever in a store or your online even chopping online, picture somebody standing right there, uh, and they're holding up the amount of cash that is gonna cost you to purchase that item or the item, and you've got to choose one of the two, like which one is it gonna be? And to put it in terms like that to help you to visualize, like, oh, wait a minute, is that

really worth all that money? You know, it's like, okay, I'm about to drop forty bucks on a couple of pizzas? Is that actually worth like those couple of pizzas? And in some cases you might say, yeah, those pizzas are really good, or you might think am I am I just doing this like at a convenience or or maybe just had a habit, you know, whether it's food or whether it's like clothing, like do I really want the shirt for twenty bucks? Or that's how much my shirts cost?

Their cheap. Um, is that going to provide me the utility or the warmth here in the winter with it being cold, or would rather take that twenty and put in my wallet. I'm a fan anytime you're able to bring these alternative options into these sort of scenarios where you feel like you have to do something and instead

if you ask yourself, well, what if instead I did this? Um, it's just a way to you know, optimize your spending and make sure that you're spending your money in a way that aligns with your values and the things that actually bring you joy. Until Lisa's book Money Hacks, I've never thought about it that way, but I know that's something I'm totally gonna be referring to in the future

when it comes to my own expenses. I'm gonna be visualizing a stranger trying to hand me cash and I'm probably gonna, you know, not buy the item now because because of it. I think that's I think that's a great one for sure, or or you'll say, oh no, I totally need that thing. It's it's completely worth the money, you know. Like, I just love how it reframes that interaction completely. Yeah, So I think my big take away.

What was your big takeaway? I think rent yourself out as a friend man um and I don't know if you can virtually do it these days. If you can, I might have to do that. My wife might not be down with it. But I love meeting new people. Like honestly, part of me is thought I would love to become a lift or an uber driver just because

all the people used to be chat with folks. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of fun, like I like writing in them when I'm the passenger because I like make a new friend every time kind of And that might sound weird, but I'm that interested in meeting new people. And so yeah, if this was my younger days, if this existed, but always in my early twenties, it's totally something I done. Run up Joel's alley. Yeah, No, I got a wife and three kids though, so I just

don't really have the time to prefriend strangers. I'd rather do the stranger test, I guess. So we were just talking about both of us have to do a stranger Well, I've told you, I mean back when we're doing the Airbnb down here in the basement, Like that was the thing that I enjoyed the most was being able to talk to the you know, our guests and figure out why they're in town, how long they're in town. I mean, well, I knew how long they're in town four because the reservation,

but o're here three nights, I see. But to be able to talk about where they're from, you know, what they've been doing, dude, I love that aspect of it. And I'm not even extrovert, you know, like there's a part of me that just doesn't want to talk to evil. But I still enjoyed, I don't know, playing host to folks. But yeah, but here's my question for you. What if you are, you know, doing ren a friend and folks

are asking for their money back? Like, how does that work? Honestly, if I was doing it, they might be they might be like, you talk too much, get out of here. I want you to be a better listener. Uh, you're a good listener, buddy. I don't know. Sometimes you know, sometimes I'm not, and that's that's the case. But yeah, I love that as a tip. I love just kind

of outside of the box ways to make money. And you know, if you can make an hour, that's real money, that's not pidally money that's legit money and maybe leg cool experience at the same time. All right, now, let's get back to the beer that we had on this episode. This one was called condensation accumulation. Um two big words right there to describe this beer. What were your thoughts on this I p A. We are two smart guys. We know how to say these words. We know big words.

Uh well, obviously it makes me think of condensation accumulation, makes me think of snow accumulating outside during some of these colder days that we're having here in January, buddy. But I don't know how else to describe this except that it is a really good hazy I p A. It has all the qualities that I'm looking for in a hazy I p A. Starting with that hazy color you know you poured in there, and it's got that

nice cloudy look to it, a little yellow, little orange. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and in particular to this one, wasn't overly dark, like That's one of the things I liked about it. I feel like a lot more breweries these days are making their I p A s kind of like blonder, you know, like like more pale, which I don't know I feel like that adds something to the flavor. At least it does in my mind because I see it and I think, oh, this is gonna taste a certain way. But yeah, I

really enjoyed this one. Uh. You we mentioned these guys are out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and this is actually the first of several beers that we're gonna have from Heist Brewery. But yeah, what were your thoughts on this beer? Yeah, I mean connotation, accumulation. I thought of clouds, and what I thought of the most about this beer was the mouth field. The pillowy cloud like mouth field. It was

like soft and luscious and and delicious. So yeah, I enjoyed a beer that has that kind of mouth field with just like also a ton of hot flavor. So yeah, definitely looking forward to having more from this brewery in the coming days. Um, but that's going to do it for this episode. For folks that want to find out more about Lesha's book, Money Hacks, where you can get it and also some links to some of the stuff we talked about during this conversation, just go to our

website how to money dot com. We'll make sure to include the link as well to where you can find missing money that might be owed to you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I know we've talked about that in the past and we've had emails from listeners like I found hundreds of dollars. If you haven't done that check, it takes almost no time and you can bring some money into your life that you didn't know it was

out there. That's right. And if you haven't left us a review yet and you've found our show helpful, we would love it if you did leave us a review over at Apple Podcasts. Maybe that nice five star rating as well. Uh and thanks in advanced for that. So Joel, that's gonna be a buddy for this episode until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.