Joel Larsguard, a host of How to Money Sunday's twelve pm to two pm.
His social address said, how Too Money, Joel?
Morning, Joel, Oh I'm here, you hear me?
Well, there you go, now I can Yeah, Okay, we just had a little bit of a glitch.
Okay.
We immediately go, of course to Costco News and Costco executive members, of which I am one.
I understand.
I'm getting more perks, better lunches when I go for samples.
Yeah. If only maybe the Costco the hot Dog Coke Comba will be a dollar forty instead of a dollar fifty.
Wouldn't that be nice? Uh?
You know what, at a dollar fifty, I can't imagine how much money they're losing.
It's been a buck fifty since the day they opened.
That's right, That's right. Yeah, I'm like literally, actually it's fascinated. I'm reading a biography of Saul Price, who was the guy who basically started the warehouse revolution, and I mean, just all what a man full of integrity, and just all that he did to pass value onto customers was incredible.
And so that's what costco members today.
Costco is essentially the legacy of this guy saw price and the Yeah, the perks are getting even better for executive members.
Who go to Costco.
And the thing is, I think a lot of people buy the basic membership and they just assume, hey, this is probably good enough, Like why do I need the more expensive one?
Well, now Costco.
I mean, there are already good reasons to be a Costco executive member, but now there are even more. And so they're going to open up the warehouse an hour early for you on weekdays at nine am. They'll stay open an extra hour for you on Saturdays until seven pm. So if you're like me and you're always like trying to go to Costco at six pm on a Saturday and you're like, dang it they're closed, Well now they won't be closed for you as an executive member. This
starts in like less than two weeks. And the other cool thing Bill I'm not sure it sounds like you like to go to the warehouse in person, which I do too, But some people are really digging this Costco Same Day, which is run by Instacart, and so Costco is also going to throw.
You a bone.
If you're into that, They'll they'll toss you ten bucks off one hundred and fifty dollars or on those same day purchases every single month. So just that alone, we'll almost essentially pay for the membership. Granted you're paying higher prices by doing the Instacart option, but that's another nice perk if you like to order VI the same day.
That's pretty impressive. Okay.
And I noticed also a quick word. I noticed that the people who are doing the samples, which I love, they've gotten a lot older and they're speaking a lot less English.
It's just one of those things. All right, let's do this.
Oh, here's another one, and that's the Chase Sapphire Reserve.
And I have that. I have a Chase card and Sapphire Reserve.
And I understand, and you're right, it's a big new annual fee. But let's talk about why it's a good idea for me to do that, because I think it is.
Yeah, So this is a premium credit card right in the American Express kind of has overwhelmingly dominated the premium credit card space until Chase got in with the Sapphire Reserve. And both American Express and Chase are updating their super fancy premium cards, and part of what they're doing is saying, actually, we're gonna ramp up the annual fee so by basically
one hundred and fifty bucks. So the new annual fee for the Chase Sapphire Reserve is going to be seven hundred and ninety five dollars.
Yeah, and I think it's four five. Now that's a lot of money.
Yes, it's so much money.
And so what they have to do is provide a value proposition and say, hey, here's why it's worth it.
To hold onto this card.
And this is really I think for the upper echelon of spenders. This is for the bill handles of the world. This fancy credit card. And yet but if you are someone who travels frequently and who uses high end services, this card can more than pay for itself. But you
just have to run the numbers. And you also, because of the way that the credit card rewards are often implemented these days, you have to pay more attention to where you're spending is going, what cards you're putting the spending on, and when those when those those you spends are actually hitting your balance your statement because they're kind of split up month to month or in parts of the year, chunks of the year, So you might get a credit that works January through June, and then you
might get there's another credit that works July through December, and so you have to be paid really close attention. But if you're into Peloton, Apple TV, Apple Music, if you are a traveler and you like to stay at high end hotels, this card is getting even better for those kinds of folks.
Yeah, Now a quick word, by the way, here's my advantage, and that is is I run my businesses through the card. And people who have businesses and pay bills business bills with a card that gets your miles. That is that's and that is not a lot of people can do that because they don't have businesses, But man, that's the huge advantage for me.
A lot more people can then think, like some of those business cards are more widely available than you might assume. If you just do something incredibly part time out of your house, if you like crochet stuff and you sell it to neighbors, like that can count as a business and you can still qualify for a business credit card. You don't have to have like multiple employees and have this bustling industry that you that you are running in
order to qualify for those business cards. I think some people think it's a higher threshold than it actually is.
Yeah, and you can have a failing business like mine and still get a lot of a lot of miles.
All right, So explain once again what.
An ETF is and an NFT and what the story is that you're going to talk about, because I always have a hard time understanding the differences between that and crypto and all of that.
It's so it's an alphabet alphabet soup we've got going on here. And we haven't really talked about NFTs in a couple of years. They've been kind of lying dormant. And NFTs are non fungible tokens, and so I was literally just talking to Kno about this.
He's a big thing of NFTs. I am not.
So we disagree on this a little bit. But NFTs, I mean think you remember like the board apes project that was so big, and there were people on nighttime comedy shows talking about the expensive board apes they had bought. And so there are these essentially essentially like JPEGs that you own, and the whole thing was a house of
cards that came crashing down. People were paying extreme dollars for some of these NFTs as they rose in popularity, there was a lot of speculative money flowing into the space, and then a lot of people who bought at the apex got burned and they lost a ton of money.
And those board apes are still worth at most ten percent of what they were back in the day, and which was like hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is kind of insane to think that's what people were paying for a digital image, but that is We're starting to
see NFTs back on the uptrend. And there's actually an ETF an exchange traded fund, so you can buy it like you would buy a stock or an index fund that is behind this NFT project, which is called Pudgy Penging, and it's really goofy if you go you look at the website. It's kind of cute, also kind of funny, and basically the website is trying to proliferate meme culture.
And we live in a culture that is dominated by memes these days, and so I think a lot of young investors might say, great, this sounds like a good way to invest, like cute project, meme culture. That's the world we're living in. But I just think that the NFT. Investing in NFTs is more of a speculative endeavor than it is actually a hope that your money will grows.
Okay, so let me ask so let me get this right.
You have a meme, for example, and it's out there for sale. Someone creates a meme and puts it out there, effectively says, if you want this just to be yours, then you pay me or you invest in this, and for a meme? What the hell do you do with a meme? I mean, how is that an investment? Explain that to me.
Well, that's a good question.
So you know, there are certain NFTs that have done decently well, like Conan and I were just talking about top Shots, which is like you actually own a highlight clip of a moment in like an NBA game, and so some people might think that's really cool, it's worth having. The problem is in this space there's so much speculation.
There's this hope that other people are going to want the thing more than you currently want it, and that the value is going to go up, and so it's less like hey, I want to buy this piece of art that lives on my computer or on my phone instead of on the wall and I just want to
enjoy it. That's the case for some people, but for a lot of people, it's saying, Ooh, how can we bid up the price of this thing, make it seem sexy and cutting edge, and then bail at the right time so we made some good money and somebody else got left holding the bag. So that's a lot of what I see happening in the NFT space. It's also what I see happening a lot in the crypto space.
I think bitcoin is a little different than most of the other cryptocurrencies, but I think in so much of the cryptocurrency space you see a ton of that type of behavior.
And I just hear from.
A lot of listeners who you are attracted to it because hey, price is skyrocketing, gets you excited, and you're like, I want to get in on that. I'm sitting on the sidelines and I'm making you know, on average and ten percent returns a year, what I'm a loser.
And then what.
Happens is you get in at the wrong time and you are the one who gets screwed. It's like.
Buying snake oil, but at least you get snake oil. You know, there's something there, or the tulip craze back in the sixteen hundred's in Holland.
I mean there was one tulip.
It got so crazy it sold for the equivalent of five hundred thousand dollars a tulip one bulb.
But you had a bulb in your hand, there was something there.
You could touch it, you could plant it, you could do whatever the hell you wanted. This one I just don't get. I don't even understand crypto, to be honest with you, But.
You know, I always advise to Bell.
I think it's really important, like if you're interested in this, and if this is something that you think is cool or cutting edge, or you do have a belief in the few sure about. I mean, I think there are technology components to NFTs that might be interesting in the future. There could be there could be fascinating ways that NFTs are employed. But I guess I'm worried about the speculative
endeavor behind it. And so if you are interested in this, I think you just have to say, I'm willing to put my money on pudgy penguins or whatever it is, but I'm only willing to put a really small portion. And if you're and it has to be amount of money that you're not going to lose sleepover if you lose that money. So just be really careful and make sure you're doing the boring stuff first and that this is really just a sideshow with a small amount of your money.
Yeah, to me, there has to be a there there for me. There does you know?
For example, gold is hugely volatile, it has been, and I've never been a big fan, although I have bought gold.
Now is a hedge, but you have gold, you know. I mean, there's something there.
And when they talk about the dollar not being worth anything, it's just a piece of paper and it's people's confidence. There's a real economy of a government behind that dollar. I mean, there is there there but the rest of it. And by the way, I probably could have been a zillionaire if I had invested early, but.
You know, not at all. I'm not a zillionaire because I didn't invest early.
Okay, all right, So this Sunday, my friend, twelve to two pm right here on KFI.
Have a good one.
Thanks. Bill.