More Money Podcast - 154 The Best Hacks for Your Wallet - Jim Wang, Blogger at Wallet Hacks

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

For this episode of the podcast, I talk with veteran personal finance blogger Jim Wang about how he was able to sell his first blog (Bargaineering) for 6-figures after having it for just 5 years, and what some of his best wallet hacks are that he shares on his current blog, the aptly named Wallet Hacks. Long description: For this episode of the podcast, I talk with veteran personal finance blogger Jim Wang about how he was able to sell his first blog (Bargaineering) for 6-figures after having it for just 5 years, then we dive into some of his top wallet hacks that he now shares on his current website, Wallet Hacks. First, let’s go back to the part where he shares that he was able to sell his first blog for a million dollars. There aren’t too many bloggers out there that I know have who have been able to do this (aside from JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly), so this is pretty impressive. What’s even more impressive is how frickin’ humble Jim is! You would never know that he’s financially independent and pretty much just living that best life from talking to him. He just comes off as a normal guy who write about money hacks for living at home. Which I guess he is, but still, sold his blog for 6-figures, I still can’t get over that! Anywho, after selling that blog, he started up a new one called Wallet Hacks, which as you can guess is all about tips, hacks and strategies to optimize your dollars, be smart with your money, and become financial secure. Here are some of the hacks he shared with me in this episode. The Secret Santa Hack You may already know about doing a Secret Santa hack. It’s fairly popular in the office during the holidays (also in The Office, one of my favourite shows). This is something I’ve actually been able to take out of the workplace and integrate into my family life. All it requires is instead of buying gifts for everyone, you get assigned a person (in secret), buy them a gift, and then gift it to them on Christmas. Someone else is assigned you, and someone else is assigned that person and so on. My family has been doing this gift exchange for two years now, and I’ve got to say, it’s amazing. We don’t have any young kids in our family anymore, which makes it easier, but it really is a big financial relief each Christmas. The holidays are an expensive, even without gifts, so this is a huge life saver. Amazon Hacks Jim doesn’t just have one hack for Amazon.com, he has 16! But, if you’re Canadian, I can’t confirm if all the hacks work for Amazon.ca, but you never know. You can read about all 16 Amazon hacks on his website, but here are just a few of them: If you’ve never used the app, download it, find a promo code like MARTH549N, and get $5 in credit. Get $1 in credit for ebooks, digital videos and more when you choose no rush shipping. Purchase from out-of-state third-party sellers to avoid sales tax. Track Your Net Worth This isn’t really a hack, but man is it a good thing to do. I’ve been tracking my net worth as well as my spending for over a year now, and it’s changed the game for me. Jim has been doing it for more than a decade, and he says it’s a big reason he’s been able to stay on track financially all these years. If you want to start tracking your net worth, here’s my free net worth spreadsheet to get started. Get Credit Card Payment Notifications Another thing Jim does to curb his spending is getting notifications or emails directly to his phone whenever he makes a credit card purchase. Not only does this help him know instantly if any fraudulent purchases are being made with his card, but it also reminds him of how much he’s spending. This is something I’m going to set up right now, because the one thing I hate about using my credit card is it’s just way to easy to tap and pay and forget about what you just bought. For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/154 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 154 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morales. Thanks for joining me for another episode. I'm so excited to have you with me. I am pumped for this next episode because he was someone that I got to meet in person at FinCon. Man, do I say that a lot, but it is what it is. It's where all the money nerds in the world go. And we were actually speaking on a panel back in October. It was in October. And his name is Jim Wang. He is the brains behind Wallet Hacks. But before that, he actually started a blog called Bargaineering, which I remember when I first started reading personal finance blogs back in the day in like the mid 2000s or, you know, goodness, that sounds mid 2000s, late 2000s. What year is it? 2018. Oh my gosh. It does not freak you out, anybody, that it's 2018.

It freaks me out. Anyway. Anywho, Bargaineering was huge, so huge that he was able to sell it for a good chunk of money and basically early retire. And now he started another website called Wallet Hacks that is doing really well. And so I just kind of basically just ask him a bunch of questions about all of the hacks that he talks about on his website and just like, what are some just like good tips, tried and true kind of methods that people can take action on? I know a lot on the podcast, we talk about, you know, kind of theory or a mindset or psychology and just like, you know, feelings and like, because I do really like that stuff. And at the end of the day, I do feel like personal finance is way more than dollars and cents and numbers and math and stuff. But sometimes it's also nice to get a refresher

on like, hey, what are some of those, you know, strategies or, you know, methods that people use to actually see, you know, a difference in their, you know, budget or their bank account? Or how can they save money? What are some things that I can implement today? So that's kind of what this episode is all about. So I know you're going to like it. But before I get to that episode with the wonderful Jim Wang, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. Freelancers and small business owners, I feel you. Tax season is in full swing, and I bet there's a good chance that many of you are trying to dig your way out from underneath a pile of receipts and spreadsheets. Do yourself a huge favor and stop digging. Before you completely disappear under that abyss of paperwork,

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All this and FreshBooks is ridiculously easy to use. It's made especially for people who don't like dealing with numbers and their taxes. And right now, FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to freshbooks.com slash M-O and enter Momany Podcast in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Once again, that's FreshBooks.com slash M-O and enter Momany Podcast in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Hey, Jim. Thank you so much for joining me on the Momany Podcast.

Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. It was so nice to get to meet you in person at FinCon and be on that panel with you. That was a lot of fun. So I'm so glad that now we actually get like a good chat, you and me, on the show. We've watched Chata back. You were a little bit late. But you know what?

Fashionably late. It was fashionably late it was fastably late um um but basically how i kind of got to know you was tanya from our next life was like oh jim's gonna be on the panel he's kind of a big deal and like she was serious so i'm like oh if he's a big deal i need to talk to him. I need to get him on my show. Not big enough. Not at all. Well, I think the reason she says that is, so you have been in the blogging game for quite a while. When did you start exactly? I think it was 2004 or 2005.

Oh, my God. So it's been a while. Is that like before WordPress was a thing? It was. So back then you had to install it yourself. There was still the world, they call the world famous one-click install. They still had that,

but you had to download it and you had to edit your config file. Wow. Let it know where the database was. But then it was just one click and it's actually one of the reasons why i started a blog was because it was that easy i mean it sounds hard now you have to download it you have to do all that stuff when today all you do is you sign up with a host and you literally again you click one button and they'll install it for you but i was

like oh this will be fun this is easy it's like keeping a journal and you know i could read it at work or really write it at work yeah not really right i could i was so i'm pretty sure all bloggers have totally written their blogs including myself at work you're like no i'm totally you just have you know but now that i work for myself i can totally say that's true i guess I can say it. Yeah, no one's going to, you know, who's going to care? Who's going to know? But the idea was, they gave me this manual, like the 401k,

and these are your retirement options and insurance. I was like, I have no idea what's going on. So I, like a nerd, I took notes. I like that. To translate from their, like, legalese speech to me later like i don't want to read this again and like try to understand it again here's how i would have written it and then so i decided i'd start a blog not because i was writing for anybody else but that i could write it at home or whatever and read it at work and really write it at work and uh i just kind of

how it started and it was just for really for me and then for like few of my friends because they'd be like oh what when you read this what did you say and rather than like like i didn't really want to like talk about it for like half an hour about 401k whatever i'm like i wrote about it here you go you read it and then we can talk about it so we can skip that like 30 minutes where i probably get it wrong i've've gotten plenty of things wrong. That's actually one of the great things about having a blog is you write what you think and then people tell on the internet, they're very happy to tell you that you're wrong about what you think. Yes.

And sometimes you are because you misinterpret something or whatever. And so it's been, it's been educational sort of both sides, but yeah, 2004 or five, I can't even remember. It's been so long. I love that that that you started it just with you know you wanted to educate yourself and some friends and why not and now i mean it's 2018 now that's insane yeah because no one thought like blogs were a thing it was like it was kind of like more of a journal thing yeah so's, it's worked out. Yeah. Well, even when I started mine at the end of 2011, before that, like a couple of years before that, I didn't know anyone actually still had a blog

because it was in my mind, blogging was just like the live journal days where people would just talk about their day. And I'm like, I don't care about that. And so when I was getting more interested in personal finance and very much, you know much the same as you, I started working. I had no idea about anything. I didn't want to be broke anymore. My sister told me, oh, there's some blogs out there. I'm like, people talk about this on blogs? And then I'm like, oh, it's a whole different thing now.

That's interesting. And now it's 2018 and people are still blogging. I remember when I first started my blog, everyone's like, oh, blogs are so over. No, they're not. They always, everything's always over. There's always like the new thing that's exciting. And yeah, there's always going to be a new exciting thing, but people still read. Like as much as they say, oh, you know, the Kindle and eBooks are going to kill regular

books. Like people still read regular books. Now it's not as convenient as having, you know, all the books that you would want, but really you only read a one book at a time. And there's something nice about just like, you just open it up and if you drop it, you're not really all that upset. If you dropped your book, like I guess the Kindle's real cheap now. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But back in the day it was like, oh my gosh, don't ruin your, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But still like the writing, people always read and some people just like reading better than, like, video.

Like, you can't watch a video at work. No, you can't. It's true. But you can secretly read. Read all the blogs at work, which I totally used to do. And I didn't watch any video. And then when podcasts, like, you know, started becoming more popular, I'm like, oh, I can listen to those at work. So maybe I should look into that.

So was that first blog Bargaineering? Is that what it was? That was it. more properly i'm like oh i can listen to those at work so maybe i should look into that um so was that first blog bargaineering is that what it was that was it and how long did you have it and then at a certain point you had the opportunity to sell it which is you know pretty cool it was i had it five years and i i was only working on it sort of, you know, after work on weekends for the first three. And then I was able to quit my job working on it full time for two. Wow. And then, yeah, it was, what's funny is so in high school, I had to get tutoring for writing. My background is in software engineering.

Yeah. I was a typical stereotypical like engineering nerd, like good with numbers. I wasn't really that good with numbers i was just better than average with the numbers and i was not at all good at writing yeah and so i had a tutor for writing and i remember telling my dad like oh you know i was working a very good job in defense like very stable like one of those careers you can be in for 30 plus years retire have a great life. And I was like, hey, dad, I'm going to do this blogging thing.

And first of all, my dad's like, what's the internet? And the second thing, he actually, he said these words that like scared me to the core. He was like, are you sure? Oh, I know. Oh, no, I don't think I'm sure. That's actually the only thing he said. He said, are are you sure i was like uh i was until you asked me now i'm like do you know something i don't and then i was like yeah no i i think i'm sure i think i know i figured out how it works and this is this will be good he's like like, okay, I trust you.

And I was like, all right, do it. When worse comes to worse, you could have found another job, right? It has to work out. Yeah, one of the nice things is in defense, you have security clearances and all that, and those are really hard to get. And granted, once you leave, they immediately expire, but since you've gone through that process of having your history checked, you're more likely to get approved if you were approved the first time. And so that was always

a good fallback. Plus, I kind of liked my job. It was fun. It was working on interesting things and working with good people. And so I left and they knew I was leaving because I'd started my own thing. They didn't know that I had had my own thing for five or three years at the time but it was it was just one of those you know yeah if you if things don't work out or you want to come back you want to whatever let us know and so it was always open that's nice that made it a lot easier definitely i can't believe you were able to kind of keep that secret and hidden from your co-workers for so long like i don't know how lots of bloggers do that. I couldn't. I just like, ah, I've got a blog. Well, what's interesting is I had,

so my friends knew. Yeah. So the places that I worked were so big that I rarely worked in the same office or the same organization as my friends. And it would usually not come up in a group conversation because it's like, oh, Jim has an internet journal. Or like, whatever, who cares?

And so that part never came up. And yeah, so I also remember back then, Facebook started in what, like 2005? I don't even know. But back then it wasn't big. It wasn't around like social media isn't what it is today where i know i remember those days being on myspace that's right everyone's friends with what was it tom yes everyone was friends with tom and uh so like it wasn't socially people like yeah they might have known that at a block but

it wasn't like a big you know in front of everybody type of thing. Today, it's hard to escape. Like if you have a blog, people have to use pseudonyms and like not show their faces. Especially early retirement. You know, you're worried that if they find out that you want to retire early, that maybe you're not bought into the cause or the mission or the whatever. So it's a lot harder now but back then i i started my blog and because i'd shared like my budget yeah it i'd gotten into the new york times like oh wow it was amazing it's awesome none of my friends had any idea granted i'm in maryland and the other times it's a national map it's a national everyone knows new york times it's huge yeah but i'm in canada i know what that

is no i'm not saying they don't know and i'm just saying no one like picks it up and reads it right right when you're in it's not like in new york where it's like in every coffee house whatever here it's like oh if you want to buy it at the store it's like eight dollars yeah and it was like in a sunday or no one had any idea and And here I am going, I'm in the New York. I grew up in New York. So this is like a big deal. And I knew it was like the Sunday money, like fluff piece.

I didn't care. I didn't care that I was fluff. I was super stoked and excited. But yeah, nowadays, like you can be in like your local newspaper, not saying local newspaper is bad, but much smaller geographic reach.

And everybody, your friends reach and everybody your friends in california your friends in canada will know like everybody everywhere yeah and so it's just a different world yeah it is yes it's very hard to be anonymous you really can't like there's just too much information out there on the internet people will find out who you are which is a big reason why i just took the risk i'm like i'm just gonna not be an anonymous. But I did do kind of full disclosure at my old job or, you know, a couple jobs ago or whatever being like, Hey, I have a blog. Also, I'm like, I was pretty junior. So I'm like, I don't really care if you don't like it, I can find another job. And you probably don't care because I'm junior. So I think it's fine.

That's awesome. So you started bargaining, it kind. It kind of took off clearly because you were able to go full-time, which is incredible. Especially like go full-time, it seems like in a time where lots of people didn't do that. It seems like a little bit more popular that that's everyone's kind of dream is to start a blog, make money, and then just walk into the sunset. I know, which is like so far from the truth. So why did you end up selling it and then starting wallet hacks? Well, so what was interesting is that around that time, a lot of other blogs were getting sold and they're being bought up by, you know, these big corporations that I, I thought knew what they were doing.

Right. I was afraid I was just eventually just going to get squeezed out. And here I was, you know, one of the things, you know, you said, oh, they're going to, you know, you quit your job, work on your own thing. It's like, I mean, it's great because whatever you make, you keep all of it.

Yeah. But then when you don't make anything, there's no like salary that backs you up in those lean moments. So there was the worry, at least in my mind, that I've built this thing up. I kind of fell into it anyway. And here are all these other, my peers, like get rich slowly. If I said, they were all getting snapped up. I was like, Oh, what if I'm, you know, I was kind of like, what if I'm left holding the bag a year? I look around

like here, someone said, Oh, I'll give you whatever for your blog and i said no i'm gonna go it alone i'm gonna keep going and then i look back and go huh i should have and you know it's the FOMO basically total FOMO but it's also like life-changing money yeah right if when you sell something for seven figures like you know it it's always great to sell it for eight figures for whatever is that how much you were able to sell it for then yeah take that money and run yeah and it it changes what you're able to do for the rest of your life 100 and and so you know i was just like this this had a good run i'd been doing it for five years yeah a bit of bit of that sort of blogging burnout. I'm doing the same things over and over again.

And so that sort of drove the decision. And looking back, not regretful at all. So why did I start Wallet Hacks, which is essentially the same thing. It's because I had, what, like a five-year break. I was like, what got me interested in money still interests Yeah. I'm still into what got me interested in money still interests me. I'm still learning about it, maybe about different aspects of it,

maybe less about the frugality and more about investing and sort of that end of it. But I always kind of like figuring things out. And sort of the wallet hacks idea was like sort of hacking my way through money and understanding things the way I like. Plus, it gives me something to do and I enjoy it.

It feels more like a game than it is work. So that's kind of why I got back into it. Also, I'd started other businesses in the interim because one of the things about when you sell something is that you can't just jump right back in. You frown on that and so i started a couple other businesses that uh were they were fun but not not to the degree that i enjoyed blogging yeah and so i was just like i'll just get back into it and things are going well so i'm i'm really happy yeah well i think you probably have a knack for blogging, so that helps. Not everyone can – I mean, anyone can start a blog, but it's – not everyone can make one that's so successful like you did with Bargaineering. Especially you had no background in, I'm assuming, real finance or marketing or websites, and you were able to build it to what it was.

So that's pretty special yeah what's what's always fun is with blogs actually what's always funny about blogging is that you you need to do it long enough for the success to happen but if you're looking for the success early you'll quit yeah fast because it just doesn't it just doesn't show up like Bargain hearing didn't make any money easily for the first year. But it had done some things that got me excited about it to keep doing it, like getting in the New York Times. That didn't result in, I think AdSense, it resulted in like $20 in AdSense, which was a ton back then. I was looking at like zero to five to 10 cents a day. So that was already exciting. But next to my salary,

I was making $60,000 a year as a software developer, like $20 a day. Doesn't really like, you're not, I'm not going to buy groceries with that, you know? And, but I was like,

it, it got me excited to keep doing it, that and enjoying it. And to the point where it got big enough to support, you know, a full-time income. And a lot of times bloggers quit before that because they're looking, they started a blog to make money. And after a year when they have it, they're like,

ah, maybe I got to do something else. And maybe that's right. Maybe they should be doing something else. But a year is probably not long enough to learn anything to the degree where you could make a living off it anyway. So why would blogging be something where you're like, oh, I've done it for a year. I should be – it's like I started playing golf about a year ago. I think I should be able to make money off golfing now. Exactly.

I know. And that's what I tell everybody who comes up to me like, oh, I'm going to start a blog or a podcast. I'm like, okay. I mean, you do you but for me i think the reason i'm still in this is because i've been doing this for like you know cumulatively six years i'm in it quite deep so it's hard to get out now but i don't know like if i knew known how much time and effort it would have taken me to get to where i am i don't know if i would have done it quite honestly yeah but it's a fun process if you're able to do it yeah definitely and and now you have wallet hacks which i really really like um kind of like you said yeah there's

lots of great hacks just like actual things to do which i think is great because a lot of blogs i find which is, you know, there's nothing wrong with them, do talk more about mindset or just like feelings with money and stuff. Sometimes you're just like, I just want to like, how do I optimize this, this, and this? So I want to kind of actually like start off with that because I really like there's a section on your website about just like specific hacks to look into. Lots of them, honestly, I've never heard of before. So I want to kind of start off with one that I really like there's a section on your website about just like specific hacks to look into. Lots of them, honestly, I've never heard of before. So I want to kind of start off with one that I would like to know what it is. Okay. What's the secret

Santa hack? What is that? Oh. Oh. It's funny. So you had emailed me that list of the different hacks. That was actually the one that I didn't look at. It's funny. You know what? Let's move on.

This is what I think it is. Okay. First of all, since I wrote it, I should remember what it is. You know what? That's totally fine. I think it's the one where we do the white elephant. No, it's the white elephant one where you don't – instead of like – so you have like a – okay. There are two parts to this actually now that i think about

it so when you have like a fat like a large family and you're buying gifts for everyone it's like why buy it's you can if you have the means to buy gifts for everybody right you want to get the the problem is that gets expensive so what a lot of families including uh ours we do like a secret santa where you only have to buy one gift and everybody has fun with it. It's not like you have to get a gift for every single person because they're right. And now we have the means where if we wanted to give a gift to everybody, it's like, yeah, you could do that. I mean, it's a lot harder because you have to think of a good gift, but it also costs a lot. But if you do secret Senate, you have to think for one person,

then that's far easier and it saves you money especially for you know younger folks in your family who you know you probably don't want someone who's just newly got married whatever yeah gifts for all the aunts and uncles and whatever then the other thing is you can do like a white elephant type of like gag gift it's still like the fun aspect of you'll probably still get gifts for like the family members that are super close but maybe like brothers-in-laws and things like that you know maybe skip out and then just stick with the white elf and then really gifts are about like having fun and like showing love and all that it's not necessarily about spending as much money as you can and like making sure the gift that you

get someone is the same that they get you and blah blah so that's that hack was something that i didn't come up with my friend told me that their family did they said it's a little so it can be a little challenging to implement because if you have family members especially like grandparents who will buy you know retire they just want to buy gifts or let them buy gifts or whatever but still do the Secret Santa. And it's a lot of fun for everyone. And then the younger folks who don't or can't really spend that much don't feel like they have to put themselves out there to do it. Yeah, that's what me and my family does. So it's just – I've got my parents, my two sisters, my husband, and my sister has a husband.

So there's no kids yet. So I think maybe that's where maybe it'd get a little bit more tricky. But now that we're all adults and honestly, it's like we have to spend money on the flight home and all this stuff. We just talked to her like, listen, can we just do a gift exchange? It'll be easier on everyone, less stressful too. And yeah, so far it's been good. In general, it's been okay to implement. I'd say my younger sister feels a little bit gypped because she's like – in her mind, she got less gift-getting years. And I'm like, oh my god, but whatever. But in general, yeah, like it's great. It doesn't make my Christmas any less good. If anything, I think we try to focus more on, okay, not putting so much focus on the gifts.

Let's make sure we're all like contributing to like making christmas dinner playing board games or whatever okay good well that's an easy one for anyone to do all right so next on my list is i wrote down amazon.com did you have a hack for amazon i think that'd be interesting to know i have a lot oh do you there were i mean a lot of them are now well known and they were probably pretty well known back then but it it was a the Oh, do you? prime yes get two free free two-day shipping and they'll bribe you if you if you're willing to accept it for slower and i started taking all of the bribes and then realizing the bribe was the one that i really like and actually the only one i take is the one dollar off digital items but they stack so you essentially accumulate this this wallet of one dollar things that you

could just spend on whatever and that includes like downloadable playstation games so like the games are like 60 bucks i've been getting for free because we order a lot of stuff from amazon and we'll do things like order one item at a time as we need it which is which is probably what they want you to do like as i think of oh i need this particular thing but i don't want to go to home depot to get it right don't go to you know the local store i'll i'm willing to wait a week to get whatever screwdriver part whatever and they'll give me a dollar and then i can spend it later when i go buy like a video game or like uh tv shows and prime like movies and things like that so it's's, yeah, we just accumulated.

When we, when Amazon didn't have a distribution center in Maryland, you know, they have to collect sales tax on all of the sales that go into an area where they have a nexus and you could go online and you could search all of the second or the third party sales of people selling things and find the ones that were outside of your state. Now they'll even show you which ones will charge you tax and which won't. And then you can really like compare and contrast. It'll only save you a couple of dollars, but if it takes just like a second or two.

Yeah. And if again, like everything's cumulative, like that could be, you know, roll into a quite a few. That's interesting that you do that because I thought one hack that lots of people like to think is like, oh, I order more than one item to get free shipping if you're not on Amazon Prime. But really, that just encourages you to buy more stuff that you may not need. Do you think Amazon Prime is actually worth it? I guess, like you said, if you do purchase a lot of items from it. And it seems like now you can order anything from amazon yeah we'll just buy like little things because we're i mean we're not that far from stores or anything like we're not out out in the woods but you know

you these are all like little chores around the house that if you had everything you go do in like 10 minutes but if you had to go get the actual part that you needed it's now it now becomes like a one hour thing and then a one hour thing it's like i'll just do it some other time but if you order it and it gets here in a week yeah the dollar for it and you're like oh this this works out and amazon is cheaper yeah it's cheaper than going to the store so you you save money on both ends, not having to drive and getting a cheaper part. That's true. Okay. Well, I'll definitely look that article and link it in the show notes because I'm sure there's a bunch of other interesting hacks.

And everyone's all about Amazon these days. One thing I actually really wanted to talk about because I thought this was really interesting, especially since me and my husband now do this, have done it for a year. And I'm like, I think we'll probably do this forever now is on your site. You mentioned that you have tracked your spending and your net worth for the past 14 years. Is that true? And how, how did you start doing that? I think that's one, like, it's so simple, but most people don't even think to do it because I think it's a lot of work and effort and annoying. I mean, so in the beginning, uh, I actually started cause a lot of work and effort and annoying. I mean, so in the beginning, I actually started because a friend suggested it. She gave me her spreadsheet that she had used and she called it her budget Bible. I kept that.

I kept budgeting up until maybe around five years where I just recorded every single transaction. And eventually that got a little too cumbersome. And I stopped learning all that much about where, because you get to the point where, you know, when you first start, you know, making a full-time income, your, your money can easily just like walk out the door when you're not, for sure. You go out with friends, whatever, next thing you know, you're like, how did I spend 300 bucks, you know, this past month on just going to bars or whatever. So, but after a few years, you kind of get into a rhythm and you know what's happening. And, and at that point,

some of the tools like Mint and that added a little more automation. So you didn't have to record everything started coming in. And so I used that for a couple of years, but I never pulled that data into the spreadsheet, the net worth worth stuff I tracked and it's only once a month and it's just essentially just an accounting of all the the balances and in the beginning there were not that many balances it was like my 401k a Roth IRA and then like a checking account maybe like two checking accounts and so I just kept doing it and over over time every month just going in and recording it. And you start pulling in some tools.

I started using Personal Capital when they released because they pulled in all of the data into one place. So I didn't have to log in every point. It's just adding just more automation that keep life a lot simpler. One other thing actually not related to recording transactions was credit cards start allowing you to get transaction notifications like near instantly. And I would get it set up on all my credit cards for anything over a dollar or zero, whichever, you know, they all have different systems. But what's funny is, you know, when they talk about, oh, using a credit card, you get disconnected from the transaction process.

You do. A little bit. It's not like real money. Well, when you get emails or text messages every time there's a charge, it kind of reminds you that things are happening, especially like recurring bills that you may not understand. You know, your cell phone or whatever. And it's actually shockingly fast. Yeah. Like I would be at a restaurant pay for something and before I got back I would already have an email like before the card came back and I was like oh so they how do they how do they do the tip yeah and it happens later it just

kind of figures itself out yeah and it was it was very enlightening to watch because and I think this is what happens when people you know I've talked or emailed with folks that have had Quicken accounts which is like the budgeting tool for like 20 years ago they've had it for 20 years and they don't want to quit it because they have all that data I fortunately was just using excel spreadsheet yeah but you go back you see sort of like the evolution of your financial life, like the accounts that come in, the different things. And it's been fun and educational. Like you learn like how like the most minor decisions you made as a kid

have had such a huge impact as a kid. Like I say that as a 12 when I did it. No, I kid like i say that as well when i did it no i was like 20 something it was 14 years ago but like saving into a 401k and now the 401k balance is enormous exactly you're like oh i just didn't even you know i didn't think about it i was like i'll just put in whatever i'm supposed to put in and now years later after not paying attention to it it's not not completely not paying attention to it but not like really but not worrying about it yeah your 401k is not somewhere where you like log in and like play around or whatever no like you just have it there you like make sure everything's okay

you rebalance it once a year maybe once every couple years depending on how but you just kind of leave it alone and it grows you're like whoa look at that. It's nice to have that actual evidence because every financial book or blog talks about, oh, start investing early because you'll start at this point. And then in 20 years, you'll be at the million dollar mark. You're like, yeah, sure. But if you actually have the data, you're like, oh, it actually, it's true. It works. No, I'm the same as you.

Once we started really tracking everything, we're like, oh, we thought we knew about our money. And actually, we really didn't know this much. And there's so many questions that pop up that now we have the data to look like, hey, so how much did we actually contribute to our investments? And how much did it actually grow? Or how much interest did we actually earn on our savings accounts? And all these other questions pop up, whereas before, we would just never know how to figure that out. Now it's like, oh, we have all the data. We can look the form 1040 it's we just took a couple line items

there were maybe like 12 or 13 of them it's like total income adjusted gross income and then taxes the different things and we looked how our tax rates would change over the years and how as we've done more uh less like wage income and more business and investment how the tax rates have gone down significantly and it's it it just shows us that you know that you know maybe the tax situation isn't necessarily skewed favorably for some folks compared to others but then also like when you start off and you think to yourself okay i'm making money but i'm also being taxed the most how do i be the most efficient i need to save as much as i can and move it into investments where it can not only grow without my direct intervention but that it'll be taxed favorably

because you know when in your retirement you kind of want that that nest egg to be as big as possible. Exactly. If you need to keep working and it gets taxed at income rates, that's not something that's really sustainable. And it's hard to know that when you're 20-something, right? Because you're like, oh, I got a paycheck. This is way more money than I need. Why don't I have fun with it? I deserve it. When in reality, you should think, well, when I'm 60 something, what do I want the scenario to look like? And so seeing, you know, the data change over 14 years, it kind

of solidifies like, you know, why I had a revelation a couple of years ago about life insurance. It's like, why does it get so much more expensive when you're like 30 or you're 35. It's not because you're any riskier when you're 30 or 35 compared to 25 or 20. It's not on a 30-year term. It ends when you're 65 if you start at 35. The cost isn't in the 30, when you're 31, 32, 30. It's when you're 58, 59, 60.

That's really how people should be thinking about the money that they're earning in their twenties. And we don't because granted, like, you know, we just don't have that long-term view and we think everything's hard to think that far into the future, you know? But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if that got too, too deeply philosophical. No, I liked it. No that got too, too deeply philosophical. No, I liked it. No, I think that is so amazing. Cause I feel like there's not too many people out there. There's just so many, you know, hypothetical examples. I don't, I don't think

I've ever really heard a real person who's been like, no, I've actually been tracking my, you know, everything for 14 years. I have the data. And basically, it seems like what you're kind of saying is a lot of the principles that are kind of promoted, like investing, kind of like that get rich slowly kind of mentality and just like not fiddling around. It seems like what you do for investing is kind of the kind of index passive investing kind of thing where you just rebalance yourself and all that. All that stuff is actually that works. I really liked your hack actually about getting a notification every time you spend something in your credit card. So simple. I've never even thought of that. And one of my

issues big time when it comes to spending is spending with my credit card because I'll do something and in that moment, like five seconds later, I'll forget that. Or sometimes, and I think this is a thing that lots of people do, they will get to the terminal and they won't even really look at how much it is. They'll just be like, yeah, whatever, tap or swipe or whatever, which is a big problem. We should know, should be more cognizant of what we're spending our money on. It was also good. So I started doing it to try to combat fraud. that's smart you know they say oh you should check your credit card bills and i do but they're all auto paid yeah it's all set up so sometimes i did sometimes i go for like a couple months and then i read this article

about this guy who had he had been scammed and but since he paid off the bill, like a lot of his recourse was, was removed. Cause he, I guess by virtue of auto paying, you're accepting the charges. And so it's hard to get it. And he had it on auto pay. So,

and I have it on auto pay. So I was like, oh, well, I don't want to take off auto pay, but I kind of want to know. So I set it up. And then a couple months into it,

I, there was some notification of like a two 99 charge that I had no idea what it was. And it was fraudulent. And I'm almost 100% sure that if I went and looked at my credit card bill every single – I probably would not have saw the $2.99. No, you're like, I don't know. Maybe I just forgot what I bought, whatever. Yeah, it's just like, oh, this i went to some no but if you get it immediately on your phone and i'm like sitting at my house you're like no there's no way i didn't i didn't

just buy that and so you know you just go on and just challenge the transaction and it it worked for its purpose and i've had it since. And so far, so, you know, knock on wood, it hasn't, hasn't happened again. Yeah. That's awesome. I have like the opposite experience.

I'll always like, you know, diligently look away, uh, spending on my credit card. And sometimes when I see something, Oh, I don't,

I don't know what that is. And I'll assume it's fraudulent. And most of the time it's just me. That's why most of the time it's just me. That's why if you get it instantaneously, that's how you know. But to be fair, it's like you don't get in trouble for calling your credit card to be like, can you verify this?

Or like, what exactly is this? Like, case in point, recently, like me and my husband flew back from Vancouver to Toronto after our holiday vacation and we flew WestJet. And then I looked at my credit card a month later and WestJet says like WestJet $30 going to Calgary or, or it said in Calgary. I'm like, wait, I didn't go to Calgary. I didn't buy anything for $30 through WestJet. So I, uh, called the credit card company and they're like, Oh yeah. So WestJet specifically, they sometimes do lump like, um, charges with

other clients. So sometimes they bill you a month later i'm like oh so yeah that was me but they were so close to be like oh well we'll take care of this and then i'm like oh wait oh wait wait no that was me i don't understand why those line items and credit cards aren't more descriptive i know it's like tell me what it is like i had an idea who spends like 30 in a flight i'm well, someone definitely bought booze. But if they bill you a month later, like how are you supposed to know they bill you? I know, it's like, I have no idea what this is. I'm like, we didn't go anywhere.

I was at home. Yeah, but no, I think I'm going to set that up just to, yeah, have more consciousness. Because I think the tricky thing too is, although tracking my spending is great, I do it basically at the end of the month so it's kind of like well i know everything that happened to my money after the fact so it'd be nice to have some kind of more real-time information so within that month you can kind of

change some of your spending habits yeah yeah i know you'll be shocked well you might not be but i might be shocked i was i was i've made the speed at which the transaction oh i probably would be yeah yeah i was like wow the person didn't even you know the waitstaff hadn't even come back with the little billfold thing and it was already emailed i was like all right that's insane it's pretty good um okay so we're kind of uh i guess we can talk a lot. So I'm going to, oh my gosh, we've been talking for almost 40 minutes. So before I let you go, I just want to kind of pick your brain because again, you were kind of the hack master, but also you have a lot more information I think than I do when it comes to like maybe good financial apps to use.

There's a lot more in the States than in Canada. What are some of your favorite ones it does seem like do you still kind of do lots of things manually but or which which apps do you actually use or or really like to recommend so i put uh i put everything in excel but i pull the data using personal capital because they're the they're the one that has probably the most easy to use tools is personal capital a bank that might be a dumb question, but I don't know. Personal capital is, they're like wealth management. Okay.

They're like, they're like one of the new, uh, FinTech startup. I don't know how they're, they're actually many years old, like four or five years. And,

but what they do is they will give you like a financial dashboard so you can pull in all your accounts and, and they will call you about managing money and things like that. But the tool itself is free they have retirement planners that can help you like chart out if you need x dollars in the future and you anticipate so like different calculators things like that i use it mostly to get sort of a snapshot of everything in one place and that's that's good a one that i haven't started using but i've heard good things about is tiller tiller tiller is and they're like an automation tool that will pull data into spreadsheets

i like that plans to uh pull into excel and i've i've been using excel for you know 14 years so i just kind of kept it all there and part of of it is I like keeping it manually elsewhere because it's kind of like when you take notes, it's one thing to type it out. It's another to handwrite it. It's just like an extra step. And I'm not going to handwrite my records. Oh, my God, no. But I hear you. You think about it more when you kind

of do it that manually when you automate too much then again just like your credit card you'll be like i forgot what i did i don't know yeah yeah so that's so i usually use personal i don't do that much budgeting anymore when i did it used to be mint uh personal capital also you know they started as an investing thing then they pulled in some budgeting but i haven't used it that much other than that it's just like the the apps on your phone that access to banks and whatnot like so kind of just keep it simple yeah i don't i don't i've played with a lot of different tools but none of them are really they're not that much different so i just kind of, I kind of agree. Like, I think it's cool to test out and see what works for you.

But for me, like you, I do everything manually with spreadsheets and it's not because I don't like any of the other apps. It's just, none of them made me think more about my money than me really like taking notes and putting it in, you know, my nicely formatted Excel spreadsheet and then having that, you know, one-on-one meeting with my husband so we could talk about our money each month. It's like simple and old school, but it works. It's like tailored suits or whatever, right? Like it's, it takes a lot more time and effort to get it up and running, but once you do and it's perfectly tailored to what you need and you're familiar with it, then it just comes down to how do I make it faster by pulling in data

or looking at one place instead of 20 different places. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks, Jim, for taking some time to chat with me. I had a great time. Well, we're done.

That's it. That's it? We talked for a while. And I just looked at the clock like oh what I don't know you're an interesting guy I guess you're interesting too this was a lot of fun you're welcome welcome back anytime

and where can people find more information about you after this episode I think just come to wallethacks.com you can shoot me an email jim at wallethacks.com that's nice of you I will reply I hope to wallethacks.com. You can shoot me an email, jim at wallethacks.com. Ooh, that's nice of you. Yeah.

I will reply, I hope. I mean, if it's a mean email, I won't, but if it's a nice one, yes. Oh, I'm sure all your watchers and listeners are nice people. They are. They're very nice people. Okay, well, thanks, Jim, again,

for taking the time. It was awesome. It was great. Thanks. And that was episode 154 with Jim Wang from Wallet Hacks. Make sure to check him out at wallethacks.com or send them an email. I thought that was so cool that he actually like, here's my email. Because for me being a blogger for so many years, I know bloggers in general hate to kind of give out their contact info because you would not believe the crazy emails we get,

the spam we get, the crap we get in our inboxes. But I mean, I'm kind of the same way. I'm like, email me whenever, Jessica, JessicaMorehouse.com because I know within all of that crap that I get in my inbox trying to sell me, you know, I don't know. I can't think of anything right now, but there's some outrageous stuff that comes to my inbox. A lot of stuff that's about like, you know, there's some prince in Ethiopia and I'm related to him and all that kind of stuff. But then also just like stuff that kind of seems like, is this legit? Is it not? But anyways, I'm getting off track. You can email jim at wallethacks.com personally, because he probably will email you right back.

And I think that's amazing. And that's awesome. I've got a few things to share with you. So don't go away. Here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. Track your hours. Format the estimate. Work out taxes.

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Momany Podcast in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Okay, first, forgot to mention, of course, there's show notes for every episode. The episode number for this current episode is 154, so make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 154. And just a quick rule of thumb, if you ever want to check out the show notes on any episode well you can see all of them very easily at jessicamorehouse.com slash podcast or just find out the episode number which is always like at the head of the title of the episode and go jessicamorehouse.com slash whatever that number is so there you know. Also, so today, currently, when this episode is out, is April 11. And what does that mean? That means we're only a few more weeks away from the tax deadline. I know, so exciting. So exciting. So if you are like me, and you're self employed, or if you have a side hustle on

top of your day job, and you're freaking out because you have no idea what the heck to do, I got you. I got you. What I would suggest to kind of maybe put you at ease is you can watch the replay of me and Lisa Zamparo's tax webinar. So this is really mainly for Canadians because we're Canadian and so we know about Canadian taxes. But there is actually a really good section at the beginning, the kind of first part of the webinar is about how to get organized for taxes. So that is kind of good for anybody to listen to. But yeah, if you're freaking out over taxes, highly recommend go to jessicamorehouse.com slash tax webinar and sign up to watch the replay of our webinar. And hopefully that'll put your mind at ease.

Because believe me, I used to panic when it was like tax time. And now I actually kind of look forward to it because once you retain that information, once you know how to do it, how to file your taxes properly and what things to look out for in terms of like deductions and credits and what all the lingo means, it really isn't that big of a deal. You're like, oh, that's it? That's not, why is everyone makes it so complicated? Because it's not complicated. Just like personal finance in general, personal finance is not complicated. Yes, there is, you know, lingo and jargon and all that kind of stuff. But in general, once you really just take the time to educate yourself, which you are by listening to this podcast, you realize it's really not that bad. So yeah, so that is my little PSA on taxes and personal violence. So there you go. Okay, so I'm gonna let you go. But I'll be back here next week,

next Wednesday, specifically with another episode. And that episode will be with Deacon Hayes from Well-Kept Wallet. And we're going to be talking about debt and financial independence and all that good stuff. So if you're in the mood for that, look out for that next Wednesday. All right. Have a good rest of this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network find out more at women in media.network