Trading Secrets - 79: If you pay 50% of retail prices, you’re paying too much! Queen of couponing & TikTok star, Kiersti Torok reveal$ what YOU need to know to save BIG on Black Friday, Cyber Monday & beyond

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

This week, Jason is joined by stay at home mom turned queen of couponing, Kiersti Torok!    Back in early 2020 when approximately 22 million Americans lost their jobs due to the COVID 19 pandemic, Kiersti and her family were like many others who had to make adjustments to their daily lives as inflation hit their bank hard. When her husband lost his job, she committed herself to finding every way to save money on everyday items and her love of couponing inspired her to start a TikTok page. Since then, her TikToks have continuously gone viral with shoppers across the country, wanting to discover the next best way to save some money.    Kiersti provides her insight to what she thinks consumers can expect going into Black Friday, the importance of shopping around and comparing prices, how couponing has changed since she started twelve years ago, how taking the extra few minutes to scan the items in your cart can save you additional money, and utilizing price matching. Kiersti also reveals her best advice for where to get coupons, how big of a role stacking plays, what she believes are going to be the top three places this Black Friday, why she only shares and utilizes coupons that she personally uses, and Which item should always be free? What is the biggest mistake the average consumer is probably making? Where should you not buy your home essentials?    Kiersti reveals all that and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!    Saving Resources: Rakuten  Select Deals BrickSeek  Torok Coupon Hunter   Be sure to follow the Trading Secrets Podcast on Instagram & join the Facebook group.   Sponsors: Shopify.com/secrets to sign up for a free trial Nextevo.com code TRADINGSECRETS for up to 25% off subscription orders of $40 or more Download the Match App today! Butcherbox.com/secrets for 2 10 oz ribeyes FREE in every box for a full year   Produced by Dear Media.   Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Now listen, when the market opens, they open the bell, they ring it. There's always pre-trade conversations, and that's what this is. This is the pre-trade before the opening bell. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the importance of today's episode. Well, today, the episode was released on November 21st, 2022. But it doesn't matter when you're listening to it.

This is one you can't afford to miss. But the relevance here is that this is Thanksgiving Day week. This is Black Friday in Cyber Monday. And you need to know how to find the best deals for how you're shopping. I was blown away because our guest is the best deal finder out there. over 2 million viewers on TikTok, how to find the best coupons, the best deals, and never pay retail again. And when I heard this, I was like, I'm not like cutting coupons. I'm sorry, not my thing, too much time. But she gives hacks that literally will take five minutes and that will for sure

change my entire outlook on spending. One of the things you got to know, too, is just last week this came out. Credit card balances jumped 15% in third quarter of 2022. That is huge, guys. That is huge. That's notching the largest year-over-year increase in more than 20 years. So as day-to-day expenses continue to rise, Americans are taking on more debt, and this is the highest leap we've seen in 20 years. Now, I looked at a little bit about holiday spending, and it's interesting because 35% of shoppers, they plan to spend more than they did last year. average consumers are going to spend this holiday season $1,430, $754 on gifts, $452 on travel, $224 on entertainment. So if you find that this number kind of connects to you, imagine someone who could help you decrease those costs, almost in half. So this is a whole different type of episode of trade secrets. We're talking money. We're talking dollars, but we're talking

how we can put more of those in your pocket. So our guest is going to reference a lot of different websites and a lot of apps you can use. We will make sure those are in the show notes. Please continue, as always, to give us five stars. Let us know what you're thinking about the show or what we should do differently. Join our Facebook group and remember to follow us on the Trading Secrets Instagram page. It's the Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday episode, the one you can't afford to miss. Let's ring in the opening bell. Welcome back to another episode of

trading secrets. Today, I am joined by stay-at-home mom turned queen of couponing. My mom would love that. Kirstie Torak, back in early 2020, when approximately 22 million Americans lost their jobs due to COVID-19 pandemic, Kirstie and her family were like many others who had to make adjustments to their daily lives. As inflation hit their bank accounts, hard. Kirstie's husband, being the sole provider for their family, was laid off, and she had to find ways to keep things afloat. So Kirstie committed herself to finding every way to save money on everyday items for her family.

Her love for couponing inspired her to start a TikTok page at the perfect time and track different discount trends she would see when shopping. Over the next few months, Kirstie mastered her skill of pinching pennies into saving upwards of thousands of dollars a month. From there, her TikTok videos would continuously go viral with shoppers from across the country wanting to discover the next best way to save some money. So today what we want to do is I'm very interesting Kirstie's story, but I really

want to get down to the root of it because it's so timely. We got Black Friday coming up this week. We have Cyber Monday coming up and all we know on the news is inflation. So Kirstie, while your story is so damn incredible, this is an episode that is really drilling down to the viewers so we can understand for their purposes in saving money what they can do. So thank you so much for being here and trading all the secrets with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. Okay. Well, let's get right into it then because I know my viewers are going to hear this. First of all, they're going to immediately follow you because who doesn't want to save a couple bucks? And secondly, the thing they're going to want to know is what's coming up. It's Black Friday.

I already alluded to it. I saw MasterCards projecting right now. There's going to be a 15% increase in US retail sales. And we already know that grocery store prices, 13, 15% inflation. We know that consumer price index is around 8% year over year. So the price of everything is going up. So there's a huge concern with holiday shopping. So coming out right from the get-go, what is the biggest tip you'd give someone is they're preparing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or just holiday shopping in general giving these crazy times? Well, I think it's interesting. This Black Friday is going to be a little bit different because we have so much surplus of items that have come out from the pandemic, right? We have all of these items that stores have mass overages of technology. We have toys. We got

home goods. All of these items they've got in storage units and they want to get rid of them fast. So while we have a bunch of inflation this year, I think this Black Friday is going to be the year to buy things for dirt cheap. We're already seeing Walmart is going out with their Black Friday sales a month in advance. Each week, there's a new sale at Walmart. Same thing with Amazon. They did the mid-year, then they did another one after Prime Day, and now they're going to do another one during Black Friday. The best thing I can say is shop around because all of these retailers are going to be competing with each other to get rid of their stock as fast as they can. So if you can get on your computer on Black Friday and look and price match at different

places, you're going to find the rock bottom price just by looking on your computer and comparing prices. I love it. I think that's such good feedback. And so on the recaps for every episode, we have my buddy come on. He's like the voice of the viewer. He doesn't really know too much about the finance industry or money management. So when he hears things in the podcast, they'll be like, all right, I got to ask it in the recap. I'm almost going to take the role of the voice of the viewer this episode because there's so many questions I have that I think the viewers are asking that I just simply don't know. So I love the idea, right? The feedback you just gave me is great. I'm going to take the voice of the viewer here and say, sounds great. But where the hell do I go to benchmark other retailers, prices? Like, How do I know who's got the better deal? Am I supposed to go into ads on Sundays or a website? What sources do you use? So I just go ahead and look up. I mean, for me and myself, if you want to just go,

the easiest way is to follow me, follow couponers on TikTok and Instagram, because that's what we do. That's our job. I go through, and I literally, if I'm going to put something out on the internet, I go through every single retailer and compare to make sure that I'm sharing the most rock bottom price for you. But the other way, if you want to do it yourself, you can go and look up Black Friday ads in advance.

Right now, almost all. all of the retailers have their Black Friday ads up and available on websites. So you can do the shopping early if you want. The other thing to do is to just take when you're going to buy something, copy the title of it and paste it into Google. And then at the top, it has all of the retailers that offer that same product, and it'll show you the prices right beneath it.

I mean, it's so easy now. Back when I started couponing 12 years ago and shopping, it was so much more challenging. Now we have so much technology available where if you just want to see if something's on sale, you type it in and put sale at the end of it, and a bunch of things will pop up. Gotcha. Is there solely in the banking world,

there are so many different websites out there like nerd wallet.com, right? That's just one of the many, that you can go and I can see every bank out there and, like, their mortgage rates and compare the difference. Is there a site like that? And a follow-up question to that would be,

are you, in those, like a nerd wallet, I'll see huge discrepancies in pricing. Are you seeing huge discrepancies when you do that due diligence? Yeah. So, I mean, there's a couple of different places. there's not a place, like, strictly dedicated to looking for sale prices and drops. I mean, Slick Deals is a really great one. And Brick Seek, both of those websites, you can look up the sale prices at each store,

and it'll kind of give you a generalized idea. But that's kind of why we're so popular on TikTok and Instagram is because we kind of fill in that gap where there isn't a website. And then the next, what was your next question? Oh, no, no. Are you seeing? So, yeah, the next question is, so that's, those are two great resources, guys. What we'll do is we will actually put those in the show notes, too.

so if you didn't catch those, go to the show notes on Apple or Spotify. We'll make sure we link those and we'll make sure that we link Kirstie's profile so you can go follow her and get all her tips. The second question was one thing I've done a lot of research about is quarter three and quarter four of 2021, even quarter two, a lot of consumer package companies or grocery stores or these consumer packaged goods like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. They showed some of their biggest profits ever.

Now, that's their job for shareholders. But there's a big discussion out there, are different companies utilizing this whole supply chain, inflation issues, all these things, and increasing their prices at a greater rate than inflation so that they're getting more profitability? And I think if I kind of bring it down to the voice of the viewer type question, when you're doing all this research, are you seeing a lot of price discrepancies in technology and products amongst retailers? or are they pretty tight amongst the whole group? So I would say now they're pretty tight. I would say about three months ago is when you really started to see a bunch of discrepancies. So I can't really speak to technology so much

because I don't coupon that unless I'm looking at Black Friday. But if I'm looking at like the cost of laundry detergent, right? So about three months ago, laundry detergent was $11.99 a container. Now it's upwards of $13. And you got to see that staggered through the retailer. So like P&G was the first one to raise their prices.

then you have like for silk they're now going up to almost $14 a container so that was a staggered approach but now they're all taking advantage of it and absolutely to your point it's they're using the inflation bubble as a means to kind of get more money out of the consumer they're also reducing the prices of coupons so while they're raising the prices of their items they're decreasing the amount of money you can save on that item so it's just across the board crazy but at this point now it's it's it's pretty level they're all wanting a piece of the pie and they're all going to going to raise their prices to match everybody else. It's interesting. It's so fascinating. I was watching some of the videos, too, that you did.

And one of the videos I saw, I think it was like CVS you were in, and there was a head and shoulders product for like 12 bucks. But you knew the exact way that you could buy those two products with other two products and then you would get 50% off. What type of advice do you have someone after someone that's like in the CVS or at these stores like this week or going in a holiday season as people are coming. And they're seeing these prices that are crazy. Like, where do you go to get coupons? How do you find those coupons? In the apps, download the store apps. If you're going to shop at one store, you have to have the app. It's no longer an option because that's where all of the savings are going to be. Paper coupons are going away. Stores aren't going to be offering sale prices.

Costs of items are going to continue to skyrocket. Download the store apps and take five minutes before you check out and scan the products in your cart. All the time when I go to Target, I get the things in my cart and I just go through the Circle app and scan each item. Nine times out of 10, there's a percentage off coupon that attaches that you wouldn't know about because they don't advertise it. It's just hidden in the app. So if you shop at any store, download their store app, that's the only way you're going to be able to save money. Okay. So you said a few things that I didn't know about. So if I download, I think you said the Circle app. Is that Walmart app? Okay. Target. That's Target tab. Duh. Okay. So I download the Circle

app. And what they'll do is they will have coupons baked in the app that won't be in the store. So you will have to scan the item in your app. And once you do, the discount will come to fruition. Yep. You can take a scan it in the app. And then when you get to the register, there's a little barcode in your app. The register scans it. And you get your discounts. Okay. So what is, this is amazing. What is the most you've ever actually like to date saved from utilizing your coupon method? I've been paid to take things out of the store. How does that? work. How? How? How was that possible? So not so much anymore. A lot of that's been taken away because of coupon fraud, but back in the day, so I've been couponing for 12 years. So I once went to the grocery

store with my parents and we had a bunch paper coupons and it was kind of like extreme couponing style scanning stuff. And at the end, the register ended up owing me $2 and they don't give overage at the store. So I had to add things in to be able to cover the overage. But yeah, it was up $2 at the end. I think it was like a $175 total down to a $2 up at the end. Okay, but for someone who knows nothing about couponing, the philosophy of that, how is that? Is it because if you package it up, like the dollar discounts become greater than the price, but what's the theory? How does that happen? There's a lot. I mean, so the basics is stacking. So what we do in couponing is stacking.

So basically what you're going to want to look for is you're going to look for a sale price, a rebate from the store or the manufacturer, and then coupons on top of it. So that's how you're going to get the rock bottom prices. If you can find a store that has, I'll just use an example, like the head and shoulders discount that you were talking about at CVS, right? So they're normally 12 bucks a bottle. They were on sale two for 12 this week. I had a $3 off coupon, and then when I bought them, I got store cash back. And so that was a whole three stacking process to get things for ridiculously cheap and inexpensive. And that's the principle that we use throughout all of it. Okay. And okay, so it's starting to click for me. So I got the app. The stacking concept is so

cool. Never knew about that. Where does one get manufacturing coupons where you don't get them in the app, but you actually get them from the manufacturer so you can stack? Right. So there's app coupons, but then there's also paper coupons. So the paper coupons come in your send a newspaper, but unfortunately those are probably going to go to the wayside and become extinct as we get more into the digital era. But then the other part you can get is manufacture rebates. So those are rebates that you can find on apps like iBata, fetch rewards, shopkick, swag bucks, all of those places offer cash back for buying specific items and then scanning your receipt. And the cashback goes directly into your bank account. So you're up at the end. All the money that you've already

spent is right back into your bank account. Okay. Some people might hear some of these steps you're telling them to take and they might be like, eh, it seems like too much work. So when I do finance, I try to break down the time. Like this actually isn't that much work. It'll take you 12 minutes. to download these apps and to actually go through the process of like getting the circle app and scanning, what would you say like the dedicated, committed time is? Not to go searching for all the deals like you do. That's the work you do and people can go follow you to get those. But to actually just do like the high level stuff.

How long would that take? Five minutes? I mean, really, honestly, if you're in the store already, you got the items in your cart, you already whacked through Target for an hour. You take five minutes, sip your Starbucks for a couple more minutes and scan the items in your cart and you'll be able to say, I mean, I had one lady that I was walking in through Target and we were talking. She recognized me from TikTok and I was scanning items in my cart. She's like, I just, I haven't done that yet. She scanned. She ended up saving 10 extra dollars on her cart total

for five minutes. I mean, $10 and five minutes. I think that's well worth your time. A hundred percent, especially if you look at like, okay, suppose you're out there. I'm just throwing this number out there, but pretty good pay, 35 bucks an hour. You make 35 bucks an hour per minute. you're making about 50 cents or so. So for, in, you know, five minutes or so, five, ten minutes or so, you're talking about, you know, three bucks. Let's do it real quick. Thirty-five divided by 60s, 58 cents times five minutes. That's $2.91. So that's literally $2.91. Or you could be saving $10, $30 of after-tax money. With after-tax money, we always multiply times $1.5. So let's say it's $30, $1.5. That's $45 you're saving for five minutes of work. Like that makes sense. Okay.

And that's just like the rock bottom price. I mean, there's been times where I've looked and scan things and I found a 50% off coupon or I've seen like a $10 rebate. I mean, that's just what you get on average. There's definitely more out there if you take the time and just scan stuff. Okay, good stuff. Guys, scan stuff. We have those sites.

Go to the show notes to get those. What about just the whole process of like places to go and places not to go? Do you have a list of for Black Friday or Cyber Monday or just any shopping in general? where you'd say these are probably top three places you'll be okay price-wise and for right now maybe watch out for these retailers or online e-commerce sites. Yeah, I think the top three places this Blackfeited are definitely going to be Target Walmart and Amazon 100%. They have a surplus. We've seen Target all the time in the news saying they have a surplus of items. They've been discounting home goods for the past five months and they're still trying to get rid of things. So Target's

going to be a great place for home goods. And I would say like clothing and kids clothing, those are going to be some great spots at there at Target. Amazon's going to be the spot to go for like toys and electronics. Walmart is going to be electronics and then kind of miscellaneous random stuff that you're going to find. Like I found a Blackstone Grill that was like half off a couple weeks ago. So Walmart's more miscellaneous, but Amazon Target Walmart, if you go nowhere else, go those places. Okay. And are there any places that in general you're like this holiday season I'd stay away from? I don't think, I mean, this is just general every year. I don't really think Macy's is that great. I don't think J.C. Pennies is that great. If you're

Out there from Macy's. I love you. I'm sorry. But I just don't think you're going to get like those stores are starting to go to the wayside, right? We're not seeing people going to malls and shopping centers. And so they're not really going to have great sales because they're trying to recruit loss. So I would stay away from places like JCPenney's, Macy's, Dillards. I mean, they might have one or two things. But on mass, you're going to see Target Walmart and Amazon be the best places to go. Those are the top three. Guys, check those out. I want to go retail to website. So retail. I used to work at Target a long time. Like when I was in college, sophomore year, total recession. My parents are like, you're coming back to Texas or you can

stay up where you go to college, but you have to get an internship. I went to try and get every internship in the planet. The only one I could land at that time, 2008, complete shit show, was with Target. 15 bucks an hour at that time, 40 hours a week. My parents are like, great, you could stay up there. The only reason. The only motivation. So I do it. And I start to learn the ins and outs of target a little bit about like zoning and stuff like that. And so what they'll do is they have obviously these like seasonal items, right? And the season is way ahead of the actual season. So they'll prepare for let's say Halloween in the summer or back to school in the spring summer. And then what happens is they do this rotation of whatever those,

the supply of that seasonal stuff doesn't sell. It's always in the back left corner, the furthest place you can possibly walk to. And on the week to week basis, the discount increases. So they'll go from like 10, 20, 40, 75% off, I think is like the greatest I've ever seen. And as a result of that, as an employee, I'd always go in the back corner, I'd watch it, see for it to go down. And then I'd employee discount and I would just get as much as I could. Do you have like retail hacks for the people that are going into the stores this year to go buy their holiday gifts, do their shopping, or just go to grocery stores to pack up for people coming home? Do you have like tips or tricks when you're in the retail store, things to know that we should know as consumers?

I think the biggest thing is going to be the same kind of scanning concept. So like for Target, Target price match, they have a price match guarantee all the way up until Christmas. So keeping an eye when you're in Target scanning items at competitors because they'll price match to any competitor. As long as it's on their website, they can see that the competitor sells it and it's available. You can get it price match.

And that's throughout the entire holiday season. As far as clearance, target clearance goes all the way to 90% off. Wow. So what I'm telling people to do, what I share on my channel is shopping early for season. So I know it doesn't help people now, and I'm so sorry, but what I was actually doing in July was shopping for Christmas because toys went to 90% off.

And so we were in the toy section at Target grabbing 70% and 90% off toys, and my kid's Christmas is already done. So if you can shop early and shop smart, another thing that I recommended is in January. So the second week in January after Christmas, toys go 50 and 70% off. So if you get your kid a gift card and say, hey, I'm going to take you shopping second week in January. Your money is going to be stretched

double if you can wait and give your kid a gift card. That's another option out there. That's brilliant. Okay, I know I'm being repetitive with this, but it's just because I'm totally not there yet. Price matching. So we go into Target. We see the, I see Tide behind you. We see the Tide laundry detergent. Kids are coming in. So I got a double stack. When I scan on a Target app, they're not going to price match for me. I have to go look at other retailers to find the price. Is there an easy way to do it, or would you just say, go to the three top competitors, go to their website, type and Tide, and if the price is lower at the register, they will discount it right then. Right. So store apps. That's what I wish I,

maybe I should just show you my phone. Yeah, we can edit this. We can all like edit this breakout. So yeah. So I mean, I mean, there's my, my cute kid, but there's also like, I mean, I've got store apps for everything. I've got like King Super. I have high, I don't have a King Super near me and my parents do. But I have it in case my mom, we're out there and I need to price match anything. But I go, like, you go to Walmart and you scan items. Each app has a barcode scanner. So all you do is you, I want to see if Tides cheaper at Walmart today. I'm going to take the barcode scanner. I'm going to grab, I'll grab this. It's this game thing. So I scan it with my app and it pulls up how much it is at Walmart. So you can see there at Walmart, it's that

price. And that's all you do. You go up to the register and you say, hey, this is $5 on the shelf here at Target, but it's ringing up 224 at Walmart and I get a price match. God, okay, so I could be in Target. I would have my Walmart app out and just scan it through Walmart. And that's easy, okay, that makes so much sense and it's so much easier.

Understood. Okay, there's some good ideas, guys. Gift cards going into January. Price matching, especially at a place like Target, where they will adhere to it. What about the whole idea of buying online? Are there any tips or tricks you have for buying online during the holidays

or early any time. Yeah, so shopping through places like Racketon and top cash back are going to be great places to get extra cash back, especially on Black Friday. If you do nothing else, get a Racketon account, sign up, and you'll be able to earn. Usually Racketon does like 15 to 20% cash back on any purchase on Black Friday. So you'll go into your Racketon account.

You'll search the retailer, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Alta, Bands, Nike, whatever. And you shop through that website. and you will be directed to the retailer you want. And after your item ships, you'll get the percentage cash back into your Racketon account. And that's a way to increase the savings, but not a lot of people know about because you're not getting anything extra.

It doesn't cost the retailer, anything extra, doesn't cost you anything extra. You're just cashing in and banking money into your Rackton account for items you're already going to buy. Okay, that's a good advice. Again, we'll link Rackatin in the show notes. I want to give you a chance here, Kirstie. So I saw on your TikTok that you will only

show and utilize coupons that you personally use. So yes, of course, listen, we're very transparent with money. Yes, of course, if it's an affiliate program, there's probably some kickbacker. You're getting paid to some capacity. But what I liked is that on your TikTok, you own that. You're like, yes, I get a kickback, but I'm only telling you the ones that I will use. So what are some of like the best coupons or codes you have out there that someone right now could like save a couple bucks going into the holiday season? I think the best ones are going to be Costco membership for only $15. You can get Sam's Club membership for 50% off.

I have a lot of things in my account that I just kind of share, but they're more like instant deals and affiliate. I like to put out things that I know, okay, this is good for my family. This is good for me. My telegram group has a bunch of things where I'm like, hey, this is cheap. I bought this for my kids. I use this every day. I find there's a lot more genuine authenticity when I'm out there going, hey, here's a

picture of this in my house. I actually use this and love this. Here's a picture of my receipt. I actually bought this. I want you guys to save, but I'm also not trying to use this as a money grab. I'm genuinely because I've been the person on the other side of the Black Friday screen going, crap, I have $100 for both my kids for Christmas and I need to make this work. So I want people to feel like I'm reaching them in a way that's genuine and authentic.

So there's a couple things on my website, but really honestly, if you go to my page, the main thing I want you to do is never pay for toothpaste. I want you to never pay more than 50% off and I want you to save money on things that you use every day. So those are great options in my website but really when you come to my page, I really want you to save.

Okay. Never pay for toothpaste. I see you caught your eye. Never pay for toothpaste. I just spent eight bucks on damn toothpaste. So never pay for toothpaste. Repeat those. What was the second one?

Always 50% off. Always 50% off. What does that mean? Anything here? I never pay more than 50% of retail price. Never. You will never catch me. more than 50% on any of these items except for toothpaste, which is always free.

I feel like an asshole because I keep saying this, but how? Just coupons? Coupons and sales. I mean, honestly, every week there is a deal to get toothpaste for free. It's always free. Holgate Crest, I mean, Sensadine's the hardest one, but even Sensadine I've gotten paid to take out of the store. It's just you have to look for the deals and you have to be willing to just clip a couple coupons on your phone and you'll be able to save money. I met this one lady. I went to Disney World with my friends a couple weeks ago, and she was there with her son. She's a single mom. So she was talking to me about how she got to Disney World.

She starts crying. She's like, I found you a year ago. And by using all of your coupon hacks, I was able to save up enough money to take my kid to Disney World for the first time. And I never would have been able to do it if I hadn't started shopping smart and saving my money. Someone's able to take their kids on a week-long Disney World vacation because they clipped a couple coupons on their phone. I mean, and it's not like I'm asking people to go out and do the same thing that

grandma did where she sat at the kitchen table and with their coupons and her scissors, like, use your phone. Everybody has their phone and five minutes in the store. People are saving hundreds of dollars. But yeah, never pay for toothpaste, 50% off everything and save money on things you need. If you need it, you can save money on it, I promise. Yeah, I think this is just so critical because so many people are asking how to get raised, it's how to get paid more, inflation, inflation, inflation. There's two sides of the equation. It's the cash in and the cash out, cash out. If you can do some of this stuff every time you're in a store and save a few hundred bucks. And then over a year, let's say it's like five or $10,000. Again, multiply that times

$1.5. You just put $15,000 onto your gross income. I love it as a strategy. Other than paying retail, which is something I do all the time, like a complete idiot, changing that right now. Changing that right now after this call, trading secrets. What do you think other than that, what do you think is like the biggest mistake your average consumer listening probably makes when shopping? Shopping at one store. only one store going into one store and getting all of your items at that one store i think it's a huge mistake because you're going to see items be ridiculously marked up at one store and super cheap at the next and with curbside pickup and online ordering and all of these options out there it makes

so for example i have one friend she lives in florida and she has a publics and she went and bought bread at publics and it was five dollars a loaf at publics and target it's a dollar 50 and like she was like Well, I just, it was in one store. I'm like, why? You can order it on your target app. Get it. Curbside, pick it up. You're not doing any extra steps and saving $350.

Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. I know gas is expensive and I get that and I know that's a hindrance for some people. But when you have options like this to be able to look and shop sales and be strategic, shopping at one store just doesn't make any sense. Okay, I love it. And then I also think optimizing time is a big barrier. People are like it takes too much time. So let's try and save some people.

time. What are some products in general that you might say or have recognized over your 12 years of doing this like, hey, listen, don't go down the rabbit hole in this type of arena. It's very unlikely you're going to save any money. And if you do, it's going to be very minimal. Is there a certain product or type of product that kind of fits that category? Yeah. So, I mean, I love telling people, I get this reaction all the time, never buy your laundry detergent at Costco or Sam'sub. You think you're saving money and you're just getting ripped off. I would and buy any health or beauty products at Samskill or Costco, same thing. I think that if you're going to buy any home good essentials, people don't think to go into places like CVS, Walgreens,

and Target to buy these. They're like, oh, no, those are expensive places. But those are the stores that offer the biggest savings in places you get things for free. So on a whole, if you're going to buy any kind of home essentials, please do not buy them at like a Publix or a Safeway or a Costco or Sam's Club. Like, please just try it and see if you can get your stuff for cheap. But as a whole, I mean, I think Costco and Sam's Cup are great. I love the rotissory chicken. That is definitely something awesome at Costco that you should get. But as far as this stuff goes, like really, honestly, CBS, Walgreens, Target, go there.

There's your answer. That's amazing. Cursi, this has been very informative. I even have some trading secrets to take away. What we have to end with, though, is your trading secret. You already gave a ton of tips and tricks. But what would you say, like, your number one trading secret is? And this could be to your coupon process, to saving money in the stores,

to career management, money management, anything, you've got to give us your trading secret. What would that be? I think the biggest thing that I want people to take away from is take five minutes. I really do. I think people really think that this takes a long time and I get it and I get that's a hundreds. Take five minutes and try it.

The secret is five minutes, scan things on your phone, five minutes in the store if you want to try a deal, and go from there. I think if you have five minutes and a little bit of patience, anybody can save this kind of money. I love it. Five minutes and a little bit of patience. And for all those viewers out there that are like, I need, like myself, I need Kirstie in my life. Where can they find your handles, your programs, your website, everything you have going on?

Yeah, so I'm on TikTok and Instagram, and it's a Torok.compon.comter on both of those places. And then I also have a telegram. You just search Torok coupon Hunter, and that'll pop up. Torok the coupon Hunter. Thank you so much for being on this episode of Traying Secrets. Thank you. Go save some money, guys. Awesome.

ding ding we are closing in the bell to the kirstie torock episode man this was a good one and hopefully it'll save you a couple bucks at home i know it'll save me a couple bucks just i have a whole new like when i walk into a store now i'm gonna have a whole new outlook especially when i like go to my credit card statements like david i'm looking on american express right now how much i've like spent that target i'm like wow i'm an idiot so that being said as per usual we got the curious canadian with me i am sure you are just chopping at that bit to talk about this episode. What do you got? Well, we are just such a podcast for the people. Like, you know, we read the comments sometimes. I want to learn this. I want to learn that.

I want to save money here. I don't, you know, I love this reality star. I hate this reality star. Give me more like normal people. It doesn't get more normal people than this. Getting free toothpaste. Saving five bucks of CVS. saving 10 bucks at Walmart. We are a podcast of the people. I was fired up. I know I'm like checking things off my box. A lot to get into here. So I'm just curious to hear from you if you knew a lot of these tips, if you apply them and little ways that you may apply or take away from this podcast. So, you know, I'm ready to get right into this. I'm just, I'm just like, why don't I know this? I'm more kind of, I feel like there's so much that I talk about on this podcast that is for the benefit of people's earning,

spending, saving, budgeting, investing. And this is a world I just really don't know much about. I talked a little bit about my target experience, but like, I'm surprised some of this stuff isn't just like so mainstream. And maybe it is. Do you find that it is? Like, do you, what are your thoughts? No, it's not. And the one example I'll start with is rackettin. And she said racketing. And it's something that I'm familiar with. And in my notes, I have, why is there something like racketon that is something that helps the common consumer buy things they're already buying, get cash back? How do we not know about it? How do we not know about it? How is it not marketed?

What is their advertising budget? How are they not? How is that not something that everyone does in commonplace? I'm on the website right now. You can buy things on Racketon from Nike, from Lulu Lemon, from Target, from Walmart, from Macy's, things that you're already buying and getting 8% cash back, 10% cash back, 5% cash back. How is that not more mainstream? Is that a surprise to you, too?

100% to surprise me. I just don't get like, so I went, dude, I didn't know how, like when she said, and I had never heard of it. So I'm literally after this podcast, like, Googling, and I'm trying to spell it. I felt like it was your tertiary. I couldn't spell it. So just for anyone out there that's with me, it's R-A-K-U-T-E-N, and I, too, went on. And it's, like, really such a simple concept.

I'm like, how the hell? I'm like the finance guy shouldn't know this stuff. I don't have a clue. So I'm in here. And to your point, David, you could see, like, right now it says, like, stores, I'm in the site. Stores are members love. And it gives you the stores that we all know, Macy's Walmart. Target Nike Coles, and it shows the percentage of cash back that you can get.

So right now in the Nike store, I can get 8% back, 8%. And they have all these different deals and steals at the top here out. David, did you go into it at all, Racketon? I've quickly glanced over it. So the only way that I know that Racketon existed before this podcast is they sponsor the Golden State Warriors NBA basketball team jersey. Every NBA team now has a logo on their jersey of a sponsor. that's the only reason why I heard of it. I didn't know what it was, so I had to glance and see

what it was. It's just shocking. Like, shocking. Now, question for you, for the people at home, I think I know the answer to this, but why can a business do this? Why can a business go and give you cash back for things that you wouldn't get if you're buying the same thing on Nike.com? I honestly got to look back into the business case of it. So clearly when you have a credit card, the reason you get cash back and all the bonuses is for two reasons. One, people don't pay, and the interest rate is so high, so their margins are so great. And then also they take a fee from merchant services, so they get a kickback. I think my guess is, like I'm in Racketon right now, and then I click on Nike, my guess, which could be wrong, but it's my guess, that Racketon has a deal

with Nike. It's affiliate deal. Just like if I told you, David, I have a partnership with Amex, and every time I send someone to Amex and you sign up, they send me $100 affiliation. I think what must happen is because Rackatin is a way for people to go to Nike.com. If Nike.com sees that I went to Nike.com and bought $1,000 worth of stuff because it was funneled through Rackaton, they give Racketon a kickback. Now, what Racketon must do is then give the kickback smaller than they receive, but enough to incentivize someone like me to go. So maybe Nike says, we'll give you 20% kickback because these margins are so high. They pass on eight of that 20% to the consumer. It's just so interesting, kind of like a skip

the middleman, skip the realtor type of business. You know, thinking back to the points guy episode, just how well received that was from the people and just kind of opening up the can of worms to the rewards membership type world, it's just something that we've done, yeah, we've done crazy enough stuff on this podcast. We went vegan for a week. We did this. We tracked our spending on food. I am over the Thanksgiving break. I am downloading every app of every store and I'm going to tell you exactly how much money I saved. Yes, I want to do that because this is something I don't do enough of either, but I'm looking at my MX spending reports and I have a few different like business cards and stuff. But dude, I'm talking like merchandise and supplies, which I think

a lot of that's probably bought it like a target. It's astronomical how much I've spent. I mean, I'm going to say it's over $100,000, $30,000 on this one. I'm just looking merchandise, it's 25K on this one, looking on my next one, and 23K on this one. So that's 23K, 24. That's almost 100K of merchandise and supplies categories. Now, I'm not going to waste everyone's time and drill down in each store and stuff, but imagine if I utilized some of these savings, and let's just say I saved 20% of that.

Like, think about that, man. That's life. It's like, it's a vacation. Like she said, it's a vacation. Yeah. And I just lost, you guys probably heard my audio go away because I literally leaned back in my chair and I'm almost fucking past. I almost like flipped my chair. I'm so pissed at myself. I'm a little fired out today too because on the way here I needed to get batteries for the Zoom for the podcast. And I was in a Walgreens thinking I was in a CVS because they're basically the exact same. And I get to the counter.

One sells tobacco, one dozen. I think it's the only difference. I get to the counter and I type in my CVS number. And she's like, oh, that didn't like register. Like, are you sure you have an account? I was like, oh, yeah. And then she's like, your family member. I was like, yeah, my wife.

So I type in Ashley's. I saved $11 because she had a membership and I didn't. And then the lady even said, oh, this body wash you got, it's two for one. I sprinted all the way to the back, got another body wash scanning, got it for free. What was that? What was that TV show back of the day? Shop till your cart drops or something. Do you know what I'm talking about?

There's a show where you'd be in a grocery store and it was shop till you drop and you'd be running through the store like trying to get the best deal and then they'd ring you out to see what it was. That would, I could imagine that was you. I saved $3 on the batteries. I got a free body wash.

I got, Ash had, I hope she's not listening. She had $2 and rebates just like left on her membership. I was like, yeah, use those two. I'm going to talk this up. But it's like $11. Like everyone always goes to like, oh, how do you budget? How do you save? Oh, skip the coffee.

don't buy the Starbucks. I brew it at home. No, just fucking download the app. Go get your rewards at all these stores. Scan these things. What she said is so true. You have your phone in your hand. Scan the damn thing when you purchase it. Price match. Do all those things. You're going to save 15, 20, 100 bucks a week. It's insane to me that I don't do this. Yeah. And I could go through my, and I'm probably going to do it. I'll go through my spending experience for it. I'm going to look at how many times I've gone to Walgreens or CVS. So someone might be like, it's 350. I don't really care. That's nothing. The problem is when you go to Walmart and CVS and Walgreens a hundred times in a year, that's when it adds up. Now also, guys, I want you to go follow her Instagram because

I'm on it right now. She has this coupon hunter website. So that gives you like all these new deals she does. I'm like going to be her biggest follower ever now. And she has all these like different. These are definitely affiliations. So she's definitely getting paid off these. But these are really good. Like on her deal section, if you click the link, she has a Costco year membership that's for 15 bucks. She's got the coat. She has 50% off Sam's Club membership, 2499 for the year. She has free unlimited sit pass at Panera. She's 35% off at Hello Bello for diapers. Like this is, these are really good deals just on her page there. So yeah, you're going to need that, buddy. So I just think give her a follow and go check that out because I sure is a hell

am. And I'm just like, why did this take us so long? We've been almost at 100 episodes to like figure out to have a guess like this. I'm also like I'm not going to lie to myself and be like I don't have the time to scan things at the store. I don't have the time to download the apps and look at the deals. Like I've been that, like I've been that idiot self being like, ah, like you don't need to do this to save $8 shirt. Yes. Yes, I do. Because we're spending it's in our everyday habits and I don't know why we're not doing it. I feel like an idiot head. And what's interesting, Dave, is like I'm so passionate. And you do have the time. We all have the time. I don't care how busy you are. She said it's five minutes. It reminds me of like when I tell people like to get your finances under control, like I don't have the time. No, you have the time. It's probably one of the most important aspects of your entire life. But I just think it's fascinating that we haven't covered it, but we have covered stuff. And I'm so passionate about it when it comes to like travel currency. And we've had, you know, the points guy on. I dude, I just got invited to the points guy. You just hit me up. They have like an annual the points guy award service.

ceremony they invited me to. Like, I'm so passionate about my miles and all my travel credit cards and getting cash back. Why am I not focused on the shit I'm spending on every single second? So I don't know, man. This is a wake-up call. My cages rattled, David. You're the guy who got me on airline rewards memberships. Like, you couldn't believe I was, I think, 30 years old, and I didn't have, like, a United number. I didn't have a Delta number. And now it's like, I'm sick into my stomach that I didn't have that because when I travel, it's that easy. I'm going to be your guy and be like, let's wake the fuck up here and start getting discounts where we're spending money in our everyday lives. Like, it just has to happen.

Also, you are like, okay, quick confession. Talk about like the biggest mistakes you make or like the laziest things you do because I call people out this on their finance. I'm going to call my shopping. One of the laziest things I do, I go to Kroger at least once a week. And when I go to Kroger and I buy groceries for us, I'm spending at least 150 to 200. Easy. Now, this is how fucking lazy I am. And this is pathetic and it's going to change now.

When I go to Kroger, I don't bring a card because I don't never, I'm too lazy to register for the Kroger card. So every time I go, I said, hey, man, or hey, you know, whoever it is, that's cash mail. You got a card, just scan your card. You got to give yourself the points. I swear to God, I do it every time. And they're like, great.

Get discount on my, like, they're like laughing at me. Sure, $150,200. I'm done with that. I'm going to get my cards. I'm going to get my apps. I'm going to start doing it. I'm going to start talking about it. That's my commitment to you, money mafia.

Let's go. You have to do it. And I'm excited with the holiday season. I got a week off work. Hallelujah. But I'm going to be spending. I'm going to be out. I'm going to be buying things for Thanksgiving.

And Christmas is coming up. Like, I want to walk away from this Thanksgiving week with this casual spending that I'm going to do because I'm to have more time to spend. I want to walk away saying like, yeah, I save 20, I save 50, or I racked up this many membership points at these places. It has to be done because Thanksgiving and Christmas are the biggest time to spend. So you said it the best. Like, if you're going to save $8 in five minutes and do that over hourly rage, like it makes tons of sense. Yeah. Do you think, do you think the whole inflation and everything that's happened has kind of warped your brain to have an expectation to spend more. Because I was thinking about this.

Like I, this conversation about Target and stuff, it made me think about like when I was like 22. I remember, and I always like to splurge on Christmas, this is not a good example. But I remember one of the things I got my mom was this like $25 bottle of wine. And I was like, when I was 22, I'm like, this is especially compared to what I was drinking then, fuck, I was just slap the bag, man. Bully Vineyards. Yeah. I was like, I thought it was like such an honest. I was getting my mom $25 bottle of wine. And now I'm, I think it's because of earnings, too, but also inflation. Like, I would never get, like, a, like, if I'm doing a gift, it would be like $7,500.

And I started to realize to myself, this whole inflation and this whole world that we live in, it's gotten so ridiculous and out of control, but I feel like I'm falling victim of it. Like, as I'm budgeting for holiday gifts, I'm budgeting, like, $2,000. And I'm like, dude, what are we doing here? Like, what are we, why don't we all take that money and, like, go to Europe? Like, what are we doing? What is happening? It's gotten out of control.

Yeah, it has gone out of control. And we're suckers as consumers sometimes. And, you know, when I was, my previous job making a lot of money, I was going out of control with gifts too. And finally, my family, Ashley's family, we're done with it. Like, what do you mean? Do you have that? Let's end with this conversation because you and I could talk for another hour.

And we have to go to our all-access networking event. Just so you know, guys, every week we have a networking, or every month, I'm sorry, We have an all-access group. You can reach out to restart at jason tardick.com to join it. But people from all over North America come together. You get to meet people in different industries. We'll promote your stuff. We ask our all-access members, how can we help your career?

Who can we introduce you to? So in just a few minutes, we've got to jump on our monthly, what do we call it, business and booze happy hour. So you can join that. Just hit me up, restart at jason tardick.com. But, David, before we do, let's wrap with the segment you were just discussing. like what are the rules that you guys as a family adhered to when it comes to gifts? Like how does that work with your relationship and family? Yeah. So previously we were very adamant like you buy a gift for everyone. You put the time, the thought, the energy, the finances behind it. We're like an old

school family. Like opening gifts for us takes like three hours. Everyone opens one gift. Everyone watches them. Everyone watches them open it. It's my mom will, I'll be like 50 and my mom will still make us do that got, you know, living, we're still doing it. So I've spent a couple Christmases with Ashley's now, and her family is just chaos. It's like, snap the finger, it's done in five minutes, it's chaos, it's all over the place. I'm like, slow down everybody. But we've switched to, like, you know, being so far away from my family now, like, we're buying, I hope they're not listening, but we're buying everyone onesies, sending them onesies

and getting them a $50 gift card to things that we know that they, like my dad, like, loves reading books like my nieces and nephews they like going like my nephew loves you know v bucks on on xbox and my my niece loves shopping and so we're getting their h and m like we're just doing that we're getting you a gift card to somewhere we know you like spending money so hopefully you don't have to spend your own money and we're just doing it differently that this year like no more big gifts like kind of stand it across the board stuff that we don't have to go out and buy like stuff that we can do from our home because time is money like it's just changed and like you said if we're spending thousands of thousands of dollars go on a fucking trip like that's what it's about spend time with

people you love get experiences like the whole old school christmas toys things that you don't need or use is crazy so are you moving that direction too calin and i are really really good about like let's talk about what we're giving each other and does it make sense and what can we do that does make sense so like we're always like it doesn't have to be like usually it's rarely as it's big surprised. Like we have an understanding of like what we're going to spend and what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. My mom is still just like, it's like the old thing she can't shake. We have to be there for Christmas Day. We have to all have our gifts and we have to all take turns. And now it's like a tradition. I'm like, we have to do it. And it's become so routine in such

a tradition in our house, which is, this is like the confession, vulnerable recap, I'm a dumbass, Jason Tardick that like, I want to tell you about a conversation we had. My mom, I, you know, she's asking me what I want, because she has to do it. I don't want anything. I don't want anything. My brother-in-law's done it best. He recognizes it makes her happy to get stuff. So just shut up and give it to her the list. So he has like a full list. She does it. I always struggled to get the list out. So I'm thinking like, what do I actually need? Hey, Ma, you know what? I really need a suitcase. So we look at suit. We're talking suitcases, right? And like the reason I'm not going to have, and I tell her, don't give me a suitcase. And the reason I'm not going to have her get me a suitcase is because the one

I want would be like around the budget she has for what she wants to spend, right? So like suppose she has, you know, X amount of budget, the one suitcase is the X dollar amount. So, but here's the problem. Here's the ridiculous thing. The reason I'm telling her not to do it and the reason I'm like, mom, don't don't, is because if she gets that one thing, then I don't have gifts to open around the circle. I just have one. Like, that's how dumbass we are with stuff. So our, Our theory is flawed. It's dumb. I don't know.

We got to find something better. So if you guys have suggestions of how we should do gifts with the family and what is reasonable and a method, I'm here to learn from you, Money Mafia. Give us five stars in the review. Give me your suggestion. And David and I will talk about it. David, we got to go to the Trading Secrets All Access Group. Business and Boo's Happy Hour.

Anything else? Nope. Fire it out to save some money. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Trading Secrets. Get ready next week because we have Brie from BFF. Brie is a podcaster from Barstool. She is on the podcast with Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards. And she talks all about the money behind her industry, her job, and the good and bad with Barstool Sports.

Please note that episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.