13 Money Moves They're Betting You Won't Make

Tyler Gardner (0:00)

As a financial advisor, I had spent a large part of my career watching people, including very smart people, leave enormous amounts of money on the table because they didn't know the ask was possible. They assumed the first number was the final number. The whole premise of modern consumer finance is that you will assume the brochure is the truth. The hacks in this episode all exist in the space between the brochure and the reality. Your job is to now close that gap.

Hello, friends. This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing. So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

Quick note before we get into it, June's pre-order incentive for my book Real Wealth is the most personal thing I've ever agreed to share. Pre-order in June and submit your receipt at tylergardner.com, and you'll get an exclusive three-episode audio series that will never appear on this feed. Three pivotal moments in my own financial life, the humbling one, the embarrassing one, and the one that made me rethink everything. Three episodes, three moments, tylergardner.com, pre-order, submit your receipt, get the episodes delivered digitally in early July, and receive every additional monthly incentive between now and the book's release on December 1st. And now, on to today's episode. Last week, I spent approximately 51 minutes on the phone with Xfinity.

51 minutes. I know this because I was staring at the microwave clock the entire time. And by the end, I had memorized every scuff mark on our kitchen floor, including one shaped shockingly like Rhode Island. I was threatening to cancel. Now I wasn't actually going to cancel. The nearest alternative provider is a guy named Dave who runs fiber out of a barn. But I knew the script. You call. You say the magic word. You get transferred to a human being in a cubicle somewhere who has, crucially, access to a pricing tier that does not exist on any website, in any brochure, or in any known universe. Her name was Melanie, and that 51-minute call will save me $43 a month for the next year. I now owe Melanie, at the very least, a Christmas card. My wife Stephanie walked in around a minute 32 and found me on hold, pacing, eating saltines directly out of the sleeve. Well, Dixie, one of the bloodhounds, who has the emotional intelligence of a therapist, and the physical coordination of a folding chair, watched me with what I can only describe as pity. At one point, Melanie put me on hold, and I'm pretty sure I could hear Dixie sigh. But here's the thing.

I saved $516 a year in 51 minutes. That works out to about $650 an hour, 100% tax free.

This whole episode is about that phone call, and 12 other money moves like it. Today, we're going to have some fun and explore 13 money hacks that most people don't know about, grouped into four categories, held together by one very simple and overarching idea, which is that almost every one of these hacks exists because the company on the other end is betting that you won't ask. So if you need to go right now and you want the one key takeaway from today's episode, I'll spoil it right now. The entire hack is asking. And as I live into my philosophy as much as I can, here's a familiar ask for you. If you have found the show helpful in any way, if you've shared it with a friend, or learned something new about the markets, or investing, or how you think about your own values, would you please consider leaving a review on Apple or Spotify? It helps other people find the show, it helps the show grow, and it helps me spread the word about asking for a discount so more money is getting put back into your pockets so you can invest it in a low-cost, broad-based index fund and be one step closer to where you need to be. All right, let's get into it.

Act one. I call this section the phone call hacks. The following is a list of my favorite money hacks that you can fix with a phone if, and I say this genuinely understanding, we're in an era where nobody under the age of 50 picks up their dang phone anymore, you can stomach the phone.

Hack number one, the cancellation retention gambit. Here's how it works, and I explored this in the intro. You call whoever it is, Xfinity, SiriusXM, your gym, your cell provider, any software subscription, and the one nobody knows about, your home and auto insurance. You tell the first person you speak to that you want to cancel. You do not negotiate. You do not argue. You do not ask for a deal. You just say, I'm calling to cancel.