uh we hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to like organize a closet like i'm so on board with oh my god we

pay so much to our organizer we don't have a coach we just have an organizer who comes in and she is doing so well she recently last time she was here which was like two weeks ago which is because she's here all the time organizing something She was like, oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me. I'm going to go organize their new place in Switzerland. So she's like, got this thing going. It's an incredible business. I mean, it's not like a huge business, but she's got people under her and stuff now. Is it just

like magic? Is your house just incredible now? I

think it's fine. My wife loves it. Wow. I

have a friend that just bought a home. They moved in. It's a huge house, like 8,000 square feet. They paid this service $25,000 to be there before, like to map out where everything, like it was like, you know, like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out, to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with a strategy. It was 25 grand. That's a lot. It's a lot.

I think we paid, I don't remember, I don't know how much we paid total because I don't see it. Because if I saw it, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember the kitchen was a couple thousand dollars. Do

you have the Indian frugality gene? Oh, time. Okay, you're not a good spender.

I'm not a good spender. And it's like my lifestyle hasn't changed. My net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade. And my lifestyle hasn't changed. I'm always looking for a deal. Like anything I buy, I'm going to slick deals first. I've like got the credit card points thing down, like all this stuff that shouldn't, I shouldn't be doing is like stupid optimization. But for me, it's kind of a game and I love it. What are

the, give us a quick credit card tip. What do you, what's your credit card stack? Cause I don't want to do the research, but I might just piggyback off you.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. So I use the US bank smartly card. It's 4 on everything. And if you just want a single card, that's the card to go off of. US Bank

Smartly? That's what it

is? Yeah, yeah. It's 4% on everything. By the way, I use it on my taxes. So... Wait, what? I pay 1.82% to the government to use my credit card, and then I get 4% back from US Bank. It's just like, I'm getting 2% back on my taxes. I could use that for like Facebook ad spend. I could use it for anything. You can use a Facebook ad spend. Yeah, exactly. Is there like a limit or is it unlimited? Just your credit limit. Wow. And now it's called US Bank Smartly. And you have to have, you have to have a hundred thousand dollars with us bank but what i did is i just have a brokerage account with a single stock and that's my hundred thousand dollars at us bank it's a great deal like they they're losing money on me for sure dude

on one hand i'm like this is sick i gotta do this and then on the other hand i'm like i just like you know i don't know setting it up dude four percent

is pretty legit I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.6 from Bank of America. Bank of America, yeah. And so now you're just shitting on that. This is way better.

This is way better.

You also tweet all types of stuff. Like the other day, you're like, does Robinhood give like 4% interest? Yeah, so Robinhood

has a card that gives 3% cash back on everything. And then right now they have a promo where it's like 4% or 5%. It was 5% if you put $25,000 into a Robinhood brokerage. Dude,

it's kind of actually interesting because if you are a really big company or you're spending a lot, couldn't the difference between 0% and 4% have a meaningful impact on your margin?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you're buying Facebook ads for like, it could be really massive for you. But for me, even just by taxes, getting 2% back on my taxes is, you know, many thousands of dollars. Pretty sweet. That's

crazy.

It's like free money. I

know a guy who, um, well, I could say it actually, his name's, um, David Hauser. He did a podcast, so it's public, but he sold his company grasshopper for i think 125 million dollars and he he's like you know famously he's he's a friend of mine he's like famously frugal and like you know whatever and he was like convinced american express to let him pay his tax bill which on a hundred million dollar sale i i don't know what that would be 36 40 million dollars something and he was like, I now have unlimited, basically like unlimited flying. He's like, for the next 30 years, I ball out on flying and I don't have to pay for a thing. And he paid with his $40 million tax bill on Amex.

The one thing, so speaking of miles, so like one thing I don't want to do is accumulate a lot of miles. I already have more miles than I need. And like, people are like, oh, well, you're getting 4%, but I'm actually getting 5% because I get miles and miles are worth 2.3 cents to me because, but then I look into it and they're like, how is it worth that much to you? And you're, you're like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight, but that's not the flight I want to take. Just give me cash back and I'll buy my own shit. Right.

Also, don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate? Plus you

don't actually use all your miles. So even

in theory, every point is worth X, you're never going to use 100% of your points. So you have to discount back off that.

Exactly. So for me, cash back is king.

Dude, I know a guy in Hampton, by the way, who is a two-person company and he spends 10 million a year on Facebook ads or something. And he's like, I got all these miles. And so I just, I was like, hey, book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money. And I got, you know, I bought four first-class tickets to Europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it. It was like significant savings for me. Do

you have any other good financial wins or hacks? So you got the 4% cashback card. Is there anything else that like is a needle mover? Actually, I've

started using Robinhood for a lot of stuff. So Robinhood had this thing where, and they continue to have it where... That's dangerous. I don't think it's dangerous. Robin's a big company. They're making lots of money. I a Robin Hood bull. And they had this thing where you could move your assets over and they would match 1%. So it's pretty amazing if you have, let's say, $10 million of assets in stocks somewhere, you move it over, you get $100,000 free money. How

long does it have to stay there? I

think it's two years, but I've been very happy with the service. And I just did the transfer, ACATS transfer from Schwab. Schwab called me like red alert. And they were like, we'll give you $15,000 right now in your account. You don't have to do anything. We're just going to give you $15,000. You don't move your money. And I was like, yeah, but I'm getting a lot more from Robinhood. So I moved it and I've been very happy. And then I have a lot of other, I now use other products on them and they have a great margin rate. It's like 5%. It's great. Do

you, are you like a stock picker? What do you do with your personal portfolio? Are you just like boring index funds? Do you do anything interesting?

I want to not be a stock picker. I want to be boring index funds, but inevitably I get excited about an idea and I invest in it. And it's been very good for me. I've been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly. What was your best pick? I bought, my biggest position was NVIDIA in 2017.

No shit. And what was that based on? What was the idea there?

It was, I did a lot of research, got excited, and I thought there were two theses. Like I actually, it was more based on crypto than it was AI. And I was wrong. Like we moved away from GPUs and moved into ASICs for crypto, but it ended up being right anyway.

And it's been awesome. So that was in 2017, the stock was range. It's about 30-something

X from that. Yeah,

it looks like it's a 30X. It's 150 today. Back then it was $5. 30X is wild. Did you keep it in the whole time?

Yeah, I've kept it the whole time. I haven't actually bought anymore or sold any. So yeah, I have. And it was like my biggest position in 2017.

And you're basically like a fintech expert, right? Your fund is fintech. You've invested in a bunch of fintech things. What's your position on crypto? Are you like, are you a big Bitcoin bull? Do you believe in all the altcoins? Like what's your, where do you stand? Because I haven't heard you talk about it much.

Yeah, I don't talk about it that much. Bitcoin is so, actually, looking at my assets, it's probably Bitcoin number one, NVIDIA number two, and then like the house that I live in number three. No way,

really? Yeah. And so, say

more. Well, what got you into Bitcoin or crypto at the beginning? And is it just Bitcoin or do you also believe in ETH and Solana and other things?

I only have Bitcoin and ETH. I have some of the others, but like not a meaningful amount. I actually have a tweet where I was like anti-Bitcoin and Bitcoin was like 60 cents or something. I was like, this is never going to work. Here's why. Governments are never going to allow it, blah, blah, blah. And then I finally bought in around $300. And the idea was, I still, what people believed then, what people told me was like, it's going to be a fast and efficient way to move money. And that isn't what happened at all. And so in some ways, I was right. It doesn't matter that I was right. I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier. And I think as a store of value, like the more successful it gets, the more successful it's going to get. And so that's it. And more and more people are putting money in. So I've put money in. Now, for me personally, that makes sense. For my fund, I want to invest in things that like actual people are going to be able to use and like have real impact on the world and i haven't found that many use cases we have made a couple of investments in stable coins i think there's something

there i was going to ask you a nerdy question there's a a lot of people are paying attention to stable coins right now uh is that what fart

coin is that's

an unstable coin for sure. Fart coin, butthole. People who don't know, a stable coin is basically, it's a digital token. So it has the benefits of being able to be transferred online easily and programmable, things like that. But it's just pegged to the dollar. So you put a dollar in a bank account and then one digital dollar is created. And that's the idea. In order for the digital dollar to be created, an actual US dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere. And so there's companies like Circle and others, Tether, who are supposedly doing this. And I guess it's kind of like a lot of people believe it's like stable coins is taking off now. There's some charts. I think the All In podcast has been talking about this recently. A stable coin, didn't the stable coin business get bought or a tech business that was about- Yeah, it got bought

for over a billion by Stripe.

Billion dollars by Stripe. So is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air? I

think there's something real here. I think like they're transferring money internationally is challenging. And there's something called SWIFT, which is how banks do it. It's basically like a messaging protocol. I think stablecoins can make things easier. I think still at the end of the day, people are overhiding stablecoins because at the end of the day, in on-ramp and in off-ramp to get money. And they aren't that. I had this issue. I had a wedding in India, and I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash. And it was a lot of cash. And I was like, hey, I tweeted it. Can somebody help me get a lot of cash in Mexico? And the reality is there's a reason why it was so difficult. And the reason is like money laundering. And actually also, even what I was doing was illegal because or what my vendors were doing, they wanted cash because they don't want to pay taxes. And so the reason it's hard is because the government doesn't want you to, do you want to skirt taxes? And I had this convoluted thing, actually, you guys might appreciate. I convinced my bank to let me, normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day. I convinced my bank, Schwab, to let me do $4,000 per account per day. And I opened six bank accounts at Schwab. And I was able to go to an ATM and withdraw $4,000 of cash per account per day. And I was there for the week prior that basically paid for a lot of my wedding. Dude,

you know what the takeaway from this, by the way, is it's like, that's the second time that you've said something where you've went to a major institution. And negotiated. Yeah, when I hear about you went to Schwab, I'm like, is Schwab a person that you can go to? I don't understand. You know what I mean? It's like getting Google AdWords help. It's like if I had a Gmail issue, it's like just, hey, Google, yeah, yeah, I need you to fix this. I didn't even realize that you could call Schwab or call Bank of America. Yeah, I know you guys don't offer this, but you got to. Yeah, I think if you explain your situation to them, actually,

one thing I do is I know pretty quickly if I've got a good agent or a bad agent. And then if I have a bad agent, I hang up and call a guy. What's the test? You know somebody who's going, I just told them my story, like told them what I needed. And, and then like somebody walked me through the process and I got it done. And so I think you could do that all the time. And then speaking of negotiation or like talking through something, I think something a lot of people should do is realize like you can negotiate at Macy's. Like I, I did this with my wife, my wife, bought a wedding dress, a post-wedding dress at Macy's. Like it was for one of our weddings. And we were at Macy's and I was like, I want to teach you to negotiate. I want you to get a better deal on this dress. It was like, I don't know, $400 dress or something. And I was like, can you get a better deal? And she did. She got like 20% off just by asking at Macy's for like a person at Macy's. And she saved like 100 bucks or something.

Sam, do you ever do that?

Yeah, I

mean, I'll do things like, I'll be like, hey, I won't know if they had a sale recently, but I'll be like, I think you had a sale recently. Like, for example, I went and got something at brooks brothers the other day and i know that one time a year they do like a 40 off sale and i went like three months after that sale but i was just like hey can you um can you match that and if you i always find i always prefer to go to women like the workers that who are women i have way more success because they're just like to get along with. You do a little fake flirt. But that works way better for me with retail. Just talking to a woman and being like, hey, how are you doing today? Look, I know this is a little obnoxious, but can I get that sale discount or what?

Yeah. My buddy Dan. They have a bunch of QR codes or barcodes and they just scan a QR code or barcode and it's like, oh, here's 20% off. And like, all you do is ask. My

buddy Dan, his mom was like the master at this. Like when we were in college, we would go try to like, you know, buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment. And she would just, while we're checking out, she'd be like, and give the boys a discount. Give these college boys, give these boys a discount. And then they would be like what uh for what and then she's like give them a discount yeah she would just be like come on give the boys a discount these they need it and then she would just tell them like give the boys a discount and sure enough 20 30 40 off would just happen like that and i would never even think to do it but she would just say it like like it's a done deal like oh it's happening not like do you think it'd be possible? Is there any way we would really appreciate it? She was just like, oh, and then throw that in. Put the discount on top of it. Whatever you got, give the boys a discount. It's like alphas,

like every clerk.

Yeah,

exactly. I think it's something I want my kids to learn. If I have kids in the future, hopefully I will. I want them to learn these sort of things. And it's also like somebody posted, what job do you wish you had? I wish I had a sales job growing up. And the people that are selling you Dead Sea cosmetics or something, they're just coming up to you. Or cell phone accessories. They're like, hey, what phone do you have? And then they try to sell you something. I feel

like those are really useful things that I wish I knew. Dude, the Dead Sea guy at the mall. Oh my God. Unbelievable skill set. Just an incredible skill set. Is

that a scent or a lotion? I think

it's like a body scrub. Yeah.

Got it. And it's

got to be like a 98% profit margin sort of.

Yeah. Didn't your dad sell like door-to or something?

Yeah. My dad sold him encyclopedias door-to when he just moved here from India. It's actually a great story. He like, he was very poor in India. He, to come to the United States, like, he studied at IIT in India, great university, and then like to come to America, he needed to raise money. So he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over. And you had to have $300 to stay in America. On your passport, they stamped that he had $300. He came with exactly $300 in his pocket. And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back. And he had this stipend as a master's student and then a PhD student. And he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman. Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time. He was in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, door-to selling encyclopedias. And he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country. Did he really? Yeah, he really did.

Have you asked him about it? Like, what was the secret? What was the pitch? I think

it was just like working day and night, I think was the pitch. And crazy enough, so he made enough money to buy an apartment in like a condo in India, like a one bedroom condo in India. And that's still the condo that like my uncle lived in. And still, like we still go and stay in that condo that my dad bought with his earnings from working as an encyclopedia salesman.