Tentmaking Tips

That article spoke about the why.

Today, I’ll share about the how.

Of the many advantages of broad-based index funds, two stand out:

1. You’re buying the entire market, so you win with the winners & lose with the losers & make the average market return (which is better than most fund advisors can do for you over time)

2. The expense ratios can be very low because it’s not actively managed (and thus you’re not having to pay a significant amount for salaries, research, etc)

For long-term investments, I like to buy broad-based index funds, rather than sector-focused index funds.

Broad-based index funds are funds that buy most of the market.

Sector-based index funds are funds that buy a portion of the market.

The best broad-based index funds are the ones with the lowest fees.

Vanguard & Fidelity are two brokerages...

It’s a game-changer!

In this one place you can see multiple airlines, routes & prices to the places you want to go.

And if you look closely enough, sometimes you’ll see greatly discounted or even mistake fares.

A greatly discounted fare is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a fare that the airline is offering at a big discount because of a promotion they’re running or because they’re trying to attract travelers to that route.

A mistake fare is even better but it’s more rare. It’s when an airline actually makes a mistake in its pricing of a particular route. Maybe they forgot a 0 or someone made a typo. But this is where a $2,000 ticket might sell for $200.

Google Flights can help you find both of these.

It can even notify you about various routes when the ticket prices change.

In addition to looking for these yourself, there are others out there that hunt all day long & tell you about the...

We send postcards and letters to sellers asking if they’d be interested in an offer on their home. I also have a course & coaching program where I teach others to do the same.

When sending mail, you occasionally have to change the type of mail you’re sending because what you’ve been sending isn’t performing as well as it used to.

That happened to us recently.

We had been sending out a certain postcard for several years that performed very well, but it wasn’t performing like it used to.

Around this time my 16 year old daughter was also looking to make extra money. She already did some babysitting but wanted to work in her Dad’s business if possible.

We had an idea.

Buy unique craft envelopes in bulk (birthday invitation size).

Have her handwrite the address on the envelope.

Put a real peel & stick stamp on...

You’re taking your spouse on an anniversary trip and you’d love to splurge on business class, lie-down seats but there’s no way you’re going to pay over $10,000 for the seats.

Here’s a little hack you can try that recently worked for us.

Get to the airport on your day of travel much earlier than you normally would.

Instead of going to self check-in, go to the ticket counter and ask the rep if there’s any remaining business class tickets available to buy last minute.

If there are any, usually airlines are willing to apply significant discounts at this point to sell them.

Ask the agent how much the available tickets would be and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the price.

This happened to us recently on our trip back from the UK.

A one-way business class ticket would’ve been over $10,000 on this particular airline and I already had economy tickets booked for...

This benefits you because you can sometimes get better airline award redemptions by booking the flight you want through the partners.

Confusing? Let me help.

I’ll give you an example from yesterday.

I was in the process of booking our flights to go skiing “free” again this Christmas on points.

The best airline to fly to this particular ski resort is American Airlines.

The problem is that their point redemptions are often not the best.

The good news is that American Airlines is in the same airline alliance as British Airways.

I looked up the flights on British Airways, and although British Airways doesn’t fly there, they showed me the same American flights (since they show partner award space) for a much better rate.

So instead of booking an American flight directly through American Airlines, I can book the same American flight through British Airways for fewer points.

Pretty cool,...

She got her real estate license & started letting friends & family know that she’d love to help them as they buy their next home.

One of her friends contacted her about wanting to purchase a house.

She showed them several homes & they made multiple offers, but they were outbid on each one.

They just put in an offer on another house and they got it.

Her commission was over $15,000 on this one transaction.

And she was able to do this in her spare time.

Imagine if she does this just 2 or 3 times a year with other friends & family.

Pretty nice extra income for a ministry family!

Here’s the link: https://account.chase.com/investing/self-directedoffer

The Self-Directed Account doesn’t charge fees or commissions when you purchase most stocks/bonds/funds online. It will charge you if you use a representative to transact for you, so you should definitely do it yourself.

They do charge a $75 fee if you ever withdraw all of the money.

But that is more than offset by the bonus you receive if you transfer a significant amount of investments in.

You can see their fees here: https://www.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm/global/documents/self-directed-fee-schedule.pdf

Another benefit of transferring investments in is that you may qualify for Chase Private Client as a result, which is a concierge banking service. https://www.chase.com/personal/checking/private-client

The current offer from JP Morgan is:

$50 bonus when you transfer in $5,000-$24,999