Tentmaking Tips

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

And you know how no one ever takes it?

Well, it probably won’t surprise you, but I always do!

Why?

Because the in-flight offers on cards are often better than the offers online.

A few years ago it was about time to for me to get the Southwest personal card to renew my Companion Pass. I believe the bonus at that time online was 40,000 points.

I happened to be on a Southwest flight during that time & they offered an additional 10,000 points if you applied in-flight. 10,000 Southwest points is a free one-way ticket almost anywhere in the country from a major metro, so that’s a good extra bonus. Those extra 10,000 points also helped me cross the minimum points I needed to earn the Companion Pass as well.

I applied in-flight, got approved, met the minimum spend, and received 50,000 Southwest miles rather than the typical 40,000.

Recently I was...

I want to share 3 streams of income you can easily add this year with resources you already have & 1 stream of income you can add with just a little bit of work.

1. Interest Income

   If money is just sitting in your checking account, chances are you’re losing money. There are several ways to have your cash making 5% or more for you right now. I wrote about some of those recently here. Over the past few years, your extra cash wasn’t a great income stream because it was earning very little interest. Now it can earn significant interest. Make sure you are leveraging this. Invest that extra cash in a HYSA, a CD, or a short-term Treasury. This will immediately add an additional stream of income leveraging money you already have.

2. Cash/Rewards from Cards

   If you strategically make your daily purchases on certain credit cards, you can add an additional income stream (or...

I’m living proof that’s not true.

It’s a numbers game.

If you talk to enough people & make enough offers, you will find deals.

In a hot market, you may have to talk to more people to find a deal than in a cooler market, but they’re still out there.

We just closed on a deal this week that we plan to do a “Lipstick Flip” on.

We had people offering us $10,000-15,000 more than we paid for it just to “Quick Flip” it to them, but we knew if we put a little work into the house, we could make significantly more than that.

We plan to do a light remodel & then sell it again to a family who will live there.

How did we find this deal?

It was a referral from a seller we had bought a deal from previously.

We called them about a year after the first deal & asked if they had any other properties they’d be interested in selling.

They did.

By “conservative” I mean government-insured or government-sponsored accounts — CDs, HYSAs, and Treasuries.

It’s not laughable anymore!

Right now you can buy CDs or invest in Treasuries and get a yield above 5%. Unbelievable!

Now, I’ve recommended in this newsletter that you should probably consider a more aggressive (i.e. less conservative) approach to investing for long-term returns (like retirement savings).

I like stock index funds the best for this.

But all of us need a more “conservative” place to put short-term funds like our emergency fund or savings for an upcoming purchase.

The good news is you have lots of vehicles to choose between right now to get a great return.

For HYSAs, check out the Marcus savings account by Goldman Sachs.

For CDs, check out your local bank or use a broker like Vanguard to buy brokered CDs.

For...