Holiday Gift Guide and Top Ways to Save This Season
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If you're planning on doing any shopping for the holidays, and I hope this episode will both give you a ton of inspiration and ideas for gifts, as well as walk you through the three to four major ways, I get anywhere from five to twenty five percent off almost all my shopping. I'm Chris tonans in today's ft.

Guy will include over eighty different ideas for the holiday season across a bunch of categories from text, kitchen cloth, health games, kids and learning. And in addition to sharing, how makes i'm always saving, including discounted gift cards, cash back, cartland offers and more, i'm going to close this out by sharing a few of our family traditions for the holidays. And if you want to jump around, you'll find time stamps in the show notes to make IT easier to do IT.

Also, please know that none of the items in this gift guide have paid me to be a part of this list. However, some of them are sponsors of the show. But that makes sense because, as i've said before, most of my sponsors are here because I reached out to them after loving their products. And while I often read out the URL things on the show, there's just too many products.

So i'm going to put all the links to everything, including all the discounts I find at all the hacks, 点 com slash gifts。 And since a few of these links are from sponsors or are my affiliate links to sites like amazon, I would obviously greatly appreciated if you want to use them to support me in the show. Of course, if you find a Better deal somewhere else, absolutely go there instead.

Again, all the links are at all the hacks that comes slash gifts. And if you enjoy this episode, please share with a friend, leave a comment or review, and if you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click follow or subscribe. Now let's get into IT right after this.

This episode is brought you by element. Now I love element and use IT all the time, because IT helps anyone stay hydrated without the sugar and other dodgy ingredients in popular electronic and sports drinks. In fact, element is a zero sugar electronic light drink mix and Sparkling electronic water born from the growing body of research showing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations.

And you don't just have to drink a cold this holiday season, you can get the element chocolate medal and enjoy IT hot or even with your coffee, tea or o element is formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration and is perfectly suited for everyone from athletes to regular people just like me, and works if you're fasting on a kito, low carb or polio diet and if you're not cherif, its for you. Don't worry, because element offers no questions asked refunds, so you can try IT totally risk free, get your free sample pack with any element purchase at all the hacks stock com slash L M N T. This deal is only available through my link, so support the show and go to all the hacks.

Stock coms lash element L M N T and get hydrated. So when to start with some tech and personal gift ideas. First, a product I use literally every single day.

And that's the mapped iphone. IT is a magnetic wallet that sticks on your iphone. I Carry IT almost everywhere I go. IT holds about three cards.

Maybe it's two. When you start with IT, IT stretches a little bit. You could put a twenty thousand billion there. Also, just in case you need cash, I really think this is the best wallet.

IT also flips out so you can become a stand so you can baLance your phone if you're watching something or you want to keep IT upright on your desk. Definitely an an amazing product, pretty small, could be a stocking stuff here as well. Other product for your phone is the anchor charging stand.

There are so many different charging stands that you can buy on amazon in the apple store anywhere, really. And so i'm not saying this is the best one. I really like anchors products. So and what's great about this one is with the new IOS, they kind of have that clock display, which I really like, but IT also has a charging case below built into the stand for airports or an apple water or anything else. So really love these charging stands.

We have one on my desk, we have one on the size of our bed, and we even put one in the kitchen just so that we could charge your phone easily and quickly when we're cooking or doing stuff around the house side. Bonus is, if you put one in your kitchen, IT forces you to keep your phone charging in a way so you can go be a little bit more present with others, which I also like I mentioned that IT charges your airports. I've been using older gene airports for a long time, but recently i've been getting to such a little battery life that I upgraded to the airport t four.

And I really, really like the noise canceling that they added. It's just so noticeable on an airplane or in a noisy space. So i'm really happy with that in the max safe case.

And the addition of USB c means I now no longer need a lightning cable to charge any of the devices we have, which is also great. I've mentioned multiple times, probably in last year's gift guide that air tag s make a great gift. Also, we thrown in all of our bags when ever we're traveling just to get that little extra piece of mind that we know where our bags are.

And if for some reason they got lost, we could kind of help find them, which can sometimes just be helpful at an airport or something like that. I actually had a dream last night that I had two flights, and I checked my bag on the flight I didn't take. And for some reason in that dream, maybe I was preparing for this episode.

I didn't have air tags and I was stress out, okay, don't worry. This is not just a giant apple ad that might be the last apple product. So next I want to talk about the anchor G A N prime power bank.

IT looks just like a power brick that you could plug in a USB or A U S, B C. charger. But he also has a ten thousand million of hour battery built into IT and a hype hour thirty.

What charging port this is kind of replaced my need to bring any of the plugs that I used so I can charge my phone and my computer. But IT also has enough battery IT. It's a handful of charges and can even do a pretty decent job charging a laptop. Next few are a bit nuri mention on my stuff I use episode.

I really excited about backing things up locally, mostly because I started a massing so much content from this podcast, from photos I take with a nicer camera, from videos we're making, that I just wanted a place to have a back up that wasn't in the cloud that was a little bit larger than needing to pay for more than two terabytes of storage. So I got this synod gy disk station D S. Nine twenty three plus.

It's basically a network attached storage drive that you could throw three to four hard drives into and IT will Operate as a backup is on the network. But if you want, you can sink different folders to the cloud. If anyone needs something for local backup and storage, this is a great idea.

It's really easy to connect to the network, attached any computer and use as kind of an external hard drive do regular backup PS is, especially if you have slower internet or someone in your family does, and they can easily back things up online. Two other fun, nerdy gifts are a rasberry pie, which, for anyone not familiar, is basically a really tiny, sub one hundred dollar computer that you can load all kinds of things onto, from home motivation to little server. Next is probably one that a lot of people listening have, which is a set of sono speakers, or especially if it's not a set.

Sonus move speaker is waterproof, portable. The sono system, even though the latest APP update for sonus is so bad and I wish they would go back, I just think they are the best speakers that you can have for connecting everything in your house, doing everything remotely, so that you can play music without having to rely on your phone in case you need to take a phone call. I'm just such a big fan in the bedroom.

I love the eight sleep pot cover for that we have. It's a fantastic product. IT basically cools and hits your mattress on both sides to whatever temperature you want. Adjust that throughout the night. That has an topo feature.

Amy and I both have very different perspectives on what temperature you want to bed, and it's just magical, right? On winter nights, you can go in and dial IT up, and you can never warm cozy bed. But once you are sleep, they will drop the temperatures so that you actually get a Better night sleep.

Because I guess the science often shows that slightly cooler temperatures at night help Better sleep. There's a great deal for that in the show notes for everyone. Then I love my arrowing.

I had this both in fitness and here. But I figured since we're talking about sleep, i'll mention IT, I got one of the newer ones that tracks heart rate for workout. So does a little bit more. My original first gene that I bought, I looked back in the history I bought on paypal before they had an e commerce website. IT still worked, but the battery wasn't what IT used to be earlier this year, maybe late last year.

I didn't episode with Molly from sleep is a skill, and he has a whole store set up, so if you want to dial in your sleep, i'll put a link in the show notes and gift guide to her store, which has a ton of different products to help promote Better sleep from different lights to different classes and eyes, masks and all kinds of stuff. So i'll link to that. There's some really cool stuff in there.

The next three, I didn't know where to put them. So everything I just mentioned was technology related, but these are three gifts, one of which i've given multiple times, which is a subscription to delete me. IT is not the sexist gift you can give anyone, but i've given IT to all of our parents surprise.

If you're listening, that might be a gift for siblings. I just think with the amount of scamming and fishing and what A I can do to compound to that, it's more important now than ever to scrub your data off the internet. So you're just a little bit harder to find and less of a target.

So to lead me to go in and regularly and continuously pull all of your name, email address, phone number, relative names that that are out off of the hundreds and hundreds of data broker websites out there that are just constantly sharing that information. So they've been a long time partner of the show. I reached out to them.

We were actually their first podcast sponsor ever, and so we have got a great twenty percent of discount on the gift guide site. Next is one that i've never actually given, but have received, and my wife has received a few, which is just a fun video from camo. You basically can hire a celebrity, usually not a list, but be through athlete celebrity, to go record a one minute video to send someone.

And depending on the relationship, if you have with someone that can be a fun gift to send someone, you just really don't know what to send. But you know, there's a mutual show or sports team that you guys love, someone that makes a plastic action 的 characters and actually have a thing called pop yourself， where you can go in and design your own character. And so you know, you pick skin tone and whether you want eyelashes and different hair styles and what color they are, you can pick the clothes and you can basically create a character and give IT to someone.

And so it's not three d printed perfect image of you, but it's just kind of a fun thing that I was thinking this year about whether there is someone that to make a good gift for no affiliation to these guys I just thought was kind of a cool idea. So that's mostly kind of the personal tech stuff. A lot of the next category is also technology and its food and kitchen.

For some reason, I feel like maybe it's just that we love to eat, we love to cook. There are so many ideas of things that we ve asked for, things that we ve gifted in the past few years, that all fall into this bucket. Recently, a gift we received was an air fire.

We got a costi nine and one countertop air fire. IT is absolutely awesome. I am actually really surprised at how often we use this to cook almost everything from fish, chicken.

We've cooked pizzas in IT. We've cooked french is great for making quick things like chicken nugget gets for the kids reheating food. We use IT all the time. I might be late to this game. I know a lot of people have an airfare already, but definitely a cool gift idea.

And thank you, mom and dad, because we didn't have one and we didn't ask for one and there's nothing I love more than getting gifts that I didn't ask for another one that i've now gifted a handful of times is a niner creamy, which is a kind of frozen ice cream sobey milkshake maker. But the thing that I love about IT most is you can make just an incredible protein ice cream. So i'll link to both the product and the recipe for that protein ice cream.

But the ice cream that makes is just so good and you can make IT with no sugar added and IT just takes like ice cream even though there's no sugar is mind blowing. So really big fan than in a creamy also for the kids, IT makes amazing store bay so you can mash up a bunch banana freeze IT and it'll just blended into this ice cream where the only ingredient is bananas and it's delicious. We've done with strawberry another food as well.

So love and injuring amy shot up to saw hl bloom, who's been on the podcast for first. Turning me onto this next is almost anything that travel makes. I can't speak to every product they have because we haven't used all of them, but we do have the tea maker and the emersion blender.

I think we have another blender. And I just think if you're trying to buy a kitchen product, we've just been really happy with the rebel products, big fans there. I also think that something that we use all the time, and I mention this in stuff I use and I got some feedback to all here, is a belden waffle ker.

And one of those like double belgian waffles kers that you ve spin over and back. Someone failed me and said, hey, that one you recommended is four hundred dollars. Is that really that good? And my answer is, no, no.

It's really not that good. I went back and looked and IT was only seventy five dollars when we bought IT. So I absolutely wouldn't get the one I got.

But i'm surprised at how often we use a double belt on wafer maker in our house. A lot of time we use kodiak cake, add eggs and milk to make going to high protein belgian waffles. And there are just a staple and kind of a weekend morning thing for us almost every week.

One other thing we've been making a lot of is smash burgers. In fact, we were at a burger place the other day, and my wife didn't get a burger even though he loves them. And like, why not share? Like, honestly, I just want smash burgers.

I don't want these garmin burgers. And so this year we had kind of a burger party for fourth july, and I bought this quiz in our kit. There are a lot of different ones, but IT basically comes with like a cast iron press, a bunch of sheet of partment paper that you can use.

So nothing get stuck to IT and a shaker by whatever your favorite seasoning is for a math burger and a big strong spatula. And wow, we make smash burgers all the time. Get a little rioch bun, toasted IT.

Really, really big fan. No thing we make a lot is how my pizza, the uni pizza in is something that we actually gave to a family member during the holidays. A few years back, they've gotten so much use out of IT.

So if you like a fresh hold pizza, there's just nothing as good as a home. Peter and a and the oni pizza n is such a great way to do IT fun. One that i've mentioned in the past is the dash rapid eg.

cooker. Just a really silly gag gift, almost in that is so cheap. You can get IT sometimes for as low as like ten, fifteen dollars.

But it's just a great way to cook hard boiled. Dex, my wife loves them, and so i've got this easy way to make basically perfect hardboiled eggs and never have to worry about IT. And the kids love the music kit makes when it's done.

So highly recommend that if that's a stable in your house. A long time ago, we had chef David chang on, and he was talking about any day, cook ware. And it's a set of microwave cook air, that if you haven't listened to that episode, go back because I think you won't believe me.

And this is something funny when I gifted IT to my mom, and he also didn't really believe me, and then I told her to give you a chance. And now she's like, I make all the vegetables, I make all of our match potatoes s and half the time, and never thought I would cook as much in the microwave as I do. And so got a link for that.

I think they gave us a discount that still works. So you'll find that on the gift guide really love their cooker comes in a couple different colors. One other thing that I think we will shock you is we've used IT a lot for making fish.

There's this David chunk salmon recipe that we've made a bunch. And I was surprised that rozen fish can be so good, especially in the microwave, for storing all these recipes for a long, long time. I've talked about the paprica APP IT costs money, and I suggested IT in the past as a gift because I think it's so good.

But the founder of an APP called umi, which is another recipe APP email name, I was like, I really think we made an awesome APP and you'd be worth checking IT out. And so I did. And it's pretty good.

We were able to import all our recipes, sort them, plan out meals, groceries and on top of that way, less expensive. I think the Patrick a APP across all your devices can cost you fifty, sixty, seventy dollars. And the umi, best I can tell, is actually free, so big, not really a gift.

But here's my advice, if you could create a bunch of family recipes, if you could take all those old recipes that maybe your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather have in some sort of probably index cards or book, and you could turn them all into a digital recipe library, all of those recipes to different family members, I think you would be a really cool gift. That would be something that really doesn't cost anything. But you could just export the file and say, hey, i've got the entire book of family recipes in a format that you can use forever and save digitally.

So that's an idea for everyone. Device we use a lot is the core of in wine preserver. And we use IT because we just don't always want to to drink an entire bottle of wine.

IT just lets you pour by the glass out of a bottle without ruining the rest of the wine without needing to finish the bottle of wine that week. And IT does IT by replacing all of the wine with organ gas. It's really curbed our feeling like we need to just finish entire bottle at night and we almost never open the entire bottle. Must we have people over?

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We've been gifted a bunch of different insulated mugs for various reasons. And my wife the other day was just saying, none of them keep coffee warm like an Amber mug. And my mom loves her Amber mug.

Even though IT broke a few times. The customer service has always replaced IT so well. I wish I never had issues. I'm at least happy that they have good support, but an ember mug makes a great gift. They have travel ones and countertop ones actually thin sometimes during the year, they're on sale at costco, which also makes me remember that the inter creamy deluxe is available like costco. And that's where you're going to get the best deal there.

I can't promise this is still there, but if you're not a costco member right now, there's a deal to get a discounted costco membership or at least a full Price costco membership with a forty five dollar costco shop card from group on. So definitely something to look into for anyone who is looking at costco stuff but doesn't have a membership on the topic of things to put in that coffee cup. There is a product that I have never bought, but i've heard great things about and is very expensive.

But if you need a gift like this, the ratio coffee machine is something i've heard about, which is basically a machine to do por over coffee at home. It's anywhere from two hundred and fifty dollars all the way up to seven hundred dollars. IT looks really beautiful.

And if pour over coffee and automation and beautiful kitchen appliances are something that kind of meet the criteria of what you're looking for, highly recommend if you need a subscription to coffee. Trade coffee and atta s coffee club are two companies that I heard good things about. Last thing that i'll share on the drinks because I found this product and I never do where to share IT is a spirit called the path finder.

And the interesting thing about IT is there is no alcohol in IT, but it's one of the best non alcohol experience i've found. And i'd say it's somewhat similar to an tomorrow. It's just really good.

So if that sounds good, you take a look. You might be able to find IT locally and a handful of stores and is a great option for anyone not drinking this holiday season. One more idea for food is gifting or doing a hot sauce chAllenge is something I love.

I actually went to a party that our previous guest staff, smith, hosted, and he had the hot ones kit and did a tasting test. You can buy ones from hot ones. There are all kinds of products like this online.

I think we did. The tame to insane chAllenge box goes all the way up to eleven. I remember this very distinctly because number ten is called pain apple and IT is a hot sauce.

And one time, because IT doesn't have one of those lids that makes IT come out in smaller quantities, amy miscalculated and poured a lot of IT on her toko. And boy, IT was both comic, and I felt at her. But I still to this day, think it's a delicious hot sauce, so really love to do in one of these chAllenge box.

This was another gift for my parents that I never went, have expected or asked for. And that was a lot of fun. But IT also creates a fun activity that you can do during the holidays with your family.

Okay, let's talk clothing and gear. IT would be hard for me not to start with viri gear right now. I'm wearing three pieces of IT and that was not intentional.

IT just happens to be what I wear all the time. Ve got a pair of sunday performance jog's highly recommend. I've got astro taxi, also highly recommend, and a pto performance, half a hoody, really anything with their dreamed fabric is amazing.

I was actually at a conference recently, after giving someone a hug day, said, well, this is so soft, what is IT as I O is very, I felt I was a walking billboard for this company, and I don't even get all of my theory closed for free. I actually pay for them. I just love them that much.

And so they've been a long time. Maybe are the longest partner of the so big twenty percent off discount for anyone that's listening in the gift guide really love them. Amy is as big of a fan as I am, so many great products, leggings, orts, Price shirts, jackets, everything.

If you need to dress up well, I do often wear the vary meta pants as my kind of nice dress pants, and they're super comfortable if you do need kind of a fun design dressed for someone. Almost all of my dressing arts are from mono bos. They've got all kinds of cool, interesting designs.

Some have tigers, some have bunnies, some have foxes. My kids love kind of picking out something creative, so love their shirts and then also love good or sunglasses. They make a great stacking stuffer.

They're affordable, but they're also really well made. I ve used them for years and almost all environments because they're not that expensive. You don't mind wearing them the ocean or in the pool.

And I just really love that about sunglasses. I hate only a really expensive paris sunglasses that you're worried you're onna scratch or forget or anything like that. And then a new clothing brand to me that my wife asked me to put on this list because he loves IT is quints.

All their clothes are really classic, except I think I probably own five to ten a is the riviera short sleep? sure. So many different designs.

They don't go after any extreme trends, but they're really high quality. They have good manufacturing practices and they're just not as expensive as a lot of other brands. And he just got me a really nice cashmere sweater that going a lot.

This is a great example because there is an M X offer right now for forty dollars of one hundred seventy five dollars. They also make great home products. I think we use the coins to do vay on our bed, and it's wonderful.

So i'll come back to those mx offers later. But I just wanted to flag that when I noticed one of the things in this guide has a special deal. It's worth including waterproof, broken stocks.

I don't own a pair, but I think my wife and our daughter are wearing them all around all the time. Our kids also really like cracks. I had to look up what these things are called, but they have these little gibt that you can kind of add your cross for fun.

Design kids love them. Great stocking stuffer. You can, of course, buy them from cross. And they have thousands of ones on amazon as well. Next is rk dot A I, which is a really cool custom jewelry website that my wife sent me. And unfortunately, because he sent IT to me, I can probably find something to surprise her with.

But for all of you out there, if you're looking for a gift for someone and it's in the jewelry area, there's some really cool, unique stuff on here. And then last stand, socks always make a great stock and suffer. Big fan of their socks.

Of course, if you just need regular running sox, I like what they sell. Like costco, the puma socks there, there are super cheap. But when he comes to fun, unique socks stance does a really great job of making socks that last on the gear side.

I'm going to start with the tortuga backpack and daycare. The daytime ack is a new product of theirs, and IT is amazing. Big shout out to the founder of torgan, who's a listener, the show and helped us design some customer day for a trip to iceland for everyone that came, we've got logos on them really, really amazing.

But their core backpack is also fantastic. It's a big travel bag that still as a Carry on and it's basically my main bag. What i'm going anywhere, 依法 do you need a roller board？ I having a way roller board and a monos roll board that's a little bigger.

And if you need a diver bag, there is none Better that i've found than what fifty, fifty gear makes. Another all the hacks listener who started this company, really big fan of their diver bag. And we use IT all the time, just designed both for performance and aesthetic, but as well as function.

And then kiana makes a travel case that my wife has gifted to a lot people over the years. You can get custom monogram, their little leather bags, they make a great makeup bag. Next, let's talk health and fitness, something i've been using for years now.

When i'm running is the shocks open run pro headphones. I mention the airports s earlier. I love them for everything except running.

I love that these shocks headphones are open ear so you can hear things around you. Cars come in anything like that. Also, when i'm running, I really like the nike slim waist e pack.

I used to use a shoulder band, and my wife got this whistle pack. And I like, oh, that seems silly and then I tried to, I H, I H, this is much Better. And so you can't see your phone while you're running.

But let's be real. Using your phone while it's on one of those shoulder bands while you're running is not really possible either. So i've really enjoyed switching to this along the lines of running in nike. Vapor y three shoes are fantastic raised issues. My speed actually improved pretty noticeably using them, but they're not everyday shoes.

And so when I came to running, I switched to the niggly pegi forty one shoes, which I could totally customize online and I think would make a great holiday gift for who needs a pair of running shoes? Another activity we like to do out, which was actually a gift for us, was stand up antle board. So if you live near water anywhere, they're great with kids.

And they're a handful of inflatable ones you can get on amazon or at costco that i'm surprised that how often we use them just to kind of go out for an hour, paddle around in the sun winters, probably not the ideal time to use them, but maybe it's the ideal time to buy them because they're probably not that popular yet. And so I don't know that makes a great gift. We have two of them, and we go out with the kids probably once a month when it's warm, amy added the jay yoga harmony yoga mat, which, if you want a really high quality yoga mat, this is a great one.

It's actually funny because I have this old crappy yoga mat, and I always was like, do you really need a nici yoga at? And every now and then will both do a yoga class together at home. And i'll be like, yoga are really nice.

Mine is like chipping apart. So really like that yoga mat. When she's not using IT, sometimes I borrow IT if you're lifting. I've long been a fan of the boat flag. Select tech adjustable dumbbells IT just saves the need to have a whole rack of dumb lls, and you can adjust in really tight. Love those for water bottles.

I feel like we've been gifted every water bottle under the sun from conferences and companies, but we've ended up slowly removing all the non hydro flask bottles and keeping the last one. So that is definitely our house pick for water bottles. And then last, this is of another weird one.

But within the health and fitness world, I think they're a handful of diagnostic that might make sense to give someone so for ample high cholesterol runs in our family. So I gave a lot of people in our family A L P. Little, a lood test.

I just ordered IT up at lab core quest. Whatever was closer to a lot of people. So they knew that kind reminds to me of how lots of people were giving out twenty three and me kids back in the day.

I'm going to dive into an episode about a lot of different diagnostic scans in the future. But some of the interesting things to consider as gifts are getting someone to dex is, can I did mind IT dex fit. And they have locations all around the country.

And I was a really cool experience. So that would be a cool one. Not that expensive.

Instead, lab has a longevity panel that's about three hundred dollars. There's function health. There's inside tracker, include links to all of these, but that's something super interesting.

I know that some insurances might cover a few of these tests, not all of them. It's kind of a weird gift to give someone, but he was really, really insight ful for me to look at all this data. Scheduled a calcium score test with something I know a lot of people in my family have done because of the history of cardiovascular disease.

So that's another one. There is the true diagnostic true age score. There's a true diagnostic biological age test.

There's just a lot of interesting things that could make for good gifts for someone you know well enough to sign up for a medical treatment or test or diagnostic. Okay, under the fun stuff. I'm a big fan of all kinds of games.

In the past, i've talked about box one, which is best I could describe, kind of like an adventure game, meta scape room for a single player served up in a box like a board game. And I loved IT. And the only thing that I didn't love about IT was once you play IT, there's no replay value.

So it's built and sold by a company called theory eleven. And I happened to meet the guy, JoNathan, who started this company and runs IT. And I asked him this year, I said, here, there, there, anything cool coming out? And I had no idea what he was going to say, but he told me box too, he is coming out now I can't look at the website right now because it's not even been announced.

But by the time this episode comes out, box two will be out. I one hundred percent will be buying box to immediately as soon as it's there, or at least giving IT to someone as a Christmas gift idea. IT was so much fun. Playing box won highly, highly recommend.

Three eleven also sells magic tricks, but they also sell the most beautiful playing cards out there in almost every possible design you could imagine, from broadway shows to movies to Harry potter, one of the best stocking stuffer you can give someone everything from box sets down to a single deck. Love what theory eleven makes. And if anyone in the family or your kids are aspiring to learn magic tricks, they have so many high quality products as well.

Couple of small games that are easy to travel with. Monopoly deal, we play all the time. Cool, we play all the time.

And a new one that someone brought on our iceland trip that I didn't get a chance to play but was told is amazing, is ill mat, it's a card game. I'm excited to test IT out. I bought IT, but I haven't not played IT yet.

For anyone that loves games, i've really enjoyed having a subscription to games magazine. Each month. I get kind of a magazine with a bunch of everything from word puzzles to other riddles and games.

Another puzzle that I think is fun as a stocking suffer is called hino model, is a japanese flag puzzle. And i'm telling you, it's so simple and its design and IT is so difficult. I've been trying to solve IT for the Better part of a few months.

I haven't SAT down for hours and hours, but every time I have fifteen minutes, I take IT out and try to figure that out. And it's both difficult and simple and easy and inexpensive. Linked to that, it's really great.

And then i've recently gotten excited watching these different puzzle boxes get played. So there's a name, Chris rami, that has a youtube channel where he tries to solve all of them and record himself doing IT. And most of them are pretty expensive.

And so I haven't really wanted to throw down hundreds of dollars for a puzzle as much as watching him do that makes me want more and more of them. If anything, I want to start kind of a puzzle. Renting service because once you solve IT, there's not a lot of useful.

This company, puzo potato, had an item on kick starter, which was called the tesla puzzle. And I thought, well, this one is less expensive than most. Let's support them.

I bought IT. IT was IT was amazing. Awesome gift idea under one hundred dollars. Highly, highly recommend for anyone who likes puzzles and chAllenges and escaping style things that can be done at home. And the only unfortunate is now that i've done IT, I can't solve IT again because I already know the answers. So that's going to become a gift for someone else this year.

And then finally, this isn't really a game, but I really enjoyed trying to learn the art or kill of lock picking, not for any nefarious reasons, but just because mechanically, it's very difficult even though you know how that works. And so one cool thing that you could give to anyone who might be interested as a little lock picking, you actually see how locks work. A lot of them come with kind of clear locks that you can look into so that you can see how the process works and is super interesting. Obviously, I wouldn't give this gift to anyone with criminal tendencies, but just a skill to pick up in practice. It's really interesting .

this episode brought to you by one password, which i've used for over a decade and absolutely love. So how do you make a password that is strong enough and no one will guess IT and impossible to forget, and do IT for hundred different sites hand, make sure everyone in your company and family can do the same without ever needing to recept them. Sounds impossible unless you have one password.

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When IT comes to managing my money, there is one API check almost every day. And it's copilot. Our sponsor today is one of my all time favorite apps. It's on my home screen, and IT makes IT so seamless and easy to track your spending and manage your entire financial picture.

And just this k, they launched an importer for all your old mint data, which is amazing because I just imported one thousand nine hundred and seventeen transactions dating back to two thousand twelve, which means I now have over a decade of all of my financial data in one place. Now, I ve tried so many apps for tracking spending last year, I evaluated over a dozen of them, but copilot is the only one i've kept using. You can link your account at over ten thousand institutions, and their expense categorization is the best I ve used.

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So for the best APP to track your spending, subscriptions and investments, go to all the hacks stock com slash copilot on an iphone or mac to download copilot and enter code hacks to during on boarding for a two month free trial again, that's all the hacks, dot coms lash copilot and the code hacks to for a free two month trial of my favorite ite personal finance APP I just wanted. Thank you quick for listening to in supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the urls, codes, deals and discounts from our partners, you can go to all the hacks dot com slash deals. So please consider .

supporting those who support us. okay? Two more categories on kids.

I want to share one of my favorites, which every time i'm using IT, another parents sees IT and says, what is that? Where do I get that? And that's the ukip kids learning skate board.

It's basically a skateboard that can help someone progress from probably the age of eighteen months, two years old, all the way up to five or six or seven. And it's just been really awesome to watch our girls learn how to baLance and learn how to lean. They've really enjoyed IT.

These kids gift are going to go all over the place. But another one is the malta and dug pizza play set. We've got a lot of these little like play sets around the house, but for some reason, the pizza one just seems to be the most popular. So really like that, you can get IT at target.

Another thing that's been hugely popular, our house, is a tony box I talked about in a while ago because not only can you buy characters that sit on top of this box, that's basically a speaker that's connected to the internet and play songs and stories, but you can record your own custom stories. In the past episode, I talked about how I use A I to create stories in my own voice that I generated with a GPT. I heard some good feedback also about the auto, which is an alternative to tony.

It's nice to have a thing that kind of like watching shows for kids that isn't screen time. Another one we actually had a wait for a while on was a nugget, which is basically a set of, I don't know, like cushions that you can use to build forts, that you can use to create kind of sitting area, you can use as a makeshift bed for a sleep over. It's really great.

Another really cool thing, we saw costco for kids that could be a fun. Is this really cool lego table that kind of pops open stores, all these legos closes, has a whole lego surface on top. So that was won that I was like, ash, we have something similar, but I really want this one.

So that's a good one for kind of fund stocking stuffer jelly cat stuff. The animals are a big hit in our house as well as coLoring books, and there's actually a cool coLoring book kit that i'll link to. There's nothing unique about IT other than the markers are all kind of built into IT.

So when we travel a little bit easier for anyone who has really Young kids or needs a gift for someone with Young kids, I love every subscription or just a gift. They make these modesty toys and kits. So for every kind of three months or four months of age, they have a different kit that they send with everything from books to an instruction guide to a bunch of different toys and learning activities that we've really loved.

Another thing that we don't yet own, but I really want, and I don't have a particular brand to recommend, is a swedish latter, which is kind of like a indoor gym for kids that you can mount on the wall. Some of them are free standing. And if you just search for IT on amazon, there are a bunch of different ones.

But this is something that if we had the right space in the house, we would probably definitely have IT right now. We do not, but it's something that I think our kids would love and would be a really awesome thing to get them. And then I probably you have mention this in the game section, but i'm not going to go through all the kids games.

There are so many, but i'm gna flag one and it's not a particularly fun game for adults. But the only reason i'll share IT is because there are not a lot of games that are easy to play with a very Young kid, eighteen to thirty six months, but there's this game called monkey around, which basically is a big bag banana. And each car just tells you something to do with IT.

And our kids really loved IT at that age when we were trying to you play a board game with them, and they were just weren't ready for IT. I would recommend the game first orchard, which was a good board game, to kind of start to teach kids about games. But man, this monkey around game they just loved for, I guess, all the obvious reasons.

But all they do is, here is a banana baLanced on your head. Hop around with the banana toss IT hold IT under your legs. That last is the books and learning section. A few things here.

So if you want to learn about diving down rabbit holes on the internet, steff Smith course that we talked about in my episode with her, there's still a two hundred dollar discount for her course called the internet pipes. If you want to learn really anything. Huge fan of master class.

We've pardew with them for a long time. I've given IT as multiple gifts. There's gonna holiday promo on the gift guide.

So I just think it's a really excEllent gift, especially if you need a last minute idea because you can buy IT online. But even if you don't, there are so many different things that really anyone can learn from. Someone wants to dial in their credit card game.

You could obviously get them a copy of my credit card tool. And then last one that we've given to, I think every family member is stories worth, which is basically a book that gets built over the year. So you send all these prompts to someone in your family, a parent, a grandparent, they answer these emails.

And then at the end of the year, all of the e mail replies get package up into a book. So IT might be something like, tell me about your first date. Tell me about your first job.

What was your childhood like where did you live? And you start to build these amazing stories from your family that you can pass down from generation to generation. Last on books.

There are so many books that different guests we've interviews this year have talked about. I'm just onna put the full list of all the book recommendation in the gift guide. Again, all the hacks star comes as gifts instead of just reading the name of all the books right now.

okay. So I hope that gift guide was helpful, but what I think is even more helpful is saving money on all the gifts you're buying, whether they're on the list or not. And so I want to talk about a handful of the ways I make sure i'm always getting the best deal.

So first off, there are few sale periods like black friday, cyber monday. Always a good time to consider what you're buying, but do make sure that those sales are real. And so I always like to install the browser extension keeper, which when you're browsing anything on amazon, you can look down and see if that Price has changed over time.

So right now, i'm trying to find a product that has a good history. I'm looking at the wu ki skateboard, and i'm seen that right now it's one hundred thirty nine dollars. But prior to october fifth, IT was always one hundred and twenty dollars and IT drop a handful of days since then.

So that tells me that one thirty nine maybe is the new Price and one nineteen is maybe the previous Price. But if on black friday, they end up saying, oh, it's on sale and they drop IT to one thirty five IT might not really be a sale. I have seen a ton of times where people increase the base Price discounted and IT looks like a big sale, but it's not actually that much cheaper than IT Normally is.

So the keep brothers extensions really helpful to be able to track those Prices. Now once you've decided that you want to buy something and it's a good Price, I want to make sure that I can get cash back if possible. And so I like to go to cash back monitor, and that gives you a dashboard of all of the different places you can get cash back.

So for example, let's take nike, let's say you want to buy those pegasi forty one shoes that I mentioned, which is actually a process that I went through when I bought them. And you can see that you can get anywhere from one to two miles per dollar with airlines. You can get two credit card points.

Sometimes there's bonuses. So one of the credit card portals right now is at fifteen points per dollar. But you can also just get cash back.

So records at eight percent back. Top cash backs at ten percent and this stuff changes all the time. So I think going on the cash back monitor or seeing what kind of deals are there is interesting. But also some of these cash back portals have their own promotions.

And so as of recording this, i'm not sure if these will still be around when this episode comes out, but for anyone who was subscribed to all the hacks newsletter, I will have sent them all around to everyone before they spire. If you're not all the hack stock, come flash email to get on for the next time. But all the airline shop in portals, american, delta, southwest, united, all have promos going on right now.

Or if you spend a certain amount through the portal, i'll give you a lot of bonus miles and those bonuses end up being somewhere in the three to seven percent back range. And that's primarily my calculations looking at gift cards to com, which will come back to but i'm always looking at ways to get cash back when i'm shopping online. If there's a bonus at an airline portal, that could make sense.

If not, i'm almost just focusing on ratten because you not only get cash back, but you can convert that cash back to M X points if you want. And with a referral, which i'll put in the gift guide, you can usually get a free thirty to forty dollars with your first purchase. So ninety nine percent of all my shopping online, i'm doing rocket.

But every now and then i'll go to cash rack monitor and i'll see o racket might be three percent and there's some promotion going on that's twenty percent back from other portal. Now there are always some terms. Sometimes they're pretty straight forward and just this is the deal.

And sometimes IT says, well, IT only applies in a certain area or a maximum purchase amount of this. So definitely look at those terms. But I ve earned probably hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars in cash back from optimizing these cash back portable.

Les, a new one that i'm expLoring is called kudos. And the way that works is a little bit more confusing. You load your credit cards into IT, and they multiple credit card rewards.

So IT looks like according to them, you can get up to twenty five percent back. This must be a startup that's funded by some kind of meta capital because I don't see how you could get twenty five percent back sustainably. So i'll put my referral link in there if you want to get a heads start to some of that cash back and play around with IT.

But those are kind of a couple of the ways i'm getting cash back on bine. But that's not IT. So I want the best Price. I want to get the most cash back. But when he comes time to pay for IT, yes, I you're using the right card, but even Better than using the right credit card is often times using a gift card.

And so what i'll do is i'll go online and see if I can find a gift card for that merchant that might actually be cheaper than actually using a credit card when you factor in all the points and everything like that. So a few options here. So one, obviously, you could go buy the gift cards at a grocery store or if there's a sale a lot of times on the weekends for whatever Roger safeway have been having deals where you earn a lot of extra points or discounts for buying gift cards.

So that's one option. Costco is known to have a bunch of gift cards on sale, but they usually have limits. So I know recently you could get uber gift cards for seventy five dollars for hundred dollars in value, or dash an instinct for eighty dollars for hundred dollars value.

Also regularly have five hundred dollars of southwest credit for four hundred and thirty dollars. So a lot of ways to buy him yourself, but in limited quantities, and only when they happen to be on sale and in stock. Though costa s.

Are available on their website, there are also a few apps that I use regularly to find gift cards. And so one of them is the pepper APP. So you can go to go pepper dot com, or you can just search for pepper in the APP store.

The way that works is you can buy gift cards at whatever value you want and earn pepper points. I mentioned this in my ephod, Kevin rose. And the points you earn could be anywhere from, like, the equivalent of four x points, which is about four percent cash back. But sometimes they boost IT.

And i've got amazon gift cards for fourteen x points, which is the effectively fourteen percent cash back, which is way Better than using my amazon card to go and buy anything on amazon because that maximum getting me five, maybe six percent if you delay your shipping and have the right card to do that. So these gift cards go on sale all the time. So it's hard to know when you're going to get the best deal on what.

But right now i'm looking and if you wanted to buy los gift cards, you can get fifteen percent off or fifteen six points. Nikes at fifteen calls is at sixteen. And so every day the deals change.

But there's a lot of great opportunity. If you're gonna spend two hundred dollars, make sure you use someone's referred code because you get an extra twenty dollars. Mine is six one two, three four two is not the Normal thing where you you use a name or a link.

It's just a six digit number. That's one option. Another option is an APP called flues. You can find IT in the APP store, and they basically also let you just buy gift cards.

They're usually not at that big of a discount, as i've seen when pepper APP puts things on sale. An example right now, we're making a purchase on hanna Anderson to buy some Christmas bajas and you could earn up to five percent back. So you go and purchase a gift card.

You put in the exact amount you want even to the send, and you basically pay for the gift card. And then you just get some cash back that I think you could just use for another gift card. So if you can't find as good of a deal in pepper, you might be able to find IT in the fu zapp.

And even if there's not a bonus, sometimes it's still a great deal. So i'll mention in a few minutes while we were shopping on hana Anderson to buy holiday paja and they had a five x points, which is basically five percent off, and there is no other deal for hana Anderson. So that was way Better than me using a car that would probably just get two percent back or two points per dollar.

Another interesting option is gift cards dot com. And the reason is interesting is because it's in a lot of the shopping portals. So I know on recent, you get two and a half percent back on purchases up to two thousand dollars.

But if you suck IT with a lot of those airline deals that are happening in the airline shopping portals, then you can get three and a half to seven percent back. So there can be some really good deals. They also have their own rewards program.

So when you end up buying something on gift cards dot com, you can stack the cash back with whatever cash back portal or racket you're using. You can stack the gift card doc com rewards. And on top of that, you can also layer on your credit card rewards depending on those factors.

And what you see on an apple pepper IT may may not be a good deal, but is at least an option, especially with some of holiday shopping portal bonuses. There are some going on now, and there will inevitably be more going on in the future. Now, one interesting thing i've learned, as I dug in to all of this gift card buying and selling marketplace is that a lot of people who buy these gift cards are turning around and reselling them.

So there's a pretty active market place for buying and selling gift cards. I might actually do an entire episode on that and bring on someone i've gotten to know who runs one of them. But if you are interested, and this is kind of a long shot, might be relevant to two or three of you.

But if anyone is making very, very large purchases, let's call IT in the probably ten thousand plus a year range at a major in whether that amazon best by apple, uber, dora ash inster card, there is an opportunity to actually buy those gift cards wholesale in bulk. And happy to try to help make that happen for anyone that's interested. But most of these whole sailors are really not interested unless you're in the kind of five figure plus range.

Otherwise it's just easier free to go buy them from an APP like pepper or gift cards that com or at costco, which is really the source of them all in the first place. But the short answer is almost every online retailer IT is a Better deal to pay with a gift card that you buy at a discount. Then IT is to pay with your credit.

Or the last is card linked offers. And so almost every credit card platform from every major issue has a set of offers where from time to time, there are things like get forty dollars off one hundred dollars, get ten percent off up to two hundred dollars at so many different retailers. I mentioned this when I talked about quinta earlier because there was an M.

X. Offer for forty dollars off one hundred seventy five dollar purchase actually went through a max and chase and looked at the lifetime dollars that i've earned from all of these card link to offers. And for me personally, across my and amy's cards is twenty two hundred seventy dollars and fifty two cents, which is actually pretty astonishing because that makes up for a lot of the annual fees that i've paid on a lot of these cards.

And it's been on things like delta, dropbox, love every hydrox. So absolutely worth especially right before the holiday season or anytime we're doing a lot of shopping to just go online and look at your cards website and see what deals are there. Sometimes there's nothing relevant.

Sometimes there's a ton of relevant stuff that wraps up most of the ways I save money when I shop. If you go back and listen, episode one, ninety five IT was fifty ways I earn more points without spending more. There are a few more tactics that were in that episode that i'm not necessarily cover right here.

Hopefully, I just gave you a bunch of gift ideas and ways to save money on those gifts. Now, since I know you're all thinking that was so valuable, what gift should I give Chris for the holidays? Don't worry, i'm not asking you to spend money and tend me anything, but I do have one.

They won't cost you anything and is so easy that i'll ask for. And it's just if you could pick your favorite episode, the podcast or maybe it's a few different ones and share them or the podcast in general with anyone and everyone you think might enjoy IT or get value from IT. IT would really mean the world to me if you want to go above and beyond.

Of course, you could share the newsletter leave rating in review. But my main ask this year, if you've got ten any out of the show, is to just share IT with someone. Thank you so much in advance for that.

Finally, as I mentioned, I went to wrap up and just share some of the holiday traditions that we have. And I did invite anyone with a fun holiday tradition that they d like to share, send an email podcast at all the hacks that come. I'd love to collect them all and maybe find a place for a time to share them back with people.

The first one i'll talk about is that on one side of our family, we started doing a kind of everyone picks one person and gets one really nice gift. And we actually evolved IT to just be each couple, so we might draw, you know, a sibling or a parent, and everyone goes and tries to find something really nice and meaningful instead of trying to find a about small gifts. So for example, one of them one year was an uni p to.

And so we were able to go a little bit above and beyond and get something really interesting for one member of the family. And then that person had another person, kind of like a White elephant, except serious gifts instead of fun gifts. So that was one thing we did each year.

Everyone gets an ornament in our family, and so our tree is covered with all these different unique ornaments. Sometimes it's related to something we did that year. For example, one year I was really in a fantasy football.

And so amy got a fantasy football. The men, or IT, might be from a trip wei took. So we have a very personalized set of ornaments on the tree.

As I mentioned earlier, we buy matching pajamas, usually from hanna Anderson, both for Christmas morning and to take photos, which has been a fun tradition. We actually try not to to buy gifts for our family, but for other people who don't have them. And we try to incorporate the girls in this process.

And sometimes local businesses or our employers have driven this. Other times, we drive at ourselves and we will go and say, take a list of ten people and we will go to target and we will have the girls help us pick out gifts for a bunch of kids or adults. And on that day, it's not about anything for us.

It's about for someone else. So we like to try to incorporate some form of giving. Especially with the kids so that they understand that there are a lot of people that don't have what they have and they get to experience what it's like to try to provide others.

Last year, we actually did a big charity fund raiser on the podcast. As you all know, we ended up funding two entire water projects in cambodia. And based on the update I just recently got, they finished all the permits, partners, supplies.

And over the next six months, they're actually going to be doing construction. So stay tuned there. Another one is anytime a toy is introduced to our house, we try to rotate another toy out and either give that toy away or put IT in storage.

So they're our toys everywhere. IT turns out that if you take a toy and put IT in a closet for six months and give IT to your kids again, IT almost feels like a new toy. So that's another great hack.

And then each year, we try to make a tradition out of doing a cookie decorating party. So we'll bake a lot of holiday cookies and invite friends and family over using the nick cocktail party formula, which, if we say that, I pis so good back and check that out and invite people over. And you can decorate cookies and leave with a little bag of cookies.

So I secretary want to evolve that to a ginger red house making party. But the sheer quantity of ginger bread that needs to be made is just not something that we're ready to do right now. So I think those are most of the traditions are always open to more.

Again, share them podcast at all, the hacks, stock com. Finally, reminder that links to all the products and gifts and ideas I mentioned, including dozens of them with really great discounts or referred codes, are all in the shopping notes and at all the test dog com slash gifts that is IT for this week. I will see you next week.