Samza Round-Up - 10/20/2022

This Week's Round-Up

Interesting email today. If you do nothing else, I'd encourage you to listen to the podcast episode I linked to. Fascinating stuff. Enjoy the weekend!

5 Budgeting Methods and How They Work

Do you ever struggle with knowing what a budget should actually look like? There are so many different apps and templates to help people budget, but more often these serve to overwhelm people with the sheer number of options. This is a simple article, outlining 5 different budgeting methodologies, and that's it. No product pushing or templates to download. Good place to start with thinking about what kind of budget might work best for you.

Reselling Costco Products on Amazon

This hustle is near and dear to my heart. This kid goes into his local costco, uses the handy dandy Amazon Seller App, and scans products into the Amazon database to determine what their price is on Amazon, and what profit he could take home after related fees. This is a business model called retail arbitrage, and works for a lot of department stores (Target, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.). You'd be surprised what things are selling for < 40% of their Amazon price in a brick-and-mortar store...

Home buyers turn to riskier loans as interest rates soar

What could go wrong with turning to the same loan products that were present leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, right? With the sharp increase in interest rates, homebuyers find themselves considering products like 2-1 buydowns (function to artificially lower interest rates for 2 years), interest-only loans, and reverse mortgages.

The problem with all of these options? They provide temporary relief to the buyer for a certain time frame, but the monthly payment will inevitably increase after this time is up, creating a bigger financial pain down the road.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that the percentage of these loan products make up anywhere near the market share that they did in 2006-2007, but it is interesting to see a very tangible evidence of people attempting to mitigate the financial strain of a mortgage in this environment.

Idea of the Week - Travel Hacking

Have a credit score over 700? Want $5,000 in free credit card rewards a year? Travel hacking is one of the "pillars" of financial independence, and that's for good reason. It is one of the highest ROI activities anyone can achieve every year. 

The concept is simple: apply for cards with excellent sign-up bonuses (normally achieved through spending a certain amount of money on the card in 60-90 days) that translate to "points" with the credit card company. These points can be redeemed at around $0.01-0.015 / per point with partnering travel agencies/companies, and you didn't have to do much besides opening a new card, changing your payment habits, and collecting the rewards. Give the article below a read to learn more:

Podcast of the Week - My First Million

This just might have been the most captivating piece of content I've consumed this entire year; and I consume podcasts 12 hours a day 5 days a week at 2x speed. 

This specific episode outlines a few different models/programs that are run by AI, including the ability to bring people "back from the dead," design your home with any theme imaginable, and curate new music from a person's history of consumption. If you don't think AI is the future and the next gold-mine, I think you're wrong. HIGHLY recommend giving this episode a listen.

This week's content is sponsored by KickFlips. Kickflips is your one-stop-shop for all things reselling; get access to hot leads, flipping guides, drop dates/times for sneakers, consoles, tickets, etc., and much more. All this for just $30 a month. I made my subscription cost back in profit within 5 minutes of joining the channel, and you can too. Check out Kickflips here.

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