T Nation

Personal Finance Thread

#105

Look into FB and Instagram marketing. It’s still way underpriced and you can target people like crazy. Say you only want to reach 45 year old men in your town who golf, are divorced and smoke cigars. You can do that for very cheap. I’d recommend the class “Billy Gean is marketing/clicks into customers”. I think the whole 10 week course is $100.

That way all you need to do is build the landing page for your customer. If you set up the sales funnel correctly you’ll capture the info of the customer and deliver it to the business owner on a silver platter. That way you aren’t trying to convince the old man shop owner that “views” or “clicks” or “impressions” matter. You’re value proposition is “here are customers who already buy what you’re selling. That’ll be $2,000.”

#106

This is the only part I truly can’t imagine how would work. Without asking you to write an essay, do you care to explain just a little bit how this is structured and works?

#107

I’ve only used it a few times. Basically you give value (coupon, ebook, free event, email tips etc…) to a group of people who already love a certain type of product, but don’t know your client exists. Facebook knows what people “like” so they did that part for you.

So the people sign up for the free giveaway and get introduced to your awesome client and decide to do business with them, after they’re impressed by the freebie/coupon. The trick here is to only do business with clients that are actually good.

#108

EDIT: upon further reading of this thread I’m just repeating an old conversation so just ignore me.

Digging up an old post in this thread but since I’ve spent 11+ years working in the gambling industry just wanted to say that it is totally legit.

Matched betting works by placing a bet on the outcome of a match to get your free bets, then placing a bet on another site against that bet. Because of the house edge this will result in a small loss, but you then have in free bets that you can use to repeat the process, guaranteeing at least a small win.

Example (all numbers made up off the top of my head):
Sign up to site #1 for an offer of “bet £10 to get £20 in free bets” and bet £10 on Inter Milan to score >1 goal to return £14.

Calculate how much you need to bet to cancel this out, then go to Betfair and bet on Inter Milan to score <1 goal. Based on these bets you’ll lose let’s say £0.45.

However you now have £20 in free bets from site #1. So you bet that £20 on a long shot, let’s say a 5/1 bet. Then, you go to Betfair again and bet £20 against it at roughly 1/5.

If it comes in, great, you have £120 profit and £20.45 losses. If it doesn’t, you have £5 profit. Wash, rinse, repeat across every welcome/reload/lifecycle offer at every online bookie available to you.

Most people don’t do it and even some of those that do don’t do it properly and still lose, so it’s not exactly a huge impact on the bookies’ bottom line. If everyone got onto doing it properly then yes, they’d have problems.

They will still ban people who consistently make profits but because you’re doing it at a multitude of sites then it takes a while. You can definitely make some relatively easy cash along the way.

#109

I’m not very familiar with how Facebook works because I’ve used it very little. Does that simply mean that the content you post will be preferentially shown to people that fb’s algorithm deems interested, or are there specific tools for content creators to promote said content?

Is this what people that have a “sign up to download free ebook - enter email address here” on their web page are doing?

#110

We continue to carry a home warranty because our heat pump and A/C units are 25ish years old…

#111

You can pay to target your ads to any demographic you want. The more specific the demographic the cheaper cost per click FB charges you. So it would be pretty cheap for me to target say, teenage boys in your Italian town who lift weights and like sugary cereal. That add would show up in your feed and not even look like an ad. It would be something you’re legit interested in. It’s very powerful. Imagine how expensive it would be to get an ad to you through radio or TV, and you’d probably ignore that one anyway… those FB/instagram ads are underpriced by 1000%

The thing you have to make sure you do is promote relevant content to lower your cost per click. For instance don’t target 75yo grandmas with an ad for call of duty.

I can’t emphasize this enough. The list of warm prospects is worth more than the sale. I’d rather get your information than sell to you on the first contact. Sales research teaches us that you convert at 10x the rate after 5 or more contacts.

For instance: I signed up for the Tnation forum because I liked their articles and the banter here. Then they started sending me links to their articles every Sunday night. I eventually bought some of their protein powder. I’m just a weekend warrior and I’d rather eat real food, but I figured what the hell. Then I realized it was high quality and mixed well. I buy a tub probably 4x a year when they go on sale. I never would have bought any if they didn’t provide me free articles from real professionals and a place to hang with meatheads… which was all “free” to me.

#112

My fridge, dishwasher and water heater all failed the year after our home warranty was up. Ugh.

#113

That sucks. We’ve used ours a good bit.

#114

Thank you so much. I’ll make sure to reread your post when I get home and really absorb the info

#115

Word of mouth. Meet people. When they ask tell them what you do and to cal if they ever need it. Eventually you’ll get a cal or two.

One client =2 clients. 2 clients = 4… referral work happens when you do good work.

Your young. Start trying now and when you get older it’ll be second nature. Don’t worry it’ll happen. Jsut don’t be that guy whose to scared to start…

That’s if this type of work is for you. Some people can’t do it.

#116

For me the biggest thing has been making my saving automatic. People are really good at adjusting their life style to their incomes (this is why many people who make $100K+ salaries still live pay check to pay check). So if you get a raise, but were living happily before, set up the raise to be contributed to a retirement account.

The second biggest thing is to never take loans. I have a 15 year mortgage at 2.75% interest, but it is almost impossible to buy a house without a mortgage. I went to community college, and transferred to a university which I attended while living with my parents and working. The fact that borrowing money for a car is normal has always been absurd to me. Don’t give me the I need to get to work excuse. I drove a $600 car for 4 years and 60,000 miles. Guess what every now and then I had to get under it and fix it. It was a pain, but not nearly the pain of paying hundreds a month on a car loan.

#117

@samul, as a heads up, this is also the core principle behind Gary Vee’s “jab, jab jab, right hook” approach. Read/watch anything you can on that. Awesome resource.

#118

My Ally savings now give 2.2% Annually. FDIC insured, $30 minimum, free transfers, 6 free withdrawls a month.

Open one, and get excited about free money. It’s a huge motivator to save, at least for me anyway. There are other options besides Ally that may have another .1% or so, but Ally is easy and user friendly.

I laugh when I read articles that say savings accounts aren’t a good idea, cause they’re usually referring to the bullshit accounts like wells fargo that has like 0.01%.

#119

Inflation for 2019 is going to be 2%. So in real purchasing power your money will grow about .2%. Savings accounts are okay for emergency funds… not much else. I’d recommend other asset classes for real growth.

https://knoema.com/kyaewad/us-inflation-forecast-2018-2019-and-up-to-2060-data-and-charts

#120

Imo this is a good reason to get a decent credit card (WHOOP WHOOP COSTCOOOO) and never use your debit card again if you can help it.

I get more back in cashback than I would ever see out of a savings account (no reason not to do both if you don’t mind the money moving hassle).

#121

Do any of the other asset classes come with zero risk?
Are they FDIC insured?
Do they require time from me to research in order to make informed decisions?

It’s a savings account, not playing with stocks here. When I have money that I can afford to lose I will start playing with stocks and index funds.

I pointed this out because when I TOLD MY CPA ABOUT THIS he gave me a surprised look and proceeded to write down the name of the bank cause even he didn’t know about it. I thought others may not know about it either. I find it to be a decent motivator for those who have a hard time with saving.

#122

Agreed. Fuck the perks, fuck the airline miles, give me CASH BACK. I went from discover (1%) years ago to capitol one (1.5%), and I’ve been using the Citi Double cash back (2%). I’ve seen it rated 1st or 2nd place on CNBC.

#123

@pfury @carbiduis

You guys ever carry a balance? I know if you’re super duper careful you can win with CC’s. But they wouldn’t offer that 2% cash back if 99.9% of customers didn’t still make them money.

My risk averse butt has accepted that I’m not special and that I would probably end up losing money to the CC company if I played that game.

#124

Pre house purchase I spent about a year carrying a balance of ~10% my max. Fico soars that way. Beyond that nah, I don’t bother.

Most credit card companies also get a bit of scratch per transaction from whoever you made the purchase with.

I have both of my credit cards set to auto pay the full amount every Monday morning.