Ski Trip Mishaps, AI Interior Design, Reflecting on Life and More

Summary

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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life

Episode: Ski Trip Mishaps, AI Interior Design, Reflecting on Life and More
Host: Chris Hutchins (CH)
Guest: Amy (Chris's wife)
Date: March 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is a lively, candid conversation between host Chris Hutchins and his wife, Amy, centered around their recent family adventures—both the mishaps and hacks that come along. They detail a dramatic ski trip gone awry (involving lost clothes), dive into Amy’s use of AI for affordable home redesign, share practical travel and wellness tips for families, and get honest about navigating high-deductible health plans and joint finances. Throughout, their approachable, hack-first mindset shines through, offering listeners real, actionable advice layered with personal stories and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Great Ski Trip Mishap: Lost Clothes and the Power of Persistence

• Story Recap (00:00 – 12:08)

  • Chris recounts accidentally throwing away his wife’s and daughters’ clothes in a rental house dumpster after a ski trip. Amy was "not happy", leading to late-night blame debates and attempts to recover the lost items.
  • Chris refuses to give up, leveraging social media, Reddit, and local connections to find someone willing to dumpster-dive for the bags.
  • Eventually, a kind handyman named Gordon, compensated and supported by Chris (he even builds Gordon a business website as thanks), and another Good Samaritan via Reddit help retrieve and deliver the clothes all the way back home.

• Memorable Quotes

  • "I am sometimes just not willing to give up...maybe the time—not just sometimes, it's never." – Chris (08:00)
  • "The silver lining...is it became so apparent to me that humanity is still alive and thriving, and there's so much good in the world that I think we never really hear about or talk about." – Amy (10:17)

• Key Takeaways

  • Persistence pays off, especially when combined with community resourcefulness.
  • There’s a ripple effect of goodwill and karma—doing good often comes back.
  • Sometimes a mishap can result in unexpected, meaningful connections and stories.

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2. Family Ski Trips: Hacking the Logistics & Enjoyment (14:30 – 22:34)

• Strategy Shifts & Lessons

  • This ski season, the family upgraded to all-in on Epic Passes, booked more ski school for the kids (unlocking true ski vacations for the parents), and found ways to make trips more affordable and enjoyable.
  • Booking accommodations: By networking and searching old emails, Chris booked a rental house directly with the manager, saving 25% off VRBO.
  • Airline travel hacks: Used credit cards with checked bag perks, employed travel bag weighers for efficiency, and enjoyed the Delta Sky Club perks.
  • Unexpected road trip lessons: Always bring a travel potty, extra snacks, and download content for the kids.

• Notable Quotes

  • "If you put a kid in a lesson for the full day, you don't get to see them ski. But they're making so much progress, you don't want to take them out." – Chris (15:58)
  • "I can already see into the future of us actually all skiing...I see this short window where it's like, now we can all ski together. And I'm really excited for that." – Chris (18:31)

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3. Using AI for Affordable, Beautiful Home Redesign (22:34 – 34:12)

• Amy’s Process & Big Wins

  • Stepping back from work gave Amy time to experiment with AI tools (Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT) to design and visualize room makeovers.
  • She emphasizes AI’s collaborative, creative potential: acting like a virtual design partner that refines, suggests layouts, finishes, and even sources affordable furniture.
  • Key to success: Amy took the lead without Chris’s day-to-day involvement, and AI helped bridge prior design differences with human designers.
  • Implemented cost-saving strategies: pressured AI to find similar-looking, less expensive furniture and repurpose existing pieces.

• AI Tool Breakdown

  • Gemini: Best at generating images and sourcing furniture, leveraging Google’s reach.
  • Claude: Excellent for precise measurements, layouts, and practical constraints.
  • ChatGPT: "The visionary"—offered creative ideas.
  • Nano Banana: Used to synthesize the final look and make tweaks.

• Quotes

  • "With AI, anyone can make the room look incredible. Like, just absolutely dialed in, and it doesn't take a lot." – Amy (23:13)
  • "We did the whole thing for a few thousand dollars each. It wasn't like we spent $10,000 to redo two rooms." – Chris (33:22)
  • "You can see something and say, 'I love the look of this...Can you find a few alternatives that have the same kind of look that are cheaper?' And it did just that." – Amy (33:47)

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4. Favorite Home Gadgets & Wellness Wearables: Real-World Pros and Cons (34:14 – 43:24)

• Tech Reviews

  • Skylight Calendar: Initially promising as a family organizer but essentially now just a digital photo frame; too many features, not enough depth in any one.
  • Ratio Coffee Machine (gifted): Earns glowing praise for delivering café-tier coffee with minimal effort, especially synced with a Baratza burr grinder—combo satisfies both Chris’s perfectionism and Amy’s need for convenience.
  • Whoop vs. Oura Ring: Amy tested both. Whoop pushes her to be more active and provides more actionable fitness feedback, while Oura is more passive and lifestyle/monitoring oriented.
  • B Transcription Device: Always-on, privacy-conscious audio transcriber that creates daily action items, integrates with AI agents, and helps both personal and business productivity. Both admit it’s a little creepy but appreciate its utility.

• Notable Quotes

  • "[Whoop] basically slapped me in the face and was like, you can do a lot more...I probably needed and I guess now appreciate the advice." – Amy (40:39)
  • "It is so powerful in the agents you're spinning up and the work that it's able to do, both for the business and for us personally." – Amy (50:56)
  • "I look over and you're just chatting with Ted [the AI agent]. And Ted is very funny. He's cheeky, and I do love his jokes. So I love it. It's very much...We are a throuple now. You, me, and Ted." – Amy (51:08)
  • "The fact that we could have a conversation about something and I could just say, hey, let me go find that conversation and share it as an input is really interesting." – Chris (48:19)

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5. High-Deductible Health Plans: Emotional vs. Logical Decisions (54:24 – 63:12)

• Reflections & Strategies

  • Switched to high-deductible health insurance last year. Last year’s big medical event made it cost-effective, but this year without a known big expense, the emotional load is heavier.
  • Used virtual care solutions—One Medical membership for convenience and Blueberry Pediatrics for affordable virtual urgent care and prescriptions, mitigating some high out-of-pocket costs ($39 virtual pediatric visit vs. $700+ urgent care).
  • Struggled with the mental burden of deciding when to seek care, suggesting the creation of "money rules" (a la Ramit Sethi) to streamline decisions.
  • Proposed rule: Always do a virtual consult first; if told to see a doctor, go without additional debate.

• Quotes

  • "The emotional part of me and I think both of us is still like, okay, well, how do we find the best deal? Or is this really worth it?" – Amy (60:19)
  • "I think the answer is create a rule. If the kid's sick and you're on the fence, do a virtual call...if they say go to the doctor, go to the doctor. And now we eliminate the decision making." – Chris (62:42)

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6. Listener Q&A: Combining Finances as a Couple (63:12 – 70:10)

• Advice for New Couples

  • No one "right" answer, but transparency, shared values, and open communication are key.
  • Joint accounts simplify, but separate accounts can also work if both parties communicate and align on money management.
  • Automation (using tools like Mercury for paying regular bills and Copilot for net worth tracking) reduces friction.
  • Assigning roles is fine, but both should be informed; even if only one person manages finances, there should be shared access and regular state-of-the-financial-union reviews.

• Quotes

  • "If you cross to a point that the way you're thinking about your money is that it's ours, it's not mine and yours, it can simplify things by combining your money." – Chris (66:20)
  • "It's probably not okay if there's not transparency about it and there's not conversations about it. So even if one person is like, 'I don't care, I'm not interested,' I would encourage the other person...to create a state of our personal finance report and run through it." – Chris (69:24)

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Notable and Memorable Moments

• Dumpster Diving Story: The saga of retrieving lost ski trip clothes showcased the value of not giving up, resourcefulness, and pay-it-forward community kindness (00:00 – 12:08).
• AI Room Redesign: Amy’s success remixing AI tools to create beautiful, budget-friendly spaces—proof that anyone can be their own designer now (22:34 – 34:12).
• Candid Wearables Review: Honest, practical, and sometimes conflicting feedback on household tech and wellness gadgets highlights the importance of fit and function over hype (34:14 – 43:24).
• Marriage & Money: Transparent, nuanced take on combining finances, echoing that what matters most is "communication and values," not one-size-fits-all advice (63:12 – 70:10).
• AI Assistant “Throuple”: Humorous and relatable discovery that an AI chat agent (Ted) is now a quasi-member of the marriage, representing just how quickly tech can weave into modern relationships (51:08).

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00 – 12:08] — The wild lost clothes / dumpster story, community kindness, and DIY website building for a handyman.
• [14:30 – 22:34] — Family ski trip logistics, value hacks, kid lessons, and travel booking tips.
• [22:34 – 34:12] — AI-powered interior design: tools, process, budget, and practical creative lessons.
• [34:14 – 43:24] — Home gadgets and wellness wearables: honest reviews and decision-making.
• [43:24 – 53:56] — The B device, all-in data tracking, AI business agents, and reflections on tech’s growing role at work and home.
• [54:24 – 63:12] — Real talk on high-deductible health insurance, hacks for pediatric care, and rationalizing healthcare choices.
• [63:12 – 70:10] — Answering a listener’s question on combining finances as a couple, practical workflows, automation tools, and financial communication.

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Final Thoughts

This episode captures the Hutchins’ trademark blend of honesty, practicality, and relentless optimization, delivering advice from the trenches of family, travel, tech, personal finance, and home life. Chris and Amy’s banter, transparency, and willingness to share both wins and foibles make this a relatable and actionable listen for anyone looking to upgrade their own life, one hack at a time.

Key Takeaway:
Whether it’s negotiating the chaos of a ski trip, upgrading your home on a budget, streamlining family finances, or leveraging the best in AI and wellness tech, success comes down to creativity, tenacity, and a willingness to learn from every experience—even (especially) the messy ones.

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Transcript

[A]

On a recent trip, I accidentally threw away all of my wife and kids clothes into a dumpster and didn't realize until we got home my wife was not happy.

[B]

And let's just say the attempt to

[A]

recover them is one of my favorite

[B]

stories from 2026 so far.

[A]

So today I'm joined with my wife

[B]

Amy to tell that story.

[A]

But we're also going to share how she's been using AI to redesign all the rooms in our house for a fraction of what a designer would charge. Of the learnings we have from going on multiple ski trips with young kids, our takes on some health and life tracking wearables, we've been testing the $39 virtual pediatric visit that ended up saving us over $700 on urgent care bills, our thoughts on managing finances as a couple, and a lot more. I'm Chris Hutchins.

[B]

If you enjoy this episode, please leave

[A]

a comment or share it with a friend. And if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life, click follow or subscribe.

[B]

All right, Amy, you're back. We have a lot to catch up on, I think. Recently we've done three ski trips in two months with two kids. One of them went a little sideways.

[C]

I would barely call that a little sideways. We went on this trip and it resulted in you throwing away all of her belongings that we had packed on that trip and then driving home, which took an extra three, four hours.

[B]

Yeah. So the drive home was not my fault.

[C]

That's true.

[B]

There was a major accident on a bridge that happened five minutes before we got on the bridge. So we didn't get rerouted and we literally sat standing still for three hours. So note to anyone driving with children, I would always bring more things. We had no service because there were so many cars tightly packed that there was data, but not enough to stream anything. There wasn't a bathroom. So we now re brought the travel potty in the car. And I'd say the kids did well. The other aspect of it was my fault. Ish.

[C]

It's clearly still being debated.

[B]

So here's a story because I think there are some fun takeaways. We had a bunch of dirty clothes, all of them. Somehow, only yours and the kids ended up in this trash bag because we didn't bring a laundry basket. You know, we put them all in a trash bag. That trash bag ended up in the pile of. Of things to both go in the car and go to. Recycling fair.

[C]

Yes and no. So first of all, it was just mind the girls stuff because I. I think I have A higher bar for cleanliness and not mixing clean clothes with dirty clothes. And you're fine just piling them all in one and leaving them to coexist together during the trip.

[D]

So this trash bag had been hanging

[C]

in the girl's room where we very clearly were putting in dirty laundry the entire week.

[B]

Yes, I knew that the dirty laundry was in a trash bag.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So there was no debate there. And by the way, my backpack that I carry all my clothes in has two separate compartments, one for dirty clothes and one for clean clothes.

[C]

But if only they were used that way.

[B]

And so what happened was that bag, I knew the trash bag had all the clothes, but it ended up by the door and it ended up near a bunch of stuff going to recycling. And so we were up in Kirkwood in Tahoe, and one of the things on the checklist for this house we were staying at was don't leave all your trash and your recycling here. There are these dumpsters, go drop them off. And so I unknowingly dropped off all the recycling, all the trash, including this one bag of trash with all of your clothes, all of the girls clothes. And we didn't realize it until what time? Like 10pm when we got home, right?

[C]

Yep.

[B]

So you'd written off the clothes at that point?

[C]

Yeah. I was convinced we were never going

[D]

to see them again.

[C]

I was already online trying to find new wall base layers for our next ski trip that was coming up very shortly. They were gone.

[B]

Now I'm sure anyone listening who's in a relationship, there are things where their partners are always like, oh, did you misplace this thing? Or some kind of pet peeve slash recurring issue. And all I could think about in my mind was, if I don't find these clothes, that's gonna just forever be my thing that I always throw the clothes away. So I was like, there has to be an answer. And so one answer was just drive up to Kirkwood. But it's 10pm and we just done a six hour drive and there's stuff to do tomorrow. So that seemed like not the best option. And so I thought, gosh, I am convinced that they're still in this dumpster, right? There's six dumpsters. We had fortunately left on, I think a Tuesday after a weekend. So it was not a busy day. And I thought, I think they're still in this dumpster. What can I do? So I remember I went on to Facebook and Reddit and I found the Kirkwood Reddit. I found three Kirkwood Facebook groups and I Just posted like, does anyone know anyone? And I had one friend that owned a house in Kirkwood, and I messaged that person and said, hey, do you by any chance know anyone in Kirkwood that would go look in a dumpster? I'm happy to compensate them for doing that. And I had two leads, and I actually ended up with a third lead. So I hadn't told you all of this. I told you I was, like, kind of looking, but I didn't want to get any hopes up because I was pretty sure this wasn't going to work. So the first one, someone messaged me on Facebook back and said, I live near these dumpsters. I'm willing to go look. And so I said, awesome, I'm happy to send you. And I can't remember. It was like, a hundred dollars. And the person was like, okay. I went. And there was just something off about the story. Like, they knew where the dumpsters were, and. And they sent me a photo, but the photo was kind of like, of trash. It wasn't clear how much effort they put in, but there was something about their story that both seemed like they genuinely tried, but also they didn't. And so even though I found a person to go jump in this dumpster at night and not find anything, I wasn't willing to necessarily give up. Like, I felt like something was off. You know, your spidey sense is off. So I found another person who said they were willing to do it, but they were kind of ran a service, and they were like, it's gonna be $500. I was like, I don't know. $500 doesn't seem worth it given there's, like, a dec that it won't work. And then someone had recommended this handyman in another home group. And I was like, I'm going to find this handyman. Gordon was his name. And I messaged him. I was like, hey, is there any chance you're in Kirkwood? He's like, no, but I will be tomorrow morning. And I was like, is there any chance you'd be interested in doing this? And he was like, sure. So he shows up, and he looks for a few minutes. He can't find it. And this one dumpster is locked. I even called the Kirkwood sanitation. I was like, have these been emptied? And he's like, there is one. If it's locked, it shouldn't be. And he went and unlocked it. Gordon went back, and he starts sending me these photos. And the saving grace was that we had put in about seven bags of, like, Kitchen sized trash bags into one massive black trash bag. So I was like, here's what you're looking for. And he sent me a picture of all the dumpsters. I was like, it's that one. Like, I remembered that it was the third from the right because there were like 10 dumpsters. And this guy's looking and looking and looking and finally he sends me a photo. He's like, is this it? And I was like, oh my gosh, we got the clothes. I remember sending you that photo and being like, look at this, we found the clothes. And so huge shout out to Gordon for doing this. Gordon was definitely compensated for his time. But also shout out to the random person on Reddit that said, hey, I'm not there, but I'll be there in four days if you want. Or maybe it's two days, I can't remember, but it wasn't that day. And they lived nearby and so they were willing to bring it back. So Gordon found them, dropped them off at the main lodge. This other kind soul on Reddit ended up picking them up from the lodge and bringing them back to the Bay Area. And then a Uber courier ended up bringing them from their house to our house. And I can't believe we found the clothes. Shout out to that guy on Reddit who brought them back, who did it, because a similar thing happened to him. He and his wife were in Colorado and they left their ski helmets in somewhere in the mountain and someone picked them up and drove them back to Denver. And so they were like, this is just karma that someone did this for us. Now I get to do it for you guys. And so I share that because I am sometimes just not willing to give up and maybe the time, not just sometimes, it's never.

[C]

I was actually convinced. I was like, if you don't figure out a way to find someone to get those clothes, you are going to drive up yourself, even if it's in the middle of the night. I was convinced you are going to be out of here real fast.

[B]

You were not happy about me losing

[C]

the clothes and I, I, but here's

[D]

the thing, it's not that I was actually upset that the clothes were gone.

[C]

It's a bummer, obviously, but I think I was really pissed about the fact that when we had the conversation about it, you blamed me because I put this dirty clothes in a trash bag that ended up right next to to the trash pile and all of our other bags. So understand again, this is like the ongoing debate, but I wasn't actually upset

[D]

about the Things being gone, yes, there were a few sentimental things that we wouldn't be able to replace.

[C]

But I think the broader issue was where the blame was placed in a very heated moment. And, oh, yeah, I was. I was mad.

[B]

Yeah, I was mad myself. And I probably was, like, deflecting on the blame, though. I was annoyed. I was like, this would not have happened if they were not in a trash bag in the trash pile.

[C]

That's fair.

[B]

We got them back.

[C]

Yeah, we. We did. And actually, there are two things that I loved about how all of this came together. I love the karma aspect. And actually, I think there was also a bit of good that happened across the board, because this guy Gordon is

[D]

a handyman, and he was trying to get his business off the ground, and you offered to pay him. And if I recall the conversation correctly, he said, actually, can you just give me a good review for the work that I provided? And as you learn more about what he was trying to do, you actually went one step further and said, hey, I'm actually just going to go buy you your business domain. I'm going to build you a website.

[C]

And you delivered it to him.

[D]

And I thought that was really cool.

[C]

And it was actually a really great website. So I loved that aspect. And then the other thing that was

[D]

the silver lining of all of this is it became so apparent to me that humanity is still alive and thriving, and there's so much good in the world that I think we never really hear about or talk about. And that part felt amazing.

[B]

Yes. I couldn't believe that multiple people offered to help. Some people I didn't know, some people that I knew and were trying to help because they'd lived there. And I did pay Gordon. And I remember at the end, I was like, is there anything else I could do? And he said, I'm trying to get this handyman business off the ground. And, you know, if you know anyone up in Kirkwood, let them know. And I thought, oh, I searched for him. I'm like, how would anyone ever know he has a. He's a handyman. He had one person wrote his name on a Facebook page. That was it. Not even a page, like a comment in a private Facebook group. And I thought, this guy needs a website. And so I remember, I just looked. I was like, hmm, handyman Kirkwood is available. And so I bought that. And then I just used Google sites because I wanted to be dead simple for. For him to manage it and put it together. And so I put that site together. I sent it to him. I said, what do you think? Can you send me a headshot? And he sent me a headshot. He didn't have a great headshot. So use a little Gemini to take his headshot and kind of touch it up so it still looks like him. Or at least I think it does. Cause I've never met the guy. It looks like the photo he sent me. And now there's a website that he can put together that hopefully people find that will help him actually make his business more successful. And so between the time I spent searching for this and building this website, you know, I probably spent way more money in time than to replace all the clothes. But we sure got a good story out of it. And if I had replaced those clothes, the fact that I lost them would be looming over me for the next 15 years. This is true whether you forced it over me or not. So that is kind of what happened, which actually has nothing to do with skiing. The topic I thought would be good to talk about is the experience of taking kids skiing and what that's like.

[A]

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[B]

We did three trips we did in two months and they were different than the trips we did last year because last year we went to a ski resort with the kids. We brought some skis. We kind of did a couple runs that were not part of, you know, a lift. We didn't buy lift tickets. It felt arduous. And then this year we committed to buying epic passes for the family. And so we were all in. And fortunately, when you buy an epic pass, you get a discount on lessons. And we thought, let's do lessons, let's go all in. Let's get the kids skiing. And you know, you grew up in a ski resort town, so I know like for you it was like, we want these kids to ski. Like that's what I grew up doing. And I skied also. So like this was something we wanted to do. What do you think about this ski season with kids?

[C]

Relative to last season, this season feels

[D]

so much more interesting and it feels like we are actually going on ski trips and ski vacations in a sense. And I think a big unlock for us this year compared to last year is one, we don't have to think about how expensive these day lift tickets are because we have the season passes. And two, we've really doubled down on ski school this year, which we hadn't done previously. And that's been huge because it allows us to actually have time to go and ski the terrain that we want to ski together without the kids. But then we can also pick them up and take them on a few runs to see their progress. And they're so proud. And I am actually really impressed at how much they progress in One to two, three, four days.

[B]

The tension for me is so tough because every day they come out of ski school and they have a blast and they progress, but I don't get to ski with them because they're in ski school all day. And depending on the mountain, we did two times to Kirkwood and once to Park City. And Park City didn't do full day lessons for kids three and four. And so in that regard we had the afternoons to kind of play around. But if you put a kid in a lesson for the full day, you don't get to see them ski. But they're making so much progress, you don't want to take them out because they're having so much fun and they're actually improving. And so I think the only downside to lessons, other than the fact that they're egregiously expensive look like skiing is not a cheap sport to do. Yes, it helps that they're 20% off if you have an epic pass, but they're still not cheap. But it is amazing to see the progress. And if people are looking for any hacks on the lesson side, most of the non mainstream mountains have much less expensive lessons. And then there's other options. Like there's the Woodward. So Woodward is like a terrain park. It's for people who want to do jumps and tricks and all this stuff. And it's skateboarding and snowboarding and skiing. But they actually do private lessons for young kids that are about half the price of the mountain also. And so we didn't do that this year cuz we kind of had everything dialed in. But that was kind of another alternative. To save on that, there are also private instructors you can hire on Facebook and Craigslist that we've tried in the past. I know it's very frowned upon on the mountain, so I would not say that's a technique I'd endorse, but it's a technique that exists. I don't know. I'm excited. Like we have a fourth ski trip coming up in two weeks and I don't think we've actually booked any lessons for the kids. And I'm excited to ski with them. The progress they've made from our youngest was not skiing really at all. Maybe like with a harness with us running behind her and is now skiing. We did a blue run at Park City from the very top of the mountain all the way to the bottom. And yeah, she needed a few breaks. Yes, there's maybe a meltdown on there once or twice, but the progress is amazing. And it's really fun. And I can already like see into the future of us actually all skiing. I can also see into the future of them progressing past us and wanting to go do things we don't want to do. And now all of a sudden they' longer skiing with us. But I see this short window where it's like, now we can all ski together. And I'm really excited for that. So a couple other things, just kind of some fun travel thoughts on this. So one, one of our trips to Kirkwood, we brought some friends and we wanted to rent a house. And I've kind of talked about this before, but when you see a house, sometimes there are ways to get around booking that house directly. And so in this case, I saw a house, it worked for everything we need. And this one I just got lucky. I had gone on a retreat and 12 years ago to Kirkwood and stayed in the house that I found on vrbo. And I thought, gosh, I wonder if there's any way I can get the contact information. I searched my email and sure enough, there was an email with like a house guide from 12 years ago that the group had sent us and it had a phone number for the house manager. And I called them and we were able to book it off vrbo for like 25% off. So that's one good hack. And then when we went to Park City, I will just say the value of having a credit card that covers check bag fees is often useless when we don't check bags. But on this ski trip we checked four bags and I can't remember what Delta would have charged. 30 to 50 a bag times four of us. It would have been hundreds of dollars that we ended up paying nothing for. And so that was amazing. We brought one of those travel bag weighers. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it costs almost nothing. And we had a couple ski bags, they're like 49.9 pounds. So that was great. And then my only other travel thing is shout out to the Beautiful new Terminal 2 lounge, the Delta Sky Club. It is amazing and really impressive.

[C]

So nice.

[B]

The Delta Sky Clubs are really nice and they always seem to have activity books for the kids. But that one in Terminal two has got to be one of the biggest lounges I've ever seen in my life. And food is great, top notch service. If you're in Terminal 2 and you're flying Delta and you can get into the Sky Club with a platinum card or a Delta reserve card or a Sky Club membership Definitely check it out.

[C]

Agree.

[B]

And any thoughts on the flying to scheme versus driving to scheme?

[C]

Generally, I think the driving feels easier

[D]

because you just don't have to worry about packing all this stuff and how to Tetris it all together to get it there. So I think driving feels lower lift. But when you have young kids that for some reason can not need a bathroom for six hours, but suddenly when

[C]

we're driving, it's like every hour on

[D]

the hour they're like, hey, gotta go, gotta go. I don't love using all the public

[C]

bathroom bathrooms, but that's just a me nuance, I suppose.

[D]

The flying to Park City, I think Park City specifically is pretty fast and easy. The flight time is really short and the drive time from Salt Lake City to Park City is also really low.

[C]

So I think it's lower lift.

[D]

Now if we were flying and schlepping all of our stuff to Steamboat, for example, where I grew up, it feels like such a heavier lift because it takes so much more time to get

[C]

to and the drive is longer if

[D]

you're stopping in Denver.

[B]

I think when it comes to a place that you can drive from a major airport, Utah is the best. Now the snow this year we got lucky. It snowed a little bit while we were there. Obviously planning trips for ski vacations, not knowing what the snow will be like is a big variable. But man, the convenient factor from Salt Lake City airport to a handful of ski resorts relative to Denver, relative to the Bay Area. Yes, Reno is close, but I wouldn't consider Reno a major airport. And then, you know, Montana and Wyoming have some great ski resorts, but you can't fly direct there from as many places as you can. Salt Lake City. Okay, so let's take a little detour. Last time we had you on the show, we talked a little bit about furniture, a little bit of a debate and kind of a little blow up in the house. And a lot of things have changed. Right. The last two months you've really been going at an impressive rate of kind of designing and redoing a couple of rooms in the house. I mentioned this in the newsletter and I can't tell you how many emails I got back. Dozens that were like, how is Amy using AI to redesign your house? I want to do this. I'm about to redo a room. What happened? Can you show before and after pictures what changed? Because I think at least my perspective is when we tried to redo the girls rooms didn't go so well. These last two feel like they went amazing. So Talk a little bit about the process of, like, how this went, what you did, how you did it, so that people listening can be like, I want to learn from this. I want to redesign rooms. And we did it on a pretty good budget.

[C]

I think we did well.

[D]

I think the biggest change is twofold. One, you are a lot less involved,

[C]

and I think that's subject of the learning we had previously, but also the fact that I have stepped away from work.

[D]

I had more time to be able to commit to redoing these rooms, whereas you didn't. And so it felt like a luxury of, if I have the time to do it now, let's knock it out.

[B]

Do you think you needed to, though? Like, do you think it took so much time that this is a task that someone might need to step away from work to redesign a couple rooms, or did it just feel like it gave you some breathing room?

[D]

No, it just felt like it gave me breathing room. And I felt more creative because I had the mental capacity to actually think through some of these things while the girls are in school. And so I think it's very, very achievable. Especially now with AI, It's a massive unlock. With AI, anyone can make the room look incredible. Like, just absolutely dialed in, and it doesn't take a lot. We've talked to a few designers previously, and I just feel like we never were really aligned on my vision or your style. And with AI, you essentially have a collaborative artistic creative director of sorts and brainstormer that can kind of work with you in dialing it in.

[B]

What was the step by step, where did you start?

[D]

So I started with our old au pair room. And because we no longer have an au pair, that was the spark that I was like, you know what? This room just needs to be completely redone because we haven't really accessed it or updated it in years.

[B]

And it was going to become a guest room. We didn't have a guest room because we had an au pair room.

[D]

Right? That's exactly right. And so in my mind, I really wanted to update it. Knowing your parents come stay with us sometimes. My parents come stay. We have friends and other family, and I really just wanted it to feel cozy and welcoming. And so I think where I started is input, just my initial prompt. Look, I'm looking to redo this room. Here are some pictures of it. My ideal vision is creating a cozy moodiness or a modern organic design, whatever it might be. Right? Like, explain the vision you have if you have one. I shared pictures of the room as it was in that current state or in that state at the time. And then it's. We started brainstorming back and forth given what the room looked like and what I was envisioning.

[B]

What model were you using?

[D]

So it's interesting. So I used a variety of different eyes. So I use Gemini for a lot of the sourcing, the researching, figuring out, do these different pieces of furniture or color palettes or whatever actually go together? Can you mock up an image so I can kind of visually see what that looks like? I use Claude a lot. I would say Claude felt very much more accurate from a mathematical, like, square footage. Here's, you know, what fits, what doesn't fit, here's the accuracy of how light actually would hit, like, a dark, moody brown wall. Right. And so we actually color saturated the entire guest room.

[B]

I relinquished control for this entire project. And so I was like, you know what? Whatever you say. I trust you. Usually that seems to be a good decision. And you were like, I think we're gonna paint the walls, the ceiling, the trim, and the entire, like, closety kind of thing for storing clothes. We're gonna paint it all brown. And I was like, we're gonna paint everything in the room brown. And I just bit my tongue. I was like, okay, it looks amazing, but, man, I was like. I was a little nervous when you're like, we're just gonna paint everything brown. I was like, I've never been in a room that's all brown.

[C]

I saw it in your face, and I just kept going. I didn't respond. I was like, you know, decision's been made, and off we go. But even.

[D]

Even small things like, look, I want to do this entire room saturated in this dark, rich brown. It was really good about helping me distinguish which finish to have in which part of the room so that, like, there's different sheens given where your eye is, to break it up so it doesn't feel just like this really kind of, like, flat brown room.

[B]

Was that even your idea from the start, or was the idea to saturate the entire room something that came out of the conversation?

[D]

I knew I wanted to saturate the room, and so that was something that I had prompted it with. But it helped me refine the different sheens. It helped me refine how to think about how dark or light to go and which color. So I. I did test a few colors just to make sure that it was something that I felt really good with. But, you know, we talked about how much natural light it gets, what the warm or the cool lighting of the ceiling is and all of that. So it really helped refine what I wanted to do in a way that manifested so much more elegantly than I think I could have done on my own.

[A]

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[B]

And for the furniture ideas, both in that room and the other room, was that something where you would ask the tools to source furniture or, like, come up with ideas and then you would find it? Or, you know, I'm trying to get down tactical. I get like, okay, here's my room. What colors work? What themes work? But were you the one finding the furniture?

[D]

Yes. Well, it depends, I guess. So we did need a few pieces of furniture for the family room that I recently did. And I think it was a combination of my saying, I love this room to bring in some of the Scandinavian elements. And so that prompted it to look for pieces that exuded more of that kind of aesthetic and vibe. But it definitely hallucinated at times and would give me crazy things. Like, I definitely had a gut check it a lot. Do these really go together? But it was good about helping instruct me of, obviously, you don't want to have matching. Matching pieces. Ideally, you get them in the same or similar kind of wood tones. And so I think the little aesthetics and the direction that it provided, once I had a general sense of this is the broad design of the furniture I'm looking for, then we started. It would give me three options, and I would say, I like this one. Can you find me five others that are kind of similar? Or I don't like any of these. Can you find me some in this wood type or whatever?

[B]

So Gemini, it seems, at least today, as of recording, I found to be the best model for generating images. Right. So you're like, here is a picture of my room. Paint the walls brown and put this piece of furniture in.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

What was the best at finding furniture?

[D]

I actually also think Gemini did the best job at sourcing furniture because it's leveraging Google so it has access to so much out there. And so I think if I broke down all the different AI tools that I used, I would say ChatGPT was really the visionary. The creative director was really able to think a lot more boldly about things

[C]

I could do in the space. And so that was a good kind

[D]

of jumping off point. Claude was really good about helping me understand the sizing and the layouts. And mathematically, like, how much space do I actually have? How does this room function? And then Gemini worked really well for helping me actually source Some of the pieces and. And doing some of that research and then compiling it together through Nano Banana to actually see, like, what does this final vision look like? And then how do I tweak it to make it more aligned with what I actually hoped it would be?

[B]

Wow. Okay. It turned out amazing, right? There's two rooms in the house that are done. I'm like, do you want to do more?

[C]

I do, actually.

[B]

And I think the other really cool thing is if you hire a designer, they often have, let's just say, expensive taste. And they sometimes are like, oh, let's replace this. Let's replace this. You manage to say, like, I want to keep these three things. And then you found good options for really inexpensive. I think it was cheaper to redo both of these rooms than it would have been to just hire a designer to do both of these rooms.

[C]

If I would have hired someone to

[D]

do this, it probably would have cost

[C]

five to 10 times as much as

[D]

we spent on the rooms. And I'm still not convinced it would fully have aligned with the vision that I had in my head.

[B]

Yeah. And I think we did the whole thing for a few thousand dollars. Is that fair for two rooms? We kept some furniture, wasn't fully replacement.

[C]

Each.

[B]

Each. A few thousand dollars each. Yeah. But it wasn't like we spent $10,000 to redo two rooms.

[C]

No, I agree.

[D]

The other really nice thing about AI Is when they're recommending all of these different furniture options and accessories, you can see something and say, for me, I loved some of the things they sent, but I was like, they're sending me a $6,000 coffee table. This is crazy. I'm not paying for that.

[C]

So I would say I love the look of this.

[D]

Can you find a few alternatives that have the same kind of look that are cheaper? And it did just that. So it was a good way to pressure test is it actually worth spending that money, or can you find alternatives that fit the space really nicely that give the same kind of look without the crazy price tags?

[B]

Well, excellent work.

[D]

Thanks.

[C]

It's been a lot of fun, and I'm very excited to continue room by room in our house. And so speaking of house, we've also added a few kind of new, fun gadgets or tools.

[B]

Yeah. So I've not helped with the design, but we did do a few changes. So we were at Costco, and the skylight calendar was on sale. And I can't remember if we've talked about it at length, because I have a kind of an updated review. I Think on the Skylight calendar. Originally I had this idea of like, let's just put an iPad on the wall and we can custom code anything. And that was one of my first, like AI coding ideas. And then I realized what we need is not that complex and if someone has it and it just works great. And so for the first two weeks I was super into this thing. We have it in the living room and we had our calendar synced up, we had the kids calendars, all kinds of stuff. I feel like it's turned into a piece digital picture frame.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

It's basically an aura on our wall

[C]

is what it feels like.

[B]

Aura, the frame, the ring. Yeah. So I'm a bit disappointed in that. I felt like it had a lot of potential and where I think it fell short for me is it tries to do too much and by doing too much, it can't do it well. And so we use Paprika for recipe stuff. And there's a lot of features in there that we like, which is why we use it. Skylight doesn't integrate with Paprika. Skylight has its own recipe system and it's pretty basic. Our kids aren't old enough to have a lot of chores and tasks. I could see how if you had that, the like leaderboard of that would be cool. And then the calendar is kind of like nice to glance at, but it's also on our phone. And so I think I was at a friend's house and I saw this. I was like, oh, it's great. You've got one place you can just look at the calendar. And honestly, maybe this is an experiment we should run. Maybe if we turn off the picture frame so it's always the calendar, would we actually use it more? Like is the fact that it needs to be more in your face as a calendar, would that help? There was another challenge which is like the calendars had so much stuff on it that I did clean up. And so I have some ideas on how to try to invigorate it. I'm probably most proud of the fact that we managed to like drill the right hole through the wall so it mounts on the wall with no cord, which is like, I don't want to get rid of it. I did all this work to make it mount nicely. But on the other side of the wall where it's mounted is a new gadget that I think we use a lot of. So we got a ratio coffee machine, which is like a pour over coffee machine a few years ago. And you love a cup of coffee in the morning.

[C]

Nothing's better.

[B]

And so I'd heard about this. We got one and we talked about it. And I actually gotten reached out to by the CEO of Ratio who's like, hey, you've been talking about this. We've gotten a bunch of purchases. Thank you so much for talking about this. If there's ever anything you need, let me know. And I was like, awesome. Like, we've got this machine, it's amazing. I'll let you know. But didn't have anything I needed. And he reached out and said, hey, we built this gen 2 of the ratio coffee. Can I send you one? And so, you know, full disclosure, we got this updated machine for free, didn't pay for it. I'm incredibly gracious and thankful for that. And it's beautiful. I don't drink that much coffee. Maybe once every month or two. You're drinking every day. How is the new machine?

[C]

It's amazing. It's beautiful and in a way I

[D]

wish it wasn't in our pantry behind the wall because it is just stunning to look at. But it just makes the perfect cup of coffee. And so you get the perfect pour over taste without having to actually spend the time to do the pour over. So I set everything up the night before and in the morning I just grind the beans, throw it in, and

[C]

come back a few minutes later and enjoy my coffee.

[D]

It is incredible.

[B]

Yeah. The Ratio founder does not even know we're doing this. It's not a paid segment.

[C]

No, I just love it.

[B]

Yeah, I know. We just love the product. Like I've told so many friends about this product, but the one thing that I think is funny about the two of us that is different, that is why the Ratio Coffee machine works so well is that I really enjoy the craft of trying to make something as best as possible. And that is a downside sometimes. And I think you enjoy having really good things, but like, it doesn't have to be the best. And if it takes a lot of work, especially in the morning, you're not interested. And so I would always be like, okay, here is the counter scale to weigh out the perfect amount of beans. And you didn't even necessarily care, but I was like, if we're going to make a coffee, I want it to be perfect. And the combo of the Ratio and this new, I think the brand is Baratza Burr grinder that has like programmatic settings and a scale built in. I get the satisfaction of it being so dialed in that it's like exactly 17 grams of beans. It's all exactly how I would do it if I were trying to make you the perfect cup of coffee, except it's like two buttons and you don't have to think at all. So it's like this perfect combo of simplicity for you. Beautiful on the counter. And I always want to try to get the thing that makes it the best, even if you don't care. And now that happens on its own.

[C]

Yeah. I will say it's really nice. Before, we had a grinder, and it was great. It was a great grinder, But I feel like I wasn't using the scale very much. And so I would just go in, I would turn it on. I would mentally count to 20 in my head as I'm feeding the dog or whatever. Sometimes I lose track of my counting, sometimes I wouldn't. And I would say around 20 seconds. Turned it off. Okay, that's probably enough beans. And so my coffee definitely took on different boldness and flavor day by day. So it is really nice to have the barratta grinder as well, because it

[D]

honestly just has dialed it in. So it is so consistent and so good every day.

[B]

Yeah. And now I don't have to criticize the amount weight. I'm like, that looks like it's not enough beans.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's also, you know, I love

[C]

that for us too.

[B]

Another thing. So we took advantage of this Chase reserve deal where you basically get a free whoop band. And I ordered two of them because we each had the card. And I haven't even opened mine yet because I'm like, well, I've got this oura ring. Like, it works fine. And. And I got it for you. And you were like, I don't know if I need this. And then your aura ring died.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you've been all in on whoop. I'm curious what your experience has been as having gone from aura to whoop. And are you like, I want my ordering back. I like the whoop. I like them for different reasons.

[C]

For Those watching on YouTube, you'll actually notice I'm. I'm rocking both right now. I got the whoop right before my aura died, so the timing was excellent.

[D]

And so I started leaning really heavily on my whoop. And I think the biggest and quickest takeaway I got from it was, wow, wow, wow.

[C]

I thought I was working out being a semi trained, fit individual. Whoop basically slapped me in the face and was like, you can do a

[D]

lot more based on your readiness score, your sleep, whatever. And given it seems to be built for more hardcore trained athletes. I feel like pushed me to be like, you can do more. You got to get out there and do a hit run.

[C]

You've got to like, really like pressure test your body. And so that was an interesting wake

[D]

up call that I probably needed and I guess now appreciate the advice that Whoop gives. Feels a lot more detailed and deep. And the fact that it's constantly trying to have a conversation with me, I think is interesting. Whereas Aura feels a bit more kind of relaxed in the background where I can check in on how things are going. And my scores, I think they just serve different purposes depending on the kind of experience and what you're looking to use that data for.

[C]

But I've enjoyed Whoop. The ring feels more comfortable and I

[D]

like the aesthetic of it more. But I like how Whoop really kind of like kicks me in the butt constantly. Like, hey, get out there and do more.

[B]

The Oura ring is kind of like, hey, you slept well. It's like, well, I kind of.

[D]

Oh, it's the chill version. Yeah.

[B]

Okay, I have to put the Whoop on and give it a go. Although I'm slightly terrified. This is why, by the way, I'm sure this deal exists. We both bought Oura rings long enough ago that we have the subscription is free. Right. When they first sold the Aura ring, there was no subscription. And we're kind of grandfathered into this unlimited lifetime subscription. And then the Whoop. The whoop was $365, but Chase refunded all of it. Or maybe it was 359 somewhere. I can't remember the exact amount. And Chase refunded all of it. So it's like, oh, it's free for a year, but next year it's 300 something dollars for two people. It's $600. Or maybe there's a family plan that we can look at. So I'm a little terrified of getting excited about the Whoop and then having to pay for it the next year. Which is exactly why they did this deal, I'm sure.

[D]

Smart on them.

[C]

Smart on them.

[B]

So we'll have to see if it can earn its keep and if the features that justify that higher price plan. Right. If I was gonna do this without the deal and I really wanted a whoop, I wouldn't have started at the like, super premium plan. So we'll see how that changes going forward. There's also another device that I've got on my wrist and you're wearing on your waist, which is not related to exercise. It's called the B. And so I haven't talked about this, but when I went to the openclaw meetup, which is, you know, a couple months ago now, it seems like weeks ago, there were a couple demos and one of them was from this company called B. I think it was B Computer, but it's not really a computer and it's a device that you wear, you can wear on your wrist, you can clip it on your pants, you can kind of put all over. And it actively listens to everything. Now, for many people listening, this is crazy and terrifying.

[C]

And they're like, it sounded so creepy to me when you first explained it.

[B]

Yeah. And this is the second one I've ordered. There was a company called Limitless that made this pendant and I tried this out for a while before. And the two things that made me give it a second go is one, there wasn't a good interface for using the pendant because a lot of the AI tools that we have now didn't exist. And two, the battery life on it. I feel like the battery lasted a day and the battery on this B device lasts 10 days or 7 days. Like it's a week long battery. The only thing that I will say kind of sucks about it and maybe for privacy reasons, this is good. It's not a recorder as much as it is a transcriber. And it needs your phone. And so maybe that's how they get around the battery issues. But it's not recording everything. It's kind of like transmitting it to your phone that has to be nearby, that's transcribing it on your phone. My understanding is from talking to the founders that they care a lot about privacy. Now, this company was acquired by Amazon, just like the Limitless Pendant company was acquired by Meta. So both of these are now owned by big tech companies. So that could give a lot of people pause for other reasons. But the thing that has really been interesting is the ability to plug it into other tools. So my little openclaw agent has access to B can go look at things. Honestly, I haven't used that as much as I have just the Bee app. And it's crazy how good it is at coming up with action items. So you'll open it and it'll be like yesterday it said, hey, remember to help the girls send off the letter to the Easter Bunny. We talked about how we need to do that. We had a conversation about it, but I didn't like write it down as an action item. And it pulls out these actions and it's so good at it.

[C]

It's so good.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by upwork. The fastest growing businesses aren't doing more, they're delegating smarter. And Upwork helps you bring in expert freelance help fast so you can delegate and keep moving. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers across web development, data analytics, marketing, business operations and more. Up what makes it different? You can browse profiles, review past work and scope the role before you commit. And with Business plus, you get access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork. And AI powered shortlisting matches you to the right freelancer fast. No endless recruiting and no full time headcount commitment. Contracts and payments are handled in one place so there's less overhead and you can spend more time running your business. It's free to sign up and posting

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thank you so much for being here today.

[A]

You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from our [e-mail] deals. These are brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us.

[B]

I feel like that is the thing that hooked you to try it out and then use it is that it's

[A]

just kind of listening throughout the day

[B]

and it's like here's the things you need to do and I've been really impressed. Also there have been moments where we had a conversation so I think we had a conversation yesterday. Gosh, it feels like everything's happening so fast where we talked about priorities for the business. How are we doing? Reflect on 2025. What now that you're not involved are challenges for the business because I have to do them. What am I not great at? What do we need to focus on? What's working, what's not working? So we had this 10 minute conversation and then I went into the B app and I was like, let's take it, share it. It exported a file locally and I threw that into a cloud conversation. On top of that I threw in all of our kind of revenue and expenses from our books for the last three years and I threw in the personality profile that I've talked about in the past from Deep Personality, which is probably more like a psychological profile. So I put all of that in and then I hit go on Whisper, flow and talk for 10 minutes on my computer. And I was just like, hey, here's what's going on in the business, here's what's working, here's what's not working. And I think I also took the transcript from another AI conversation about content

[A]

planning and I threw it all in

[B]

there and said, I want to create a state of the business report everything that's going on, things that are wrong, things that are working. And what came out of one prompt was absolutely crazy, mind blowing.

[D]

It was so good and so detailed in the way that it pulled all of the information from the different sources that you gave it. If we would have tried to do that ourselves or paid someone in the business to do it for us, it would have taken several weeks. Like, it was very thorough.

[B]

Yeah. And it all came out of the fact that I joined like a small group of other creators running businesses and we were all supposed to share a state of the business and how we're doing. And so someone put together a notion page and they chatted with their AI agent to fill out a few things. What this produced was like a full on website, but Claude has these things called artifacts, which are basically like interactive websites that you can share that are way more interesting than just like sharing the transcript of the conversation. And I was like, I wanted to make a couple changes and primarily the changes I wanted to make was that the dock was so good that I couldn't stop it. Proposed these things that we need to change. And I was like, well, let's start changing them. The only reason I wanted to change the state of the business is that in the two hours after making it, we'd actually made progress on half of the things that needed to be done in the company. And so these artifacts that you can ask Claude to build are amazing. And I'm sure other tools will be building these by the time this comes out. There's probably another version of another model and another tool. But to go back to where we started, the fact that we could have a conversation about something and I could just say, hey, let me go find that conversation and share it as an input is really interesting. And I've gone back and forth, I've planned out this product slash feature that I want to build with AI tools. The next obvious question is like, I'm curious to get your take on AI taking over our entire house, or at least my life. But I was like, I wonder what would happen if I took all of my texts because I have imessage on my phone and it's on the computer, and there's a whole database of every message that I've sent since I had an iPhone. I have every email I've gotten. I could go grab all my call logs from the carrier I'm on. You can grab your FaceTime call history. You could grab everything, everything. Now you can have the live conversations you're having. You could look at your calendar. And I just. I wonder if you could get comfortable with the privacy security elements of it. If you could throw all the knowledge about your. What you're doing, your workout history, sync your Apple health, like, all of that, what could you do with that? And so the thing that's held me back is I don't have a use case yet, but I am just fascinated about the idea of indexing all of it. And at a minimum, like, what could you learn about me? You know, when I threw in the personality profile with the problems with the business, it was very clear. It was like, here is the biggest problem in your business. Here is exactly what about your personality makes this problem happen. And here's what you should do.

[C]

I'm almost speechless because it is so incredible.

[D]

And I do think there is something really interesting about how, if it can index everything, like, what does that unlock? Because I think even in the last few weeks, despite having almost completely lost you to AI for what feels like

[C]

days at a time, I think it is so powerful in the agents you're

[D]

spinning up and the work that it's able to do, both for the business

[C]

and for us personally.

[D]

I'm also glad, honestly, that at least these agents have a bit of, like, souls or personalities.

[C]

Because I definitely feel like there were days where I was like, the third wheel in our relationship. It was like you and your main AI assistant or agent, Ted, and you

[D]

would just be, like, chuckling in bed late at night. And I'm like, what is going on over there? And it's like, I look over and you're just chatting with Ted. And Ted is very funny.

[C]

He's cheeky, and I do love his jokes. But, man, he just has you going. And I'm like, how do I get you to laugh like that? That's amazing. So I love it. It's very much. We are a throuple now. You, me, and Ted, the AI agent.

[B]

Let's be clear. You have Sam now. So. So you have your own agent. So you're throwing me as if it's just me, but you have your own. I set one up yours entirely. When we started, it was like, let's Just let Amy and use Ted and I'll use Ted. And I was like, well, let's spin up Amy's own agent, Sam. And so it's not just me, but I would say I've probably gone farther down the rabbit hole, maybe a little more than you.

[C]

Maybe a little bit.

[D]

Sure.

[C]

I would say a lot. And I do appreciate you spinning up Sam. Sam has been a huge help to me.

[D]

I think the difference between your spinning up agents and my using an agent is if things break, I have to bother you. I have to say, hey, sorry, this

[C]

doesn't work, or it's giving me this

[D]

weird information or whatever, and then you go in and fix it. And so if I were to take the next step, it would be my actually taking control of that. So I'm not having to bother you when you're now managing 10 other agents

[C]

or whatever it is at this point.

[D]

What's your counter?

[B]

I think we're at eight in yours, so nine total. I don't even know what an agent is. I mean, I do, but I've started building a lot of tools that are not necessarily agents, but they do different things. And so, yeah, I think that it's probably not a healthy thing to be so excited, but in the episode I did with Ann Laura a few weeks ago, it's like, if something's so exciting that it takes your life over for a little bit, that's fun. If something so excited takes your life over for a long bit of time, it's not. And I feel like maybe we're still in the, like, excited window. I don't know. How long does that window get to last?

[C]

That's a good question. Let's check back on this the next time we reconvene, because I think you're right if in the short term it's completely fine.

[D]

And honestly, I feel something similar when I'm redesigning and redecorating our house using AI. There's just something that's so addictive because you get such real time data and they're working 24 7. So you always have the ability to learn more and make progress, and it's really hard to pull yourself away from.

[C]

So I can empathize with that.

[B]

Yeah. So we'll see how this evolves. And at what point I stop taking things that take 10 minutes and spending 40 hours to make them take zero minutes, and then when they break, take another two hours. But I think it's just been a lot of fun to do all this, and I'm excited to kind of reel you in a little bit because I feel like if I'm going to go down this rabbit hole, maybe you want to come a little bit with me and sympathize with the craziness that's going on.

[C]

I'm already in the rabbit hole.

[B]

Okay. One other topic on money that I thought would be interesting to cover is that last year we switched to a high deductible health plan. And I think our quick takeaway at the end of the year was that wasn't as bad as we thought. Like we were really worried about our ability to spend money on our health when it was all out of pocket until you hit a certain level. Now, two things changed. One, the deductible went up way more. So I think our last deductible was kind of in the, I don't know, three to six thousand dollar range, depending on whether it was personal or family. And now it's more in the like 6 to 12,000 or maybe even higher. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's high enough that it feels different. And you had one of your surgeries last year which we just knew was going to make us hit the deductible. I think we were kidding ourselves and we were like, oh, it was so Easy to spend $500 to take our kid to the doctor because we knew in October at the end of the year we would have this like $200,000 expense that would blow through the entire deductible. So it kind of felt easy.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

This year there's no big operation procedure cost on the horizon. I'm curious if you feel differently about high deductible health plans.

[D]

Yeah, it definitely feels harder not knowing if we're gonna hit it. Both of our girls have been sick recently and one of them, there was a morning she woke up and we were like, we should probably take her to the doctor. Something feels off. And we debated it.

[C]

That tells you right there, we debated should we go to the doctor or do we think this will just pass because of the high deductible health plan?

[D]

So yeah, I think it feels a lot harder now.

[B]

Yeah, I do think we've tried a couple things that in some scenarios have really helped and in some haven't. And so we have a one medical membership, which I think it serves two purposes. One, it's just a little bit more convenient to go schedule an urgent care appointment because you can just schedule it and you can book it same day. And there are enough around us, so that's helpful for same Day and weekend urgent care doesn't change the price. Like those urgent care appointments now are hundreds of dollars, but it's convenient. The other thing is, as part of your membership, you get a lot of virtual care for free included, at least. So if you do a virtual call with a doctor or they have like a treat me now thing where you can answer a bunch of questions and it's powered by a human, but it feels like a chat and it might result in a prescription without even an appointment. So from a cost saving standpoint, what goes through my head is if this is just an obvious thing you can solve, then great. And so I remember we thought one of our daughters had an ear infection. Based on she was saying my ear hurts and all this stuff, we're like, okay, if she just has an ear infection, which has happened in the past,

[A]

do we really need to go spend

[B]

700 to go to urgent care on the weekend or can someone just give us what we need? And I remember talking to one of the doctors and talking to your sister who's a PA about her experience and she's like, I think this sounds like an ear infection. Then I remember getting an, we have a little otoscope or otoscope. And we were looking and I was like sending your sister pictures and she's like, looks like an ear infection. And I remember like, okay, now we know it's an ear infection. I remember going to one medical and I sent them these pictures and videos which their system was very bad at accepting. But I was like, clearly there's an ear infection. I've confirmed this with my sister in law. Like she sees kids all the time. It's an ear infection. Can you just prescribe the thing we need? And they're like, well, I don't know, like, like they were very conservative to do virtual care. And I'm sure there are good reasons for that. But I remembered back to a couple years ago, we signed up for this thing called Blueberry, Blueberry Pediatrics, which is like 30 bucks a month. I can't remember the exact price, but it's like tens of dollars a month and it includes unlimited virtual pediatric care, whether it's a call or a chat based system. And I've got my gripes with Blueberry in that you schedule a call and it's not like It'll happen in 10 minutes. It could happen in 45 minutes, an hour. It's unclear.

[A]

But when you sign up for Blueberry,

[B]

if I have a referral code or a promo code I can find, I'll put in the show notes, and I think it maybe takes the cost of the entry kit down to zero. I'm not 100% sure, but they send you this kit with an otoscope that you can use in someone's ears that takes video and sends it to them. And I think they, because they just focus on just pediatric patients, they're really dialed in. And I was like, let's go do that. So we found it, we took this video, we sent it to them, and they confirmed exactly what your sister had said from the video and the pictures we sent her. And they sent the prescription. And so we ended up getting the prescription we needed for her ear infection for $39 instead of what I'm sure on the weekend would have been five or six or seven hundred dollars for a doctor's appointment. So I'm happy we have some solutions to mitigate the cost for things where we kind of know what we need or you can treat it remotely. The challenge of this most recent one was like, it just didn't feel like it was that. And so we tried it and we were like, is there enough here to know what's happening? They're like, no, you should go see a doctor.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And we did. So I'm proud of us for going. I don't like that it felt so mentally taxing. But does it help at all knowing that, like, we are still saving money in the long run, even if we spend it all, or does it still make it worse and harder and we should do what we do with the ski passes, right? Like, with our ski passes, it's like we pay up front so that we don't have to think about it in the moment. And in that case, the challenge is you actually save money. Money. In this case, it's the opposite. It's like you can pay up front to remove the stress of the in the moment charges, but you actually have to pay more for that. What do you think?

[C]

When we look at it logically and we know that by going the high deductible health plan route, we end up

[D]

saving money even if we max it out, that to me, I'm like, okay,

[C]

great, we're still in a net positive spot.

[D]

So great.

[C]

Like, let's just do all the appointments

[D]

we need to do.

[C]

But the emotional part of me and I think both of us is still

[D]

like, okay, well, how do we find the best deal? Or is this really worth it? Or can we save the 700 and not go? Because odds are half the time we take kids in, they're like, oh, sorry, you just have to ride it out. It's some viral thing that we can't explain. And respiratory season is here and here we go. So I think emotionally it's definitely taxing. Logically, it makes a ton of sense. And if we always function from a

[C]

logical state, I think hydrogen health plans is a great idea, at least for us.

[B]

Right. Like, this is not blanket advice for everyone. When you're getting health insurance on your own, whether it's through an exchange or as a small business, you're paying for those plans. When we worked at companies, it was often the case that the company just said, oh, all the plans are the same price. Well, if all the plans are the same price, I might not get the plan that has this high deductible and stresses me out all the time. In fact, we. I don't think we ever did. I think one year at Google I did, but every other year for the last decade before this, we didn't. But when you're paying for yourself, it's like significantly more expensive. Or at least in California with the plans we have options of, it was more expensive. I wonder if this comes back to kind of the Ramit Sethi model of setting money rules, where I think that there are certain things that we've been able to have rules around that have mitigated similar situations. So, like, we now have kind of said, we're not going to fly at 5am yeah. So when I search for flights, I don't even look at the flights at 5am Because I know we're not going to take them. And sometimes they show up. And because we've made that rule, even if I don't filter them out before I see them, it doesn't bother me that the flights after 7am Are a hundred dollars more for four people. Four hundred more dollars. Because we've kind of said we're just not gonna take 5am flights.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Now, if those flights ended up being a thousand dollars a person, would we maybe reconsider? Maybe. I don't know. We haven't gotten there. But I wonder if this is a thing where, like we create a rule that's like, hey, we always try to see if we can remotely treat this. And if the prognosis from a blueberry or a one medical thing is see a doctor, we go see it. Like, there's no debate. We have first line of defenses. If it was an emergency, we wouldn't have had any problem going straight to the hospital. Like, we're not going to be sitting There, like, do we go to the hospital? Like, kids bleeding everywhere? I don't think we would be in that scenario. It's the scenario of, like, anyone here listening with kids knows, like, there's a good percentage of the time your kid's sick, you see a doctor and they're like, there's nothing we can do.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And like, that stressed us out. But I think the answer is create a rule. If the kid's sick and you're on the fence, do a virtual call as soon as possible with one of the services we have. And if they say, go to the doctor, go to the doctor. And now we eliminate the decision making. Should that be our rule?

[C]

Yeah, I think that's a really good

[D]

rule, and I like that it applies

[C]

for future instances so that we're not

[D]

having to go through this taxing back and forth every single time, which turns out feels weekly at this point.

[B]

So, yeah, for anyone without kids, they get sick all the time.

[D]

All the time. All the time. But now that we're speaking about money and creating rules around that, there was actually a listener question that came in. So let me read it, and I'd love to get your take. My husband and I recently got married. We make around the same income. Neither has debt. Besides student loans, we're discussing combining finances and planning for a baby. What are best practices? When does a joint account make sense? Where do we start?

[B]

So this is a great question. Unfortunately, there's not a perfect money rule for this. And I think one of the things I took away from both doing financial planning, I did an episode on money and relationships with Ramitz at. And just talking to people, is that there's actually not a right answer. I would say three or maybe five or six years ago, if you asked me this question, my answer would be, you should combine your finances. It turns out that depending on the couple, anything can work. I think what's important is less whether you both operate out of the same account and that you both are transparent about things and that you talk about your kind of feelings and understandings about money. And so if it works better for you to each have your own checking accounts, that's fine. I think personally, and this is where I'll project my judgment on everyone, I think it's a lot easier if you can get comfortable with just operating in one account. There's one account to pay all the bills out of. There's one account to put all the paychecks in. There's one account to pay your taxes in. It's all our money. And that works. And I'd say if that can work, it simplifies things a ton. But there are couples out there who very successfully say, like, I take 50% of my paycheck and put it in my account. 50% goes in our joint account. And, you know, we pay our bills out of this. And there are even couples that's like, because I make more money, I put more here. And like, you might have prenups and all kinds of other things that factor in. My general sense is that if you cross to a point that the way you're thinking about your money is that it's ours, it's not mine and yours, that it can simplify things by combining your money and putting it together and putting it in a joint account and operating altogether. That doesn't mean that you need to necessarily all have authorized cardholders for every credit card. That doesn't mean you have to have the same credit card. That doesn't mean the other person has to see every expense and purchase or sign off on everything you do. But I think it can help when there's all things happening in one place. And I think the one caveat I'll say, and you have experienced this deeply, is if one person or both people have things that are kind of, like, irregular and confusing, it can be very helpful to either agree that that person is in charge of things or have those things happen in a separate account. So oftentimes, you know, I've talked about, oh, I'll go buy some gold at Costco and resell it. Oh, so that credit card is now going to have, you know, $20,000 on it. And now our checking account needs to make sure it has the $20,000 in. I think there was a time where if you were managing all of this, it would stress you out like crazy if our monthly credit card statements varied from a thousand to fifty thousand dollars because of all kinds of crazy stuff. And it gets amplified even more when there's a business. And some of those business expenses might happen on personal cards and get reimbursed by the business, but they get auto paid by the personal account. And so I think that can be something you'd want to talk through. But I'm guessing that the average person listening is not doing all of those kind of crazy things. And that you're just thinking what makes sense. And I would say go back and listen to the episode I did with Ramit. Maybe have a conversation with an LLM that could be helpful. Do a personality profile and potentially do it for both of you and you know that on that deep personality thing, it gave us a prompt could use to create our own custom GPT or Claude instance about our personalities. And that you could use that as kind of like a couple's counselor. You could take those two outputs, put it in and say, hey, we're thinking about what to do with our money. Based on what you know about us, what do you think we should do? And so I think that if it works for you, combining your finances is probably the best option. And that's me projecting for sure. But there are people for whom it doesn't work well. And I don't think you should feel like that's a problem if that's you. Ours is kind of all of our money is all of our money. We have lots of random accounts. Because sometimes I'm like, oh, there's this cool bonus. Let's go open this thing. So it's not that all the money is in one place. And I'm not even sure at any given point in time you know where all the money is, but you at least know that there's a place you could go to find out where all the money is. And I think it just helps to know that it's like everything gets paid out of this one account.

[C]

Yeah, I agree.

[D]

I think it comes down to like

[C]

you said, the transparency around it and

[D]

communication and then also the values, like make sure you guys are both financially kind of aligned in the way you think about money and how you spend it or how you save or how you contribute. And if you're aligned in that. And there is the communication transparency, I think joint accounts make a ton of sense.

[B]

Yeah. And when it comes to who pays what, I'm like, if possible, can you just automate all of those things so no one has to do any of it? I feel a little crazy with this example, but we use Mercury as a personal banking product and they have this ability to do invoices. And so we have a dog walker and they send us invoices and they're like, hey, can you send me some money over Zelle? And I'm like, would it be cool

[A]

if we just use this thing?

[B]

And I feel so ridiculous. Cause I'm like, could you actually forward our dog walking invoice to my accounts payable email address? And so I didn't say I just auto set up an email filter to do it automatically. But if you can automate these things, it could just make it even simpler. It's not like I'm responsible, you're responsible. It's like, can't it just be responsible? And so invoice goes in, auto forwards to Mercury, gets queued up. We both get a notification that someone needs to approve the payment, and either one of us can do it. And then we get a notification that it was done. Automating a lot of it, setting things on autopay has been helpful. And then, you know, using some tool to review stuff because, I don't know, I just feel like in this day and age, things happen. Random charges on cards, you could set it all on autopay, but you should still review it. And so that's why we're using Copilot still, because there's one place that syncs all the accounts, syncs all the transactions, and on a regular basis, we can go through and see them all, and then we can go through and see what we're spending money on, and we can have a conversation about that. So I think you want to have conversations about this. I do think that it's not a problem if one person manages it, not just because that's our situation, but because I talk to other people. It's like, it's okay if there's a manager of the finances, but it's probably not okay if there's not transparency about it and there's not conversations about it. So even if one person is like, I don't care, I'm not interested. I would encourage the other person to, like we did with our state of the business, export all your transactions from Copilot or whatever tool you use, look at your balance sheet and your net worth and throw it in. And then say, hey, let's create a state of our personal finance report and run through it. And you could even say, hey. And make it kind of fun, make it kind of silly. Like, you know, you can kind of. I've controlled it. It doesn't have to be a spreadsheet. So that's what I would encourage people to do to get on the same page.

[C]

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

[B]

All right. I think that's it.

[C]

Yeah, this was fun.

[B]

I want to encourage everyone. We're going to do this again and again, not every week, but go to all the hacks.comama ask questions for me, ask questions for Amy, ask questions for both of us, and send them in super easy form. Like, it'll take you a second. You can do it on your phone, you can do it anywhere. Because I want to make sure that what we're talking about is, are things that are interesting to this audience. And so we'll continue to share the trials and tribulations of our crazy journey, optimizing our lives and all the stuff that comes with it. But would love to be able to inject any questions and ideas and thoughts and feedback you guys have as well. So do that. And that is it for this week. We'll see you next week.

[D]

Thanks.