Ask HTM - Cashback vs Travel Points, Letting a Brokerage Cook, and the Right Way to buy a First Home #952

03/03/25 • 52 min

2 Listeners

Let’s dive into the week with some fresh listener questions we have lined up for you! And don't just stand on the sidelines- if you have a question you’d like us to answer, toss your voice memo our way. It only takes about 90 seconds to record and you can find a step by step guide over at HowToMoney.com/ask . Regardless of how random or bizarre you might think it is, we want to hear it!

1 - Cash back or travel points credit card... aren’t the rewards basically the same?

2 - Should I continue to let my investments in my taxable brokerage account continue to grow or should I focus on my mortgage?

3 - What factors like size and location should we consider when buying our first apartment?

4 - Does it make sense to pay for a credit lock with the 3 major credit bureaus?

5 - Can you help me understand Joel’s Costco Instacart hack?

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:

Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Join a thriving community of fellow money in the HTM Facebook group.
Find the best credit card for you with our new credit card tool!
Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.

During this episode we enjoyed a 2025 Bigfoot by Sierra Nevada! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 - Cash back or travel points credit card... aren’t the rewards basically the same?

2 - Should I continue to let my investments in my taxable brokerage account continue to grow or should I focus on my mortgage?

3 - What factors like size and location should we consider when buying our first apartment?

4 - Does it make sense to pay for a credit lock with the 3 major credit bureaus?

5 - Can you help me understand Joel’s Costco Instacart hack?

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:

Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Join a thriving community of fellow money in the HTM Facebook group.
Find the best credit card for you with our new credit card tool!
Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.

Best friends out!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Previous Episode

Friday Flight - Brainless Borrowing, DOGE Dividends, & Abroad on a Budget #951

Time for a Friday Flight- our little sampling of the week’s financial news and what it means for your personal finances. There are a lot of headlines out there, but we boil them down to specific takeaways that will allow you to kick off the weekend informed and help you to get ahead with your money. In this episode we explain some relevant and helpful stories like: renting the fancy clothes, lowest cost airports, the frequent flier switch, going abroad on a budget, secondary credit card benefits, referral bonus taxation, (not so) unlimited PTO, saving the most with health sharing, ghost tax preparers, DIY vs tax pros, brainless borrowing, updated Money Gear #1, and DOGE dividends.

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:

Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Join a thriving community of fellow money in the HTM Facebook group.
Find the best credit card for you with our new credit card tool!
Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.

And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money. Have an awesome weekend!

Best friends out!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Next Episode

Launching an Offbeat and Sustainable Business w/ Jason Zook #953

“Solve a problem for people in an interesting way” and “There’s not one way to do business”... those are just a couple quotes from our conversation with Jason Zook. Our goal for this episode is for you to finish listening, and to be completely inspired to start your own small business. Unfortunately, there can be this aura around starting an “official business” that keeps creative individuals who have great ideas from pursuing something that is going to light them up and prove to be successful. Sure, getting an MBA might be the best path to take for a certain subset, but there are a lot of folks who might be better served by just going for it, and figuring it out along the way! And here to talk about that is Jason, an entrepreneur who takes a very unconventional approach to business formation. He and his wife currently run Wandering Aimfully, which is a platform that seeks to help creative entrepreneurs build successful, sustainable businesses that fit with their lifestyle, all while avoiding the burnout that tends to come with hustle culture. Listen as wee discuss everything from Jason auctioning his last name, creating ‘calm’ businesses, to living abroad in Portugal and more!

Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:

Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
Join a thriving community of fellow money in the HTM Facebook group.
Find the best credit card for you with our new credit card tool!
Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.

During this episode we enjoyed a Na Chouffe by Brasserie Chouffe! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!

Best friends out!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How to Money - Ask HTM - Cashback vs Travel Points, Letting a Brokerage Cook, and the Right Way to buy a First Home #952

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:00.119

Welcome to Hat of Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt, and today we're answering your listener questions.

Speaker 200:00:24.039

That's right, buddy, Happy Monday to everyone. We're excited to get to some listener questions today, including a listener who's trying to figure out whether he should be going with a cash back credit card as opposed to a credit card that offers points. He's going to figure out what's best for him.