Extreme Money-Saving Tactics w/ Martin Mei & Kevin Yee: Exploring Unconventional & (Un)Ethical Hacks

Can returning items to Costco and mastering credit card perks really boost your finances?

This episode is all about walking that fine line between frugality, cheap and, well, let’s say 'creative' money-saving hacks. I'm joined by two awesome guests, Martin Mei and Kevin Yee, who aren't afraid to push the envelope when it comes to saving cash.

We dive into some pretty unconventional tactics, like the art of returning items to Costco and playing the credit card perks game. But hey, it's not all about the cheeky savings! We also get serious about the importance of aligning financial values with your partner and how our relationships with money evolve over time.

Martin and Kevin share their unique perspectives on balancing frugality with investing in life’s experiences and education. And let’s not forget about weddings – those big days that can take a huge bite out of your wallet. We're dishing out some savvy tips to cut down those wedding bills without skimping on the celebration.

Martin Mei is a real estate wizard with a knack for turning properties into profits. With a bachelor’s degree in commerce and additional studies in AI and Business Strategy, Martin's no stranger to the world of high-stakes investing. His journey in real estate is nothing short of impressive, from mastering the BRRRR strategy to managing a 7-figure wholesaling business and a portfolio of 38 doors worth $6.5M. Now, he's setting his sights on class A self-storage assets with the Meily Investment Group.

Kevin Yee, the PharmD who traded prescriptions for digital strategies, is a YouTuber and high-ticket sales advisor. He’s all about helping pros sell their high-ticket offers with class, not cringe. Kevin's also a 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu practitioner who’s mastered the art of making friends and building a life that kicks ass, all while sharing his journey with the world.

Key Takeaways:
Frugality is about being intentional with how you spend your money and resources.
Finding a balance between being cheap and being frugal is important.
Credit card perks can help save money on purchases and protect investments.
Being intentional with spending and investing in education and experiences can lead to long-term fulfillment.

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Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): Everyone, welcome back to the Fit and Frugal podcast. I am your host, Tawni Nguyen. You can find me on IG at Tawnisaurus. So today I have a couple friends with me, Martin and Kevin. They can introduce themselves. They look all hood right now.

0:00:20 - (Kevin Yee): You go first, man.

0:00:20 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, for sure. I mean, we're all wearing black. Gotta look like twin brothers. Well, yeah. My name is Martin May. Thanks for inviting me here. My wife and I, we own a private equity firm. We develop self storage facilities. We were in the multifamily space for a couple years, and we got sick of dealing with know toilets, tenancy laws, all of that. So what we do nowadays is we develop self storage facilities.

0:00:47 - (Martin Mei): It's essentially just like multifamily, but without any of the tenant.

0:00:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): With the humans.

0:00:52 - (Martin Mei): That's it.

0:00:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Remove the humans out of it.

0:00:54 - (Martin Mei): Exactly. And it's a lot more scalable, and we do that through syndication. So we let people passively invest into our deals, and we're looking to launch a fund as well, using the same model. So that's what we do on a daily basis.

0:01:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): Cool.

0:01:07 - (Kevin Yee): I'm Kevin. I'm a youtuber. And I'm a high ticket sales strategist, too. So do everything from sales calls to masterminds.

0:01:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's something new, that BBC, baby.

0:01:21 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, exactly.

0:01:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): We're going to launch BBC together.

0:01:24 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, definitely on this couch for sure. But, yeah, that's me. Oh, also, 10th planet jiu jitsu, bro. So. I love jiu jitsu. That's it. Dang.

0:01:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): So, can I hire you as a bodyguard?

0:01:36 - (Kevin Yee): Probably not, because I'm not that. Yo, if a UFC fighter comes up to me, you're fucked, dude.

0:01:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): I can't even run, dude. I am very unhappy.

0:01:45 - (Kevin Yee): I just lift. That's it.

0:01:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't think I can run.

0:01:48 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, but that's me, man.

0:01:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. So, today, on the basis of the fit and frugal podcast, I remember when we were kind of talking about it at Brian's, and we came up with this thing that was called. What did we call it? Unethical.

0:02:02 - (Kevin Yee): Unethical life hacks.

0:02:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): Unethical life hacks. The frugal edition, right.

0:02:06 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah.

0:02:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I thought that it was, like, one of the most interesting conversations. Not because we are all asian, which.

0:02:12 - (Kevin Yee): I feel like has nothing to do with it.

0:02:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): We happen upon this asian thing together. But I don't think that's why we became friends. Yeah. So let's talk more about unethical. What?

0:02:24 - (Kevin Yee): Life hacks. Unethical life hacks.

0:02:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): So that's just a nicer like a pr way of saying, like, how cheap are you? Cheap. How cheap are we? How cheap are you?

0:02:33 - (Kevin Yee): I think there's a difference, though. There's one to be super cheap and then unethical. Life hacks are, like, borderline scammy. It's kind of unethical. It could be, like, borderline illegal. Maybe not.

0:02:46 - (Martin Mei): Where do you draw the line, though? Right?

0:02:48 - (Kevin Yee): If you get caught in arrest, you're.

0:02:50 - (Martin Mei): Finite till you get caught.

0:02:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. Okay, so disclaimer. This is not financial advice. This is not life advice.

0:02:56 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah. And allegedly, I've never done any of these either at all, whatsoever.

0:03:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): We've taken all of these experiences from a friend, so this is neither legal advice or anything.

0:03:10 - (Kevin Yee): Did I cover ourselves?

0:03:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): Did we cover that? Should I call my lawyer? I just want to make sure we're covered. Okay, let's just start off with how frugal would you rate yourselves from, like, one to ten?

0:03:27 - (Martin Mei): One being the most frugal, ten being the most.

0:03:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Being pretty, I would say kind of like the superficial frugal to where it seems like you're saving money. Kind of like just buying sale items.

0:03:41 - (Martin Mei): Right.

0:03:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Ten being like, you feel like you're a strategist, like you know what you want and you know how to manipulate the system. Crossing into the borderline of, you could possibly, potentially go to jail for these morally, ethically.

0:03:56 - (Kevin Yee): Wait. It's the action of doing it right. Not just like, only knowing. Ten is like, oh, wow, okay.

0:04:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Ten is like, yeah, let's just say, like, ten is probably where it would cross the line of you potentially getting in trouble.

0:04:09 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, I'm probably like eight or nine. I would say.

0:04:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Damn.

0:04:14 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah. I definitely despise the ones and stuff because I feel like coupon shoppers and clippers, they're so inefficient. I'm like, there's better ways to use this. Yeah, I think, honestly, the way my mind works is probably like a ten. I don't know. It's the chinese side of me. Always try and be like, oh, how's this person ripping them off? Can I do the same? Can I one up them? That's like, what's going through my mind, honestly.

0:04:38 - (Kevin Yee): But how I actually act probably like, I don't know, five sometimes an eight. It really depends my mood, honestly. How about you?

0:04:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): I feel like I'm an eight. But now that I've heard way better strategies than how I've been living my life, I would realistically say I'm like a three or four, really, on a daily, but then I get to the levels of like a seven sometimes, if that makes sense, it's going to be interesting. I thought I was really frugal until I met really frugal people. Not cheap people. They actually have a lot of money, but then they got to their net worth and their wealth through frugality. But you can't even see it because they don't look cheap from the surface at all.

0:05:18 - (Kevin Yee): Have you guys ever seen that show the cheapscapes or something like that with the super cheap people who will rewash their fucking toilet paper and stuff?

0:05:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh my God.

0:05:28 - (Kevin Yee): And then dry it? I'm like, okay.

0:05:30 - (Tawni Nguyen): Then I'm like a negative one. Dude, those people are trees. I can't give you up.

0:05:34 - (Kevin Yee): Dude, those people are like, dude, that's intense. But it's like not even efficient because I'm like, dude, you're probably wasting more water than doing that and time and.

0:05:42 - (Martin Mei): All that frugal anymore. That's just disgusting.

0:05:45 - (Kevin Yee): And the personal brand too. Dignity, man.

0:05:50 - (Martin Mei): That's something else that deserves its own episode.

0:05:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): But yeah, I think even just toilet paper. I thought I was good at shopping at Costco or something, right? Just because I think that's where most of the bases of my choices come from. Like, I buy clothes there, I buy gas there, I buy food there, I buy most household items there. And I feel like it saves me a lot of time. It's because I can get everything done within an hour. And frugality kind of comes down to me actually saving time. It's not really like a dollar amount because sometimes if I have to go to four different places to save like $2, that actually to me wastes more money.

0:06:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's because I could do better with the extra 2 hours that I spend driving around to save like a dollar on something else.

0:06:28 - (Martin Mei): That's it.

0:06:29 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:06:29 - (Martin Mei): And I also like what Kevin said about mentality, really how I see it. It's really a mentality, right. So that's kind of how I treat my business expenses, how I treat my personal expenses. But it's always about, okay, strategizing how to save a bit, both on time and also money, right?

0:06:46 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah. I think about maximizing energy in the old days. In college, I was like, how do I maximize my dollar? But back then I didn't really have any skills to really generate that much money. But now as I get older, I value my energy a lot more. And I realize, yeah, going to four different stores in that same amount of time, I could do an affiliate deal like this or some sort of sponsored deal, and that would generate multiples of that time and whatnot, too. So I look at it more as energy these days.

0:07:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:07:18 - (Martin Mei): On my drive here, I was thinking about this. Have you guys always been, like, this kind of thinking about frugality, trying to strategize the best way to use your money and your resources, or was there, like, a monumental moment in your life that kind of made that shift?

0:07:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. No, I think for me, I grew up pretty frugal. My family was well off before I was born, and then we were in Vietnam, so the whole war and all of that communist thing kind of took over. But I grew up, like, the roots of how I was raised is buddhist and very holistic, very non materialism. I guess you would say that, but we were raised, like, my grandpa was a monk and my grandma was a businesswoman, so we knew how to do money, I guess we knew how to conserve money. But when we got here, we were poor as hell. It was just me and my mom.

0:08:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): So I think the lines kind of shift from me taking those roots out and learning to make really good money at a really young age, like, 1213, for the same reasons, moral, ethical reasons that we won't speak of. But I learned how to make a lot of money at a really young age, so money was nothing really important to me. But I think it was when I got to my higher teenage years that when I started spending a lot of money, and I think that ego kind of took over. Like, the high consuming, the high consumption, consumerism, all of that capitalistic, patriarchal dick got into me or something like that. And I really liked, like, wow, if I can use $100,000 to make $500,000, what else can I do, right? So once you tap into that mentality, I just kind of forgot about my frugality, and then I just got really irresponsible. I think that's the right word if we're speaking financially.

0:08:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): The roots is still in me. Like, I'm naturally a frugal person, but I think the power overcame me at one point in my life, and then obviously, I would get humbled years and years later and then kind of return back to roots. Like, who am I? Do I really need all these things? Do I need to live my life and kind of pick up on all of these items and just hoard a bunch of stuff? Just to, right?

0:09:21 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah.

0:09:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): Attach your self worth or attach your status to owning a bunch of stuff that really holds no value to me. It's just because I could afford it. I could afford it once I can afford it twice, I can afford it three times. But does it really bring value to me? And that's when recently, I kind of became back to my roots. It's kind of like none of these things really matter to me. And I think that's how I got to the values I'm here today and attracting conversations like these, which I find really enlightening.

0:09:46 - (Martin Mei): Right.

0:09:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:09:48 - (Kevin Yee): I really like what you said about things happening in stages and stuff and how you had different phases, like, for me, poor chinese family and stuff like that. And my dad was super cheap, but it's not because he didn't have money. It was because how he grew up and those mental models that he brought into our family. And so I kind of grew up with a very similar mentality. And then I think one of the first people I started reading up on was like, ramit Sethi. Have you guys ever heard of him? I will teach you. Be rich. The brown Guy, indian guy? Yeah.

0:10:21 - (Kevin Yee): He talks about the difference between being cheap and then kind of like living a rich life, almost like being frugal. The differences between the words that we choose are very important and something I really like that opened my eyes. Like, oh, there's more than just saving, just money and stuff. It's how I choose to. It's almost a mentality of intentionally spending on the things that bring us value, like you said earlier, that really aid us. And so for me, I never really bought super ball and stuff. I always spent on education, like courses, assets and stuff and like that because that's what I always valued.

0:11:04 - (Kevin Yee): But as I get older, when I became a pharmacist, dude, I was spending a shit ton. I had Amazon packages I didn't even know. I was like, oh, I ordered on Amazon. But that late night scrolling and shit, right?

0:11:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): But then sad, dopamine driven. Yeah, I need this. I need this. I need this. Buy now. Buy now.

0:11:21 - (Martin Mei): Gratification.

0:11:22 - (Kevin Yee): The instant gratification. But then nowadays, for me, I just try to live as minimally as possible. And what people don't realize is all that time you're spending on coupon clipping and shit, you would have just saved more money if you didn't buy it to begin with because you realize it doesn't serve your needs or anything like that.

0:11:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, right.

0:11:38 - (Kevin Yee): How about you?

0:11:39 - (Martin Mei): I hear you. Yeah. On my side. I feel like my parents are probably going to be heartbroken if they know how frugal I am, but I'm the only child. I don't know about you guys, but I was the only child only child as well, right?

0:11:51 - (Kevin Yee): No, I have a brother.

0:11:53 - (Martin Mei): Okay. Yeah. My parents growing up, it was always about me. I was always the center of attention. They were trying to provide the best for me, so they definitely weren't frugal with me at all. So I feel like. I can't say I got it from the chinese side, but it must have been when we moved out here, we financially weren't doing too hot. We slept at McDonald's. We skipped bus fares, which was absolutely illegal. So that definitely wasn't ethical. But we essentially just had to make ends meet, right. So me and my mom would just spend the night at McDonald's, and they would kick us out in the morning, that kind of stuff. So kind of gone through that.

0:12:26 - (Martin Mei): And when I went to college, when it was time for me to go to college, we actually decided to go up to Canada because it's way cheaper compared to the US. So that's how I happened to be canadian. But up in Canada, I still remember this when I was looking for the residence for the first. You know, it's your college year. You're supposed to have fun. People stay at residences. Couldn't afford a residence. So what we ended up doing was we rented out this one bedroom, one bath apartment, and I found two roommates on Craigslist. So one of the roommates would take the bedroom, and I will share a bunk bed with another roommate in the living room.

0:13:02 - (Martin Mei): So that's kind of like what people call house hacking, right? So my mom and I basically kind of did that out of necessity, and that's kind of set me on a path to realize, hey, yes, these are your living expenses that happen on a monthly basis, but there's a lot of ways you can work around it if you're willing to make the sacrifice. And that's also what we did when we bought my first property. It's a duplex. So instead of buying a condo, we bought a duplex and rented out room per room.

0:13:29 - (Martin Mei): I think your previous guest is literally. That's what he does, right? Like, room by room, rent room by room.

0:13:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:13:34 - (Martin Mei): So that's essentially, like, I think just the mentality just got triggered from there where I realized, hey, yeah, your expenses can be high, but there's a lot of ways to work around that. And I feel like that's why I'm living as frugal as I am today. That's kind of where it came from.

0:13:49 - (Kevin Yee): I'm kind of curious about you, too. How has your money relationship changed over the years, too, the way that you look at money the way that you value money. How has that changed over the years?

0:13:59 - (Tawni Nguyen): I definitely did not value money when I was younger just because I had more of it. It was so easy for me, and I think it just became like the excess liquidity in my life that was.

0:14:11 - (Kevin Yee): Are you talking about during your teenage years?

0:14:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, during my 20s, my twenty s. Like the weird grind hustle culture to where I was flooded in cash or whatever, right? But I had no life, no relationships, like no sleep, like no nothing. And all I care about was money was just the process of making. I think it was more like a coping mechanism. It's because that's how I felt, joy. But it wasn't really joy. It was more productivity. It's because I attached myself for to making money and my ability to have a lot of money.

0:14:39 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I didn't really have a strong relationship with it is because once it came in, it comes out. Right. Because your lifestyle got so highly inflated, your friends change because now all your friends are making money. Right. And I hang out with bigger circles, and compared to them, they have tens and millions of dollars. Right. You're just always a baby step away from making more and more money. So that became, I think, a more toxic relationship to money. It's because I wanted more of it, but I wasn't really conserving it. So I was never really conservative when I had a lot of money. It's just because I knew I can make more. It's more of an ego thing. It never came from doing anything, like soul enriching kind of work to where I actually found fulfillment attached to the value of the money that came to me.

0:15:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right. So now that's why in my 30s, I'm finding fulfillment, doing something different. Like, I want to explore more passion. I want to actually do things and build more relationships organically and just have better relationships with people that I make money with so that I feel like my life path and my karmic retribution is a lot better coming from making money. In certain ways, money is still money. Dollar is a dollar, right? Just like you said. If you don't spend that dollar, you're not saving that dollar. If you're buying that item, like, you're not $10 poorer or richer, you just have more things.

0:15:49 - (Tawni Nguyen): The money doesn't really change, but what changes is your relationship with yourself and the people around you. And I think that was how my relationship with money kind of cascaded over the years is because it didn't really come to me in the way to where I feel like I deserved it, or it came at me in a more spiritually abundant sense.

0:16:11 - (Martin Mei): Okay. I feel like maybe growing up, you've always found a way to make money, so the relationship you have with money is slightly different than my story. I can't wait to hear yours as well. But I feel like until I graduated from college with my marketing degree, until then, I was just making hourly jobs, and I was making very little money. So I had to save. Right? I had to squeeze every dollar. I had to work overtime, take on different part time jobs, and how I felt about money, how relationship I had. As soon as graduation, I felt like I was bowling out, making like, $40,000 per year, because that was the most money I've ever made.

0:16:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): $25 an hour, right?

0:16:48 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. When I was at 23 years old, right. I was like, wow, this is awesome. So I felt rich. It's so funny to say that, but I literally felt rich, right? I was like, oh, maybe I don't need to house hack as much. Maybe I can rent, like, a nice apartment. And I feel like a lot of people, a lot of Americans and Canadians are kind of in that trap. They couldn't make money. Now they have a really good paying job, probably pays way more than 40,000. But I'm just saying, they feel like, oh, I can really elevate my standard of living.

0:17:15 - (Martin Mei): So I need to do this. I need to buy really expensive car. I need to do that. And they're constantly just in a trap almost, right? They can't really start a business. They can't really do their own thing, because they really elevated their standard of living as soon as they start making more money. And what changed for me, I'll say, like, the phase that's really monumental was when I started my business doing real estate.

0:17:37 - (Martin Mei): So we started wholesaling, and we started having employees. We started having, obviously, making way more than 40,000. But what's really interesting is the resources that we had. It's no longer, okay, like, my employers resources. It's my own resources. Okay, how do I capitalize on everything that I have? How do I nickel and dime the suppliers? How do I save money in order to really make sure that I can reach my business goals?

0:18:04 - (Martin Mei): But at the same time, just like what you're saying, I think paying for education, that's where definitely we're not nickel and dumbing for that. I feel like my relation with it right now is if we can pay a heavy ticket item to get to a subsidy network of people that we're trying to get to, if we hire the right people. I used to pay my vas, like $3 per hour. Now we just hire someone from Algeria for $50 per hour. And he's going to be a graphic designer because this is the right person to have on our team to get the job done. So I feel like, yeah, we're cheap on certain stuff, but when it comes to education, when it comes to stuff for your businesses, we're willing to pay a heavy ticket price nowadays to get it done properly.

0:18:47 - (Martin Mei): So that's kind of the recent shift.

0:18:48 - (Kevin Yee): In my mindset that's so interesting. I really relate to that because especially running my businesses, I think about how can I deploy capital a lot better, right? Because I related to what you're saying. So for me, I graduated pharmacy school as a practicing pharmacist. Making 130 to was like, oh, shit, I'm balling.

0:19:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I made it as an asian.

0:19:15 - (Kevin Yee): If I do all my cheap hacks, I was like, living with other people. I was paying $600 in rent per month in California. Yeah, we just got this big ass house and we were just living there. Dude, imagine how much capital I had. But the one thing people didn't realize was that I was so miserable. My health was taking. I had high blood pressure at like 27. Dude, that's ridiculous. So having all these health implications, I hated my job and I was like, this isn't going to be my life forever. And I realized there's more to resources than just freaking money, right? There's like time, there's energy, there's a lot of other considerations, right?

0:19:55 - (Kevin Yee): I think that's when my relationship started changing. And then again, it started changing again when I started my own business, like doing YouTube and high ticket sales and stuff. So that was pretty crazy.

0:20:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. What we've been talking about lately is all the failures that entrepreneurs have to go through. It's because we don't sit here and talk about losing money all the time. But I feel like lately that's the conversations I've been having with people. It's because we actually have organic connections now to where we feel vulnerable enough to share. Be like, hey, I just lost x, Y, and z on this business. This business is doing this. I'm in a negative here, but I made money here.

0:20:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): And that story about, or even the storytelling with how you spend on your businesses or your personal expenses, I think that's a high, sensitive topic. And it's always been a taboo, especially in asian culture too, because we're not really allowed to talk about money. Is because we're always supposed to kind of gloss over it. Like, everything's fine with being asian. You're always supposed to pay the bill because you're the older one at the table or whatever. And I feel like those values kind of intrinsically was in me already, and innately, it made me worse financially. When that relationship changed for a little bit in my 20s is because I'm like, oh, now I can take care of people. I can give back.

0:21:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): And my value and my contribution was just paying for everyone and contributing to these relationships that I had in my life, but it was really no value. If I would have just went to masterminds, like, when I was 22, I don't think I'd be in the same space now, right? Because I would have better relationships in my life to where we can sit and talk about money. That's why it was just funny how we shared about all these unethical things that we do to save money and people don't really understand. It's like, you guys make enough money not to do all of these things.

0:21:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I think. I don't know if that's, like, a high that we're kind of chasing.

0:21:40 - (Kevin Yee): It's because it's allegedly, we didn't do any of this. I didn't do any of this. Don't sue me.

0:21:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Theoretically, if someone was to save money on Amazon, you know what saying, like, all of these tricks, like, where do you think we learned it from? Or how did you guys get around to finding these alleged.

0:22:01 - (Martin Mei): I mean, great. It's funny. I feel like we should make a list of everything. If you notice my wrist, you can see probably a timeline. That's because I just returned my Apple watch.

0:22:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh, we were there. We were there. We talked about this.

0:22:15 - (Martin Mei): We talked about this.

0:22:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): And you had an iPad.

0:22:17 - (Martin Mei): I had an iPad.

0:22:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): And you're like, I'm returning this in seven days. Let's talk about that. Where's your.

0:22:25 - (Martin Mei): See, Costco is really good. So I can tell Costco in the face that that's what I'm doing. But other stuff probably not so much. But, yeah, Costco, you know, has this return policy where, unless it's electronics, you can return at any point after five years. After you use it, you can literally return it.

0:22:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): So what are some of the funniest things that your friends have done? Allegedly.

0:22:47 - (Martin Mei): Allegedly, yeah, I mean, with my Apple watch, we usually have an iPad. When we go to these investor meetups, we show them our deal specifics, and we just have to return it within 90 days. The same with electronics, every year there's a new one, there's a new model. So I always feel like a sucker, like, buying the latest cycle, and then the next year, it's already outdated. So I don't know. I will honestly do this with electronics all the time, and I'm proud of saying that, too. But other stuff.

0:23:15 - (Martin Mei): I know whenever my friends come to visit, if they're crashing in my living room, I'll pick up a mattress from Costco and I will return it after their trip. Right. Because again, Costco is the best when it comes to stuff like this.

0:23:28 - (Kevin Yee): You buy a mattress, you're not the type that buys, like, an air mattress.

0:23:33 - (Martin Mei): You want, like, top of the line drop, like, queen size mattress.

0:23:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): No, I throw my bedtress, but no.

0:23:40 - (Kevin Yee): Bed frame or anything like that.

0:23:41 - (Martin Mei): No bed frame.

0:23:44 - (Kevin Yee): We're not returning that.

0:23:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm straight up like, here's a $99 mattress that I got at Costco. Here's some sheets. Good luck.

0:23:54 - (Martin Mei): But, yeah, I mean, something that's really unethical, I would say that I've seen people do, and it's worth a try as well. Those budget airlines that frontier or, you know how they don't have working wi fi per se? It's not like Delta or know they have working Wi fi. So technically, if you go on those airlines, if you buy anything from the pos, if you buy bottle of whiskey or if you buy a snack or anything, they'll run it through their pos.

0:24:24 - (Martin Mei): But they can't really process your credit card. All they're doing by inserting your card is to take your credit card information, and they can run it as soon as they land, when they have the Internet access. So what people can do is you can literally just swipe whatever you want with the expired credit card, and they can't really charge it to you. So you just got free drinks and free beverages and free food.

0:24:44 - (Kevin Yee): But you have to endure that, like, plastic chair. I've never been on one of these.

0:24:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I hear, I'm sorry.

0:24:51 - (Kevin Yee): Over a free drink. I don't know. Maybe airlines.

0:24:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): No, he's going to get all the fucking Ritz crackers and, like, bunny fucking whatever crackers.

0:25:00 - (Kevin Yee): And then you open up your own store and sell that arbitrage.

0:25:04 - (Martin Mei): Nice.

0:25:05 - (Kevin Yee): Zero acquisition cost.

0:25:06 - (Martin Mei): Zero acquisition cost.

0:25:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): Oh, my God. Yeah.

0:25:08 - (Martin Mei): So that would be something that's really.

0:25:09 - (Kevin Yee): Unethical that you could do, man. Okay, so my turn.

0:25:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:25:20 - (Kevin Yee): What's really interesting is I think if you own your own business or anything like that, there has to be a little creative element or thinking outside the box. And I noticed this first inkling of this happening when I read that guy Ramit Sethi's book. And he was talking about credit card perks. And I was like, yeah, I know the travel hackers, they always take out credit cards and stuff. But what I didn't know are all the perks that you get from credit cards. Like, you get primary auto insurance from some credit cards, but the ones, if you want to be allegedly, unethically, life hacking. Right.

0:25:56 - (Kevin Yee): Are the double warranty ones and the purchase protection. Do you know about these?

0:26:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): No. Okay, see, that's why I don't think I'm as frugal as I claim to be. So that's why I say it's realistically know.

0:26:07 - (Kevin Yee): It's just being.

0:26:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): See, this is why I have friends outsourcing.

0:26:11 - (Kevin Yee): So think about this as like, your Costco, right? But let's say if I buy from Amazon and supposedly it gets stolen, it gets broken, maybe a minor ding, right? Technically, for 90 days, that product is covered, right? So you can file a claim, get everything done. Double warranty, right? Double warranty. Let's say you get Airpod pros or something like that, and you're just like, it suddenly is not working anymore after. What's the normal time, one year, let's say one and a half years, right? Since you have double warranty, then you can file a claim and they never ask for the product back. So you get the credit and the allegedly. You get the credit and the product, then allegedly zero acquisition costs. And then you sell it. Then you can sell it on Facebook marketplace. Allegedly too.

0:27:06 - (Kevin Yee): And allegedly, you can double dip. And then when the product goes, like, if you still love that product, right, by that time, by two years, it's probably like really lowered at that point. So you can just buy it used and get it for like, what, $100 or like $20 or some shit.

0:27:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): I've heard of people flipping, like, used items before too, right? Or just claiming losses on all of their Amazon electronics and just flipping them back on offer up in Facebook marketplace and stuff.

0:27:34 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, there's a max limit, though. But I mean, that's one way.

0:27:40 - (Martin Mei): This actually reminded me. I literally just. Not that I did something.

0:27:45 - (Kevin Yee): I did something.

0:27:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): You have a lawyer?

0:27:47 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. No, it's not that unethical. I feel like people must do this.

0:27:51 - (Kevin Yee): Insurance fraud, I think, is.

0:27:54 - (Martin Mei): No, no, it's nothing to do with that. Whoever is citing this, please make sure I'm starting something new here, separate from what Kevin said.

0:28:03 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, suppress.

0:28:05 - (Martin Mei): But I recently did this, and it fully works. It's funny that we're in vegas, so a lot of people obviously come here for trade shows. And if you're in the trade show business or you're in marketing department, probably work with a big company called, you know, you can rent all know tvs, you can rent furniture from Freeman. And so a lot of trade shows, a lot of businesses, what they do during trade shows is that they have to pay a high ticket price to rent all the equipment, to beef up their booth, right, to decorate their booth to Furniture booth.

0:28:36 - (Martin Mei): I was recently in Niagara Falls for a conference my wife and know, instead of paying a supplier, we just know tv from Costco. We bought a desk from Costco. We bought all kinds of gadgets to really present our booth well, to show that we're really prepared. So instead of paying the supplier, we just got it from Costco and return it right after. So I think that's one way that businesses can literally save money.

0:28:58 - (Kevin Yee): Oh, my God. This brings up a memory that happened really recently. It was at like, one of these masterminds, right? 30k mastermind per head, right? And like, dude, the person flew down. They're like, oh, my God, I don't have any of this stuff. The guy that's coordinating the mastermind is like, I got you. We'll go to Best Buy. We'll go all this. So we just buy everything and then just return it right after. Even the light bulbs in the freaking ceiling from Home Depot.

0:29:24 - (Martin Mei): There we go.

0:29:25 - (Kevin Yee): Because you want nice lighting for video shots and stuff.

0:29:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): But, dude, zero equipments and everything.

0:29:31 - (Kevin Yee): Zero acquisition costs. That's how you use.

0:29:35 - (Tawni Nguyen): That.

0:29:36 - (Martin Mei): I'm looking at this room because it's a really nice setup. I'm just trying to see what can.

0:29:40 - (Kevin Yee): Be purchased from Costco.

0:29:43 - (Tawni Nguyen): Hey, we should ask the owner. Hey, where'd you get all these items? Can be returned from Costco.

0:29:48 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, my mind is working pretty hard. Right.

0:29:51 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, see, but that's the thing, right? That's how these unethical life hacks happen. And there's a whole Reddit forum on unethical Life hacks. They also have illegal life hacks. Wouldn't recommend it if you don't want to get arrested. But it's just like hearing these things, it's like, oh, that's how someone did that. I wonder if I can one up them or try some other loophole. It just reminds me of things like marketing and stuff like that. You try different campaigns. Your a b testing, seeing which one doesn't land you in jail, and all that.

0:30:22 - (Martin Mei): That's the thing. I mean, we're all business owners here, so we got to bootstrap, right? We got to make it happen with the resources that we have.

0:30:29 - (Kevin Yee): How about yours? You didn't share any?

0:30:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I can't even think of mine because that's what I'm saying. Okay. I got to take, like, one points back now. Maybe I'm, like, a two. I don't think I have anything that's really life hacky, because this whole time, I would think what I've been doing with Southwest is when I book a flight, because I have a southwest card, I'll book it, and then I'll check, and then actually, the prices will go lower, and you just rebook the flight and you get the refunds. Because that's how I hack southwest. But I don't think it's a hack. It's just something that I naturally do.

0:31:01 - (Martin Mei): Such a standard. It's like the minimum. What you got to do, tawny.

0:31:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. So that's just something I do regularly. But it's not anything to where. It's, like, item specific to where. There's just things at Costco that I would never pay full price for just because that's just it. That's one example, like protein powder or everything that I use normally in my house. There's a pattern of when I go shopping, it's because there's, like, literally 2025 items that I always eat, you know what I'm saying? And that I always have in the fridge, in the pantry or whatever. And I refuse to pay, like, full price for it, even for full price. And it goes on sale within 30 days, you can actually just take it back and get a refund.

0:31:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): So, see, just things like that, that I know how to make it fit my life. I wouldn't go necessarily out of the way to do some of these things. It's because of the time thing. If it's convenient for me, sure, I'll entertain it. But if it's like, if I. It's going to take me, like, an hour to figure out how to do it, just because I feel like I'm a really terrible liar, too. So in some of these situations, if it requires me to have human interaction and if I have to lie to someone, I'll be like, I don't like it.

0:32:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't want anymore.

0:32:07 - (Martin Mei): You know what's funny about the whole Costco return situation? They always ask you, like, per item, what's the reason?

0:32:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm just like, I don't want it anymore.

0:32:15 - (Martin Mei): I just blame on my wife always. I'm just like, yeah, my wife hates it. She doesn't want it. We had a fight about this. She really hated it. I don't know what to tell you. Please.

0:32:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): You're like, I ate most of it.

0:32:25 - (Kevin Yee): It's not like they're going to say no. I've never seen them say no before. Maybe on certain. Yeah, maybe rare receptions.

0:32:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): But what's the weirdest thing you've tried to return that you felt, like, really guilty about?

0:32:37 - (Martin Mei): Everything I've ever bought from Costco.

0:32:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): You still have a membership, right?

0:32:43 - (Kevin Yee): That's the only unreturnable thing. Probably the membership. Get you thousands of dollars of electronics and all this shit, and they're losing money on a $60. They're making money off a $60 thing. I think you definitely came ahead.

0:33:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think you're up at this point.

0:33:02 - (Martin Mei): Now I can sleep on night.

0:33:06 - (Kevin Yee): I think the weirdest thing I've ever returned was probably like, hot dogs at like, Costco or something like that. But it's like, what? Oh, this has pork in it. I don't really want. It wasn't because it was cheap or anything. I was like, I don't think I want these anymore. And I just returned it. That's the only time. But all the other stuff, like electronics or whatever, I never felt bad about. But hot dogs, I'm like, oh, dude, I know that's going to go in the trash, but I'm not going to eat it.

0:33:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. I don't know if it's just because I came from a hospitality service background. I've never really sent food back as much as how much I hate if it's too salty or whatever, I just won't eat it. But there's just something in me. That's what I'm saying. I don't know if there's just like, it's nothing personal. It's not personal to the waitress or whatever, but to me, that's what I figured out, too, because I know I've talked to people to where they're like, you know, I'll eat a meal, like, more than halfway to when they're almost full and just send it back, get a new meal. And I find that really unethical.

0:34:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's what I find unethical. And I think there's a line of what you find, morally or ethically, what your values are, and I think food is one of them to me because I don't know, but I do get mad when I spend money on food and I hate it. And I'm like, fuck, I wasted, like $40 on this shit.

0:34:18 - (Martin Mei): Right as you're saying that. It reminded me. Do you guys have partners? Like significant others?

0:34:23 - (Kevin Yee): No.

0:34:24 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. So what's your partner like when it comes to stuff like that? Because my wife, just speaking from my personal experience, she was like the opposite of me. She didn't feel comfortable talking about money. So at first, there's some friction. You guys know the app, like, splitwise? Have you heard of it? No. Essentially, it's like when your friends go on the trip, you can contribute the expense that you pay for. Or let's say, tony pay for something, and the platform automatically calculates, okay, Tony.

0:34:50 - (Kevin Yee): But it's like vemoing individually, and it's.

0:34:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like, awkward because you got to ask them for money.

0:34:54 - (Kevin Yee): Let me do the math. No one likes doing the math.

0:34:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): You got to send me $15.84.

0:34:59 - (Martin Mei): So it's like, really good for that. And Lynn got mad. Our first fight was about that Lynn got invited to this party, and she was asked to contribute into this fitwise platform. She's like, what the hell is this? I have one drink. I bombed, like, a little weed off this person, and they sending me a memo request for this.

0:35:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): I was like, one hit of weed. You owe me $2.01 hit.

0:35:22 - (Martin Mei): This is my friend group. I don't know what to tell you. She's like, well, in my culture, this would never happen. We don't feel comfortable talking about money. But now she's fully on board, and she's thinking of ways to save money and brew Fugo with me. So I think it either creates a lot of friction for people who have partners, or thankfully, if you're on board.

0:35:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): No, you have to be spiritually aligned, and that's the financially aligned conversation that you should have even before dating or in the beginning stages of dating. It's because if someone doesn't spend the same money or doesn't have the same relationship, it doesn't matter if they have the same goals or visions or mission or lifestyle as you. But if you don't see money the same way, I think that's where the friction comes in. Right. It's because you can conserve on certain things and try to make excuses for other things. Kind of like, oh, but this is an experience and this is a vacation. It's like, no, do you want to travel or do you want a vacation? And I think that's two completely different platform for me. It's because, like, you said, you like traveling. You like traveling, too. But why do you travel?

0:36:21 - (Kevin Yee): It's because I don't really travel that much. I like relationships. That's where I splurge the most.

0:36:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): I splurge the most on eating with friends like experiences and just enjoying life. But there's people that's like, oh, let's just go on a trip. Let's go on a trip. I'm like, why do we always have to go on trips? Can we just hang out at my house for free? Can we not do anything that will cost me more than, like, $2,000 for a weekend or whatever? And I think dating is always like that because in the beginning, you want to kind of like, oh, let's be fun and do all these things.

0:36:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): But I find in my new relationship, I'm like, let's do all the free things. If we hate each other and can't spend time with each other doing absolutely nothing, that's fun or whatever, you're not really aligned, right? Like, who are you without nothing? Who are you when you're not spending a bunch of money on a date? Who are you without your $500 dinner? Right? Anyone can do that. We're capable of spending that. Does that mean can we afford it? We probably can, but if it takes that monetary value to be able to date someone, to be able to connect with them, you're not really connecting with them.

0:37:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): You're connecting with the activity of the newness, the novelty, and the things that you're able to enjoy. Like, sure, let's go to Gordon Ramsay, let's go to Jose Andres or whatever and have the new experience and share that experience. But do you remember the conversation that you have with that person of what values you share or what your goals are? If you can't even remember the conversation because you're drunk and it cost you $500 to be drunk, you can do that at home for a lot cheaper.

0:37:46 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, I find myself chasing a lot of because I'm so relationship based. I find myself going back to, I've had those really nice experiences, and in the moment, it's cool, but I find myself just, like, missing those teenage college experiences where recently actually a purchase I made. You're going to be mad at me because I didn't return it yet, but in my bag over there, I bought my dream camera from back in the day, and it was not that much back in the day. It was a lot.

0:38:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): What's your dream camera?

0:38:24 - (Kevin Yee): It was like the Casey neistat one back in the day, and I was a pharmacist. That's how cheap. Oh, yeah. That shows my relationship with money. I was so cheap back then. I didn't even buy that camera. It was only like $700 back then. Now it's like $200. I'm like, wow, dude, that's freaking cheap. But that brought me so much joy.

0:38:41 - (Tawni Nguyen): In my life because you always wanted.

0:38:43 - (Kevin Yee): It makes me excited to shoot content again and stuff like that. And I think those are the areas that I find myself going back to. Even when I go eat with friends and stuff, I miss going to those casual places, the gringy hole in the wall asian restaurants where they serve the best chinese food. I love those. Yeah.

0:39:04 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. I feel like just know you invest in experiences and mean, we talked about this. We all invest in education, right? There was this one canadian events called the Multifamily conference. Live, whatever it's called. Grant cardone was there. Arod was there. So, like, really good lineup. Like, anyone that's in Canada that's remotely in real estate where multifamily is there and the highest ticket price tier is like vip. It's like $5,000.

0:39:32 - (Martin Mei): You can buy a ticket for 5000. That's vip, or you can buy like the basic level. That's like $400 or something like that. So I kind of make the post about this because I remember my first job. I was trying to ask for a $5,000 race. They wouldn't give it to me. It was crazy. But I just dropped $5,000 like that on a ticket because I was like, yeah, I'll be in the same room with Grant cardone and a rod. And there's like a q and a session with Grant cardone too. And also the kind of people that you get to meet as well, right? So.

0:39:59 - (Martin Mei): But what's really interesting on that trip, talking about how fugo I actually am, because my wife didn't come with me, I was the only one there. I stayed at a freaking hostel, guys. I stayed at a hostel. I shared a room with like six other people. And I was all decked out in my three piece suit in the morning. And I liked the hostel. And people were at the front desk, they're like, what the hell is this?

0:40:20 - (Martin Mei): What is this clown doing at the hostel? But it'd be so funny. I spent like $5,000 on a ticket, but I was too cheap to pay for a real hotel.

0:40:29 - (Kevin Yee): No, but I like that because it's like that intentionality. That's something I spend a lot of money on. I probably spent like yesterday, I think two days ago I spent like seven. It's not a ton of money, but like seven k. But it was on masterminds and stuff because that's a power network. And then what's really cool, you know, those events that you're talking about going to half the time I get comped in for free because of my network now because of that initial thing. So it's just really interesting too.

0:41:00 - (Martin Mei): Intentional?

0:41:00 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, very intentional.

0:41:02 - (Martin Mei): I appreciate that. You've made me sound like smarter, not cheap.

0:41:08 - (Kevin Yee): You're just intentional. A minimalist and intentional.

0:41:12 - (Martin Mei): Yes.

0:41:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think we budget out about what, like, least on these educational experience, too, because now it's a priority to me. And before, yeah, you can spend 2030K going on like three different vacations or whatever, but now I'm like, this is where I'm going to spend my money. And going back to the partner thing because I remember when we saw you at the conference here, how you bought her a ticket. The VIP ticket.

0:41:35 - (Martin Mei): That's right.

0:41:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): Kind of like, that's what I kind of splurge on, too. It's like the VIP tickets. Because I'm like, why not? Right? Because you get to talk to better people. I guess that's going to bring you to a more elevated conversation. And you're like, I bought her a VIP ticket, but I'm going regular.

0:41:51 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, I didn't even get myself a ticket.

0:41:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): So you just went in, right? Yeah, I think on the second day I saw you were like, yeah, I don't even have a ticket.

0:41:58 - (Martin Mei): Exactly.

0:41:59 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, half the time they don't even check to those events.

0:42:02 - (Tawni Nguyen): Well, they don't even check.

0:42:04 - (Martin Mei): I wasn't trying to sneak in. She was like, she had a speaking spot, so I was like, they were to support her, but I wasn't just going to go in without a ticket anyways. But, yeah, no, I do think the three of us were very like minded in that sense, but frugal at the same time. So intentional.

0:42:18 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, very. I got a burning question I've been wanting to ask since the beginning.

0:42:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

0:42:23 - (Kevin Yee): What's a cheap life hack that you tried that definitely was not worth it for you. You're like, dude, this is a complete waste of time for me. What's one thing that you tried?

0:42:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Complete life hack.

0:42:35 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah. That I find, like, online cheap life hack that you tried out that wasn't worth it.

0:42:41 - (Martin Mei): Cheap life hack. I've got one. If you want some more time thinking.

0:42:45 - (Tawni Nguyen): About it.

0:42:47 - (Martin Mei): It'S interesting. I feel like once you're married, there are certain things that you just can't do anymore. You can't be the cheap bastard that you always been talking about myself. But I told you guys, literally, I could sleep under the bus.

0:43:02 - (Kevin Yee): That's fine.

0:43:03 - (Martin Mei): Truly. I can sleep anywhere. But that's why I used to house hack. I told you, even when we're renting, I used to rent hack. I used to live in the punk bed in the living room, so I could not pay rent. And even when my wife and I, we got married, she's a 50 50 partner in everything I do. So we're fully in it and she gets it. She understands house hacking. She's fully comfortable with it. But as soon as we are married, our sex life and all the talks that we'll have regarding business, all the little date nights, little cute things that we do, you don't want people around anymore.

0:43:38 - (Martin Mei): So this is actually very recent. We recently stopped kind of sharing our living space with other people. As a married couple. We wanted to do the right thing and wanted to save money by sharing the expenses, by having roommates. But now we're just like, yeah, we're never going to do that again because it's too much having other people around us. When you're married and have a dog, it's too much of a mental space that you have to give up for other people.

0:44:07 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think that does really cut into the relational aspect, too. And it actually costs you more money in the long run. Right?

0:44:13 - (Martin Mei): Yeah.

0:44:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Not saying it's going to cost divorce. There's no direct correlation to it, but if you're in an unhappy environment all the time, it's just going to stack day by day. Yeah, you're going to resent each other. It's like, why are you here? Why is this person here? But to answer the question, there was one time I tried getting an upgrade to whatever, like a hotel suite or whatever. I was traveling at a conference, and I was telling my friend, I told you, I'm too chicken shit to lie to people.

0:44:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): So it was terrible. So I was like, hey, we probably can. Upgrades. And I tried to play the girl card, right? I was like, hey, you're hot. Let's just try to get upgrades or whatever. And I don't know what the fuck happened, but we were like, not flirting, but she was like, oh, da da. It's just me and my girlfriend. We want something with the tub and all of that stuff. And, yeah, we got like a really nice penthouse and all that shit. But later it was, like, billed to us.

0:45:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): We actually had to pay for it. So that did not work, dude. And I was just like, oh, I mean, we had the money to pay for it, but we tried to do the frugal thing of flirting our way into something, and that's when I found out I'm like, I'm not very good at this.

0:45:20 - (Martin Mei): Yeah.

0:45:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): Am I doing the girl thing the wrong way? I don't think I've ever flirted my way into anything for free or anything for cheap or whatever. If things are handed to me, like a drink or whatever, I feel weird, like, I can't receive because before, it's like I wasn't in that place of receiving things from not even male counterparts, but even girls. I had a hard time just accepting things from people coming from an asian culture that I wasn't really raised. I was raised an only child. I was raised hyper independent. So I pay for things. I pay for you. I pay for you. I take care of you. I got you.

0:45:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): But it's never the same way of, like, hey, get me, because I'm in trouble. Right? But, yeah, that was the one time to where I'm like, now we have a $2,000 room, and we have to pay for it, motherfucker. Three days, dude. I was really mad. I was like, went for $500.

0:46:09 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, I do something similar, but I mean, instead of flirting, I would kind of play on either a honeymoon card, right? My wife and I wear a honeymoon. Like, we just got back from Niagara Falls. As it said, we rented a Kia reel from Costco travel. Obviously, it was, like the cheapest tier, right? It's like a compact car, but I negotiated my way to a Colorado Silverado.

0:46:29 - (Kevin Yee): That's like, damn.

0:46:31 - (Martin Mei): The excuse I use is either a honeymoon where I tell them, hey, this is really embarrassing, but I'm actually supposed to pick up my parents in law. Like, would you mind just give me a free upgrade? Like, I don't have the money to pay for it, but could you give me a little bit of upgrade? It usually works. Like, they kind of feel bad for you. They really feel you. So, yeah, try that. It's another life hack. But you got to be super explicitly clear with them. It's like, I'm not going to pay for an upgrade, but could you give me a free upgrade again?

0:46:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's why the disclaimer was, I'm a fucking terrible liar. Because when I start lying to people, I start, like, fidgeting. I'm just like. I start stuttering. And that's why I'm like. And I start sweating. It's because I don't really know how to. Like, I feel like, with the tactful communication that we've talked about, it's like, I feel like I'm well spoken. I'm very diligent with my words. I'm very assertive, I'm very direct.

0:47:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): But when it comes to lying, I get really weird. I'll be like, can I get this for free? I'm going to be interior. Please, can I have this? Like, do you want me to beg?

0:47:34 - (Martin Mei): For what about yours?

0:47:35 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, well, I have two thoughts, right? So I'll share mine in a second. But as you're speaking, I was thinking about, like, this isn't unethical, which kind of kills the thing, but something I think about is, like, compassion. And just being, like, a very kind person has probably gotten me the most free shit in my life. I've been in 30k masterminds where I didn't have to pay a dime and all this other stuff. And I was reflecting on that, too, because I think when I was younger, I always try to people please manipulate my way into getting free shit, but for the things that actually matter, like, being just really kind has just really paid off.

0:48:15 - (Kevin Yee): But back to the hacks that didn't fucking work. It was probably, like, in college. It's probably in college. And I found this world of, you know what they say. Sometimes what pisses you off is, like, your own projection. I was a couponer at one point. I was a coupon hacker before, and I remember, like, the event.

0:48:38 - (Martin Mei): A coupon hacker.

0:48:39 - (Kevin Yee): It's like those coupon, like, people, you.

0:48:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Take this, you pay for it, and you double dip on another one, but it's a different transaction. And then you take that one, you do a refund.

0:48:49 - (Martin Mei): I thought it was a funnel hacking live.

0:48:51 - (Kevin Yee): No, it's not funnel hacking.

0:48:53 - (Martin Mei): Coupon hacking live.

0:48:54 - (Kevin Yee): Pretty much coupon hacking live.

0:48:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is there a sales funnel we can hack?

0:48:58 - (Kevin Yee): I was like, what?

0:49:00 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

0:49:01 - (Kevin Yee): No, I was doing that because I was like, oh, man, I could save so much money doing this sort of shit. I remember getting my credit card bill. I was like, what the fuck? This bill is higher because I bought so much unnecessary shit that I was never going to buy. And that's when I was like, this is not a smart way for me to spend my time and spend my money and go store to store trying to coupon hack stuff. Yeah, I got hustled. I probably did something wrong, honestly.

0:49:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): You're like, how do I have 17 mouthwash and, like, 18 detergents that I'm never going to use.

0:49:33 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, I know. And then they expire on you. Or maybe you get left with like $4,000 worth of chocolate that you can't get rid of. Allegedly.

0:49:42 - (Martin Mei): Not to our producer here, allegedly.

0:49:48 - (Tawni Nguyen): Dying. There's another hack that I've heard is people buying engagement rings and wedding rings from Costco and returning it and just claiming like they got divorced or something. I don't know if it works. I've never been married.

0:50:04 - (Martin Mei): Wait, so you return it?

0:50:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, they said like you can buy jewelry at Costco or something like that.

0:50:09 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, they have jewelry section and like.

0:50:11 - (Tawni Nguyen): Years later just return it because they don't have like an expiration date on their returns or something. Is that true? I don't know.

0:50:17 - (Kevin Yee): I don't know about that. But as I was preparing for this podcast, I was looking up like, what are the top posts on unauthorized life hacks? Right. One of them was going to divorcees and like freaking old people and buying their engagement rings to and wedding rings.

0:50:36 - (Martin Mei): That's like a wholesaler.

0:50:39 - (Kevin Yee): Hey, your husband died. Death, divorce.

0:50:43 - (Martin Mei): We buy engagement rings for cash.

0:50:45 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

0:50:47 - (Tawni Nguyen): Can you flip those after? Can this?

0:50:49 - (Kevin Yee): I'm pretty sure you can. Yeah.

0:50:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't know shit about jewelry, so I'd be a really bad jewelry salesperson.

0:50:54 - (Martin Mei): Stress sellers, that's what it's all about.

0:50:56 - (Kevin Yee): But that was one of the top tips on ethical life hacks.

0:51:01 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, that's really good because I've heard about buying like furniture and all of that stuff too from a divorce sale. Like just find the local real estate agents and like, hey, which house is going through a divorce and just buy all of their furniture because it's mostly brand new. Mostly their wife picked it or something, so it has to be in good price. And they're too sad to sell it individually.

0:51:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): So I did go to one of those and try to buy everything for like three k, but it just didn't fit my house. Like, the couch was fucking huge, but that's what the guy was going through. But then the human, we was like, oh, I really want to talk to him and find out if he's okay. They're like, no feelings. I'm like, but I feel so bad.

0:51:35 - (Kevin Yee): You know, it'd be really unethical if you're the one that caused that divorce and then you profit off of that and then you arbitrage.

0:51:45 - (Martin Mei): Master plan arbitrage, baby. The chinese side of me, it's like, it's the stuff like cursed. Is it going to be like bat blood?

0:51:55 - (Kevin Yee): It's not going to be cursed because you're going to sell it off to someone else. Oh, true.

0:51:59 - (Tawni Nguyen): This is just an arbitrage. Are we planning a business right now? This is such an unethical business, you guys.

0:52:04 - (Kevin Yee): I've always want to do like an unethical webinar or something.

0:52:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): What else can we sell or buy?

0:52:12 - (Martin Mei): Feel around to something here. Yeah, well, anything that comes with the divorce, right?

0:52:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. That is so sad because you don't want to be part of the statistics. I think I know two people that got divorced that's like in their 30s. Most of them are separated, but they don't admit that they're divorced. They just take the separation is because they don't want to be divorced or whatever. But I don't think that's, I guess, a bad reputation. I think it's just costly because I think marriage is just a costly financial decision to begin with.

0:52:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): And like, you being the only married person here, it sounds like you're pretty responsible in your marriage. Like talking about finances and all that stuff too. That's what I'm sure there's people that have gotten married and it's like, fuck, I shouldn't have gotten married because it's so expensive, like the weddings and all the fucking shit that comes with it. So I don't know if. Is there a hack to how to get cheaper weddings?

0:53:07 - (Martin Mei): There is actually, yeah.

0:53:11 - (Kevin Yee): I mean, you're the married ones, though.

0:53:13 - (Martin Mei): Destination weddings, it sounds expensive, but you can literally invite the entire world. But only specific people can show up on our list. I think we invited like 200 people. Only 40 people can make it because we did our wedding in Spain and most of our friends were coming from China, Canada, US, Algeria, from everywhere. And none of them could make it to Spain.

0:53:36 - (Kevin Yee): Did you do a chinese style where you make money too on top of the table?

0:53:39 - (Martin Mei): I wish I should have. Oh, man. See, I feel like there's certain stuff that I just like. Yeah, even the engagement ring. I didn't really do any tricks or being frugal with it at all. But that's a really cool way, like destination weddings. It sounds expensive. It really brings down your guest list and nobody is offended. So people usually just send you a gift or send you some money and they're like, hey, I'm sorry I couldn't make it.

0:54:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, no worries.

0:54:02 - (Martin Mei): You owe me one.

0:54:03 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is it unethical if I just make a wedding anyways? Be like, hey, I'm getting married. Feel free to venmo me. But I don't get married.

0:54:12 - (Kevin Yee): That's just scamming people. That's just unethical. That's where we draw the line, you piece of shit.

0:54:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, dude, I told you I'm a three. I can get to a ten. I'm going to get scammy real quick right now.

0:54:25 - (Kevin Yee): Dude. If we're doing that, I might as well hire a hitman and take off all these people and buy their wedding rings and stuff and sell it. I mean, allegedly. Allegedly.

0:54:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): We are in no way affiliated with this man.

0:54:43 - (Martin Mei): If you see your spouse missing, we're dead. You know what happened?

0:54:48 - (Kevin Yee): It's an accident. Purchase protection. That car that drove to, I may.

0:54:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): Or may not be getting married. I don't know.

0:54:57 - (Kevin Yee): And make sure you get a life insurance plan out before you do it. Yeah, very important.

0:55:03 - (Martin Mei): Damn part of the master plan.

0:55:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I think, yeah. Asian weddings, they make a lot of money because I used to plan them and I see how much cash they rack in at the end of the day with the fucking envelope.

0:55:13 - (Kevin Yee): What do you feel like the profit margin is on that?

0:55:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's about like 300%. It's because all the weddings have plans. Like the weddings itself, it's about 50 to. So it's the higher end ones because usually you aim for like 30, right? Like the average ones that people do want to get married, they're like, oh, I want to spend 30k. I'm like, okay, let me see what you want. And they give me a list. I'm like, that's about $65,000 because like 9000 of those is fucking flowers. And they're like, how do you know? I'm like, because bitches, when they start listing flowers, they don't expect flowers to be that much. But flowers actually is the most really high margin item.

0:55:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): That and the bar. And that's like the only two things that you can't really save money on because one is perishable and the other one you can't really return. So there's no way to buy a bunch of liquor and return it because alcohol is non refundable. I tried too, because I used to plan weddings. They're like, oh, we need this much liquor. I'm like, you don't need this much liquor. They're like, oh, everyone's going to have a great time. I'm like, just buy a third of this because you can't return it.

0:56:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): And I think going with the profit margin of the envelopes, I've seen, like, maybe that wedding just had really rich people, but in the back I kind of asked one of my friend that was coordinating it, I think they made about, like, 150 that weding in just, like, envelopes and whatever the checks or whatever that they came in, because a lot of people just write checks instead of giving cash. So I'm wondering, what's the average price of entry, because I've only given up to, like, $1,000. And I thought that was a lot.

0:56:47 - (Martin Mei): Wow, guys, I messed up then, dude.

0:56:50 - (Kevin Yee): Imagine if you live stream that event and you're accepting donations from your fans, too, and monetize that shit.

0:56:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): Put on Patreon and do a chinese.

0:56:57 - (Kevin Yee): Wedding on top of that.

0:56:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Fuck, yeah, I'm going to put on Patreon. I'm going to YouTube, stream it.

0:57:01 - (Kevin Yee): And then you get a life insurance policy on your wife and take her.

0:57:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Out and then sell the ring.

0:57:07 - (Kevin Yee): Dude.

0:57:10 - (Martin Mei): That'S really good.

0:57:12 - (Kevin Yee): There's one thing to just save money, but there's another thing if you want profit, if you want profit off of.

0:57:16 - (Martin Mei): It, break even or profit margin.

0:57:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. But if you're going into it knowing that it's going to be a really expensive contract that you're going to sign the rest of your life to, wouldn't you want to go into it at least? Positive. Right? Because most people go into it don't realize they're spending 30 to 80k on just one day unless their parents are paying for it as a gift or whatever. But that's really pricey, and I see a lot of that.

0:57:38 - (Martin Mei): Here's actually a disadvantage with a destination wedding. Sure, you can have a shorter guest list, but people, in their mind, they've already spent thousands of dollars just being in Spain. Right. So we ended up not getting a whole lot of cash, to be honest. So we're. Yeah, like, our registry is literally, like, give us money, basically. We're like, yeah, we don't. It's true, too. Like, Lyn, and know we don't want physical gifts. We just want experiences or cash.

0:58:01 - (Martin Mei): But, yeah, people are writing very small checks, I think because they spent so much money getting to.

0:58:06 - (Tawni Nguyen): Getting there. Yeah, because they're probably like, oh, they just want our presence. They just want us to sit there through the vows and is it fucked up if I just give my vow or whatever? Be like, by the way, we love money. We're building a life syndication with this wedding.

0:58:22 - (Kevin Yee): You're just a minimalist. Not with money, though.

0:58:26 - (Tawni Nguyen): But everything else. I just want to make money. If I'm going to do a really important life decision, I might as well put that. Or you can word it kind of nicely. It's like, hey, this is going to go towards the kids right now.

0:58:37 - (Kevin Yee): That's what's happening.

0:58:40 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm planning on how to make money getting married.

0:58:45 - (Martin Mei): Mistakes.

0:58:46 - (Kevin Yee): I wonder if I could put an irresistible offer together where I could actually make a shit ton of money on my wedding.

0:58:52 - (Martin Mei): Let's hear it.

0:58:53 - (Kevin Yee): I don't know. I'm thinking about it, talk about it.

0:58:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): It sounds like a partnership coming up.

0:58:57 - (Kevin Yee): Dude, we can make a business, and then you can sell other people. Be like, dude, I can structure this. I got the salespeople. I can structure this whole thing so that we can monetize your whole family and shit.

0:59:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): Like the PR, the writing down to where they'll feel good donating. I've thought about maybe if I do, like, a good cause booth in the back to where they can donate to charity and all that stuff, too.

0:59:20 - (Martin Mei): The charity is your bank account.

0:59:23 - (Tawni Nguyen): The charity is an actual charity.

0:59:26 - (Kevin Yee): You're good. I'm catching on here. This is bad. I didn't think like this before I walked in here.

0:59:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): The foundation to me, the library I'm building is for me.

0:59:39 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, but have you ever been to an expensive ass wedding? I've been to some, right? And I barely even remember those anymore. They're just a speck in my memory these days.

0:59:50 - (Martin Mei): Yeah.

0:59:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): I think what people spend the most money on now is to have. I wouldn't say, like, the Instagram gratification of people posting all of their stuff. But most of the weddings that I planned in the past, like five years before I stopped, they did a lot of geotech. They want live filters. They want it to be like an Instagram event. They want it to be all over the feeds, like, people having fun, dancing and all that stuff.

1:00:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): So I feel like it's more of, like, a live event than it is. They want the biggest flowers, they want the arches and all of that stuff that looks, like, really glamorous. But if you're looking at, like, a flower arch and the tables and the designs and the decorations around there, it's like 20k just for the backdrop of people posting the pictures of standing with you. So when I have that background going into it, that's why I was not against marriage, but I was really against the money that is spent on weddings.

1:00:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because marriage itself is different from your wedding day, right? The wedding day is like a one day event. But for me, marriage kind of starts at the time of your commitment. It's not at the time of you saying your vows. So if you're intentionally going into marriage thinking like, hey, this is the day I begin my commitment to you. That's already a fucked up mindset. It's because you're waiting to get fucked up, be hungover, and be like, oh, I'm married. I can't do anything about it. But if you go into it with the mindset, like, hey, how do we one capitalize on this day?

1:01:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): Make really good financial decisions so that our one day doesn't ruin our financial stability and put us in debt for the next year just to pay off that one day? I think that's a different mindset of what, to me, frugal is. And that's the kind of life partner you should be thinking about.

1:01:30 - (Martin Mei): Unless you're from certain cultures where you just have to. Indian weddings are insane.

1:01:35 - (Kevin Yee): They're like Coachellas.

1:01:36 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I really want to go to one. I see, like, the elephants and stuff. I just want to play with the elephants.

1:01:41 - (Martin Mei): I don't know, like four day, five day festivals.

1:01:44 - (Kevin Yee): Dude, it's so crazy because their culture is very frugal, cheap and all that. But then the weddings, they just go, like, fucking crazy every single time.

1:01:54 - (Martin Mei): So true.

1:01:55 - (Tawni Nguyen): Do you mind sharing how much you spent on your wedding? Or is that something that Lyn's going to text me? Like, what the fuck? I don't want your wife after me, man.

1:02:02 - (Kevin Yee): Wait, we spent this amount.

1:02:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): I know your wife, too, man. I'm kind of careful.

1:02:08 - (Kevin Yee): The flowers to the funeral home.

1:02:09 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I'm treading lightly.

1:02:12 - (Martin Mei): It really wasn't bad. It was around just under €50,000.

1:02:16 - (Kevin Yee): So it's not that bad.

1:02:17 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. And this last summer, that's when we got married. And euro and american dollars, they were basically one to one.

1:02:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): Okay.

1:02:22 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, it really wasn't bad at all.

1:02:24 - (Tawni Nguyen): So you were in the statistics that I was saying, right? The average wedding?

1:02:28 - (Martin Mei): Oh, yeah. I think that's a really good average. But as you said, where we could have saved money is we could have done, as you said, like, the alcohol ourselves, we could have done the flowers ourselves. Honestly, the cake was a fucking rip off. It was literally the tiniest cake. And it was like, I think, €700 for the tiniest weding cake and wedding dresses. I feel like there must be a better way for wedding dress. Like, she will never be able to wear that weding dress again. Yeah, it's a freaking white dress. What are you going to do with it?

1:02:55 - (Martin Mei): She's north african, so she has seven different dresses. All the other dresses, you can wear that in certain occasions. But, like, a wedding white dress, does she drop, like, two grand on. There's no way she can wear that again.

1:03:08 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right?

1:03:08 - (Martin Mei): So, yeah, kind of hate it. I took those as L's, but overall, really fun.

1:03:12 - (Tawni Nguyen): Still usually, like, the five tier wedding cakes that I've seen, it's about like two k. Oh, yeah, we didn't get that. We got, like, mean. Not the cakes, the dresses. They go up to like 4k. When I was in the industry, and I have a really strong affinity for secondhand, I'm like, what if I start like, a secondhand wedding dress business where I just rent them out? But then I think it's more of, like, the sentimental thing that the brides get to keep because most of them kind of keep their wedding dresses.

1:03:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): And for me, I'm like, I'm just going to wear it once. Unless it's like a couple of $100.

1:03:42 - (Kevin Yee): You're not going to wear it to your friends weding?

1:03:46 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm going to wear it once. I'm going to make money, hopefully. I want to double this dress cost. If I'm going to get married.

1:03:52 - (Kevin Yee): Just wear it to every single wedding you go to.

1:03:54 - (Tawni Nguyen): That's so fucked up.

1:03:56 - (Kevin Yee): Oh, my God.

1:03:57 - (Tawni Nguyen): I know. It might be unethical. That's fucked up, dude.

1:04:00 - (Kevin Yee): Sorry. I'm not an ethical asshole here. Sorry, dude.

1:04:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): I just almost went to a tent. Like borderline went to jail for the last thing I said. Right.

1:04:09 - (Martin Mei): But I think, yeah, used for sure. I guess the fitting will be probably the hardest part.

1:04:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right?

1:04:15 - (Martin Mei): Because people's shapes.

1:04:16 - (Tawni Nguyen): Because they have to alter and all that stuff, too.

1:04:18 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. Interesting enough. I'm not sure if you ever dealt with this, if any of the viewers are from Texas. I recently went to a wedding in Texas. That's why I happened to know this. For some reason, on Sundays, you can't buy liquor in Texas.

1:04:31 - (Tawni Nguyen): Really?

1:04:32 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. You can buy a beer. You can buy all you.

1:04:36 - (Kevin Yee): I think that was Massachusetts, too.

1:04:38 - (Tawni Nguyen): Really?

1:04:39 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah. Sundays you can't buy liquor and stuff.

1:04:42 - (Martin Mei): Yeah. But for my really good friend's wedding that happened in Austin, they were short on alcohol. They found out last minute and they couldn't buy anything on Sunday.

1:04:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): Is that new?

1:04:52 - (Martin Mei): I don't know. I think that's always been the thing in Texas. But again, I'm canadian. What do I know? We're just scrambling, trying to find solutions. We're calling out frats, we're calling out bars. It was nuts.

1:05:03 - (Kevin Yee): Was it end up being a dry wedding?

1:05:05 - (Martin Mei): There was enough alcohol. It was just pretty watered down. And all of the local friends, they.

1:05:10 - (Tawni Nguyen): Brought in their own supply, like from at home.

1:05:13 - (Martin Mei): Literally from at home.

1:05:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Outsource their pantries and stuff.

1:05:15 - (Martin Mei): Got, like, half a handle. Everyone just bringing whatever they can. Oh, my bottle. Yeah. So be careful when you're trying to be frugal with planning these events like that.

1:05:28 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, I don't drink, but would you guys be mad if you went to a wedding and it was a dry wedding?

1:05:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): I've planned a dry wedding before.

1:05:36 - (Martin Mei): Okay, I'll be mad.

1:05:37 - (Tawni Nguyen): The guests were pretty mad. Some of the guests were really mad.

1:05:40 - (Martin Mei): Did they know beforehand?

1:05:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Some of them didn't know. I don't think they thought it was, like, real, because the signs and stuff would be, like, mocktail bar, because it was, like, a religious.

1:05:50 - (Martin Mei): Is it, like, Muslim?

1:05:51 - (Kevin Yee): Muslim?

1:05:52 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. I was like, I don't know what it was. But then I didn't plan the wedding. I just planned the bar. So that's all I got the instructions for. And I planned a mocktail bar, right. And I didn't know, and I showed up, and, like, all these people are mad. I'm like, why are you mad at me for? They're like, you gave me juice. I'm like, it's a mocktail bar. What do you want me to do? They're like, you got to have something back there. I'm like, no, it. I was like, do you want me to sell you shots from my car? What do you want?

1:06:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): But that was the one time to where I think whoever was getting married should have done better at putting it on the invitation or something like that. But I don't think I would be mad if it was disclosed ahead of time just because I stopped drinking. I don't expect other people to not drink, but I do want to host an event to where non alcoholic drinks, like mocktails, are more favored. But then there will still be options and just not make it, like, everyone get drunk and kind of forget. And most wedings I've been to, which is not a lot, probably less than ten, but all I know, it's like, you do shots of Hennessy coming from an asian background, and by, like, the fourth or not even right before the lobster, everyone's coked out, and no one eats anything after that. So you waste, like, six courses of food, and each table costs you about $500 to $1,000.

1:07:03 - (Kevin Yee): Those are definitely viet weddings, for sure.

1:07:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): Weddings. I've worked them, I've been to them, and I plan them, too, so I know how much money goes into it, and I see the same pattern every single time.

1:07:15 - (Kevin Yee): It's always up to the lobster, and.

1:07:17 - (Tawni Nguyen): Then it's up to the lobster. Everyone's coked out, and the bar is slammed with all the bottles coming out, and everyone's drunk as shit, and it wastes all the money on the food. I always tell them, like, hey, plan the good stuff, like, first, and then plan all this stuff. No, you got to ease it in. You got to ease it in. I'm like, no, I looked at your guest list. Like, everyone is under 30. They're going to be on coke by, like, 730.

1:07:39 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm not going to lie to you. They're like, how do you know? I'm like, I'm planning your bar. I know how much liquor you're buying, dude. It's like $10,000 in liquor. Like, everyone's going to be on coke.

1:07:49 - (Martin Mei): Wow.

1:07:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. I don't know. That's just my thing coming from the industry and being too some of them. And sometimes when I was part of the fucking problem, I'm like, I got to make it to the lobster. I never fucking make it to the lobster. And I get so embarrassed. I'm like, fuck, I know this shit, too, dude.

1:08:05 - (Kevin Yee): Being sober, I always make it to the lobster. I'm like, the only one eating the fucking lobster at that point.

1:08:09 - (Martin Mei): Eating other people's lobster, dude.

1:08:11 - (Kevin Yee): And then you just package that up and then sell on the street. Arbitrage, zero inventory cost. Yeah. Zero cost. Acquisition.

1:08:20 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. What a fucking wild ass conversation today, dude. I felt like I talked to the mafia and shit about how to make money on weddings, bro.

1:08:26 - (Kevin Yee): You got my mind spinning. This is why I can't spend time with people like me, because I'm like, oh, will that work?

1:08:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Will that work? Because we're grabbing dinner after this. We're going to see where this takes us. Right?

1:08:38 - (Martin Mei): Talking yourself in the mirror. But they actually have different ideas.

1:08:41 - (Kevin Yee): The mastermind. Oh, the mastermind.

1:08:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): The cheapskake. Mastermind.

1:08:47 - (Martin Mei): Wait, so the fit and frugal. What is the concept behind it?

1:08:51 - (Tawni Nguyen): Concept behind it? Fit being, like, mental, spiritual, emotional, obviously physical fitness and financial fitness. And frugality is just a way of life to understanding where you need to spend money on. And for me, it's more of like a life audit. For most people, it's because for me, I'm teaching. The basis of actually understanding your lifestyle number is people only know how to calculate their financial independent number, right?

1:09:14 - (Tawni Nguyen): Pretty simple. Like, if you know the basics, but they don't know how to minimize their lifestyle number to actually get to that number. It's because the inflation thing really kicks in. And just because maybe if you're making fifty k a month. You're spending forty k a month.

1:09:27 - (Martin Mei): That's right.

1:09:27 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah, I had that mindset too. I'm like, I can always make more money. And one day you stop and you're like, oh, fuck. So it's a lifestyle that I feel people don't really resonate well with the word frugal just because it kind of makes them sound cheap or whatever. But it's actually not like a lot of the nicest and wealthiest people I know are the most frugal people I know. And they live a really modest life with millions of dollars in the bank and they're happier than ever. It's because they actually only spend money on the things that bring them value and they spend money on other things, obviously investments and having businesses and stuff, but not on showing that they have money.

1:10:05 - (Martin Mei): Right.

1:10:05 - (Tawni Nguyen): So that was kind of like my inspiration of how from that defining moment of changing my relationship with money and how I live my life, that's just how I'm going to carry those values and hopefully bring value to other people by sharing these kind of experiences. Right. Like tips of how to not go to jail. Save money, frugal, you just cheap, homie. Free housing. But yeah, no, thanks for asking.

1:10:31 - (Martin Mei): Yeah.

1:10:32 - (Tawni Nguyen): So I feel like we're kind of aligned in that similarity of how we choose to live our life, too. Business owners, entrepreneurs. We need to save money, maximize our income, make more money, but minimize our lifestyle.

1:10:44 - (Martin Mei): Even the studio we're in. Right. I think it's a great concept. Like, they're essentially the producers house hacking in a way. Right. They got their warehouse in the back and this is used for income producing aspect of the property. I love it. Great concept.

1:10:56 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah.

1:10:57 - (Kevin Yee): Last thing, because we're going to document this. Right? What's something that.

1:11:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): Call my lawyer.

1:11:06 - (Kevin Yee): What's something that will get you rest? No, I'm kind of curious. What's something exciting that you would like for fit and frugal to happen to fit and frugal podcast? What's something exciting that you're looking forward to?

1:11:19 - (Tawni Nguyen): Okay, so I'm a merch girl. I love merch. I've been buying t shirts since I was in my teens, going to concerts and all that stuff. And that's just what I loved. But I did recklessly, I guess, overdo them at one part of my twenty s. Like, I was going to holy ship. I was buying like every single fucking shirt on that boat. And holy ship is not cheap. Right? Like, every rave I went to was like $10,000.

1:11:44 - (Tawni Nguyen): I know it's like a whole, what the fuck? I know.

1:11:47 - (Kevin Yee): Every rave is ten to 20,000.

1:11:50 - (Tawni Nguyen): Well, it's like in the Bahamas, and you make a trip out of it, and it's like a car festival kind of situation. Yeah. Like, you're on an island, you're on a yacht. Not on a yacht, on a cruise ship for whatever days. And then, of course, I won't sleep on the bottom. I need whatever the deck. I need air and all that stuff. So those rooms are like $6,000. So that's what I'm saying. I had a really high lifestyle before, too, but I love merch, and I do see usability in the lifestyle that it creates is because I do want to make really high quality clothing and just very essential items that don't look essentially expensive but really durable. Because for me, durability and longevity of items that you own is really important to me.

1:12:34 - (Tawni Nguyen): Right. Like the cup that I have, I refuse to buy a stanley. I refuse to be, like, an Instagram influencer with a $50 cup. This was like $17 at home goods. And my other one has been riding with me for almost, like six years. It's like falling apart, and it's like the straw keeps falling out.

1:12:49 - (Kevin Yee): I'm like, maybe you file purchase protection on that.

1:12:53 - (Tawni Nguyen): I did not file a purchase protection.

1:12:54 - (Kevin Yee): Might not be too late. The warranty didn't hold up. Right.

1:12:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): But, yeah, that's what I mean. And that's something that would really bring me joy. It's being able to kind of bring that mentality towards people of understanding. Like, hey, spend money on things that actually will last you a long time. It's because I know minimalism, like the aesthetic kind of culture now, all these minimalist items are actually not really good quality. They're still fast fashion. They're still destroying the environment, and they're still somewhat expensive. Like, a lot of these things that look aesthetically pleasing as minimalist items, they're really fucking expensive.

1:13:28 - (Tawni Nguyen): I saw some t shirts that's like $150, and I'm like, I get the quality and all that stuff, but maybe get like a $40.01 if quality of the material is your thing. If not, I shop at Target, I shop at Costco. It's like $10. And the wearability, it's like I calculate my clothes into cost per wear if I'm going to buy something, like, how many use do I get out of it? My shoe is like $30. You know what I'm saying? I refuse to pay any more than a certain amount for certain things, like my pants were from Costco is probably, like, $12. I'm not even going to lie. It's probably not even $15.

1:14:00 - (Tawni Nguyen): But for me, exchanging that lifestyle into people and understanding the value of the things that you're actually paying for would make me really happy. In terms of things that you're buying.

1:14:09 - (Kevin Yee): Yeah, technically, it's Zero because if you're Martin over here, you'll return the pants too.

1:14:13 - (Tawni Nguyen): I love these pants.

1:14:14 - (Martin Mei): Exactly.

1:14:15 - (Tawni Nguyen): I'm emotionally attached to them. I've had them for, like, three years.

1:14:18 - (Martin Mei): Return them.

1:14:18 - (Tawni Nguyen): I can't return them now, man.

1:14:20 - (Martin Mei): Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can.

1:14:22 - (Tawni Nguyen): I don't have the receipts. It's so old.

1:14:23 - (Kevin Yee): Don't matter.

1:14:24 - (Martin Mei): It doesn't matter.

1:14:25 - (Tawni Nguyen): It's so old that it's becoming Caprice. It's because I'm, like, outgrowing my own clothes.

1:14:30 - (Martin Mei): Thanks for sharing. I always thought you were designer stuff.

1:14:33 - (Tawni Nguyen): Only, so, no, this was given to me. I have things that are of sentimental values. Gifts. Gifts. I don't really pay a lot of things on jewelry. I don't believe on buying things like that that really don't hold value to me unless someone gives it to me. Like, this shirt was a gift, obviously. I truly like the things that I enjoy wearing. I have, like, ten t shirts that I wear all the time and, like, two pairs of pants. I have more than that, but I don't really care for them just because I don't see the value.

1:14:58 - (Kevin Yee): Awesome.

1:14:58 - (Tawni Nguyen): Yeah. Cost per wear is important. Yeah.

1:15:03 - (Kevin Yee): Cool.

1:15:04 - (Tawni Nguyen): I like how you asked me a question at the end, but, yeah. So hopefully you guys got some kind of valuable tips or some laughs, at least. I hope nobody goes to jail for any of these alleged conversations that we've shared today about what our friends have done in the past at Costco, et cetera, and airlines. Yeah. If you want to link up with me, I'm happy to connect on tawnisaurus on IG. And you can find Martin at itsmartinmei

1:15:28 - (Martin Mei): Martin may where if you just look up Martin self storage on any other platforms, you're going to come across my profile.

1:15:35 - (Kevin Yee): You can go to refugeehustle.com slash links. It has all my things, Instagram and all that. But on IG, I'm Kevin the refugee.

1:15:42 - (Tawni Nguyen): Awesome. Cool. Safe fit and safe frugal.

1:15:45 - (Kevin Yee): Oh, my God, the FBI are here.