Life gets busy when you have a new baby, so Chris Hutchins is on a quest to learn all the hacks, optimize his life, and share what he’s learned with you in his new podcast, All the Hacks. The goal of the podcast is to help listeners upgrade their lives by living more exciting, fulfilling lives without spending a lot more money and optimizing it all along the way. Life hacks tend to fall into one of three camps. It clicks with and becomes second nature, you find a way to automate it so you don’t even have to think about it, or it’s too much work and you never do it again. If you can find where optimization and excitement intersect, it’s a huge win for you and your family. When Chris thinks about life hacks, he thinks about different aspects of his life and what the important parts are, such as family, work, finances, shopping, travel, and self. Categories may also be broken down into multiple subcategories. Jonathan says the idea of life hacks and living his life in a slightly more optimized way is what led him to financial independence which he says is the ultimate life hack as it helps us reclaim our most precious non-renewable resource, our time. Coming out of a year of lockdown, it seems like everyone is planning to travel somewhere. Chris recommends using Google Flights to get quick insight into flight prices with flexibility on airports and dates. For hotel planning, Chris says it’s often a choice between a better price or a better experience. Trip Advisor recently launched Trip Advisor Plus, a paid membership service that allows them to offer hotel rates around 7-8% off because the rates are not available to the general public. However, booking directly with the hotel will likely get you a better experience. In addition to booking directly, reaching out to someone on the sales team or the general manager will often get you an upgrade or some sort of amenity. You may be able to find the names of individuals by seeing who is responding to reviews on Trip Advisor. Having status with the hotel can help as well. A family life hack Jonathan and his wife began doing is creating a shared family photo library and build a slideshow of their favorites from the year. Brad believes another life hack is just being a good person and making personal connections because it makes others want to go to bat for you. A lot of customer service reps have the discretion to do things for you that they wouldn’t if you get angry with them. Website account hacks are becoming more commonplace and passwords are frequently stolen so using the same password for everything can be trouble. Check to see if your account has been part of a data breach at Haveibeenpwned. A password manager makes it easier to use unique passwords for all your accounts. Increasing security with two-factor authentication helps make your accounts even more secure. Chris has a fireproof box in his home where he keeps important documents and the one password he uses with his password manager 1Password. In the event of death or incapacitation, a legacy binder has all the information loved ones need to manage your affairs. As mentioned on the show previously, Brad uses ToDoist to track all his tasks. Chris says that you can’t use any software system like ToDoist for an hour and see the magic. Commit to it. When it comes to renting cars, Chris rents with Avis using a Costco discount. He says to make sure if you’re a member of something, you find out if they have deals for you. Autoslash and Turo are additional ways to possibly save money on rental cars. Chase and American Express credit cards have offers to save many when using their cards. Listener Jessica asked about life hacks for type A career women and mothers on the path to FI. Chris thinks there is power in being incredibly passionate about a company you want to work for. He also says you can negotiate your salary all of the time especially if you present data that you are being underpaid. Before having their baby. Chris was ab