Hidden Money Pots

Places most people don’t think or know about to put their money

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $4,000 Vacation + $1,000 VISA eGift Card

The Ultra High End - 4 Tickets to Candlelight: A Tribute to Taylor Swift

The Superpremium - Hutchins BBQ

The Premium Core - HomeChef

The Accessible Core - Hidden Money Pots

The Affordable Luxury - Future Brands

The Everyday Luxury - In-person Social

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $4,000 Vacation Voucher + $1,000 in VISA eGift Cards [ARV $5,012]

• Odds: For every 660 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) vacation bundle Prize

• Contest Period: January 3, 2024 at 10 AM CST to January 30, 2024 at 10 PM CST

See Issue 1 for more content about The Bespoke Prize.

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winners

The winner for Issue 9 is Ha from Lincoln, Nebraska! This is her submission for “what’s your favorite decor”:

Ha, you are fancy! For your fancy decor, you have won a $200 HomeChef eGift Card!

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: 4 tickets to Candlelight: A Tribute to Taylor Swift [ARV $239]

• Odds: For every 160 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) set of four (4) tickets (if available)

• Contest Period: January 24, 2024 at 10 AM CST to January 30, 2024 at 10 PM CST

Here are the specifics of the first set of tickets:

What: 4 x Zone B tickets to Candlelight: A Tribute to Taylor Swift

When: February 24, 2024 @ 6:30PM

Where: Edison’s Event Venue in Dallas, Texas

Taylor has been on a roll lately! Even though, I’m quite ignorant about Taylor Swift’s rise to fame, music and the culture around it, I know there are many Swifties out there. My local Swiftie (my wife) tells me how amazing her music is and cranks it up in the car when she gets the chance.

Candlelight, combines classical music prowess and illuminating candle-lit venues to showcase wonderful music of different genres. With the warm, silent ambiance, Taylor’s catchy tones will echo into the hearts of all the Swifties in the audience. Even if you aren’t a Swiftie, I’m sure you can find at least one friend that is or is willing to take your seat.

I think it’ll be a wonderful experience as classical instruments meet modern music, it tends to bring a nostalgic and relatable feel to old sounds. If you win, take my wife with you. I’ll be sleeping in my kids’ room for a week if she doesn’t get to go.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Hutchins BBQ in Mckinney, Texas. Texas is known for its barbecue, or BBQ. If you go to any major city center, there will be a dozen BBQ joints that is lauded as #1 in Texas. Then you visit 3 small cities around each big city center to find 3 more BBQ restaurants saying they’re the best. The reality is most of them are really good and do stand out to the locals. But there are only a few that stands out to the majority of the country-sized state of Texas.

Hutchins BBQ is one of those restaurants. It’s a huge plus I only live 10 minutes away from it. I won’t go into how everything is amazing, since that’s why I’m writing about it. Let me give you a list of a few things that stand out:

1. Accolades - Hutchins has been in every major and minor magazine (digital and print) in the state of Texas, even on the Oprah Magazine’s O List. They’ve been ranked top 100, 50, 15 in the state for more than a decade in these publications.

2. Free Dessert - Normally, most BBQ restaurants have a salad bar for sauce, pickles, onions and sometimes jalapenos. Not only does Hutchins do that, they even give out free Peach Cobbler and Banana Pudding to dine-in customers! That’s nearly $5 servings for free, so I normally get cobbler with a side of brisket.

3. Ambiance - Location, location, location. Many amazing BBQ restaurants are in the middle of nowhere, which makes it quite a trek to get to. Hutchins still has the same rural BBQ joint feel, but is just around the corner of US Route 75 so it’s pretty easy to get to. Did I say I’m 10 minutes from it?

4. Fans - You know a restaurant is good when they can open at 11AM and have 50 take-out orders before they open. I went out to Hutchins to eat on a Tuesday for lunch and had to wait in a line at 10:45AM (I’m 5th in line, on a Tuesday!). Then I went inside to see them line up 20-30 take-out orders that was placed online or by phone. By the time I sat down with my cobbler and brisket (11:10AM), there's probably 40-50 people dining in and another dozen walking out with their take out.

I’m not going to say it’s the best, since I haven’t tried every BBQ restaurant yet plus I don’t want the crazy mobs. However -- it’s pretty darn good.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is HomeChef and the focus is financial wealth. Like previous issues, I’ve stated how cost-efficient a meal subscription can be. Let’s go through that this week.

Scenario 1: You buy your own groceries

1. You first need to decide what you want to eat for the week, and decide the items you need to get for those meals

2. You then need to take time to drive to the stores to get the items you’ve decided on

3. You then need to go back to the store because you forgot a few items

4. You then need to cook the meals each day or prep ahead of time

5. You then eat your meals, feeling good that you saved quite a bit of money of groceries

6. But you ate more than you should have because you didn’t portion it, so you go back to the store to get more food for tomorrow

Scenario 2: You dine out

1. You dress in your finest sweatpants and hoodie

2. You go the nicest McDonald’s with the clean booths

3. You order from the $1, $2, $3 menu, but your bill still comes out to be $13+. Not sure why, but fries and drink ain’t cheap plus you have to have a soft serve.

4. You rinse and repeat, until you get bored of McDonald’s and stop by Wendy’s to realize you like McDonald’s fries more and go back.

5. You go to a fancy dinner with friends at Whataburger and your bill is $25! You decide to starve for 1 meal to make it up.

Scenario 3: You use a meal subscription

1. You order HomeChef and pay about $10 a meal.

2. It arrives and you take out a package each dinner. You prep it, cook it and clean up.

3. You eat it but feel a bit hungry still, but you’re too lazy to cook another one.

4. You do this for a week and realize you weren’t hungry but thirsty and the amount of food was just right.

5. You are a whiz and finally do a budget on your spending to realize you’ve saved more money on HomeChef than the Whataburger/starving method.

These scenarios are highly exaggerated (or not for some) to show the reality that meal subscriptions can affect. It won’t make you money, it won’t save you millions, but it can supplement your time and money when you have no control over your eating habits. It can also save time from making up dishes with leftover scraps in the refrigerator.

Here’s the deal this week:

Deal #1: I am offering a $100 HomeChef eGift Card for only $35 at shop.duckytran.com. There will only 5 available so get yours and don’t starve for Whataburger!

The Accessible Core

Hidden Money Pots

For legal sake, this is not financial advice. Do you own research if any of these interests you. Reach out if anything is confusing and I can point out more publications with information that can help you navigate these financial concepts.

I will not be talking about the generic “where should I put my money” like 401K, IRA, etc. I will give a few places many people may not know or consider. Let’s get right into it.

Real Estate

I know what you’re thinking:

• You just said “I will not be talking about the generic”

• It costs too much

Real Estate is the one exception to the generic rule because even though most people think it’s a great idea, they may not know they are already investing into real estate or don’t know if they can.

Statistics show that more than half of American households invest into some form of real estate. But many may not know that since it’s being invested through a retirement account like 401k. Because everyone is doing it, doesn’t make it a smart investment. But because everyone needs it that makes it a smart long-term investment, even if there are short-term pitfalls. Hence, many retirement accounts and funds invest a big portion into real estate.

If you think you can’t invest into real estate because of the cost, I recommend looking into REITs. This is how most retirement funds invest your money into real estate. REITs major advantage is that you “own” real estate without having to physically owning a building. Which also means you can buy smaller bits of it for cheaper without having to fork out large down-payments to purchase an entire building.

Plus there are many other advantages such as cash flow, tax advantage, depreciation, and many more.

High Yield Savings Account (HYSA)

I know many of you may have heard or thought about it, but in reality most people just put there savings into a generic savings account that is associated with their original checking account.

Either from laziness, convenience or lack of knowledge, many people will never use a HYSA. As shown in this article, the average savings APY is only 0.47% while a HYSA can reach over 5%. That’s 10X more money, just because you put it in a different account. Don’t be lazy, get educated!

529 Plans

If you have young children, this is a good way to put away money for future schooling. There different types of plans: one that allows you to pay for your children’s future tuition at today’s price and the second you can invest the money for future education expenses. Both are tax advantaged and will vary by state.

Yourself

I know it may seem cliché to say, but investing in yourself will return the most value, especially intrinsically. Let me explain:

1. Reading - Not only can it be entertaining, but it will educate you about the world outside your own. It can essentially be free or very cheap to be educated and entertained through reading. In this study, it shows a statistical advantage to those that readers versus non-readers. With readers, having a 20% better survival rate (living longer) than non-readers. The correlation is that better cognition from reading increases survival rate, or in my words “smarter people live longer”.

2. New Skill - Most people want to make money, but most people also don’t want to have to learn something new. The crazy thing is a new skill can generate many times more money than investing can and in shorter time. For example, according to AlphaAcademy, digital marketing is the most profitable skill in 2023. And Google provides a free course that only takes 40 hours to complete. This free course has more value than nearly any investment in 2023 due to its potential but sadly very few people will ever go through it.

3. Communication - In general, communication is the cornerstone for success and failures in any relationship, business or personal. However, this is a skill that is neglected the most. We tend to believe that how we communicate is sufficient, not realizing that communication is mainly about perspective, or how the message is received. With all our extra time for shows, music, dining out and naps, we could be improving on our communication which in turn tends to help represent us better leading to better relationships and eventually more money in the case of business. Here are some free courses that you could take advantage of today.

I hope this list surprised a few of you. At the end, you are the maker of your fortune, and you must decide what’s best for you. Don’t feel like these are an indication of your progress or success, they’re just opportunities.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 9 Community Poll Results

The polls are getting answers by about 20-25% of the members, which is higher than I expected. However, the answers will obviously be skewed to that group of responders.

1. Your stress level last 30 days, on a scale from 1-5 (stressful to calm). The average score was about 3.75, meaning most of you are just slightly stressed. I didn’t think about it until writing the results, but I wonder if the members that are really stressed aren’t getting this far in the newsletter so it’s not reflected.

2. 100% of those that voted did not have a New Year’s Resolution. Just in case I missed anyone, I rephrased it in a different way this week.

3. I asked about the Bespoke prize again, and the results are similar to last time. Most of you put vacation prize, so we will be continuing the vacation prize package next month. Sorry to the 2 members that wanted a home renovation, we will get there soon.

This Week’s Community Poll

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

I know we discussed about a virtual murder mystery the last few newsletters, but the amount of interest makes it not very feasible right now. I think I will move it to a later date when more members can be part of the event.

However, I love BBQ. I was thinking about catering Hutchins BBQ for an in-person social? Unfortunately, this will only be for people near or can come to DFW area. About 50-60% of the members are concentrated in DFW. It will most likely be during lunch time on a Sunday. Let me know in the comments what you think!

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: taylor