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

On a recent trip I accidentally threw away all of my wife and kids close into a dumpster and

didn't realize until we got home. My wife was not happy and let's just say the attempt to recover

them is one of my favorite stories from 2026 so far. So today I'm joined with my wife Amy to

tell that story but we're also going to share how she's been using AI to redesign all the rooms

in our house for a fraction of what a designer would charge some of the learnings we have from

going on multiple ski trips with young kids. Our takes on some health and life tracking

wearables we've been testing. The $39 virtual pediatric visit that ended up saving us over

$700 on urgent care bills. Our thoughts on managing finances as a couple and a lot more.

I'm Chris Hutchins if you enjoy this episode please leave a comment or share it with a friend

and if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life click follow or subscribe.

All right Amy you're back we have a lot to catch up on. I think recently we've done three

ski trips in two months with two kids. One of them went a little sideways. I would barely call

that a little sideways. We went on this trip and it resulted in you throwing away all of the

longings that we had packed on that trip and then driving home which took an extra three four

hours. Yeah so the drive home was not my fault. That's true. There was a major accident on a bridge

that happened five minutes before we got on the bridge so we didn't get rerouted and we literally

sat standing still for three hours. So note to anyone driving with children I would always bring

more things. We had no service because there were so many cars tightly packed that there was

data but not enough to stream anything. There was no bathroom so we now re-bought the travel

potty in the car and I'd say the kids did well. The other aspect of it was my fault ish.

It's clearly still being debated. So here's a story because I think there are some fun takeaways.

We had a bunch of dirty clothes. Somehow only yours and the kids ended up in this trash bag

because we didn't bring a laundry basket. We put them all in a trash bag. That trash bag ended

up in the pile of things to both go in the car and go to recycling. Fair. Yes and no. First of all

it was just me and the girl's stuff because I think I have a higher bar for cleanliness and not

mixing clean clothes with dirty clothes and you're fine just filing them all in one and leaving

them to coexist together during the trip. So this trash bag had been hanging in the girl's room

where we very clearly were putting in dirty laundry the entire week. Yes I knew that the dirty

laundry was in a trash bag. Okay. So there was no debate there and by the way my backpack that I carry

all my clothes in has two separate compartments one for dirty clothes and one for clean clothes.

But if only they were used that way and so what happened was that bag I knew the trash bag had all

the clothes but it ended up by the door and it ended up near a bunch of stuff going to recycling

and so we were up in Kirkwood in Tahoe and one of the things on the checklist for this house we

were staying at was don't leave all your trash in your recycling here. There are these dumpsters go

drop them off and so I unknowingly dropped off all the recycling all the trash including this one

bag of trash with all of your clothes all of the girls clothes and we didn't realize it until

what time like 10 p.m. when we got home. Right. So you'd written off the clothes at that point.

Yeah I was convinced we were never going to see them again. I was already online trying to find

new wall base layers for our next ski trip that was coming up very shortly. They were gone.

Now I'm sure anyone listening who's in a relationship there are things where their partners are

always like oh did you misplace this thing or some kind of pet peeve slash recurring issue

and all I could think about in my mind was if I don't find these clothes that's going to just

forever be my thing that I always throw the clothes away so I was like there has to be an answer

and so one answer was just drive up to Kirkwood but it's 10 p.m. and we just done a six hour drive

and there's stuff to do tomorrow so that seemed like not the best option and so I thought gosh

I am convinced that they're still in this dumpster right there's six dumpsters we had fortunately

left on I think a Tuesday after a weekend so it was not a busy day and I thought I think they're

still in this dumpster what can I do so I remember I went on to Facebook and read it and I found the

Kirkwood Reddit I found three Kirkwood Facebook groups and I just posted like does anyone know

anyone and I had one friend that owned a house in Kirkwood and I messaged that person and said hey

do you buy any chance to know anyone in Kirkwood that would go look in a dumpster I'm happy to compensate

them for doing that and I had two leads and I actually ended up with a third lead so I hadn't told you

all of this I told you I was like kind of looking but I didn't want to get any hopes up because

I was pretty sure this wasn't going to work so the first one someone messaged me on Facebook

back it said I live near these dumpsters I'm willing to go look and so I said awesome I'm happy to

send you I can't remember it was like $100 and the person was like okay I went and there was

just something off about the story like they knew where the dumpsters were and they sent me a photo

but the photo was kind of like of trash it wasn't clear how much effort they put in but there was

something about their story that both seemed like they did genuinely tried but also they didn't

and so even though I found a person to go jump with this dumpster at night and not find anything

I wasn't willing to necessarily give up like I felt like something was off you know your

spidey senses off so I found another person who said they were willing to do it but they were

kind of ran a service and they were like it's going to be $500 I was like I had to $500 doesn't

seem worth it given there's like a decent chance that it won't work and then someone had

recommended this handyman in another home group and I was like I'm going to find this handyman

Gordon was his name and I messaged him I was like hey is there any chance you're in Kirkwood he's

like no but I will be tomorrow morning and I was like is there any chance you'd be interested in

doing this and he was like sure so he shows up any looks for a few minutes he can't find it and

this one dumpsters locked I even called the Kirkwood sanitation I was like have these been emptied

and he's like there is one if it's locked it shouldn't be and he went and unlocked it Gordon went

back and he starts sending me these photos and the saving grace was that we had put in about seven

bags of like kitchen size trash bags into one massive black trash bag so I was like here's

what you're looking for and he sent me a picture of all the dumpsters I was like it's that one like I

remembered that it was the third from the right because there were like 10 dumpsters and this guy's

looking and looking and looking and finally he sends me a photo he's like is this it and I was like

oh my gosh we got the clothes I remember sending you that photo and being like look at this we found

the clothes and so huge shout out to Gordon for doing this Gordon was definitely compensated for his

time but also shout out to the random person on reddit that said hey I'm not there but I'll be there

in four days if you want or maybe it's two days I can't remember but it wasn't that day and they

lived nearby and so they were willing to bring it back so Gordon found them dropped them off at

the main lodge this other kind soul on reddit ended up picking them up from the lodge and bringing

them back to the bay area and then a uber courier ended up bringing them from their house to our house

and I can't believe we found the clothes shout out to that guy on reddit who brought them back

who did it because a similar thing happened to him he and his wife were in Colorado and they left

their ski helmets in somewhere in the mountain and someone picked them up and drove them back

to Denver and so they were like this is just karma that someone did this for us now I get to do it

for you guys and so I share that because I am sometimes just not willing to give up and maybe

the time not not just sometimes it's never I was actually convinced I was like if you don't figure

out a way to find someone to get those clothes you are going to drive up yourself even if it's

in the middle of the night I was convinced you were going to be out of here real fast you were

not happy about me losing the clothes I know I but here's the thing it's not that I was actually

upset that the clothes were gone it's a bummer obviously but I think I was really pissed about

the fact that when we had a conversation about it you blamed me because I put this dirty clothes

in a trash bag that ended up right next to the trash pile and all of our other bags so

understand again this is like the ongoing debate but I wasn't actually upset about the things

being gone yes there were a few sentimental things that we wouldn't be able to replace

but I think the broader issue was where the blame was placed in a very heated moment and oh yeah

I was I was mad yeah I was mad myself and I probably was like deflecting on the blame though I

was annoyed I was like this would not have happened if they were not in a trash bag in the

trash pile that's fair we got them back yeah we did and actually there are two things that I

loved about how all of this came together I love the karma aspect and actually I think there was

also a bit of good that happened across the board because this guy Gordon is a handyman and he

was trying to get his business all to ground and you offered to pay him and if I recall the

conversation correctly he said actually can you just give me a good review for the work that I

provided and as you learn more about what he was trying to do you actually went one step further

and said hey I'm actually just going to go buy you your business domain I'm going to build you a

website and you delivered it to him and I thought that was really cool and it was actually a really

great website so I loved that aspect and then the other thing that was the silver lining of all

this is it became so apparent to me that humanity is still alive and thriving and there's so much

good in the world that I think we never really hear about or talk about and that part felt amazing

yes I couldn't believe that multiple people offered to help some people I didn't know some people

that I knew and we're trying to help because they lived there and I did pay Gordon and I remember

at the end I was like is there anything else I could do and he said I'm trying to get this handyman

business off the ground and you know if you know anyone up in Kirkwood let them know and I thought oh

I searched for him I'm like how would anyone ever know he has a handyman he had one person wrote

his name on a Facebook page that was it not even a page like a comment in a private Facebook group

and I thought this guy needs a website and so I remember I just looked at like handyman Kirkwood

is available and so I bought that and then I just used Google sites because I wanted to be dead simple

for him to manage it and put it together and so I put that tie together I sent it to him I said

what do you think can you send me a headshot and he sent me a headshot he didn't have a great headshot

so use a little Gemini to take his headshot and kind of touch it up so it still looks like him

or at least I think it does because I've never met the guy and it looks like the photo he sent me

and now there's a website that he can put together that hopefully people find that will help him

actually make his business more successful and so between the time I spent searching for this and

building this website you know I probably spent way more money in time than to replace all the

clothes but we sure got a good story out of it and if I had replaced those clothes the fact that I

lost them would be looming over me for the next 15 years this is whether you forced it over me or not

so that is kind of what happened which actually has nothing to do with skiing the topic I thought

would be good to talk about is the experience of taking kid skiing and what that's like

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gelt to stop overpaying on taxes. We did three trips we did in two months and they were different

than the trips we did last year because last year we went to a ski resort with the kids we brought

some skis we kind of did a couple runs that were not part of you know a lift we didn't buy lift

tickets it felt arduous and in this year we committed to buying epic passes for the family and

so we were all in and fortunately when you buy an epic pass you get a discount on lessons and we

thought let's do lessons let's go all in let's get the kids skiing and you know you grew up in

a ski resort town so I know like for you it was like we want these kids to ski like that's what I

grew up doing and ice skate also so like this was something we wanted to do what do you think

about this ski season with kids relative to last season this season feels so much more interesting

and it feels like we are actually going on ski trips and ski vacations in a sense and I think

a big unlock for us this year compared to last year is one we don't have to think about how

expensive these day lift tickets are because we have the season passes and two we've really

doubled down on ski school this year which we hadn't done previously and that's been huge because

it allows us to actually have time to go and ski the terrain that we want to ski together

without the kids but then we can also pick them up and take them on if you run to see their progress

and they're so proud and I am actually really impressed at how much they progress in one to two

three four days the tension for me is so tough because every day they come out of ski school and

they have a blast and they progress but I don't get to ski with them because they're in ski school

all day and depending on the mountain we did two times to Kirkwood and once to Park City and Park

City didn't do full day lessons for kids three and four and so in that regard we had the afternoons

to kind of play around but if you put a kid in a lesson for the full day you don't get to see them ski

but they're making so much progress you don't want to take them out because they're having so much fun

and they're actually improving and so I think the only downside to lessons other than the fact that

they're a gregiously expensive look like seen is not a cheap sport to do yes it helps that

they're 20% off if you have an epic pass but they're still not cheap but it is amazing to see the

progress and if people are looking for any hacks on the lesson side most of the non mainstream

mountains have much less expensive lessons and then there's other options like there's the woodward

so woodward is like a terrain park it's for people who want to do jumps and tricks and all this stuff

and it's skateboarding and snowboarding and skiing but they actually do private lessons

for young kids that are about half the price of the mountain also and so we didn't do that this year

because we kind of had everything dialed in but that was kind of another alternative to save on that

there are also private instructors you can hire on Facebook and Craigslist that we've tried

in the past I know it's very frowned upon on the mountain so I would not say that's a technique

I'd endorse but it's a technique that exists I don't know I'm excited like we have a fourth

ski trip coming up in two weeks and I don't think we've actually booked any lessons for the kids

and I'm excited to ski with them the progress they've made from our youngest was not skiing really

at all maybe like with a harness with us running behind her and is now skiing we did a blue run

at Park City from that very top of the mountain all the way to the bottom and yes you need a few

breaks yes there may be a meltdown on there once or twice but the progress is amazing and it's

really fun and I can already like see into the future of us actually all skiing I can also see

into the future of them progressing past us and wanting to go do things we don't want to do

and now all of a sudden they're no longer skiing with us but I see this short window where it's

like now we can all ski together and I'm really excited for that so a couple other things just kind

of some fun travel thoughts on this so one one of our trips to Kirkwood we brought some friends

and we wanted to rent a house and I've kind of talked about this before but when you see a house

sometimes there are ways to get around booking that house directly and so in this case I saw a house

it worked for everything we need and this one I just got lucky I had gone on a retreat 12 years

ago to Kirkwood and stayed in the house that I found on VRBO and I thought gosh I wonder if

there's any way I can get the contact information I searched my email and sure enough there was an

email with like a house guide from 12 years ago that the group had sent us and it had a phone

number for the house manager and I called them and we were able to book it off VRBO for like 25% off

so that's one good hack and then we went to park city I will just say the value of having a

credit card that covers check bag fees is often useless when we don't check bags but on this

ski trip we checked four bags and I can't remember what Delta would have charged 30 to $50 a bag

times four of us it would have been hundreds of dollars that we ended up paying nothing for

and so that was amazing we brought one of those travel bag wares I'll put a link in the show notes

but it costs almost nothing and we had a couple ski bags there like 49.9 pounds so that was great

and then my only other travel thing is shout out to the beautiful new terminal two lounge

the delta sky club it is amazing and really so nice the delta sky clubs are really nice and they

always seem to have activity books for the kids but that one in terminal two has got to be one of the

biggest lounge I've ever seen in my life and food is great top notch service if you're in terminal two

and you're flying delta and you can get into the sky club with a platinum card or a delta reserve

card or a sky club membership definitely check it out I agree and any thoughts on the flying

to skiing versus driving to skiing generally I think the driving feels easier because you just

don't have to worry about packing all the stuff and how to touch us at all together to get it there

so I think driving feels lower lift but when you have young kids that for some reason can

not eat a bathroom for six hours but suddenly when we're driving it's like every hour on the

hour they're like hey gotta go gotta go I don't love using all the public bathrooms but that's

just a mean nuance I suppose the flying to Park City I think Park City specifically is pretty fast

and easy the flight time is really short and the drive time from Salt Lake City to Park City is

also really low so I think it's lower lift now if we were flying and schlepping all of our

stuff to steamboat for example where I grew up it feels like such a heavier lift because it takes

so much more time to get to and the drive is longer if you're stopping in Denver I think when it

comes to a place that you can drive from a major airport Utah is the best now the snow this year

we got lucky it's not a little bit while we were there obviously planning trips for ski vacations

not knowing what the snow will be like is a big variable but man the convenient factor from

Salt Lake City Airport to a handful of ski resorts relative to Denver relative to the Bay Area

yes Reno's close but I wouldn't consider Reno a major airport and then Montana and Wyoming

have some great ski resorts but you can't fly direct there from as many places that you can't

Salt Lake City okay so let's take a little detour last time we had you on the show we talked a little

bit about furniture a little bit of a debate and kind of a little blow up in the house and a lot

of things have changed right the last two months you've really been going at an impressive rate

of kind of designing and redoing a couple rooms in the house I mentioned this in the newsletter

and I can't tell you how many emails I got back dozens that were like how is Amy using AI to

redesign your house I want to do this I'm about to redo a room what happened can you show before

an after pictures what changed because I think at least my perspective is when we tried to redo

the girls rooms didn't go so well these last two feel like they went amazing so talk a little

bit about the process of like how this went what you did how you did it so that people listening

to be like I want to learn from this I want to redesign rooms and we did it on a pretty good

budget I think we did well I think the biggest change is twofold one you are a lot less involved

and I think that's a subject of the learning we had previously but also the fact that I have

stepped away from work I had more time to be able to commit to redoing these rooms whereas you

didn't and so it felt like a luxury of if I have the time to do it now let's knock it out do you

think you needed to though like do you think it took so much time that this is a task that someone

might need to step away from work to redesign a couple rooms or did it just feel like it gave you

some breathing room no it just felt like it gave me breathing room and I felt more creative because

I had the mental capacity to actually think through some of these things while the girls are in

school and so I think it's very very achievable especially now with AI it's a massive unlock

with AI anyone can make the room look incredible like just absolutely dialed in and it doesn't

take a lot we've talked to a few designers previously and I just feel like we never were really

aligned on my vision or your style and with AI you essentially have a collaborative artistic

creative director of sorts and brainstormer that can kind of work with you in dialing it in

what was the step by step where did you start so I started with our old opair room

and because we no longer have an opair that was the spark that I was like you know what this room

just needs to be completely redone because we haven't really access it or updated it in years

and it was going to become a guest room we didn't have a guest room because we had an opair room

right that's exactly right and so in my mind I really wanted to update it knowing your parents

come stay with us sometimes my parents come stay we have friends and other family and I really just

wanted it to feel cozy and welcoming and so I think where I started is input just my initial prompt

look I'm looking to redo this room here are some pictures of it my ideal vision is creating a

cozy moodiness or a modern organic design whatever it might be right like explain the vision

you have if you have one I shared pictures of the room as it was in that current state or in

that state at the time and then it's we started brainstorming back and forth given what the room

looked like and what I was envisioning what model we're using so it's interesting so I used a

variety of different AIs so I used Gemini for a lot of the sourcing the researching figuring out

do these different pieces of furniture or color pallets or whatever actually go together can

you mock up an image so I can kind of visually see what that looks like I use Claude a lot I

would say Claude fell very much more accurate from a mathematical like square footage here's you

know what fits what doesn't fit here's the accuracy of how light actually would hit like a dark

moody brown wall right and so we actually color saturated the entire guest room I relinquished

control for this entire project and so I was like you know what whatever you say I trust you

usually that seems to be a good decision and you were like I think we're going to paint

the walls the ceiling the trim and the entire like

closity kind of thing for storing clothes we're going to paint it all brown and I was like we're

everything in the room brown and I just bit my tongue I was like okay I it looks amazing but man

I was like I was a little nervous when you're like we're just gonna paint everything brown I was

like I never been in a room that's all brown I saw it in your face and I just died in respond I

was like you know decisions been made and off we go but even even small things like look I wanted

to do this entire room saturated in this dark rich brown it was really good about helping me

distinguish which finish to have in which part of the room so that like there's different

sheens given where your eye is to break it up so it doesn't feel just like this really kind of like

flat brown room was that even your idea from the start or was the idea to saturate the entire room

something that came out of the conversation I knew I wanted to saturate the room and so

that was something that I had prompted it with but it helped me refine the different sheens it

helped me refine how to think about how dark or light to go and so I did test a few colors just

to make sure that it was something that I felt really good with but you know we talked about how

much natural light it gets what the warm or the cool lighting of the ceiling is and all of that so

it really helped refine what I wanted to do in a way that manifested you're so much more

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the furniture ideas both in that room in the other room was that something where you would ask

the tools to source furniture or like come up with ideas and then you would find it or

you know I'm trying to get down tactical I get here's my room what colors work what themes work

but were you the one finding the furniture yes well it depends I guess so we did need a few pieces

of furniture for the family room that I recently did and I think it was a combination of my saying

I love this room to bring in some of the Scandinavian elements and so that prompted it to look

for pieces that exuded more of that kind of aesthetic and vibe but it definitely hallucinated

at times and it gave me crazy things like I definitely had a gut check it a lot do these really

go together but it was good about helping instruct me of obviously you don't want to have

matching matching pieces ideally you get them in the same or similar kind of wood tones and so

I think the little aesthetics and the direction that it provided once I had a general sense of

this is the broad design of the furniture I'm looking for then we started it would give me

three options and I would say I like this one can you find me five others that are kind of similar

or I don't like any of these can you find me some in this wood type or whatever so Gemini it seems

at least today as a recording I found to be the best model for generating images right so here

is a picture of my room paint the walls brown and put this piece of furniture in yeah what was the best

at finding furniture I actually also think Gemini did the best job at sourcing furniture because

it's leveraging Google so it has access to so much out there and so I think if I broke down all

the different AI tools that I used I would say chat GBT was really the visionary the creative

director was really able to think a lot more boldly about things I could do in the space and so

that was a good kind of jumping off point Claude was really good about helping me understand

the sizing and the layouts and mathematically like how much space do I actually have how does

this room function and then Gemini worked really well for helping me actually store some of the

pieces and doing some of that research and then compiling it together through Nana banana to actually

see like what does this final vision look like and then how do I tweak it to make it more aligned with

what I actually hoped it would be wow okay it turned out amazing right there's two rooms in the house

that are done I'm like do you want to do more I do actually and I think the other really cool

thing is if you hire a designer they often have let's just say expensive taste and the

sometimes are like oh let's replace this let's replace this you manage to say like I want to keep

these three things and then you found good options for really inexpensive I think it was cheaper

to redo both of these rooms and it would have been to just hire a designer to do both of these rooms

if I would have hired someone to do this it probably would have cost five to ten times as much as

we spent on the rooms and I'm still not convinced it would fully have aligned with the vision that

I had in my head yeah and I think we did the whole thing for a few thousand dollars is up there

for two rooms we kept some furniture wasn't fully replacement each each a few thousand dollars each

yeah but it wasn't like we spent ten thousand dollars to redo two rooms no I agree the other really

nice thing about AI is when they're recommending all of these different furniture options and accessories

you can see something and say for me I loved some of the things they sent but I was like they're sending

me a six thousand dollar coffee table this is crazy I'm not paying for that so I would say I love

the look of this can you find a few alternatives that have the same kind of look that are cheaper

and it did just that so it was a good way to pressure tests is it actually worth spending that

money or can you find alternatives that fit the space really nicely that give the same kind of look

without the crazy price tags well excellent work thanks it's been a lot of fun and I'm very excited

to continue room by room in our house and so speaking of house we've also added a few kind of new

fun gadgets or tools yeah so I've not helped with the design but we did do a few changes so

we were at Costco and the skylight calendar was on sale and I can't remember if we've talked about

it at length because I have a kind of an updated review I think on the skylight calendar originally

I had this idea of like let's just put an iPad on the wall and we can custom code anything and

that was one of my first like AI coding ideas and then I realized what we need is not that complex

and if someone has it and it just works great and so for the first two weeks I was super into

this thing we have it in living room and we had our calendars synced up we had the kids calendars

all kinds of stuff I feel like it's turned into a digital picture frame yeah it's basically an

aura on our wall is or the frame or the ring yeah so I'm a bit disappointed in that I felt like it

had a lot of potential and where I think it fell short for me is it tries to do too much and by

doing too much it can't do it well and so we use paprika for recipe stuff and there's a lot of

features in there that we like which is why we use it skylight doesn't integrate with paprika skylight

has its own recipe system and it's pretty basic our kids aren't old enough to have a lot of chores

and tasks I could see how if you had that the like leaderboard of that would be cool and then the

calendar is kind of like nice to glance at but it's also on our phone and so I think I was at

a friend's house and I saw this I was like it's great you've got one place you can just look at

the calendar and honestly maybe this is an experiment we should run maybe if we turn off the picture

frame so it's always the calendar would we actually use it more like is the fact that it needs to be

more in your face as a calendar with that help there was another challenge which is like the calendars

had so much stuff on it that I did clean up and so I have some ideas on how to try to invigorate it

I probably most proud of the fact that we managed to like drill the right hole through the wall

so it mounts on the wall with no cord which is like I don't want to get rid of it I did all this work

to make it mount nicely but on the other side of the wall where it's mounted is a new gadget that

I think we use a lot so we got a ratio coffee machine which is like a pour over coffee machine a

few years ago and you love a cup of coffee in the morning nothing's better and so I'd heard about

this we got one and we talked about it and I actually gotten reached out to buy the CEO of ratio

who's like hey you've been talking about this we've gotten a bunch of purchases thank you so much

for talking about this if there's ever anything you need let me know and I was like awesome like we've

got this machine it's amazing I'll let you know but didn't have anything I needed and he reached

down said hey we built this gen two of the ratio covenant can I send you one and so you know full

disclosure we've got this updated machine for free didn't pay for it I'm incredibly gracious and

thankful for that and it's beautiful I don't drink that much coffee maybe once every month or two

you're drinking every day how is the new machine it's amazing it's beautiful and in a way I wish

it wasn't in our pantry behind the wall because it is just stunning to look at but it just

makes the perfect cup of coffee and so you get the perfect pour over taste without having to

actually spend the time to do the pour over so I set everything up the night before and in the morning

I just grind the beans throw it in and come back a few minutes later and enjoy my coffee it is

incredible yeah the ratio founder does not even know we're doing this it's not a paid segment

no I just love it yeah I know we just love the product like I've told so many friends about this

product but the one thing that I think is funny about the two of us that is different that is why

the ratio coffee machine works so well is that I really enjoy the craft of trying to make something

as best as possible and that is a downside sometimes and I think you enjoy having really good things

but like it doesn't have to be the best and if it takes a lot of work especially in the morning

you're not interested and so I would always be like okay here's the counter scale to weigh out the

perfect amount of beans and you didn't necessarily care but I was like if we're gonna make a coffee

I want it to be perfect and the combo of the ratio and this new I think that brand is barata

burger grinder that has like programmatic settings and a scale built in I get the satisfaction

of it being so dialed in that it's like exactly 17 grams of beans it's all exactly how I would do it

if I were trying to make you the perfect cup of coffee except it's like two buttons and you don't

have to think at all so it's like this perfect combo of simplicity for you beautiful on the counter

and I always want to try to get the thing that makes it the best even if you don't care and now

that happens on its own yeah I will say it's really nice before we had a grinder and it was great

it was a great grinder but I feel like I wasn't using the skill very much and so I would just

go in I would turn it on I would mentally count to 20 in my head as I'm feeding the dog or whatever

sometimes I lose track of my counting sometimes I wouldn't and I would say around 20 seconds

turned it off okay that's probably enough beans and so my coffee definitely took on different

boldness and flavor day by day so it is really nice to have the barata grinder as well because

it honestly just has dialed it in so it is so consistent and so good every day yeah and now I

don't have to criticize the amount way I'm like that looks like it's not enough beans yeah so it's

also you know I lost that for us to another thing so we took advantage of this chase reserve deal

where you basically get a free whoop band and I ordered two of them because we each had the card

and I haven't even opened mine yet because I'm like well I've got this ore ring like it works fine

and I got it for you and you were like oh I don't know if I need this and then your ore ring died

yeah and you've been all in on whoop I'm curious what your experience has been as having gone from

aura to whoop and are you like I want my ore ring back I like the whoop I like them for different

reasons for those watching on YouTube you'll actually notice I'm I'm rocking both right now I got

the whoop ripe for my ore died so the timing was excellent and so I started leaning really heavily

on my whoop and I think the biggest and quickest takeaway I got from it was wow wow wow I thought

I was working out being a semi trained fit individual whoop basically slapped me in the face and

was like you can do a lot more based on your readiness score your sleep whatever and given it seems

to be built for more hardcore trained athletes I feel like whoop pushed me to be like you can do more

you got to get out there and do a hit run you've got to like really like pressure test your body

and so that was an interesting wake up call that I probably needed and I guess now appreciate

the advice that whoop gives feels a lot more detailed and deep and the fact that it's constantly

trying to have a conversation with me I think is interesting whereas aura feels a bit more

kind of relaxed in the background where I can check in on how things are going on my scores

I think they just serve different purposes depending on the kind of experience and what you're

looking to use that data for but I've enjoyed whoop the ring feels more comfortable and I like

the aesthetic of it more but I like how whoop really kind of like kicks me in the butt constantly

like hey get out there and do more the ore ring is kind of like hey you slept well it's like

well I kind of I was a chill version yeah okay I have to put the whoop on and give it a go although

I'm slightly terrified this is why by the way I'm sure this deal exists we both bought ore rings

long enough ago that we have the subscription is free right we need a first sold ore ring there

was no subscription and we're kind of grandfathered into this unlimited lifetime subscription

and then the whoop the whoop was $365 but chase refunded all of it or maybe was $359 somewhere

I can't remember the exact amount and chase refunded all of it so it's like it's free for a year

but next year it's $300 something dollars if for two people it's $600 or maybe there's a family

plan that we can look at so I'm a little terrified of getting excited about the whoop and then

having to pay for it the next year which is exactly why they did this deal I'm sure smart on them

smart on them so we'll have to see if it can earn its keep and if the features that justify

that higher price plan right if I was going to do this without the deal and I really wanted a whoop

I wouldn't have started at the like super premium plan so we'll see how that changes going for it

there's also another device that I've got on my wrist and you're wearing on your waist

which is not related to exercise it's called the B and so I haven't talked about this

but when I went to the open claw meetup which is you know a couple months ago now it seems like

the weeks ago there were a couple demos and one of them was from this company called B

I think it was B computer but it's not really a computer and it's a device that you wear

you go around your wrist you can clip it on your pants you can kind of put it all over

and it actively listens to everything now for many people listening this is crazy and terrifying

and they're like it sounded so creepy in me when you first explained it yeah and this is the

second one I've ordered there was a company called limitless that made this pendant and I tried

this out for a while before and the two things that made me give it a second go is one there wasn't a

good interface for using the pendant because a lot of the AI tools that we have now didn't exist

and to the battery life on it I feel like the battery lasted a day and the battery on this B device

last 10 days or seven days like it's a week long battery the only thing that I will say kind of

sucks about it and maybe for privacy reasons this is good it's not a recorder as much as it is

a transcriber and it needs your phone and so maybe that's how they get around the battery issues

but it's not recording everything it's kind of like transmitting it to your phone that has to be

nearby that's transcribing it on your phone my understanding is from talking to the founders

that they care a lot about privacy now this company was acquired by Amazon just like the limitless

pendant company was acquired by meta so both of these are now owned by big tech companies

so that could give a lot of people pause for other reasons but the thing that has really been

interesting is the ability to plug it into other tools so my little open claw agent has access

to be can go look at things honestly I haven't used that as much as I have just the B app

and it's crazy how good it is at coming up with action items so you'll open it and it'll be like

yesterday it said hey remember to help the girls send off the letter to the Easter bunny

we talked about how we need to do that we had a conversation about it but didn't like write it

down as an action item and it pulls out these action and it's so good at it it's so good

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so please consider supporting those who support us. I feel like that is the thing that hooked you

to try it out and then use it is that it's just kind of listening throughout the day and it's like

here's the things you need to do and I've been really impressed also there have been moments where

we had a conversation so I think we had a conversation yesterday gosh it feels like everything's

happening so fast where we talked about priorities for the business how are we doing reflect on 2025

what now that you're not involved are challenges for the business because I have to do them what am I

not great at what do we need to focus on what's working what's not working so we have this 10-minute

conversation and then I went into the B app and I was like let's take it share it it exported a

file locally and I threw that into a clawed conversation on top of that I threw in all of our kind

of revenue and expenses from our books for the last three years and I threw in the personality

profile that I've talked about in the past from deep personality which is probably more like a

psychological profile so I put all of that in and then I hit go on whisper flow and talk for 10

minutes on my computer and I was just like hey here's what's going on in the business here's what's

working here's what's not working and I think I also took the transcript from another AI

conversation about content planning and I threw it all in there and said I want to create a state

of the business report everything's going on things that are wrong things that are working and what

came out of one prompt was absolutely crazy mind blowing it was so good and so detailed in the way

that it pulled all of the information from the different sources that you gave it if we would

have tried to do that ourselves or paid someone in the business to do it for us it would have taken

several weeks like it was very thorough yeah and it all came out of the fact that I joined like a

small group of other creators running businesses and we were all supposed to share a state of the

business and how we're doing and so someone puts the other notion page and they chatted with

their AI agent to fill out a few things what this produced was like a full on website but Claude

has these things called artifacts which are basically like interactive websites that you can share

that are way more interesting than just like sharing the transcript of the conversation and I was

like I wanted to make a couple changes and primarily the changes I wanted to make was that the

doc was so good that I couldn't stop it proposed these things that we need to change and I was like

let's start changing them the only reason I wanted to change the state of the business is that in

the two hours after making it we'd actually made progress on half of the things that needed to be

done in the company and so these artifacts that you can ask Claude to build are amazing and I'm

sure other tools will be building these by the time this comes out there's probably another

version of another model and another tool but to go back to where we started the fact that we

could have a conversation about something and I could just say hey let me go find that conversation

and share it as an input is really interesting and I've gone back and forth I've planned out this

product slash feature that I want to build with AI tools the next obvious question is like I'm curious

to get your take on AI taking over our entire house or at least my life but I was like I wonder

what would happen if I took all of my texts because I have a message on my phone and it's on the

computer and there's a whole database of every message that I've sent since I had an iPhone yeah I've

every email I've gotten I can go grab all my call logs from the carrier I'm on you can grab your

FaceTime call history you could grab everything everything now you can have the live conversations

are having you could look at your calendar and I just I wonder if you could get comfortable with

the privacy security elements of it if you could throw all the knowledge about your what you're

doing your work at history sink your apple health like all of that what could you do with that

and so the thing that's held me back is I don't have a use case yet but I am just fascinated about

the idea of indexing all of it and at a minimum like what could you learn about me you know when

I threw in the personality profile with the problems with the business it was very clear it's like

here's the biggest problem in your business here is exactly what about your personality makes this

problem happen and here's what you should do I'm almost speechless because it is so incredible

and I do think there is something really interesting about how if it can index everything like what

unlock because I think even in the last few weeks just by having almost completely lost you to

AI for what feels like days at a time I think it is so powerful in the agents you're spinning up

and the work that it's able to do both for the business and for us personally I'm also glad

honestly that at least these agents have a bit of like souls or personalities because I definitely

feel like there were days where I was like the third wheel in our relationship it was like you and

your main AI assistant or agent Ted and you would just be like juggling and bed late at night

and like what is going on over there and it's like I look over and you're just chatting with Ted

and Ted is very funny he's cheeky and I do love his jokes but man he just has you going and I'm like

how do I get you to laugh like that that's amazing so I love it it's very much we are a throttle now

you mean Ted the AI agent let's be clear you have Sam now so so you have your own agent

you're throwing me as if it's just me but you have your own I set one up yours entirely when we

started it was like let's just let Amy and use Ted and I'll use Ted and I was like well let's

be on these own agent Sam and so it's not just me but I would say I've probably gone farther down

the rabbit hole maybe a little more than you maybe a little bit sure I would say a lot and I

do appreciate you spinning up Sam Sam has been a huge help to me I think the difference between

your spinning up agents and my using an agent is if things break I have to bother you I have to

say hey sorry this doesn't work or it's giving me this weird information or whatever and then you

go and fix it and so if I were to take the next step it would be my actually taking control of

that so I'm not having to bother you when you're now managing 10 other agents or whatever it is at

this point what's your count I think we're at eight in yours it's a nine total I don't even know

what an agent is I mean I do but I've started building a lot of tools that are not necessarily agents

but they do different things and so yeah I think that it's probably not a healthy thing to be

so excited but in the episode I did with Anne Laura a few weeks ago it's like if something so

exciting that it takes your life over for a little bit that's fun if something so excited takes

your life over for a long bit of time it's not and I feel like maybe we're still in the like excited

window I don't know how long does that window get to last that's a good question let's check back

on this the next time we reconvene because I think you're right if in the short term it's

completely fine and honestly I feel something similar when I'm redesigning and redecorating our

house using AI there's just something that's so addictive because you get such real-time data

and they're working 24 or seven so you always have the ability to learn more and make progress

and it's really hard to pull yourself away from so I can empathize with that yeah

so we'll see how this evolves and at what point I stopped taking things that take 10 minutes

and spending 40 hours to make them take zero minutes and then when they break take another

two hours but I think it's just been a lot of fun to do all this and I'm excited to kind of

reel you in a little bit because I feel like if I'm going to go down this rabbit hole maybe you

want to come a little bit with me and sympathize with the craziness that's going on I'm already in

the rabbit hole okay one other topic on money that I thought would be interesting to cover

is that last year we switched to a high deductible health plan and I think our quick takeaway at the

end of the year was that wasn't as bad as we thought like we were really worried about our ability

to spend money on our health when it was all out of pocket until you hit a certain level now two

things changed one the deductible went up way more so I think our last deductible was kind of in the

I don't know three to six thousand dollar range depending on whether it was personal or family

and now it's more in the like six to twelve thousand or maybe even higher I can't remember the

exact numbers but it's high enough that it feels different and you had one of your surgeries

last year which we just knew was going to make us hit the deductible I think we were kidding ourselves

and we're like oh it was so easy to spend five hundred dollars to take our kid to the doctor

because we knew in October at the end of the year we would have this like two hundred thousand

dollar expense that would blow through the entire deductible so it kind of felt easy yeah this year

there's no big operation procedure cost on the horizon I'm curious if you feel differently about

high deductible health plans yeah it definitely feels harder not knowing if we're going to hit it both

of our girls have been sick recently and one of them there was a morning she woke up and we were

like we should probably have taken her to the doctor something feels off and we debated that tells

you right there we debated should we go to the doctor or do we think this will just pass because

of the high deductible health plan so yeah I think it feels a lot harder now yeah I do think we've

tried a couple things that in some scenarios have really helped and in some haven't and so we

have a one medical membership which I think it serves two purposes one it's just a little bit more

convenient to go schedule an urgent care appointment because you can just schedule it and you can book

it same day and there are enough around us so that's helpful for same day and weekend urgent care

doesn't change the price like those urgent care appointments now are hundreds of dollars but it's

convenient the other thing is as part of your membership you get a lot of virtual care for free

included at least so if you do a virtual call with a doctor or they have like a treat me now thing

where you can answer a bunch of questions and it's powered by a human but it feels like a chat

and it might result in a prescription without even an appointment so from a cost saving standpoint

what goes through my head is if this is just an obvious thing you can solve then great and so I

remember we thought one of our daughters had an ear infection based on she was a my ear hurts

and all the stuff we're like okay she just has an ear infection which has happened in the past

do we really need to go spend seven hundred dollars to go to urgent care on the weekend or can

someone just give us what we need and I remember talking to one of the doctors and talking to your

sister who's a PA about her experience and she's like I think this sounds like an ear infection

then I remember getting and we have a little otoscope or otoscope and we are looking and I

was like sending your sister pictures and she's like looks like an ear infection and I remember like

okay now we know it's an ear infection I remember going to one medical and I sent them these

pictures and videos which their system was very bad at accepting but I was like clearly there's

an ear infection I've confirmed this with my sister a lot like she sees kids all the time it's

an ear infection can you just prescribe the thing we need and they're like well I don't know like

they were very conservative to do virtual care and I'm sure there are good reasons for that but

I remembered back to a couple years ago we signed up for this thing called blueberry blueberry

pediatrics which is like 30 bucks a month I can't remember the exact price but it's like tens of

dollars a month and it includes unlimited virtual pediatric care whether it's a call or a chat-based

system and I've got my gripes with blueberry in that you schedule a call and it's not like it'll

happen in 10 minutes it could happen in 45 minutes an hour it's unclear yeah but when you sign up

for blueberry if I have a referral code or a promo code I can find I'll put in the show notes

and I think it maybe takes the cost of the entry kit down to zero I'm not 100% sure but they

send you this kit with an otoscope that you can use in someone's ears that takes video and

send it to them and I think they because they just focus on just pediatric patients they're really

dialed in and I was like let's go do that so we found it we took this video we sent it to them and

they confirmed exactly what your sister had said from the big deal or in the pictures we said

her and they sent the prescription and so we ended up getting the prescription we needed for

her infection for $39 instead of what I'm sure on the weekend would have been five or six or

$700 for a doctor's appointment so I'm happy we have some solutions to mitigate the cost for

things where we kind of know what we need or you can treat it remotely the challenge of this

most recent one was like it just didn't feel like it was that and so we tried it and we were like

is there enough here to know what's happening they're like no you should go see a doctor yeah

and we did so I'm proud of us for going I don't like that it felt so mentally taxing but

does it help at all knowing that like we are still saving money in the long run even if we

spend it all or does it still make it worse and harder and we should do what we do with the ski

passes right like with our ski passes it's like we pay up front so that we don't have to think

about it in the moment and in that case the challenges you actually save money in this case it's

the opposite it's like you can pay up front to remove the stress of them in the moment charges

but you actually have to pay more for that what do you think when we look at it logically

and we know that by going the high deductible house plan route we end up saving money

even if we max it out that's me I'm like okay great we're still in a net positive spot so great

like let's just do all the appointments we need to do but the emotional part of me and I think both

of us is still like okay well how do we find the best deal or is this really worth it or can we save

the $700 and not go because odds are half the time we take kids in they're like oh sorry you just

have to write it out it's some viral thing that we can't explain and respiratory season is here

and here we go so I think emotionally it's definitely taxing logically it makes a ton of sense and

if we always function from a logical state I think high deductible house plans is a great idea

at least for us right like this is not blanket advice for everyone when you're getting

health insurance on your own whether it's through an exchange or as a small business

you're paying for those plans when we worked at companies it was often the case that the company

just said oh all the plans are the same price with all the plans the same price I might not get the

plan that has this high deductible and stresses me out all the time in fact we I don't think we

ever did I think one year at Google I did but every other year for the last decade before this we

didn't but when you're paying for yourself it's like significantly more expensive or at least in

California with the plans we have options of it was more expensive I wonder if this comes back to

kind of the remit safety model of setting money rules where I think that there are certain things

that we've been able to have rules around that have mitigated similar situations so like we now

have kind of said we're not going to fly at 5 a.m. so when I search for flights I don't even look

at the flights of 5 a.m. because I know we're not going to take them and sometimes they show up

and because we've made that rule even if I don't filter them out before I see them

it doesn't bother me that the flights after 7 a.m. are a hundred dollars more for four people

four hundred more dollars because we've kind of said we're just not going to take 5 a.m. flights

yeah now if those flights ended up being a thousand dollars a person would we maybe reconsider

maybe I don't know we haven't gotten there but I wonder if this is a thing where like we create a

rule that's like hey we always try to see if we can remotely treat this and if the prognosis from

a blueberry or a one medical thing is the doctor we go see it like there's no debate we have first

sign of defense is if it was an emergency we haven't had any problem going straight to the hospital

like we're not going to be sitting there like do we go to the hospital like our kids bleeding

everywhere I don't think we would be in that scenario it's the scenario of like anyone here listening

with kids knows like there's a good percentage of the time you're kid sick you see a doctor and

they're like there's nothing we can do yeah and like that stress us out but I think the answer is

create a rule if the kid sick and you're on the fence do a virtual call as soon as possible with

one of the services we have and if they say go to the doctor go to the doctor and now we eliminate

the decision making should that be our rule yeah I think that's a really good rule and I like that

it applies for future instances so that we're not having to go through this taxing back and forth

every single time which turns out feels weekly at this point so yeah for anyone without kids take

it sick all the time all the time but now that we're speaking about money and creating rules around

that there was actually a listener question that came in so let me read it and I'd love to get your

take my husband and I recently got married we make around the same income neither has debt

besides student loans we're discussing combining finances and planning for a baby what are best

practices when does it join account makes sense where do we start so this is a great question

unfortunately there's not a perfect money rule for this and I think one of the things I took away

from both doing financial planning I didn't episode on money and relationships with

and just talking to people is that there's actually not a right answer I would say three

year maybe five or six years ago if you asked me this question my answer would be you should combine

your finances it turns out that depending on the couple anything can work I think what's important

is less whether you both operate out of the same account and that you both are transparent about

things and that you talk about your kind of feelings and understandings about money and so if it

works better for you to each have your own checking accounts that's fine I think personally and this

is where I'll project my judgment on everyone I think it's a lot easier if you can get comfortable

with just operating in one account there's one account to pay all the bills out of there's one

account to put all the paychecks in there's one account to pay your taxes in it's all our money

and that works and I'd say if that can work it simplifies things a ton but there are couples out

who very successfully say like I take 50% of my paycheck and put it in my account 50% goes in our

joint account and you know we pay our bills out of this and there are even couples that are like

because I make more money I put more here and like you might have pre-naps and all kinds of other

things that factor in my general sense is that if you cross to a point that the way you're thinking

about your money is that it's ours it's not mine and yours that it can simplify things by combining

your money and putting it together and putting in a joint account and operating all together

that doesn't mean that you need to necessarily all have authorized cardholders for every credit card

that doesn't mean you have to have the same credit card that doesn't mean the other person have

to see every expense and purchase or sign off on everything you do but I think it can help when

there's all things happening in one place and I think the one caveat I'll say and you have

experienced this deeply is if one person or both people have things that are kind of like

irregular and confusing it can be very helpful to either agree that that person is in charge of

things or have those things happen in a separate account so oftentimes you have talked about oh I'll

go buy some gold at Costco and resell it oh so that credit card is now going to have you know

$20,000 on it and now our checking account needs to make sure it has the $20,000 in I think there

was a time where if you were managing all of this it would stress you out like crazy if our monthly

credit card statements varied from a thousand to $50,000 because of all kinds of crazy stuff and it

gets amplified even more when there's a business and some of those business expenses might happen

on personal cards and get reimbursed by the business but they get auto paid by the personal

account and so I think that can be something you want to talk through but I'm guessing that the

average person listening is not doing all of those kind of crazy things and that you're just thinking

what makes sense and I would say go back and list the episode I did with her meat maybe have a

conversation with an L that could be helpful do a personality profile and potentially do it for

both of you and you know that on that deep personality thing it gave us a prompt we could use to

create our own custom GPT or clawed instance about our personalities and that you could use that as

kind of like a couple's counselor you could take those two outputs put it in and say hey we're

thinking about what to do with our money based on what you know about us what do you think we should

do and so I think that if it works for you combining your finances is probably the best option

and that's me projecting for sure but there are people for whom it doesn't work well and I don't

think you should feel like that's a problem if that's you ours is kind of all of our money is all

of our money we have lots of random accounts because sometimes I'm like oh there's this cool bonus

let's go open this thing so it's not that all the money is in one place and I'm not even sure at

any given point in time you know where all the money is but you at least know that there's a place

you could go to find out where all the money is and I think it just helps to know that it's like

everything gets paid out of this one account yeah I agree I think it comes down to like you said

the transparency around it and communication and then also the values like make sure you guys

are both financially kind of aligned in the way you think about money and how you spend it or

how you save or how you contribute and if you're aligned in that and there is the communication

transparency I think joint accounts make a ton of sense yeah and when it comes to who pays what

I'm like if possible can you just automate all of those things so no one has to do any of

I feel a little crazy with this example but we use Mercury as a personal banking product

and they have this ability to do invoices and so we have a dog walker and they send this invoice

and they're okay can you send me some money over Zell and I'm like would it be cool if we just

use this thing and I feel so ridiculous because I'm like could you actually forward our dog walking

invoice to my accounts payable email address and so I didn't say I just auto set up an email filter

to do it automatically but if you can automate these things it can just make it even simpler it's

not like I'm responsible you're responsible it's like can't it just be responsible and so invoice

goes in auto forwards to Mercury gets queued up we both get a notification that someone needs to

approve the payment and either one of us can do it and then we get a notification that it was done

automating a lot of it setting things on auto pay it has been helpful and then you know using some

tool to review stuff because I don't know I just feel like in this day and age things happen

random charges on cards you could set it all on auto pay but you should still review it and so

that's why we're using co-pilot still because there's one place that syncs all the accounts syncs

all the transactions and on a regular basis we can go through and see them all and then we can go

through and see what we're spending money on and we can have a conversation about that so I think

you want to have conversations about this I do think that it's not a problem if one person manages

it not just because that's our situation but because I've talked other people it's like it's okay

if there's a manager of the finances but it's probably not okay if there's not transparency

about it and there's not conversations about it so even if one person is like I don't care I'm not

interested I would encourage the other person to like we did with our state of the business

export all your transactions from co-pilot or whatever tool you use look at your balance sheet

and your net worth and throw it in and then say hey let's create a state of our personal

finance report and run through it and you can even say hey and make it kind of fun make it kind

of silly like you know you can kind of control it doesn't have to be a spreadsheet so that's

what I would encourage people to do to get on the same page yeah thanks good idea all right I think

that's it yeah this was fun I want to encourage everyone we're gonna do this again and again

not every week but go to all the hacks.com slash AMA ask questions for me ask questions for Amy ask

questions for both of us and send them in super easy form like it'll take you a second you could

do on your phone you could do it anywhere because I want to make sure that what we're talking about

are things that are interesting to this audience and so we'll continue to share the trials and

tribulations of our crazy journey optimizing our lives and all the stuff that comes with it but

would love to be able to inject any questions and ideas and thoughts and feedback you guys have as

well so do that and that is it for this week we'll see you next week thanks want to see your brand

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