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My favorite thing to do is not pay.

I vividly remember the first time my credit card number got stolen. It’s seared into my memory not because I had to pay for things I didn’t buy (I didn’t) but how big of a pain in the ass it was.

I swiped the card all the time; it was bound to get stolen, but the problem was I had everything on one credit card number. I had to update the payment info for everything in my life, and it nearly caused me to miss a payment on my season pass to Sesame Place.

I subscribe to many things: Netflix, Hulu, my cell phone, cable internet, Hustler magazine…, and the list goes on. Every one of these needed to be updated. There had to be a better way!

I'll show you a better way, which will likely save you a lot of money this year, and put you back in the driver's seat on spending. It is your money, after all.

DISCLAIMER: If we don’t send out another newsletter next Monday, please alert the FBI because it means the credit bureaus have eliminated us for sharing this information.

“The art is not in making money but keeping it.”

— Proverb

Fit the Bill

In my life, my goal is to spend as much time doing what I want as possible. Doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s at least my intention. This has never been more true than how I handle bills.

I have a simple rule: every payment goes on its own card.

There are some exceptions, but not many.

Credit Cards Can Be Credit Hard

This might seem like an exorbitant amount of work, but once it’s done, you rarely have to think about it again - like getting a cavity filled.

Having a card for every purchase will save you a ton of time and money for a few reasons:

You'll be obsessed once you create your first credit card number in a browser (or an app) and see how easy it is.

TLDR; It’s Privacy.com.

But first, you need a CFO

Ok, let’s be real for a moment. You probably don’t have the best idea of what’s going on with your monthly spending. There are a lot of transactions in your accounts; money is coming in and going out; it’s a lot. I get it.

My parents manually balanced their checkbook multiple times a week. That was in the 90’s. It’s 2025, there’s a better way, and it’s automated. It’s called Monarch.

Monarch will track your spending, your assets, and your debts. You can manage it any way you’d like. Budgets? Yes. Recurring charge alerts? Yes. Investments tracked? Yes. Net worth graphs? Absolutely! Dessert? You deserve it for being so organized!

If you want to get your finances in order, this is your next-most urgent task.

Manage your wealth with Monarch.

Save 50% if you use the code LOVE50.

Can I Please Get Some Privacy.com?

Building a House of Credit Cards.

The truth is, if it isn’t easy, we won’t do it - just ask the pile of leaves sitting in my backyard since Fall.

A killer spending management system needs to be very easy. 

Privacy.com is the only company I have found that:

Cashback is a requirement for me. Spending money is always easier when you are going to make a little money doing it. The Chrome Extension and App make it insanely easy to create new cards, so setting up and maintaining this system requires virtually no effort.

The Virtual Card Reality

You just need to follow the one rule: every payment goes on its own card.

There are two exceptions to this rule:

Never pay more than you intend.

If you don’t want to pay a business anymore, you close its card. That’s it. It’s over. You never have to speak to them again; they can keep your favorite hoodie.

You can talk to them and cancel the account manually if you want, but that sounds like a lot of time and work. Instead, you could just close the card and move on. Trust me, you’re not hurting Netflix’s feelings. I bet they don’t even think about you anymore.

This is what it feels like to cancel a service like a badass.

Beware, you may literally become intoxicated with joy when you randomly decide to nope a future payment. The power of fighting capitalism might go to your head.

I’ve found that cutting spending is the easiest way to give myself a raise. It is much easier than finding more income.

Bill me now, I’ll pay when I’m ready.

Spent too much at the farmer’s market and blew your budget? It’s ok, it happens.

Most subscriptions give you a 30-day grace period. You can collect a full month’s income in that time.

Imagine shifting some of your biggest expenses back so you have more cash flow today while still being able to use the services you want. Just make sure to pay before they cancel on you.

Being positive in income only for some months is lazy and risky. Often, there’s an excuse like “it all balances out.” Well, you’ve been alive long enough to know that, no, it doesn’t balance out, and debt will quickly swallow you whole. If you don’t do it today, it won’t happen. The best day to start was yesterday, and the second best is today.

You can only spend what you earn in a month. Vacations are an exception, most everything else is not. Buy the cruise, don’t buy the booze.

Want to buy a $500 TV? Realistically, you should only buy that TV if you saved $501 that month. It’s not fun or exciting, but it’s exactly what financially responsible adults do. This might be the financial equivalent of eating your vegetables before you can have dessert, but it always tastes much sweeter when you know you’ve been a good boy.

You can pause cards whenever you want or reduce their monthly budget so payments bounce.

You have that power now, so you should use it.

In practice, you shouldn’t need to do this. But look, I’ve gotten myself into tight situations and I’m sure you have done the same, don’t lie. This is an easy, painless way to come up with quick savings. Just remember this is a financial band-aid; like a band-aid, it shouldn’t be used more than once!

Cashback That Thang Up

Not points, not anything other than cold hard cash.

Unless you can buy things, like toilet paper, with points, taking anything other than cash doesn’t make sense. That is unless you have more cash than you know what to do with. But then, you’d already agree with me.

Privacy.com is a 1% cashback of up to $4k/month in spending.

This wouldn’t include spending on your Mortgage/Rent, which is usually not payable with a card anyway. It also doesn’t need to include utilities or other necessary services, but it could

You should view most expenses as potentially cancelable. Fixed costs sink ships, so it’s best not to “need“ things that are not truly necessary.

It’s unlikely you have over $4,000 in incidental monthly spending, but even if you do, you could still benefit from this as a starting point.

Money Talks

What was the biggest unnecessary expense that you’ve cut?

Let us know your answers so we can feature them in a future newsletter!

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We get paid to promote businesses we love 🤑

You can make money promoting any product on the internet. I’m sure you know this, but if you didn’t, let your mind be blown and learn about Affiliate Marketing. We’ve created a ton of resources and three businesses around it.

It’s how we earn money with Listen to Money Matters and Giftlab. We also build tools to help Creators earn a full-time living doing what they love with Lasso.

The beauty is that because all companies offer affiliate programs, we can choose our favorite companies and get paid to refer customers to them. It's the best of both worlds (even Tesla has an affiliate program).

Point is, we recommend what we want, then try our hardest to get paid for what we do anyways

Privacy.com pays us $5 for every signup, full disclosure. You don’t get honesty like that anywhere else.

We earn on everything below as well; they’re also best-in-class products we use.

Our Favorite Money Tools

🦋 Monarch - Automatically monitor spending, create budgets, and track your net worth. Categorizes transactions with AI.

💳️ Privacy.com - Virtual credit card numbers per expense. Easily control how much any card can spend and never get overcharged again. Get 1% cash back!

🥧 M1 Finance - Simple, no-fee investing with superpowers. Built from the ground up for long-term investors with high expectations. We use them; they are awesome.

🏠 Fundrise - Invest in Rust Belt and Mid-Western real estate.

🏦 Mercury - The best small business checking account, full stop. We use it for all of our businesses, including my personal checking.

🌵 Lasso - My business. We create tools that help Creators monetize their work.

See the complete list in our Toolbox.

May the cash flow always be in your favor,

Andrew and Lou - the Funny Money team