Finance Xpress

Posted by: John S Kiernan

The release of each new iPhone model is a big-money occasion. Not just for Apple, the world's largest company by market capitalization and a new Warren Buffet favorite. But also for consumers, who will reportedly be asked to shell out up to $1,400 for the new device at a time when credit card debt is approaching record highs. The key, it seems, is that credit scores are at lofty historical levels, too. In other words, installment plans and other financing arrangements will help the iPhone remain as popular as ever into its second decade.

But how much do consumers really know about the connection between their credit scores and monthly cell phone bills? Do we care more about our phones than our credit scores?

To answer all of those questions and more, WalletHub performed a nationally representative survey of American consumers. You can find the results in the following infographic.

Embed on your website<a href="https://ift.tt/2Nx8xbg"> <img src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/posts/53664/2018-creditscore-iphone-survey-v9.png" width="" height="" alt="" /> </a> <div style="width:px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2N3VFfQ>

Full Details Overall

What type of phone do you have?
Android	47%
iPhone	46%
Other	7%
Do you plan on purchasing the new iPhone launching later this year?
No	72%
Yes	28%
Which is easier to understand?
Credit reports	61%
Cell phone agreements	39%
Which would you rather have?
Higher credit score	88%
iPhone launching this year	12%
Which would you rather give a stranger access to?
Phone	52%
Credit score	48%
Which would you rather have?
Excellent credit score	81%
Unlimited cell phone data	19%
Which has a bigger impact on your life?
My credit score	66%
My cell phone	34%
Which would you be more upset about losing?
Cell phone	56%
Credit card	44%
Which do you trust more with your personal data?
Apple	41%
Google	33%
The government	26%
Is a new iPhone worth going into credit card debt?
No	89%
Yes	11%
Which should parents give kids first, a credit card or cell phone?
Cell phone	88%
Credit Card	12%
Do cell phone companies check people’s credit when they apply for service?
Yes	71%
No	29%
Is it better buy a cell phone upfront or pay in installments?
Buy upfront	71%
Pay in installments	29%
Should people with bad credit have to pay more for cell phones?
No	79%
Yes	21%

Full Details - By Credit Standing

What type of phone do you have?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Android	70%	47%	52%	42%
iPhone	16%	44%	45%	52%
Other	14%	9%	3%	6%
Do you plan on purchasing the new iPhone launching later this year?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
No	90%	75%	79%	63%
Yes	10%	25%	21%	37%
Which is easier to understand?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Credit reports	49%	70%	55%	54%
Cell phone agreements	51%	30%	45%	46%
Which would you rather have?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Higher credit score	87%	85%	90%	90%
iPhone launching this year	13%	15%	10%	10%
Which would you rather give a stranger access to?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Phone	50%	42%	59%	61%
Credit score	50%	58%	41%	39%
Which would you rather have?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Excellent credit score	80%	80%	83%	82%
Unlimited cell phone data	20%	20%	17%	18%
Which has a bigger impact on your life?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
My credit score	60%	69%	68%	63%
My cell phone	40%	31%	32%	37%
Which would you be more upset about losing?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Cell phone	75%	53%	59%	55%
Credit card	25%	47%	41%	45%
Which do you trust more with your personal data?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Apple	16%	44%	37%	43%
Google	45%	26%	44%	36%
The government	39%	30%	19%	21%
Is a new iPhone worth going into credit card debt?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
No	90%	90%	93%	86%
Yes	10%	10%	7%	14%
Which should parents give kids first, a credit card or cell phone?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Cell phone	93%	86%	84%	92%
Credit Card	7%	14%	16%	8%
Do cell phone companies check people’s credit when they apply for service?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Yes	60%	74%	76%	66%
No	40%	26%	24%	34%
Is it better buy a cell phone upfront or pay in installments?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
Buy upfront	49%	78%	66%	67%
Pay in installments	51%	22%	34%	33%
Should people with bad credit have to pay more for cell phones?
Credit Standing	Bad	Excellent	Fair	Good
No	90%	74%	90%	80%
Yes	10%	26%	10%	20%

Full Details - By Age

What type of phone do you have?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Android	55%	55%	43%	36%
iPhone	43%	45%	50%	46%
Other	2%	0%	7%	18%
Do you plan on purchasing the new iPhone launching later this year?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
No	61%	68%	72%	86%
Yes	39%	32%	28%	14%
Which is easier to understand?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Credit reports	34%	53%	67%	86%
Cell phone agreements	66%	47%	33%	14%
Which would you rather have?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Higher credit score	88%	89%	84%	89%
iPhone launching this year	12%	11%	16%	11%
Which would you rather give a stranger access to?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Phone	53%	48%	51%	55%
Credit score	47%	52%	49%	45%
Which would you rather have?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Excellent credit score	81%	83%	80%	80%
Unlimited cell phone data	19%	17%	20%	20%
Which has a bigger impact on your life?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
My credit score	56%	72%	69%	67%
My cell phone	44%	28%	31%	33%
Which would you be more upset about losing?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Cell phone	57%	74%	51%	42%
Credit card	43%	26%	49%	58%
Which do you trust more with your personal data?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Apple	38%	43%	42%	41%
Google	46%	40%	29%	19%
The government	16%	17%	29%	40%
Is a new iPhone worth going into credit card debt?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
No	85%	79%	94%	97%
Yes	15%	21%	6%	3%
Which should parents give kids first, a credit card or cell phone?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Cell phone	87%	89%	92%	85%
Credit Card	13%	11%	8%	15%
Do cell phone companies check people’s credit when they apply for service?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Yes	63%	73%	66%	80%
No	37%	27%	34%	20%
Is it better buy a cell phone upfront or pay in installments?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
Buy upfront	71%	71%	63%	80%
Pay in installments	29%	29%	37%	20%
Should people with bad credit have to pay more for cell phones?
	18 - 29	30 - 44	45 - 59	59+
No	76%	79%	80%	82%
Yes	24%	21%	20%	18%

Full Details - By Gender

What type of phone do you have?
	Female	Male
Android	43%	51%
iPhone	52%	40%
Other	5%	9%
Do you plan on purchasing the new iPhone launching later this year?
	Female	Male
No	70%	75%
Yes	30%	25%
Which is easier to understand?
	Female	Male
Credit reports	62%	60%
Cell phone agreements	38%	40%
Which would you rather have?
	Female	Male
Higher credit score	90%	85%
iPhone launching this year	10%	15%
Which would you rather give a stranger access to?
	Female	Male
Phone	56%	47%
Credit score	44%	53%
Which would you rather have?
	Female	Male
Excellent credit score	82%	81%
Unlimited cell phone data	18%	19%
Which has a bigger impact on your life?
	Female	Male
My credit score	68%	64%
My cell phone	32%	36%
Which would you be more upset about losing?
	Female	Male
Cell phone	58%	53%
Credit card	42%	47%
Which do you trust more with your personal data?
	Female	Male
Apple	44%	39%
Google	35%	30%
The government	21%	31%
Is a new iPhone worth going into credit card debt?
	Female	Male
No	89%	89%
Yes	11%	11%
Which should parents give kids first, a credit card or cell phone?
	Female	Male
Cell phone	92%	84%
Credit Card	8%	16%
Do cell phone companies check people’s credit when they apply for service?
	Female	Male
Yes	68%	74%
No	32%	26%
Is it better buy a cell phone upfront or pay in installments?
	Female	Male
Buy upfront	71%	71%
Pay in installments	29%	29%
Should people with bad credit have to pay more for cell phones?
	Female	Male
No	86%	72%
Yes	14%	28%

Full Details - By Income

What type of phone do you have?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Android	31%	60%	42%
iPhone	63%	36%	50%
Other	6%	4%	8%
Do you plan on purchasing the new iPhone launching later this year?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
No	74%	69%	70%
Yes	26%	31%	30%
Which is easier to understand?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Credit reports	73%	36%	60%
Cell phone agreements	27%	64%	40%
Which would you rather have?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Higher credit score	84%	83%	94%
iPhone launching this year	16%	17%	6%
Which would you rather give a stranger access to?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Phone	45%	67%	57%
Credit score	55%	33%	43%
Which would you rather have?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Excellent credit score	83%	65%	90%
Unlimited cell phone data	17%	35%	10%
Which has a bigger impact on your life?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
My credit score	62%	60%	72%
My cell phone	38%	40%	28%
Which would you be more upset about losing?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Cell phone	52%	55%	59%
Credit card	48%	45%	41%
Which do you trust more with your personal data?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Apple	47%	33%	48%
Google	15%	50%	28%
The government	38%	17%	24%
Is a new iPhone worth going into credit card debt?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
No	92%	90%	86%
Yes	8%	10%	14%
Which should parents give kids first, a credit card or cell phone?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Cell phone	90%	90%	89%
Credit Card	10%	10%	11%
Do cell phone companies check people’s credit when they apply for service?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Yes	77%	58%	66%
No	23%	42%	34%
Is it better buy a cell phone upfront or pay in installments?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
Buy upfront	75%	78%	63%
Pay in installments	25%	22%	37%
Should people with bad credit have to pay more for cell phones?
	High Income	Low Income	Medium Income
No	76%	83%	76%
Yes	24%	17%	24%

from Wallet HubWallet Hub


via Finance Xpress

In Partnership with TransUnion.

Just a few years ago, I had around $40,000 in student loan debt. I hated having my student loan debt hang over my head. I received my first bill for my student loans right after I graduated with my MBA, and it was for several hundred dollars a month for around a decade.

The thought of paying such a large bill for so many years was just frightening to me.

So, I decided to pay off my student loans as quickly as I could.

Learning how to pay off student loans can lead to many positives, such as:

• You may finally feel less financial stress.
• You may be able to use that money towards something more important, such as saving for retirement.
• You can pursue other goals in life, such as traveling more or looking for a better job.

I know these things are true because learning how to pay off my student loans is one of the best decisions that I've ever made.

No, it wasn't easy to pay off my student loans that quickly, but it was definitely worth it. No longer having those monthly payments hanging over my head is a HUGE relief, and it allowed me to follow my dreams.

Paying off my student loans also helped me move forward in life. Instead of drowning in a large monthly debt payment, I was able to move on and work towards other financial goals. I became in control of my financial situation, in control of my credit score, and more. It felt absolutely amazing to pay off my debt, especially so quickly!

And, this is something that you can do as well. You can challenge yourself, reach your financial goals, and get back on financial track. This can then help you to improve your credit score as well, if you finally pay off your debt and can move onto other financial goals of yours.

My credit score is now in the 800s, and it was actually not that hard to reach.

Whether you want to believe it or not, your credit score can play a major role in your family's life.

While you shouldn't go crazy and completely obsess over improving your credit score, it is important to learn more about them due to the impact they may have.

Your credit score can influence the interest rate you receive on a loan, buying a home, finding a rental home, attaining certain jobs, your insurance rates, and more.

A credit score is a three-digit number showing others your creditworthiness, and is often used as an indicator of how risky you are.

Your credit score is determined from data that is collected from businesses where you've completed purchases and transactions, such as from loans. This means that understanding, managing, and securing that information is extremely important when it comes to reaching your financial and other life goals.

There are tools available that make improving your credit score easy as well as accessible.

 

Why is improving your credit score important? What can it impact?

There are many situations where your credit score and history may be important. It is important to spend time on improving your credit score, because you never know when it may be useful.

Your credit score may impact:

• Loans (mortgage, car loan, etc.) – If you apply for a loan, your credit score and credit history will be checked. Before you are approved for a loan of any sort, the lending institution is going to thoroughly check your financial history so they don’t end up losing money on your loan.
• Home and car insurance – If you have home or car insurance, your rate may be calculated on a factor you didn’t know about – your credit score.
• Renting a home – If you have decided you don’t want to own a home, do not think you have escaped having your credit history checked. Your landlord will most likely check your credit history. They will want to know if you pay your bills on time or if you have ever skipped one completely.
•  Credit cards – If you don’t care about credit, then you probably will not care about this one. However, if you want a credit card, especially one with a good rewards system in place, then you will want to work on improving your credit score.
• Employer – While employers can’t see your score, you may be surprised to know that many employers will check your credit report (with your permission). Industries that often check your credit report include those dealing with financial services, chemical, and defense.
• The interest rate you receive – A good credit score can mean you qualify for a low interest rate, and a bad credit score may mean that you get a high one.

And, this is why I recommend TransUnion.

TransUnion empowers consumers to maximize financial health by providing resources to help monitor personal information, manage credit, as well as keep your identity safe.

If you're wondering about your credit score, I recommend checking out TransUnion's Online Credit Score Simulator. This tool shows you ways your current credit score may change based on actions that you may take in the future (such as getting a new loan). This can show you how your actions may impact you, so that you can make better informed decisions.

 

How can a person improve their credit score?

Improving your credit score does not have to be difficult. Once you know what impacts your score, you can make changes to improve it.

Here is my advice for increasing your credit score:

• Pay your invoices and bills promptly.
• Check your credit report often. There is a chance that mistakes may pop up on your credit report, and this may be hurting you. If you find an error, you should fix it as soon as possible.
• Keep your balances and utilization down. I recommend spending less than 20% of your available credit.
• Keep your credit card accounts open if it makes sense (if you think you'll go into debt with them open or if the annual fees aren't worth it, you may want to think about closing them instead), so that you can lengthen your credit history.
• Pay your credit card on time. Even if you pay your credit cards in full each month, your balances are still reported. To improve your credit score, you should pay your credit card in full before your balances are reported.
• When shopping for a loan, apply for loans within a short period of time instead of over several months.
• Fraud protection is an important factor of maintaining your credit health, because identity thieves may take out loans or finance items that appear as delinquencies on your credit report. Due to that, I recommend TrueIdentity, a free credit and identity theft protection product designed to help consumers protect their identity from identity thieves. 

Here's a great infographic I found from TransUnion that is helpful as well.

 

To learn more, please visit TransUnion.com.

Are you trying to improve your credit score?

The post How Paying Off $40,000 In Student Loan Debt Changed My Life appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.

from Making Sense Of Cents


via Finance Xpress

After gaining 12 lbs during my freshman year in college, I had to spend $35 to buy a pair of new jeans. $35 might not sound like a lot to you, but it was a lot to me at the time because I only made $4/hour working at McDonald’s.

Wasting 10 hours of my life because I couldn’t resist the buffet line pissed me off. So of course I did a lot of dieting research and discovered the magic bullet to weight loss: eat less.

With such simple logic, I decided to keep track of what I ate and slowed my food intake as I approached 2,000 calories. I also educated myself about world hunger. Knowing there are over 700 million malnourished people in the world became harder to stuff my face.

By the middle of sophomore year, I was back down to my fighting weight of 160 lbs. Given I’m not an infallible machine, I’d have a cheat day once a week. This release day has helped keep my pant size the same for the last 22 years. Although I admit, old jeans are getting very snug nowadays!

Samurai September: Your Financial Cheat Month

If you’ve been following Financial Samurai since 2009, you’ve seen your net worth surge higher because you’ve been focusing on saving and investing as much money as possible. The S&P 500 is at a record high and most real estate markets around the world are also at record highs.

While many people were spending big bucks on cars, clothes, and other things they didn’t need, you’ve been feeding your investments like a hungry hippo and watching your returns compound like a champ.

Heavy spenders missed out on one of the biggest recoveries in history. As a result, they are stuck in the muck, while you’ve come that much closer to financial freedom, if you’re not there already.

Since many of you have done so well since the financial crisis, I’d like to propose a brief respite from your financial ways. At the rate you’re going, you will die with way too much money, or you might simply burn out. It’s time to course correct a bit and spend more than usual.

Let’s not let all those people who take on massive credit card debt to fund their fabulous lifestyles have all the fun!

Samurai September Challenge Rules

The Samurai September Challenge simply encourages you to spend more than you usually do on yourself and the people you care about for one month, once a year.

Samurai September is a challenge because after years of practicing good financial habits, it’s hard as hell to spend up. Samurai September is also a challenge because in order to participate, you must meet at least five of the following conditions:

1) Grown your net worth by at least 100% in five years

2) Read Financial Samurai for three years or longer

3) Saved at least 20% of your after-tax income for five years or more

4) Tracked your net worth every month for at least 12 quarters

5) Own your primary residence for at least three years

6) Have a side hustle that earns at least $100 a month for at least two years

7) Worked on building an after-tax passive income portfolio for at least five years

8) Spent no more than 1/10th your gross income on your current car

9) Have a net worth of at least $250,000

10) Maxed out your 401(k) for at least five years

11) Maxed out your IRA for at least 10 years

12) Haven’t blamed anybody for your failures for at least three years

13) Got a graduate degree part-time while working full-time

14) Spent at least 20 hours a year volunteering

15) Donated at least $1,000 to charity for at least five years

16) Negotiated a severance instead of quitting

17) Did not vote on a law to raise taxes on others without paying more yourself

If you’ve met at least five of these conditions, congratulations! You are now free to spend more money for one month. If you haven’t met at least five conditions, better luck next year.

To those eligible for the Samurai September Challenge, here are some guidelines for how much more you can spend in Samurai September compared to usual. The goal is to reward your performance and enjoy life a little more.

Net Worth Growth Condition

• Boost spending for one month by 5% if you have increased your net worth by 100% over the past five years.
• Boost spending for one month by 10% if you have increased your net worth by 200% over the past five years.
• Boost spending for one month by 20% if you have increased your net worth by 300% over the past five years.
• Boost spending for one month by 50% if you have increased your net worth by 400% or more over the past five years.

For example, if you increased your net worth from $200,000 to $600,000 since 2010, you can now spend $500 more this month on whatever you want if your normal monthly spending is $5,000. But if you increased your net worth from $200,000 to $1,000,000 since 2010, then you’re free to increase your spending by 50% to $7,500 in Samurai September.

Savings / Investing Condition

• If you have been saving and investing at least 20% of your after-tax income every year for five years, you can boost your spending by 5% in Samurai September.
• If you have been saving and investing at least 30% of your after-tax income every year for five years, you can boost your spending by 10% in Samurai September.
• If you have been saving and investing at least 40% of your after-tax income every year for five years, you can boost your spending by 20% in Samurai September.
• If you have been saving and investing at least 50% of your after-tax income every year for five years, you can boost your spending by 50% in Samurai September.

For example, if you have been maintaining a 50% after-tax savings rate every year for five years and have plowed a majority of it into the stock market, you are free to raise your monthly spending from $10,000 to $15,000.

Home Ownership Condition

• If you’ve owned a primary residence for two years, you can increase your spending by 5% in Samurai September.
• If you’ve owned a primary residence for three years, you can increase your spending by 10% in Samurai September.
• If you’ve owned a primary residence for four years, you can increase your spending by 20% in Samurai September.
• If you bought a primary residence between 2010 – 2012, you can increase your spending by 50% in Samurai September because you bottom-ticked it baby!
• If you’ve been renting since 2010 when you could have bought, then you need to go run a marathon and think about what went wrong.

Car Ownership Condition

• If you purchased a car for up to 30% of your gross annual income, you can buy yourself a cookie.
• If you purchased a car for up to 20% of your gross annual income, you can increase your spending by 10% in Samurai September.
• If you purchased a car for up to 10% of your gross annual income, you can increase your spending by 20% in Samurai September.
• If you don’t own a car and use public transportation and the occasional rideshare, you can also increase your spending by 20%, provided that you’ve also increased your net worth by 100% over the past five years.

Starting Your Own Side Hustle / Business

• If you started a side hustle this year, you can treat yourself to a nice business expense dinner.
• If you started an online business last year and stuck with it, you can spend 10% more in Samurai September.
• If you started an online business two years or more years ago and stuck with it, you can spend 20% more in Samurai September.
• If you’ve had a side job after normal work hours for a year, you can spend 10% more in Samurai September. With Fivver, Upwork, Craigslist, Task Rabbit, WordPress, Uber, and Lyft, it’s easy to make extra income if you want to.

I firmly believe that anybody who sticks with their online business or side hustle for at least two years will see meaningful financial reward. You will learn from your failures, build your endurance, and find your “lucky” break.

Boosting Spending With A Combination

The above items are not mutually exclusive. If you increased your net worth by 200% since 2010 (+10% spending boost), consistently saved 20% of your after-tax income since 2010 (+5%), bought a primary residence in 2013 (+20%), purchased a car that cost 20% of your gross annual income (+10%), and started a side hustle in 2015 (+20%), you are free to increase your spending percentage by 65% in Samurai September or until you spend 100% of your after-tax income, whichever comes first.

You are encouraged not to spend more than 100% of your after-tax income during Samurai September because then you might turn into the average American who lacks impulse control and gets easily triggered by other people’s opinions. Seriously folks. It’s important we never relapse!

Moderation is key.

The typical American is doomed to financial misery with a median retirement balance of less than $100,000.

Excessive spending is one of the reasons why roughly 41% of Americans can’t come up with $400 in an emergency according to the Federal Reserve. I can’t fathom this to be true for the Financial Samurai community.

Have Fun, Don’t Get Carried Away

September is the chance for you to buy or do those things you’ve been putting off because you’re overly frugal. Use this month to have fun! And if you can’t stand spending more on yourself, you can always spend more on other people in need.

Here are some small and large things I plan to spend money on this September:

* New boxes of daily contacts for $200. I’ve been reusing my daily contacts to save money for years. Now I plan to use a fresh pair even if I just use them for several hours playing tennis.

* Flights for parents and in-laws for $1,000. Given I don’t want to travel on a plane with our boy until he’s at least three, I’m happy to pay for my parents and in-laws to come visit us.

* Supreme unleaded fuel for $10. I drive around 150 miles a month. My vehicle gets about 20 miles a gallon. Hence, I’m willing to see if using supreme fuel makes a lick of difference. It probably doesn’t, but who cares. It’s only $10.

* Toro sashimi for $200. Tuna belly tastes so good, but paying $10+ per slice feels like highway robbery when I can get a filling In N’ Out cheeseburger for $2. But gosh darn it, one evening I’m gonna eat to my belly’s content.

* Tinted windows in the house for $1,400. It turns out having magnificent western-facing ocean views has some downside: heat and glare. Although the new windows I installed in 2015 have some tint, I’d like to have more. It was a scorcher last Fall.

* New jogging pants with zippers for $130. Nowadays, I just like to wear athletic gear. But I need pants that have zipper pockets. Otherwise, my wallet will end up falling out, and that would be a disaster.

* Two couple massages for $400. Massages are the best, especially if you work out a lot or play sports. I have an app on demand that sends the masseuse with massage table to our house for $99 / hour, including tip.

* New air conditioning units for my parents in Hawaii for $8,000. My dad told me several of the AC units in their house died due to geckos getting stuck in the units. Ouch, this is a big expense.

* Take four personal days to save my sanity: priceless. Recently, I’ve had too many 6am – 1am days due to my writing schedule, reader and business requests, and fatherly duties. Fall is the time to take it easy since San Francisco weather is so good and the kids are back in school.

Total cash outlay: $11,439, $9,000 of which is going to my parents and in-laws. Hmm, I think I need to come up with more things to spend on my family! Any ideas? The only thing I really want are more good experiences. This challenge to spend more money than normal is going to be harder than I thought.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

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Readers, are you ready to join the Samurai September Challenge? With the stock market and real estate market making us so rich since the last recession, how do you ensure your consumption level is appropriate to your situation and you do not die with too much?

The post Samurai September: Welcome To Your Financial Cheat Month appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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Posted by: Adam McCann

Visa Signature benefits include rental car insurance, roadside dispatch, extended warranties and special hotel discounts. Visa Signature benefits are also better than the perks on standard Visa cards, but they’re not as good as those on Visa Infinite cards. Almost any Visa card can be Visa Signature, depending on your overall creditworthiness and the credit limit you’re approved for. If you’re assigned a limit of $5,000+, you’re likely to get the Visa Signature version of your chosen credit card.

Unfortunately, a few of the best credit card perks don’t always come with Visa Signature: travel insurance, purchase protection and return protection. It’s possible for a Visa Signature card to have these benefits, but it’s 100% up to the issuer. All three perks are standard with Visa Infinite cards.

Below, you can learn more about all the Visa Signature benefits and how they compare to other credit cards’ perks.

Visa Signature Benefits vs. Visa & Visa Infinite Benefits

The chart below shows the perks that are standard to each tier of Visa card.

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Benefit	Visa Signature	Visa	Visa Infinite
Rental Car Insurance	Yes	Yes	Yes
Roadside Dispatch	Yes	Yes	Yes
Emergency Card Replacement	Yes	Yes	Yes
Emergency Cash Disbursement	Yes	Yes	Yes
$5,000+ Credit Limit	Yes	No	Yes
Warranty Manager Service	Yes	No	Yes
Travel & Emergency Assistance	Yes	No	Yes
Travel Insurance	No	No	Yes
Purchase Security	No	No	Yes
Return Protection	No	No	Yes

Standard Visa Signature Benefits

These benefits come standard on Visa Signature cards. You may see some of them on regular Visa cards, too.

• Rental car insurance: This benefit covers physical damage, vandalism or theft, up to the cash value of most vehicles. You have to decline the rental agency’s insurance to be eligible. Certain vehicles (e.g. trucks, large vans) and situations (e.g. drunk driving, injury) aren’t covered.
• Roadside dispatch: Roadside dispatch is a pay-per-use service. You can call Visa any time to get a tire change, a jump start, towing or other needed services. They’ll send assistance to you, for free. But you’ll have to pay the service provider.
• Emergency card replacement: If you lose your card, you can call Visa and they’ll help you get a new one in 24-72 hours, even if you’re abroad.
• Emergency cash disbursement: Visa can arrange to have cash delivered to a place near you for pick up if you lose your card.
• Warranty manager service: You get one extra year of warranty on items you buy with your card. The item has to start with a warranty of three years or fewer, though.
• Luxury Hotel Collection: You get special perks at properties in the Luxury Hotel Collection, including free breakfast, Wi-Fi, food and beverage credits, unique amenities and more. The program includes more than 900 hotels worldwide from brands like Park Hyatt, Peninsula and Shangri-La.
• Rental car deals: If you rent a car from Avis, National or Silvercar, you’ll receive special discounts. The deals vary over time.
• Concierge: This is like your own personal helper. You can call Visa any time and ask their representatives to help buy tickets, find a gift, book a reservation at a restaurant, arrange for transportation and more.
• Deals on golf & wine: Visa Signature and Infinite cardholders who join Troon Rewards get discounts on golf fees and merchandise. Sonoma wineries also give discounts to Visa Signature and Infinite cardholders.
• Travel & Emergency Assistance: This 24/7 hotline can help with all kinds of things. You can get assistance with medical and legal referrals, translation services, delivery of important documents, lost luggage claims and more. The number is 1-800-992-6029 in the U.S., or 804-673-1675 collect from abroad.
• $5,000+ credit limit: Visa Signature cards start with a credit limit of at least $5,000. The same goes for Visa Infinite. But a regular Visa card will usually start with a lower limit.

Possible Visa Signature Benefits

The following benefits come standard only with Visa Infinite cards. But depending on who issued your card, you might have them on your Visa Signature card.

• Travel insurance – Coverage for travel accidents, lost/delated luggage and trip cancellation/delay.
• Purchase protection – Reimbursement for items you buy with your card that break or are stolen within 90 days.
• Return protection – Reimbursement for items in new condition that the merchant doesn’t let you return.
• Global entry statement credit - $100 credit for the Global Entry application fee; Global Entry gets you through customs more quickly.

Your card might have other benefits too, so be sure to read your card’s benefits guide to figure out exactly what you get. It’s good to take advantage of everything your card offers.

Lastly, don’t forget that Visa cards have $0 fraud liability. So you can rest assured that you’re protected against fraudulent purchases.

Best Credit Cards for Visa Signature Benefits

Visa Signature Benefit	Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card	Wells Fargo Visa Signature® Card	Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card	USAA® Preferred Cash Rewards Visa Signature® Card
Overall Benefits Score	88.6%	67.95%	46.48%	57.6%
Travel Insurance Score	92.9%	82.1%	67%	65.9%
Rental Car Insurance Score	91.5%	87.5%	87.5%	80.5%
Purchase Protection Score	92.5%	84%	84%	N/A
Extended Warranty Score	86.5%	88%	85%	76%

from Wallet HubWallet Hub


via Finance Xpress

How do you feel about spending and budgeting? Depending on your answers, you’ll either choose a secured credit card or a prepaid card. So, which is better for you?

If you’re trying to build or rebuild your credit, chances are you’ve heard of a secured credit card. But what about a prepaid credit card?

Many people think that you can build credit with these cards, but the short answer is you can’t. That’s not to say that prepaid cards don’t provide tremendous value for the right person.

We tend to get a lot of questions on the debate between secured and prepaid cards, so in this article, I’ll discuss what each of them is and why you may want to consider getting one. Let’s first start by calling out some of the differences between the two.

Secured vs. Prepaid Credit Cards – What’s the Difference?

Before determining which credit card is best for you, let’s explore some of the critical differences between a secured credit card and prepaid credit cards.

Secured Cards

Secured cards work just like traditional credit cards. You can use them up to your credit limit (which is determined by a deposit–see below), and each month you’ll get a statement with your charges and the amount of your minimum payment.

If you make your payments on time, your credit score should improve, whereas late payments will hurt your score. This is par-for-the-course with all credit cards.

One thing that’s different, though, is that secured credit cards require you to make a cash deposit (typically $200 to $5,000) with the card issuer before you can use the card, and your credit limit is generally equal to the amount of your deposit.

The bank then holds your deposit as security in the event you fail to pay your credit card bill. That’s the basis of any secured loan. A mortgage loan, for instance, is secured to your home. If you don’t pay, the bank can take your house. A traditional credit card, on the other hand, is unsecured, meaning that if you fail to make a payment, there is no collateral tied to it.

Because of this security deposit, people with bad credit can generally qualify for a secured credit card, even if they can’t get a traditional card. That’s why these types of cards are perfect for those looking to rebuild their credit after a bankruptcy, foreclosure, or other adverse financially-related life events.

Prepaid Cards

A prepaid credit card works like a debit card. Once you deposit money on the prepaid card (via direct deposit, bank transfer, or cash), you can use the card anywhere that accepts debit MasterCard or Visa. It can be used to shop online, over the phone, or at virtually all retailers.

Once you’ve spent the money you initially deposited, you’ll need to add more funds to continue using the card. For this reason, these cards are often referred to as reloadable prepaid cards (in contrast to, say, gift cards). Because you’re spending your own money that you’ve added to the card, prepaid cards generally won’t help you improve your credit score.

Which Card is Right for Me?

Now that you have a basic understanding of each type of card, here’s a breakdown of some of the features to look for in a card. I’ll tell you if a secured card or a prepaid card offers them, and if so, which one is best.

Build Credit

Short Answer: Go with a secured card.

A secured card is a credit card, and it’s just secured to collateral that you put down (your cash deposit). Other than that and a small credit line, you’re holding a credit card. As I said above, if you make payments on time, you’ll build credit. If you miss payments, your credit will stay in the gutter.

Here’s an easy trick to get you started: get a secured credit card and sign up for a low recurring monthly service, like Spotify. Set up autopay on the credit card so when the bill comes every month, it’ll be automatically paid out of your checking account. This way, you are getting a service you’d already pay for, but you’re doing it with the secured card and building credit. Overall, the risk is low since you’re only charging about $10 per month.

Prepaid cards are not real credit cards. They won’t show up on your credit report, and you can’t miss a payment, because there are no bills. You can only spend what you’ve deposited onto the card. So there’s no way to build credit by solely using a prepaid card.

The Capital One® Secured Mastercard® is a great option for those with very poor credit scores. There is no annual fee (and no fee to acquire the card) and the minimum deposit to gain a line of credit is either $49, $99 or $200. The amount of your deposit will depend on your credit history and your initial line of credit will be $200. You can always deposit more money to gain a higher line of secured credit.

Earn Rewards and Points

Short Answer: Neither type card will give you bonuses that you’ll care about.

If you’re looking to earn rewards from your purchases, neither a secured card or a prepaid card will give you what you’re looking for. If you have a secured credit card, the odds of you getting rewards are slim to none. If you do, they’ll be minimal.

Your only real hope is that after a certain period (and you can ask the card issuer this), you can “graduate” to a regular, unsecured credit card, which may offer better rewards (often, card issuers will do this after 12 to 18 months of on-time payments). Still, though, you’re better off using the secured card to build your credit up, then go out and get an excellent rewards card later.

With a prepaid card, you may get small rewards or perks, but nothing to write home about. The difference here is that you can’t “graduate” to a credit card, and typically a prepaid card won’t help you build credit to get to a better card. So if rewards are what you’re looking for, don’t get your hopes up.

Curb Spending Habits

Short Answer: Choose a prepaid card if you want to learn to spend less.

Since a prepaid card is loaded with cash that you put on it, there’s a finite spending limit. You can only spend as much as you’ve put on the card. Now, there are apparent loopholes around this (you can use another card, cash, etc.) but if you’re determined enough, you can use one prepaid card and set a spending cap for the week or month.

You may want to use it for things like discretionary purchases, though, not things like rent or utilities (since you have to pay those). We recommend using a tool like Personal Capital to create and manage a budget and use your prepaid card to help you stick to it.

A secured card, on the other hand, won’t (by itself) help you curb your spending patterns. It may, up to the small limit you receive, but overall you can spend as much as your limit allows. You’ll also get a bill in the mail since the money won’t be deducted right away.

If your primary goal is to spend less money, but you also need to build credit, try doing a combination of a secured card with an app like Debx–which will make daily payments to your credit card for you, thus making it function like a debit card.

With the Netspend® Visa® Prepaid Card there is no activation fee, no minimum balance required and no credit check in order to be approved.  There are no late fees or interest charges and you’ll have access to the NetSpend Mobile App to manage your account.

Avoid Fees

Short Answer: It depends on how you want to use the card and how responsible you are with money.

First, let’s start with secured cards. Secured cards will come with all of the same fees a traditional credit card would. This includes finance charges (if you carry a balance), late fees (if you miss a payment), annual fees (if applicable; some have this, some don’t), and more. Each secured card will be different with its fee structure, so make sure to do your due diligence before selecting one.

Prepaid cards don’t come with annual fees or late charges like a secured card does–but they may come with activation fees and monthly maintenance fees (some of these can be worse than credit card fees, by the way). Many prepaid cards will charge you for withdrawing cash, paying bills, reloading money, and other typical things you’ll end up doing with a prepaid card. On the surface, it seems like it might be free (and some are, by the way) but you’ll want to make sure you read all the fine print before getting a prepaid card.

Overall, you really shouldn’t be using either card to get cash. On a credit card (secured card) it’s considered a cash advance and will be at a very high rate, along with some charges. A prepaid card is funded with cash, so it would make little sense to withdraw it back out (and potentially pay a fee). If you can manage to make your payments on time, go with a secured card. There are more benefits–namely building your credit. Plus, you can find secured cards without an annual fee, so it should cost you nothing if you’re responsible. Prepaid cards are great if you don’t plan to reload your balance often and are merely using it as a budgeting tool.

Extra perks

Short Answer: Hands-down, go with a secured credit card.

A prepaid card is mostly the same as using cash, just in a different form. Because of that, it gives you no perks or extra benefits. A secured card, on the other hand, is a credit card, so it gets the same protections that traditional credit cards have. This includes fraud protection (you’re not responsible for purchases you didn’t make if your card is stolen); insurances like car rental coverage and travel accident insurance; and purchase protection (depending on the issuer). Heck, you might even wind up getting a secured card that gets your points or discounts if you use it certain places.

Prepaid cards lose the federal protection that credit cards have so if this is important to you, I’d strongly recommend getting a secured card. Keep in mind that while there are standard protections that all credit cards provide, you may find issuers that offer additional perks on top of that, such as extended coverages.

When to Apply for Each

Both secured and prepaid cards are useful in different types of financial situations. So when should you apply for each one of these?

Secured Cards

If you’ve had a major negative financial event occur, such as bankruptcy, you’re best off waiting for at least six months after the event to apply for a secured card. There are two sides to this. First, something like a bankruptcy can be emotionally, mentally, and financially exhausting and stressful. You shouldn’t be adding anything to your plate at that time–just focus on getting your financial situation together (paycheck, rent, etc.). Most banks will also consider your financial event a little too soon to want to give you credit–even if it’s secured. So I’d recommend giving it at least six months to a year before applying for new credit. When you’re ready to manage a new card with monthly bills after that time period, go for it.

If you have no credit, you can certainly apply for a secured card, but you may be declined. If you’re unsure, I’d talk to a customer service rep at the bank you’re looking at, or a financial advisor. There are other ways to establish credit besides getting a secured card.

Prepaid Cards

There’s never a bad time to apply for a prepaid card, it really just depends on your situation. If you have no credit, want to start budgeting and cut back on your spending, or just want an easy way to separate your spending from a significant other, getting a prepaid card might be a good idea at any point in your life. Since you’re depositing the money and it’s basically a debit card, there’s typically no credit check or thorough application process needed.

Bottom Line

I can’t tell you which type of card is best–you have to make that decision for yourself. In most cases, I’d recommend a secured card because you get so much more. But I can also see why you’d want a prepaid card, such as its simplicity and ability to not allow you to spend more than you can afford.

To quickly recap, you’ll probably want a secured card if you:

• Want to build credit
• Are responsible with monitoring your spending
• Have at least $200 to put down as a deposit
• Need protections like car rental insurance and zero fraud liability

On the other hand, you’ll probably want a prepaid card if you:

• Can’t keep up with monthly bills and payments
• Want to make sure you never spend more than you have
• Are interested in getting better at budgeting
• Need to make smaller deposits more frequently

Either way, by reading this article it’s clear that you have the intention of improving your financial life in some way–so kudos to you. Please let us know in the comments below which card you ended up choosing and why!

Topics: Credit Cards

The post Secured vs Prepaid Credit Cards – Which is Better for You? appeared first on The Dough Roller.

via Finance Xpress

Posted by: John S Kiernan

Net demand for allocating to hedge funds is at 28%, the highest in the past 3 years, according to Bloomberg. Currently, there are over $3 trillion in hedge funds. To put that in perspective, only four countries, including the U.S., have a GDP higher than that. Furthermore, the median yearly earning for a hedge fund manager is now just under $350,000, but there are many who are billionaires.

So it makes sense that people pay attention to what hedge fund managers are buying, selling and holding. We want to replicate their success. Hedge funds’ quarterly public disclosures, mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, give us a window into their recent activity.

To help investors make informed decisions about where to put their money, WalletHub analyzed the filings of over 400 top hedge funds, identifying their biggest holdings, new positions, recent exits and more. You can check it all out below, including a breakdown of the names that billionaire stock pickers – from Warren Buffett to George Soros – prefer these days.

1. Most Popular Hedge Fund Stocks
2. Top Billionaire Stock Picks
3. Hedge Fund Holdings by Sector
4. Ask the Experts: What Can We Learn From Hedge Funds?
5. Methodology

25 Most Popular Hedge Fund Stocks

Rank	Name of the Company	Ticker	Change from Last Quarter
1.	Microsoft Corp.	MSFT	---
2.	Amazon.com, Inc.	AMZN	---
3.	Apple, Inc.	AAPL	---
4.	Facebook, Inc.	FB	---
5.	Alphabet, Inc.	GOOG	---
6.	Wells Fargo & Co.	WFC	↗
7.	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	JPM	↙
8.	UnitedHealth Group, Inc.	UNH	---
9.	Visa, Inc.	V	↗
10.	Bank of America Corp.	BAC	↙
11.	Mastercard, Inc.	MA	↗
12.	Netflix, Inc.	NFLX	↙
13.	Comcast Corp.	CMCSA	↗
14.	Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	↗
15.	Citigroup, Inc.	C	↙
16.	The Coca-Cola Company	KO	↗
17.	The Home Depot, Inc.	HD	↗
18.	Adobe Systems, Inc.	ADBE	↗
19.	Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.	BRK/B	↗
20.	Verizon Communications, Inc.	VZ	---
21.	Intel Corp.	INTC	↙
22.	salesforce.com, Inc.	CRM	---
23.	Merck & Co., Inc.	MRK	---
24.	Booking Holdings, Inc.	BKNG	↙
25.	The Boeing Company	BA	↙

 

Top Billionaire Stock Picks

Hedge funds have become so popular that the billionaires behind them have celebrity status. Not only are they rich and famous, but they can move markets with just a few words. Investors worldwide follow their every move.

If you, too, are curious to see how billionaire investors such as Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman are making their money these days, just check out the following infographic. You’ll find the top three holdings of 12 big-name billionaires, plus an overview of the stocks they’ve been buying and selling lately.

 

Embed on your website<a href="https://ift.tt/2vNksv0"> <img src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/posts/53588/q2-2018-top-billionaire-stock-picks-v1.png" width="" height="" alt="" /> </a> <div style="width:px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2Cakh1u>

 

Hedge Fund Holdings by Sector

Diversification is key to investing success. That’s because spreading your chips around reduces risk and allows you to benefit from the broader market’s long-term upward trend. That’s why even the world’s best investors hedge their bets by allocating capital to various segments of the economy.

The investments don’t simply match the economy’s makeup, however. And they’re not always the same year to year, either. That’s why we can learn a lot from the way in which hedge funds diversify their investments. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of where the money was during Q2 2018.

 

Embed on your website<a href="https://ift.tt/2vNksv0"> <img src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/posts/53590/hedge-fund-holdings-by-sector-q2-2018-v2.png" width="" height="" alt="" /> </a> <div style="width:px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2Cakh1u> Ask the Experts: What Can We Learn From Hedge Funds?

In search of advice on how much stock we should put into billionaires’ stock picks, WalletHub asked the following questions to a panel of investing experts. You can check out their bios and responses below.

1. How will the recent tax reform, specifically corporate tax reform, impact stock prices in the short and long run?
2. To what extent does President Trump’s administration deserve credit for recent stock market performance?
3. Is the current stock market prone for a correction, or is there still room for growth?
4. What tips do you have for an individual investor? What sectors are expected to grow the most in the coming years?

< >

• Roger Koppl Professor of Finance, Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University
• David W. Leapard Professor Emeritus, Eastern Michigan University
• Menachem Brenner Research Professor of Finance, New York University
• Paul G. Meeks CFA, Chief Investment Officer, Sloy, Dahl & Holst, Finance & Accounting Instructor, Western Washington University
• Albert Yan Wang Professor, Auburn University
• Blerina Bela Zykaj Assistant Professor, Clemson University

More Experts

Methodology

This report is based on information from the latest public disclosures (Form 13F-HR for Q2 2018 and SC amendments from July 1 to August 15) for over 400 of the largest U.S. hedge funds. Data refer only to equities (i.e. not American Depository Receipts, Global Depository Receipts, Notes, Bonds or any other type of tradable securities).

To construct the “Most Popular Stocks” list, we looked at each of the over 400 funds’ positions, added up the positions for the same stock and rank-ordered the stocks by their total holdings value.

To calculate the “Sector Breakdown” of the positions held by the tracked hedge funds, we added up all the positions of the hedge funds from the same sector and then divided by the total amount of the hedge funds’ positions.

For the “Most bought/sold stocks”, we added up all the sold transactions and all the buy transactions for a given stock in the last quarter and rank-ordered based on total activity.

Report Disclaimer: The information on this web page is provided as general and impersonalized investment information and is not a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Please obtain additional appropriate professional advice as needed in making any investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Image: Phongphan / Shutterstock.com

from Wallet HubWallet Hub


via Finance Xpress

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Why You Shouldn’t Open a Restaurant.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Kenji Lopez-Alt became a rock star of the food world by bringing science into the kitchen in a way that everyday cooks can appreciate. Then he dared to start his own restaurant — and discovered problems that even science can’t solve.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

Some people just can’t leave well enough alone. Consider, for instance, the case of the famous food writer, the one who used the scientific method to take apart everything we know about cooking and put it back together.

Kenji LÓPEZ-ALT: If you use vodka in place of some of the water in your pie crust, you end up with a dough that is much flakier and much lighter.

He investigated whether the key ingredient in New York pizza really is the water.

LÓPEZ-ALT: So I did a full double-blind experiment where I got water — starting with perfectly distilled water and up to various levels of dissolved solids inside the water. And what we basically ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough.

He found that the secret to General Tso’s chicken lay in geometry.

LÓPEZ-ALT: The geometry of food is important because one of the big things is surface-area-to-volume ratio.

And he explored the relationship between meat and salt; he proved why it’s important to salt a hamburger at the last minute, on the surface of the meat:

LOPEZ-ALT: We rented a baseball pitching machine that would throw hamburgers at the wall at 45 miles per hour. You’ll see that salted hamburger kind of bounces off the wall like a rubber ball, whereas the burger that has salt only on the outside kind of splatters.

This was the man who finally brought science into the kitchen in a way that non-scientists could appreciate. It helped that his work was fun, not preachy, and delicious. We interviewed him a while back, for an episode called “Food + Science = Victory!”

LÓPEZ-ALT: I think a lot of people think of science as sort of the opposite of tradition or the opposite of natural. And really it’s not.

He had just published his first cookbook, a massive thing called The Food Lab, which went on to win a James Beard Award. His reputation and reach only grew. But then, something else beckoned. Was it opportunity — or a trap?

LOPEZ-ALT: It’s that temptation you can’t resist.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: the food writer who flew too close to the flame.

LOPEZ-ALT: My name is James Kenji Lopez-Alt. I am a food writer who also happens to run a restaurant right now.

And everything’s been going just great, hasn’t it?

LOPEZ-ALT: “These problems are insurmountable, like how the f— are we going to fix this?”

*      *      *

Kenji Lopez-Alt grew up in New York, in a family of scientists, and went off to M.I.T. to study biology. He got a little bored, maybe burnt-out, and during the summers started working in restaurant kitchens in Boston. After college, he worked in an architecture firm for a bit.

LOPEZ-ALT: For a few months, half a year maybe.

And then back to restaurant kitchens.

LOPEZ-ALT: My very first restaurant job was at a place called Fire and Ice. It’s a Mongolian grill, so I was a knight of the round grill. I stood in the middle of a giant cast iron grill and cooked stir-fried food for people, and flipped asparagus tips into the air and stuff.

Over the next several years, he worked in a series of higher-end restaurants in Boston.

LOPEZ-ALT: After that, that was the end of my culinary career, or my cooking career.

He began building a career as a food writer, at Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen. Then, on the food site Serious Eats, he started a column called The Food Lab. He wasn’t expecting to turn into a food-writing rock star.

LOPEZ-ALT: I absolutely wasn’t expecting it. I was a freelance writer living in a one-bedroom apartment with no windows in Brooklyn at the time.

DUBNER: Now, after doing all that and having that platform and enjoying it, what made you think it was a good idea to not only get back into the restaurant business, but open your own restaurant?

LOPEZ-ALT: It’s always that temptation you can’t resist. It’s like, “Oh, what if I just went back and do cooking for a little while? Would I be able to do this?” So, I had a daughter. She’s 17 months old now.

DUBNER: Congratulations.

LOPEZ-ALT: Thank you. And when she was born, my wife and I decided that she would continue to work, and I would be the at-home parent. So I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for the last 17 months. And about six months into that, I was approached by some friends of friends who owned a bar in San Mateo, near where we live. And they were interested in opening up a beer hall and they were looking for a chef partner. And so I thought this might be something fun I could do in my spare time. Which, you don’t have too much spare time with a baby on your hands, but I thought this could be something fun and this is a good opportunity, relatively low-risk. Mainly it was because my wife and I sort of longed for a place like this in San Mateo, a family-friendly, casual, upscale place. And that was the concept that they were working on. So it seemed perfect for me.

And initially I thought my involvement would be relatively minimal. I would work on some menus. I would lend my name to the menu. What was actually really surprising to me was — when I first signed on with them, I sent a short little tweet saying, “Hey, this is happening, I’m opening a restaurant,” something like that. Eater picked it up. A bunch of other publications picked it up. And then all of a sudden it became not, “Kenji Lopez-Alt is partnering with these two guys who are opening a restaurant.” What it became was, “Kenji Lopez-Alt is opening a restaurant.” And then I was like, “Oh man, I guess I’m really going to get sucked into this.”

DUBNER: Okay, so the restaurant is called Wursthall. So, first of all, for those who haven’t been to San Mateo, California, just give us a quick sense of the vibe of the place, and then we’ll get into the restaurant and why the choices were made to have a German beer hall with sausages.

LOPEZ-ALT: Well, San Mateo is a city that’s basically dead center between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. My wife works at Google and she works down in Silicon Valley. We initially moved up into the city and her commute was crazy. So we’re like, “All right we’ll move down to San Mateo.” And if you look at the real estate curve: very expensive everywhere, but extremely expensive in San Francisco, extremely expensive in Silicon Valley. And in San Mateo and a couple of the surrounding cities, there’s a small dip, so we were like, “Alright, that’s where we can afford to live.” And that’s where my wife’s commute will be all right. I think there’s actually a lot of people in our situation there right now.

DUBNER: Why a German beer hall — why was that the right concept? Or why was that the concept they wanted?

LOPEZ-ALT: Well, it’s two factors. One of them is the space itself. We’re located in a really nice, old, historic building, lots of nice light, so it seemed very conducive to this beer-hall atmosphere. The other thing is that my partner Adam Simpson, he is really into beer. And finally, beer halls are kind of just popular right now. So it seemed like a concept that worked in the space, that worked with Adam’s knowledge-base, and it seemed to be something that was hot and lacking in the San Mateo area.

So far so good, right? So for everyone out there who’s thinking, “Hey, maybe I should open a restaurant” — we asked Kenji Lopez-Alt: “what’s the first step?”

LOPEZ-ALT: So, the first step to opening a restaurant is, don’t. Opening a restaurant is a series of putting out fires every single day. I mean, even once you’re open, it’s still a series of putting out fires. Step one: don’t.

DUBNER: Okay. So, can you walk us through the opening process? What kind of work goes into those preparatory weeks, months, I assume?

LOPEZ-ALT: So, the first step is, you have to have a reason for people to believe that you’re going to succeed and to give you money to do it. Because it’s not cheap to open a restaurant. And then from there it’s working with the architects and designers and doing all the build-out, which inevitably takes way more time than you expect. And for us we had this extra problem, because we’re in this really old building and the previous tenants and the landlord, they didn’t take the best care of the space.

But working back from my side, from the kitchen perspective: initially a lot of it was conceptualizing how German do we want to be? How California do we want to be? Because we knew we wanted to do both. Figuring out what the service style was going to be, and how customers are going to order. And really thinking to ourselves, “Alright, when people come in here, what are they coming in to do?” Initially, when Adam and my other partner, Tyson Mao — when they were thinking of a beer hall, they thought, “Right, this is going to be essentially a bar. Some people maybe come to have a nice meal, but most will be coming to drink and have some food on the side.” And that’s what the initial menu is designed around: a selection of sausages, a couple of sandwiches, some appetizers to share.

So now he got to work creating a menu.

LOPEZ-ALT: I had developed the initial opening menu on my own in my home kitchen before we had even hired any sort of kitchen staff. And I’m pretty methodical, so I had a recipe booklet written out, everything done in metric units, something that anybody could look at and replicate. Part of the idea was because it’s going to be relatively low-priced and high-volume, the kitchen has to be able to run itself, even without very minute oversight.

DUBNER: What about the sausage-making itself? That’s a big component. Can you just talk about how involved you were in the design and execution, and maybe experimentation, and figuring out how to not only make the sausages that you wanted, but how they were going to be prepared?

LOPEZ-ALT: Yeah, from the start, we knew that we weren’t going to be able to make the sausages in-house, because we didn’t have the facilities. So in order to make a large volume of sausage, you need to have a dedicated refrigerated room, where you can grind and mix and stuff and everything, because if sausage mixture gets too warm while you’re forming it, it doesn’t bind properly, and your sausages end up crumbly and dry. It was literally physically impossible for us to make sausages in-house. So very early on we decided, “All right, we’re going to have to find some partners to work with who can execute our ideas at a level of quality and volume that we’re happy with.”

DUBNER: Is it an easy thing to find, someone who can handle that kind of quality and especially volume?

LOPEZ-ALT: No. I mean the sausage part was mainly me going to every single sausage maker I could find in the Bay Area. We did want to keep it local. We visited many, many butchers and sausage makers, and there are many, many bad sausages around. Sausage-making is a non-trivial skill. You think, “Okay it’s just meat and fat, spiced, ground up, stuffed into a casing. How hard could it be?” But it’s one of these things where the minutiae of the technique can make a huge difference in the quality of the final product. It mainly comes down to the binding element, making sure that you have the right level of salt, and that the meat has been salted long enough that the proteins start to dissolve before you mix it. Making sure that you mix it right, and that you have the right ratio of fat to lean. And then also making sure that it stays chilled through the entire process.

And if any one of those things is off, your sausage doesn’t bind properly. And that’s what you find is the problem with most mediocre sausages. They could be flavored very well, they could be crazy and interesting, but if they’re not mixed properly they crumble instead of having that nice, juicy, snappy texture that I look for in a sausage. And so finding someone who can do that was hard.

There was also the consideration of creating a sausage restaurant that could be vegan-friendly.

LOPEZ-ALT: So one of my goals from the beginning was: vegan items on the menu that aren’t vegan by omission, they’re just vegan by default, and they’re delicious. So we have a number of things like that, but the one that I was really excited about is a vegan doner kebab. And for that I worked with a company called Impossible Meats, they make a vegan ground-meat blend mostly out of wheat protein, but they add heme, which is a lot of what gives red meat its irony, bloody flavor. But it can also be derived from plant sources. It’s by far the best faux meat available. And so what we do is we spice it with Turkish spices — so cumin, urfa biber chilies, sumac.

And then we serve it as a — well, initially we were reforming it into a cylinder and doing it in front of one of those doner kebab spits that spins around, and you shave it off. But the fat in this stuff is coconut oil, and coconut oil melts at a slightly lower temperature than animal fat does, so the fat would end up melting out of it, and it would eventually just crumble off the spit. So that didn’t end up working. It would’ve been so cool if we could get that to work. Now we’re just forming it straight into hamburger-style patties, so all the flavor is there.

DUBNER: Okay, so you talked about the food and the building, etc. What about the people? How involved were you in hiring and training up the kitchen and front of house?

LOPEZ-ALT: I was very involved in back of the house, and finding good people is by far the hardest thing. So, when you’re living in a place like New York or San Francisco, where the cost of living is so high, finding great people is very hard. Even finding remotely reliable people. Even before we opened, when we were training staff, we must have lost probably 50 percent over the course of a few weeks.

DUBNER: Wow.

LOPEZ-ALT: Which is not abnormal. One day we’re there and two of our cooks don’t show up. What do we do? One of them was on a bender and the other one was just a no-show. But then, luckily, the restaurant down the street, all the cooks there showed up that morning and the manager said, “We’re closing, and you don’t have a job anymore.” So, suddenly we had 12 cooks just walk up to the front door saying, “Hey, can we have a job?” So there’s never really a shortage of résumés and applicants, it’s finding reliable people that’s hard. What I’ve discovered in my years as a cook — and it played out exactly as expected here — was that it’s much better to hire people who give a s—, even if they have no previous experience or skills, than to hire someone who has a great résumé who doesn’t really understand the concept.

Our No. 1 kitchen hire is this guy Erik Drobey, who is a career changer, he was in his 40s, he worked in an office job, always loved cooking on the side, was a Food Lab follower. He stopped by my house once to give me some sausages and sauerkraut he made because he was so proud of them. And they were great, I thought they were great. And then he said, “Hey, I think I’ve decided I want to be a cook. Would you give me a shot?” I’m like, “Absolutely.” Finding people who really care. That’s the key. Because you can always teach people skills, but you can’t teach people to give a s—.

DUBNER: And what about front of the house?

LOPEZ-ALT: Front of the house is actually probably even a little bit harder at the start, because you have to really dangle this carrot in front of them because during training and during the first month that we were doing friends and family meals, people are working and they’re getting paid, but they’re not getting the same tips that they would. And so they have to realize, “Okay, I’m putting in this work now. So in a month I’ll be making much more money.” But it’s hard to find people who are willing to think about that.

DUBNER: So shortly before opening, you tweeted — in all caps, by the way — “Opening a restaurant is insane. And I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would choose to do it.” So what’s going on in the weeks and days just before opening?

LOPEZ-ALT: I can tell you what was in my head when that tweet went out. It was not actually related directly to the restaurant itself, it was more about its toll on my personal life, and particularly my family life and my marriage, because a restaurant is a harsh mistress. During those three months I was in there, I would wake up, take my daughter to daycare, go to the restaurant from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., go pick up my daughter from daycare, bring her home, put her to bed, and then go back to the restaurant from 8:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m. It had been two-and-a-half months where I had been basically never at home. I saw my daughter for a few hours a day, but I basically never saw my wife. We lost the chance to sit down and talk together. The only time I ever saw her was when we were with our daughter, so we never really had any alone time, which is very difficult when you’re raising a child, to not be able to talk to your partner, not even have the time to talk about things related to raising the child. And the worst part of it was that no matter how well you plan, and you think to yourself, “Right, this is the amount of work I’m going to have to put into this restaurant, and I’m just going to say no after that,” it’s really hard to say no when there’s 40 people whose jobs rely on you making this a success.

Finally, Wursthall was ready for its soft opening — investors, friends and family.

LOPEZ-ALT: About 100 people, and everything was great. We had completely gutted the old bathrooms, retiled them in this beautiful blue tile, really nice wallpaper with these hand pen-and-ink-drawn animals and stuff. It was a really nice bathroom. And the first night we had 100 people in, the toilets backed up, stopped working. And we had to shut down the bathrooms. And as it turns out, the waste line leaving one of the toilets had never been repaired or replaced in probably decades and decades and had a huge sag in it. So we had to close for two weeks so that they can rip out all the tile we just put in, dig into the foundation, replace that. All of a sudden, we thought we were going to be ready to open the next week and now it’s like another two weeks and another 30 grand to fix the bathroom that we had never even considered might be a problem.

*      *      *

Kenji Lopez-Alt, rock star of the food-writing world, decided after years on the sidelines to get back into the restaurant business with a place called Wursthall, in San Mateo, California, which started out as a simple concept: a German beer hall serving nouveau-ish sausages.

LOPEZ-ALT: I was always one of these “I’d rather have influence and bring joy to people than have a lot of money” type-of-career people, you know? And if the money comes along with it, then that’s great as well. But I’d rather just be doing something I love.

DUBNER: Okay, so walk us through opening night, and I’m sure everything went exactly as it was planned, and everybody was thrilled, and it was perfect. Yes?

LOPEZ-ALT: Well, we had a sizable number of people in there and we were cooking food, people were ordering food, tickets were coming in, we were firing it. It was a disaster. Major, major disaster. Some people were waiting over an hour for their food. Some people never got their food. It’s the kind of night where we’re like, “These problems are insurmountable, how the f— are we going to fix this?” But we decided, “All right, we’ll focus on a couple of the big problems first.” When I tell them to you, they’re going to seem like stupid, small things. It’s like, “Well, why couldn’t you just do that?”

So, one of them was that we have sausages and you get your choice of topping. One of the problems was communicating to the cooks on the line. In case you’re not aware of how restaurant kitchens work, there’s a line, which is where all the stoves are, where the counters with the little cutting boards are, it’s where the cooks, the guys and girls are actually making the food. And then there’s a station called “expo,” the expediter, and the expediter’s job is to first of all act as a liaison between the front of the house and the back of the house. But, more importantly, the expediter’s job is to coordinate everybody in the back of the house so that dishes come out at the same time, so that everyone in the back of the house knows what they’re doing. So, essentially, they’re the general managing the army back there.

On opening night, we had all the toppings back on the line, and I was expediting, and I was just calling out, saying, “All right, hot Italian with speck and cherry-pepper relish. One bratwurst with sauerkraut.” And it’s a lot of information to take in when you have a full restaurant, there’s 100 people there, and you’re cooking say, 25, 30 sausages at a time, and each one has their own designated topping. It’s a lot of information for the person on the line actually cooking it and plating it to take in. And so every single sausage had this huge delay, where they maybe go out with the wrong topping on it and we’d have to re-fire it, or they would yell out and everything is really noisy, and we can’t hear each other.

And once you have these tiny little problems, that can lead to huge, huge backups, because the customers — they don’t care what problems you have back there. Once they’re seated, they want to start ordering food. And they don’t care that you already have a full board of tickets and that the grill is completely full. They don’t care that you screwed up one order and you have to re-fire it. Those tickets are just going to keep coming and coming and coming. So you have the ticket printer machine that’s spitting out these tickets constantly, and you’re constantly struggling to try and catch up with it. And that puts more and more stress on you. So you make more mistakes, the people on the line make more mistakes. And it can be these tiny little things that add to the likelihood of making a mistake that can throw a wrench in the entire operation, and that’s essentially what happened that first night.

So, the second night, what we did was we took those toppings, we took them off the line, and put them next to the expediter’s station, next to my station, so that all they had to remember was which sausages they were cooking. They would pass the sausages to me, right before I handed it to the server, I would put the topping on. I had the ticket right in front of me, it was easy for me to read it. And that smoothed things over unbelievably so. A couple of seconds of extra work on the cook’s part, it translated from a sausage taking over an hour to get to a customer, because there was this huge backlog of tickets, to customers getting their sausages in about eight minutes.

There was another major problem they discovered only on opening night.

LOPEZ-ALT: And it’s one that we didn’t resolve until relatively recently.

It had to do with the pretzels.

LOPEZ-ALT: So, I’m also partner at a bakery called Backhaus and they make all of our pretzels and all of our bread. Really wonderful pretzels, but we serve them hot. So we were trying to figure out, “How do we get these pretzels that were baked that morning and delivered to us, how do we serve them hot and fresh?” And the obvious thing is, “All right, well, when someone orders a pretzel, put it in the oven, let it get hot, and then we serve it.”

This was a problem in a couple different ways: one of them was that Backhaus, they were salting their pretzels before they came to us. And what happens with pretzel salt is that it draws out moisture from the pretzels, so after eight hours or so, some of the moisture from the pretzels beads up on the surface of the pretzels and then it leaves kind of a splotchy wet marks, which is not good, and the salt is all gone. So we’re like, “Okay, so we have to salt our pretzels,” so that’s adding another layer of stuff we have to do. And the only oven that we have back on the line is next to the fry station, and the fryer is extremely busy with potatoes and we also do a chicken schnitzel sandwich. Adding pretzels on top of that to him became very difficult. So, for the early nights, we were firing pretzels to-order in the oven. And that was another one of those things that seemed like it’s a thing that takes two seconds, but it just piled onto the likelihood that we were going to screw something up.

So what was the pretzel-salting solution?

LOPEZ-ALT: Well, we found a much more efficient way of salting them. So, one of the cooks had this idea to take a squeeze bottle, cut off the top until it was big enough that pretzel salt could flow through it. Now what we do is we just spray the pretzels and draw a line, trace the outline with the squeeze bottle, and that clears up all the space.

DUBNER: So what you just described, plainly these are things that most people eating at restaurants would never ever think about.

LOPEZ-ALT: And they shouldn’t have to think about it.

DUBNER: But you have to think about it. But, as you’re describing it, it strikes me that you being who you are, and the way that you like to work, and the way that you do take an empirical and scientific approach to food and cooking and so on, that you were driven to solve these problems and get it right. Is that often the difference between a restaurant that works and one that doesn’t, which is that you have to be driven to constantly adjust, solve problems like that, that are going to come up? Do most restaurants really try as hard as you just described?

LOPEZ-ALT: Most restaurants really try as hard. Any good chef cares deeply about the quality, and any good restaurant owner cares deeply about the quality of what they’re putting out. So I don’t think I’m unique in that regard at all. Me and my partners, Tyson and Adam, we have a lot of sit-down meetings where we analyze problems and try and solve them. So, maybe we do that a little bit more than other restaurants, but that’s my skill. I’ve worked for chefs that seem to have an innate skill to just be able to figure things out on the fly, or be able to work harder and faster to be able to solve those problems. People will attack those problems in different ways. But any good restaurant owner is going to recognize those problems and try and solve it in their own way.

DUBNER: I’m curious how much you pay attention to reviews of any sort. If you had opened a restaurant 10, certainly 20 years ago, there’s so much less feedback then, and now, some people feel swamped by it. Some people feel a lot of it is disingenuous. I know you said in the past that Yelp, in fact, this is from a tweet of yours: “Yelp is and has always been the worst place to look for decent reviews. Shady business practices, reviews by people who I know nothing about and have no reason to trust their opinion, even on the off chance they actually dined at the restaurant you’re rating.” So talk about that for a minute, your experience with Yelp and/or other online reviews.

LOPEZ-ALT: So, it’s difficult to gain value from them for me.

DUBNER: You mean as a consumer or a producer?

LOPEZ-ALT: As a consumer. To some degree, as a producer there is a little bit of value to it. But, especially if you start looking at trends and see, all right, people that are complaining, what are they complaining about? At the beginning when we opened, it was service. And that was some very legitimate feedback on that.

DUBNER: You didn’t need online reviews to know that was a problem, I gather, right?

LOPEZ-ALT: There’s very little that I’ve read, I’ve seen in Yelp, that we didn’t already realize was a problem. As a consumer of Yelp, I find Yelp useful as a map of what restaurants are around, but it’s hard to trust opinions. A very good professional review, you don’t necessarily have to agree with the reviewer’s point of view on what is good and what’s not, but if you have an idea of what they think is good, then they tell you whether this restaurant met those expectations, and then you can sort of gauge, “All right, well, do I agree with whether that’s good or not?” And that’s what a good restaurant review will do. Whereas on Yelp, it’s like someone, BasicUser12345, says “this restaurant was terrible, the potatoes sucked.” Well, I don’t know what you define as good potatoes, so how is that helpful to me?

DUBNER: But the problem is that everybody eats, right? So everybody considers themself a legitimate critic, which, you can’t totally discount that fact, can you?

LOPEZ-ALT: No, no you can’t. But at the end of the day, I’m involved in this project because I want to be, I want to have my name on it. I want to be proud of what we’re putting out. At some point you just have to stick to your guns and say, “This is what I believe is good. And I’m not going to change that just because some people say they disagree that it’s good.” And if your idea of what is good is so far off from what most people think is good, then maybe you’re in trouble and you’re going to go out of business. But I’m of the mind that I’d rather lose a little business and stick to what I believe is true than to just pander to everybody to try and make the most money, which is hard to explain to partners and investors. But at the end of the day, as a food writer, I think I do have a pretty good pulse of what people think is good.

DUBNER: Right. So overall on Yelp, Wursthall is doing pretty well. Averaging about three-and-a-half out of five stars. So let me read you one Yelp review and hear your response.

LOPEZ-ALT: Ok, I honestly haven’t looked at Yelp reviews since, like, the second month after we opened, so we’ll see, all right.

DUBNER: This is from just over a month ago. This is from Andrew R. He writes, “I was really disappointed. I expected more. Not that I had high expectations. They were modest, honestly. But it fell below that bar as well. For one, the service was not that great. For two, the food just isn’t that good. It’s okay. Like, you would eat it if you were hungry. But another sausage would probably satisfy you more. And I like a split-top bun because you can grill both sides like they do here. But when it’s split only halfway down there’s a lot of bread with no meat at the bottom. And that’s terrible. Cut that bun all the way down. It’ll be better. Trust me.” So, that’s Andrew R. What does Kenji L. say?

LOPEZ-ALT: Well, I’ll start from the end of it and work back. Believe it or not, we tested how far to cut the bun extensively before opening. And trust me when I say it’s not better to cut it too far, because the buns end up falling apart. It doesn’t stand right. That sounds all fair, I mean those seem like legitimate concerns. If I was at the restaurant, I would definitely love to talk to him and get a little more details about exactly what they were disappointed with. What is it about the sausage that you didn’t like? And to his point about sausages being not great: I fully admit sometimes, like any restaurant or any business, we have consistency issues now and then, and we work our best to make sure that those don’t happen. And every day gets better.

DUBNER: Here’s a professional review, this is Peter Lawrence Kane on SF Weekly. He writes, “The quality of the food is high, and it is consistent. The thing is, considering Lopez-Alt’s eminently well-deserved reputation for being a demystifier of culinary techniques, Wursthall falls a little short of the gosh-wow factor longtime fans might clamor for. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. After all, it’s exactly what it claims to be.” What’s your take on that, Kenji?

LOPEZ-ALT: So, I fully agree with that. This is again one of those things where it’s like what happened to the restaurant between the initial concept and between what customers expect. And, the initial concept was, “All right, we’re going to serve some damn good sausages. We’re going to make our own sauerkraut. It’s going to be good sauerkraut, but it’s still sausages and sauerkraut.” And there’s only so far that can go, as far as gosh-darn-wow factor. This is one of those things where the concept of the restaurant on paper turned out very different from what the restaurant is now. Once my name got attached to it and started bringing the media attention to it, it turns out people are coming there for dinner. They’re not coming there to drink. So, we started as a beer hall, but we’re not really a beer hall anymore. We’re a restaurant. And so that’s been one of the challenges since opening, coming to terms with that and realizing, “You know what? Some of the stuff we initially thought isn’t going to work, because customers are coming in with different expectations.” Any restaurant takes a while to find its legs. I think for us maybe it’s taking a little bit longer just because it was such a big shift from what we had initially planned compared to what customers perceive.

DUBNER: I see that — maybe yesterday, or within the last little while, you tweeted — a new menu item that’s starting soon. Maybe maybe it’s already started by now.

LOPEZ-ALT: Starting today. I was at the restaurant all morning training the staff and making making sure the cooks knew how it worked.

DUBNER: So, this is tomato mayo toast with grilled corn vinaigrette and a corn soup, paprika oil and shishito peppers. Yeah, so that’s not what I think of as beer-hall food. Was it the clientele who drove it primarily? In other words, were people confused when they came originally because they know your name and they think it was going to be more of a sit-down, knife-and-fork situation?

LOPEZ-ALT: I think that’s part of it. I definitely saw comments saying, like, “I expected the menu to be a little more Kenji than what it is.” Because it’s sausages, and I don’t write that much about sausages. I don’t eat that many sausages. I like them. And we cook them well, but it doesn’t exactly scream “Kenji” or “Food Lab” or whatever. So, yes, part of this revamping process has been, “How do we make this menu more me?”

DUBNER: So from what I’ve read, you own 12 percent of the restaurant and 20 percent of anything else with these partners?

LOPEZ-ALT: IThat’s ballpark correct.

DUBNER: Would you have had the same share of ownership had you just acted as a sort of consulting-founding chef, as opposed to roll up your sleeves fully involved?

LOPEZ-ALT: No. My partners are actually very understanding of the entire situation and the fact that I’ve now got more involved than I was planning on. Initially it was it was going to be basically just a fee plus a smaller percentage ownership.

DUBNER: The big question I have then really is, so far, do you feel overall that it’s worth it? Another way of putting that is, if I came to you tomorrow, Kenji, with an idea that you liked, an idea for a restaurant, maybe a site for a restaurant, and a potentially worthwhile partnership, what do you do? Do you succumb? Or do you refrain this time?

LOPEZ-ALT: I would say the restaurant on its own, in a bubble, detached from every other part of my life, was absolutely worth it. I don’t mind putting in hours and hours and hours of work even for little to no — I haven’t made any money off this restaurant yet, and I don’t plan on making any money for a while, until we pay off our investors. But we don’t live in a vacuum. So if someone came to me right now and asked me if I want to do this restaurant again, I would probably say no. Only because it cost me three months of being with my daughter. And that was a price that I wasn’t expecting to have to pay at the beginning, and one that made me deeply sad as it was happening, and also in retrospect. I don’t regret anything I did with the restaurant. I do regret how it affected my personal life and my family. But we learned those lessons.

DUBNER: Okay, final question. Let’s say that — maybe this is when your daughter is in school, when your daughter is in college even — but let’s say I come to you and I want you to work with me to open a new restaurant. What is the dream concept? Whether it’s cuisine or style or location. What is the restaurant that you absolutely would sacrifice again almost your entire life to do?

LOPEZ-ALT: It would be something much smaller than Wursthall. So, we’re opening a couple more Wursthalls in the coming years, but we’ve talked about other restaurant concepts as well, and if we were to work on something together again, we would do something much smaller. The idea I’ve been throwing out at them is a Korean fried chicken sandwich place, which is a recipe that I’ve done at a number of pop-ups, I think is extremely delicious, but it’s essentially chicken brined in kimchi juice and then done Nashville hot chicken style. But instead of the Nashville hot chicken oil that goes on there, we make a sauce with Korean chili flakes and a bunch of Korean flavors, and it’s super delicious and the kind of thing that I think would do well as a fast-casual thing. That would basically be it for me. I want to feed a lot of people and make them happy. I don’t want to open an ego restaurant. I don’t want people to come to worship at the altar of Kenji Lopez-Alt, come for this experience. I want a place that people say, “Hey, that’s a f— good sandwich. I’m going to have that once a week.”

Thanks to Kenji Lopez-Alt; his new restaurant, Wursthall, is in San Mateo, California. His book is called The Food Lab — and he’s currently working on a follow-up, so keep your eyes out for that.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rosalsky, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, Zack Lapinski, and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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via Finance Xpress