The Financial Wolf is one of the fastest growing YouTube creators in the make money online niche at only 18 years old. Today we are sitting down with Will a.k.a The Financial Wolf to talk YouTube growth, side hustle ideas, and the future of his YouTube channel. Enjoy!

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Will's YouTube channel blew up last year when a video called "I Sold Candy At School For 1 Week" got almost 1 million views. Since this video took off, Will has doubled down on his YouTube channel while still being in high school and has been able to scale his channel to over 60,000 subscribers.

At the same time, he has continued to try out different methods of making money for teenagers beyond selling candy at school. Financial Wolf has had success with Shopify dropshipping, reselling, vending machines, and a host of other side hustles.

While pursuing these make money strategies for teenagers, Will has been able to make over $60,000 before turning 18 and document the entire process on his YouTube channel, Financial Wolf.

Teenagers and other students have been drawn to how real Will is in sharing the ups and downs of his different side hustles and being a genuine and relatable teenager himself.

In this podcast interview, Will shares how he was able to make money as a teenager and grow his YouTube channel so quickly. He also breaks down why he succeeded in some businesses like dropshipping, but failed in others like running a social media marketing agency.

Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS

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0:00 Intro

0:33 The Financial Wolf and Dave Ramsey

1:45 Making $2k Per Month At 15

5:50 Struggles & Failure

9:55 Vending Machines

12:35 The Financial Wolf YouTube Channel

20:05 Selling Candy At School

22:00 Goals & Future Plans

26:00 Financial Wolf's Income Streams

28:00 Question From  @Jake Carlini 

33:00 What Makes The Financial Wolf Special

36:30 Who FInancial Wolf Looks Up To

39:00 Words Of Wisdom

39:34 Outro

These are THE WORST credit cards you will ever find. After spending hours searching through the darkest corners of the internet, these 5 credit cards are hands-down THE WORST in existence.

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Not all credit cards are created equal. Some can be great tools for scoring free travel or getting rewarded for spending you were already doing. BUT some credit cards are absolutely terrible and should be avoided like the plague.

These credit cards charge their user's hefty fees for things they don't need and provide TERRIBLE customer service and support. Many of the companies on this list have BBB and TrustPilot profiles full of complaints from people who were unable to close their card once they realized how bad it was.

Many of the cards on this list are what's known as Fee Harvesters. That means they're going to charge you annual fees, monthly fees, application fees, activation fees, and many more. SO that by the time you actually get a card like the First Premier Bank Gold Card, you will have already paid hundreds of dollars to First Premier and have noting to show for it!

If you're trying to rebuild your credit, it can be easy to get sucked in by these companies promising you a way to do it, but I can tell you there are so many better ways to rebuild your credit than working with one of these companies.

In fact, I have multiple videos on just this topic that will provide you with a list of MUCH better alternatives to choose from. Enjoy!

NO CREDIT CHECK CREDIT CARDS: https://youtu.be/wKrx5HCTCEc

WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE ZERO CREDIT: https://youtu.be/uTlOvy62mYI

TIMESTAMPS

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00:00 - Intro

00:45 - #5 Mastercard Gold Card

02:58 - #4 Horizon Credit Card

04:41 - #3 Credit One Platinum Card

07:34 - #2 Continental Finance Mastercard

10:08 - #1 First Premier Bank Gold Card

14:37 - Outro

DISCLAIMER:

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the legitimacy of these companies. Many elements have been exaggerated for comedic effect. Do your own research and come to your own conclusion. For entertainment purposes only!

Getting rejected for a credit card sucks. But fortunately, you can still get approved for a credit card even if you were initially rejected. In this video, I'll break down how I was able to get approved for 4 credit cards that I was initially rejected for.

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I've been rejected for my fair share of credit cards (at least 6), but of those, I was able to get 4 of the rejections reversed and actually get approved for the credit card on the spot. I was able to do this by calling up the credit card's reconsideration line and making a case for why I should be approved.

A credit card reconsideration line is exactly what it sounds like, a number you can call if you want to be reconsidered for a credit card. Most banks have a recon line that you can call and the process is pretty straightforward.

But, you need to know what to say when you call recon. In this video, I'll give you a script to use when calling a bank's reconsideration line as well as some of the most common reasons why you might get rejected for a credit card and how to prevent these.

By the end of the video, you'll be fully prepared to call the recon line. make your case for why you should be approved for a credit card, and reverse that credit card rejection you got.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

00:37 - What To Do If You Get Rejected

1:02 - The Reconsideration Line

04:18 - Reasons You’ll likely Get Rejected

08:10 - Things To Never Say

10:20 - Outro

Building your credit as a college student is huge, and thankfully there are a ton of good credit cards for college students! Unfortunately, there are also a ton of bad credit cards marketed to college students that you'll want to stay far away from.

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In this video, we'll be going over the best credit cards for students in 2021. College students have way more options than they realize when it comes to choosing a first (or second) credit card, and some of these options flat out suck.

There are a bunch of predatory companies targeting college students for credit cards that will hit them with ridiculous fees and make their lives terrible. But at the same time, there are some amazing student credit cards out there that will let college students build their credit and rack up rewards at the same time.

In order to make it on to the list of best college student credit cards for 2021, each credit card had to have:

1) No fees

2) Easy approval for college students

3) Good rewards potential

All of the best credit cards for students meet these criteria and some go way above them.

Additionally, if you stick around until the end, I'll share with you a pro tip you can use to build your credit FAST as a college student so you can become eligible for a host of amazing credit cards.

Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS

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00:00 - Intro

00:37 - Criteria For A Good Student Credit Card

00:54 - #5 Tomo Credit Card

03:09 - #4 Journey Student Rewards Capital One

07:49 - #3 Bank of America Cash Rewards For Students

10:38 - #2 Chase Freedom Student

14:38 - #1 Discover IT Student Cash Back

17:50 - Bonus Pro Tip

19:13 - Outro

If you are thinking about cancelling a credit card, you are likely making a big mistake. When you cancel a credit card, you immediately hurt your credit score in a big way. In this video, I'll break down what you should do instead to build your credit score.

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If you have a credit card that you no longer use, you might have thought about cancelling it. I'm here to tell you that this would be a very bad idea. Building your credit score is a process that takes a long time and one misstep can have a huge impact.

Cancelling a credit card is a massive mistake because it negatively impacts all 5 of the criteria that make up your credit score. For a full breakdown of those, check out this video: https://youtu.be/yB-iv6zSsMM

Fortunately, there's a much better solution than cancelling your credit card that is easy to do and will end up boosting your credit score in a big way.

Now if you have a credit card with no annual fee that you are thinking about cancelling, just don't. There is no reason to cancel a credit card that is not costing you anything because keeping it open and just sticking it in your freezer will keep your credit score increasing without needing to do anything.

However, if your credit card has an annual fee, then there is some action you need to take. There's no reason to pay an annual fee on a credit card that doesn't benefit you anymore, so cancelling the thing could seem like an appealing option. But, you don't want to do this because it's going to hurt your credit score.

The better solution is to downgrade your credit card instead. Most people don't realize that many credit cards from big banks exist on a ladder. At the bottom of the ladder are no-fee credit cards that don't earn much for rewards. Then as you move up the ladder, you see cards that will earn you more rewards, and charge higher fees.

Most banks allow people to move along the ladder and either upgrade to better card or downgrade to worse cards by simply calling them up. In this case, you'll want to downgrade your cards instead of cancelling them.

But, before you rush into downgrading a card, there are a number of important rules you'll need to follow including a specific timeline for exactly when you should downgrade it. In most cases, if you try to downgrade a card too early, you'll end up getting flagged by the bank for suspicious activity and may even end up getting your account shut down.

So stay tuned as we break down exactly how to downgrade a credit card the right way. Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

00:34 - The Problem With Cancelling Credit Cards

01:00 - Effect On Credit Score

01:42 - Payment History

02:36 - Credit Utilization

03:32 - Age Of Accounts

04:30 - The Better Solution

06:41 - Step-By-Step Timeline

09:27 - How To Do It?

11:38 - Outro

Credit Karma is a free service for checking your credit score. However, Credit Karma also has a host of features that can end up saving you some significant cash. In this Credit karma review, I'll break down how you can use Credit Karma for the greatest effect.

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Most people have heard of Credit Karma before, but most people don't know how to use Credit Karma to increase their credit score. By fully taking advantage of Credit Karma, you can significantly boost your credit score and in turn, save tens of thousands of dollars throughout your life.

Over the last 3 years, I've been able to use Credit Karma to build my credit score from zero to over 800! In this video, I'll break down exactly how I did it and how you can do the same.

One complaint that many people have with Credit Karma is that the credit scores shown are inaccurate and that you're better off using a service like MyFICO. This is incorrect, and the credit scores on Credit Karma are in fact accurate.

However, Credit Karma calculates a VantageScore as opposed to a FICO score. These are two different formulas used to calculate a credit score and both use the 300 - 850 scale. Most lenders will typically pulla FICO score when you're applying for a loan, but some will also use a FICO score.

Fortunately, both scoring models use the same credit score criteria, so when you improve one, you're likely also improving the other. This is why when you apply for a loan or credit card and compare the credit score you get from the bank with your Credit Karma credit score, there may be some differences.

This is not going to be a big deal for most people as the scores will likely be within a few points of each other. Plus Credit Karma is free, which is a big plus over services like MyFICO.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

00:14 - So What Does Credit Karma Do?

00:34 - Credit Karma Features

04:38 - How Does Credit Karma Make Money?

07:11 - So How’s This Gonna Save Me Money?

08:57 - Outro

In this video, I'm breaking down exactly how you can grow your credit score to 800 and above in no time. There are a number of strategies that I have used to quickly increase my credit score over the last few years and today I'm going to show you exactly how I went from 0-800 FAST.

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Increasing your credit score is crucial, especially for people in their 20s who are looking to secure a solid financial future. I started building my credit when I was 18 and by the age of 20, my score had reached over 800. The strategies that I used to create this big credit score increase aren't difficult, but they're also not very popular.

There are 5 key credit score criteria that you need to optimize in order to build your credit score. In this video, I'll be breaking down each of these criteria as well as providing actionable strategies that you can use in order to improve each aspect of your score.

If your goal is to reach an 800 credit score in 2020 or 2021, this video will give you the tools and strategies that you need in order to be successful.

Having an 800 credit score can open so many doors for you. From better rewards credit cards, to lower interest rates on loans, to getting funding for your business, building your credit score is an extremely worthwhile activity. Learning how to increase your credit score FAST will put you on the fast track for financial success and build a solid foundation for the future.

Enjoy!

FREE TRAVEL WITH CREDIT CARDS: https://youtu.be/LjT3SuO9KqY

BUSINESS CREDIT CARDS: https://youtu.be/kHIhzu36o4k

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

00:41 - Increasing Your Credit Score

02:51 - Payment History

06:02 - Credit Utilization

09:43 - Age Of Accounts

12:59 - Number of Accounts

15:32 - Credit Inquiries

18:03 - Bonus Strategy

21:10 - Outro

Robinhood has crossed a line...well a number of lines. I'm leaving Robinhood and never looking back. In this video, I'll break down the 4 reasons I'm pulling my money out of the popular investing app.

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I started investing with Robinhood back in 2017 and was initially really excited about the prospect of a commission-free trading platform. Before switching to Robinhood I was using Fidelity and paying $4.95 every time I wanted to buy or sell a position.

The first few months of using Robinhood went well, but later in 2017, the problems with Robinhood started to pop up. The first thing that became apparent to me was Robinhood's reckless business practices. After signing up for the service, the SEC fined Robinhood $1.25 million because Robinhood did not tell investors that they were selling their order flow.

Personally, I didn't assume that this was malicious, just that Robinhood was following the Silicon Valley mentality to "move fast and break things" and disclosing their business model to investors wasn't a top priority. However, when I'm holding thousands of dollars at an online brokerage, I'm not sure that I want them to be moving fast and breaking things.

Then came the outages. In the beginning of March 2020, there were 2 significant outages that caused users not to be able to log on to their Robinhood accounts for multiple days. As a long-term investor, this didn't impact me too much, but these were some of the best trading days in some time and to be totally locked out from them is a big deal to active traders on Robinhood. Since these March outages, there have been 50+ additional Robinhood outages. Not great.

Next comes the gamification. Robinhood's use of confetti and bright colors has armed a new fleet of young men with all of the tools they need to become ineffective day traders. It's been shown time and time again that inexperienced day traders that don't trade for a living consistently lose money over the long-term. The traders on the other side of many of these Robinhood trades are sophisticated traders who are able to profit from the inflows of new money to the markets from Robinhood users. This trains younger people to think of the stock market as a gambling machine and a losing game which is not something I'm about.

Last big strike is the hacks. Recently, around 2,000 Robinhood accounts were hacked and drained of all the cash within them. Robinhood's support was unable to help users who saw unauthorized transfers out of their Robinhood accounts and has yet to provide any solution to these Robinhood users who are currently out thousands of dollars.

So I'm leaving. And I'm moving all of my investments over to Fidelity. As a time-tester brokerage that already holds my retirement accounts, I figure it just makes sense to consolidate all of my investments over there. Fidelity has the core features of Robinhood that I like: fractional shares, commission-free trades, DRIP and will get the job done for me.

Now it's up to you whether you want to keep investing with Robinhood, but I'd recommend you to stay on top of the news as it relates to the places you keep your money. You worked hard for it after all!

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:35 What Robinhood Did Well

1:46 Robinhood's Reckless Business Practices

3:53 Robinhood's Repeated Outages

5:56 Robinhood's Gamification of Investing

10:10 Robinhood's Repeated Hackings

12:23 Where I Am Moving My Money

14:07 Outro

No this is not clickbait, and yes I did fly from Minneapolis MN to Bangkok Thailand for the cost of a couple of Chipotle burritos.

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In this video, I’m going to break down exactly how I did it and give you a simple 5 step framework you can follow to score yourself super cheap plane tickets to travel around the world when you want for the rest of your life.

Plus, if you stick around until the end, I’ll show you where to find some of the best deals around when it comes to “almost free” travel.

Sound cool? Let’s dive in.

So I graduated from college about a year ago and I knew that once I graduated I wasn’t looking to get a job. I’d been running businesses throughout college and once I’d gotten a taste of doing my own thing, I knew there was not a chance I’d be giving that up.

So when November rolled around and I was about a year away from graduating, I started to think about where I wanted to live and realized that I really had the potential to live anywhere. I decided that Thailand was as good a place as any to start and within a week I had a one-way ticket to Thailand booked for after graduation that only set me back $20.

To get this plane ticket, the trick was credit card points. Now I think a lot of people have a negative association with credit cards and for good reason. Believe it or not, I think most people would do well to avoid the credit card rewards game because it can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. But, if you can practice a decent amount of self-control and follow a few relatively simple guidelines, it’s not at all difficult to replicate what I did.

So if you’re still with me, let’s dive into the 5 step blueprint for securing your own $20 ticket to anywhere in the world.

The reason this kind of traveling is “almost free” is because the airlines will let you buy your entire plane ticket in points, but they’ll make you pay the taxes in cash since Uncle Sam doesn’t accept frequent flier miles.

The bonus I got from my United Explorer was more than enough to cover my ticket to Thailand and only pay $20 in taxes, and through my other credit cards, I had more than enough points to get home.

COMMENT BELOW with where you would go if you could travel "almost free" with credit card miles!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Intro

01:23 - Background

02:08 - Step 1: Have A Decent Credit Score

03:05 - Step 2: Pick Your Airline (or don’t)

05:02 - Step 3: Find Your Card

06:42 - Criteria #1: Willingness To Pay An Annual Fee

08:12 - Criteria #2: Ability To Meet Sign Up Bonus

09:08 - Step 4: Meet The Sign-Up Bonus

10:44 - Step 5: Rinse & Repeat

11:58 - Outro

Now in general, I’m not a fan of paying for a credit score and generally think it’s best to just be patient and build it over time. But I think it might make sense for some people who are thinking of applying for a significant loan or mortgage in the near future.

So in this video, I’m going to break down how you can buy a 730+ credit score with only about $25.

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So if you’ve heard anything about buying a credit score before, you’ve probably heard of buying tradelines. I give that a big thumbs down because you’re essentially paying someone to add you to a line of credit that they have had established for a while.

These are deceptive, can cost thousands of dollars, and may sometimes qualify as bank fraud. So let’s steer clear of that.

Instead of potentially committing a crime, I’m going to fill you in on a way to “buy” a credit score that is 100% by-the-books and approved of by banks as a legit way to establish your credit. This is by reporting your bill payments to the credit bureaus.

Your credit score is largely a measure of your ability to make on-time payments (this makes up 35% of your credit score), so many banks are willing to take your cell phone payment and utility bills into account when calculating your score.

This can be an ideal solution for people in the Dave Ramsey “credit cards are evil” camp because it allows you to build credit without the use of credit cards or the potential to get into debt.

Now, you personally can’t just start editing your credit report and adding your Netflix payment to your credit report, but there are a number of companies that will allow you to do just that. One of them is a completely free option, and the other is going to run you $24.95 per year.

The free option is Experian Boost and it is a service provided by the credit bureau Experian to “boost” your credit score by linking to your bank account, finding the monthly bills you pay and subscriptions you are on, and reporting these on your Experian credit report. These are only going to show up on your Experian report and not on your TransUnion or Equifax reports. So if you’re in the market for applying for a loan, it might be worthwhile to ask the lender which report they’ll use before you sign up for Experian Boost.

But what about the downsides?

Well, Experian Boost only reports positive payments which might seem like a good thing but lenders aren’t a huge fan of this. Imagine if every time you paid late on a credit card or went into default you could just opt out of putting that on your credit report. Kinda makes the whole system not very useful. So some banks don’t value Experian Boost as highly as typical on-time payments.

The paid option for increasing your score is similar but likely to have a bigger impact. This is called eCredable. eCredable is going to work with your TransUnion report instead of your Experian report and is generally looked at more highly by lenders. That’s because they don’t plug into your bank account.

Instead, eCredable plugs into your utility and phone bill accounts to track your payment history. As a result, they’re going to be reporting on-time payments as well as late payments so lenders will know they’re getting the full picture. Additionally, eCredable pulls back the last 24 months of payments across an unlimited number of accounts which can have a really big impact for someone with low-or-no credit.

On their site, they estimate that a person coming in with no credit could see their score jump to over 730 with only 3 bills that they have paid on-time for 12 months. That’s a huge jump and enough to make you eligible for many of the best rewards credit cards out there.

In the end, I think that both of these services have a use case for people who need to build their credit from scratch and are looking for a better option than a predatory credit card. Experian Boost is free and the biggest downside is that it won’t impact your score at all, so if you’ve got a thin credit file and pay bills from your bank account, it might be worth it to take a couple minutes to sign up and see what happens.

eCredable does cost $25 per year which is more than zero, but if you are planning on applying for a loan relatively soon, paying $25 to boost your credit score by a potentially significant amount could end up saving you thousands of dollars or more.

Personally, I don’t use either of these nor am I incentivized to get you to sign up, but I do think they make much better options than buying tradelines or paying someone $200 to remove a credit inquiry off of your report.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:40 How NOT To Buy A Credit Score

1:30 How Buying A Credit Score Works

3:00 The Free Option (Experian Boost)

5:10 The Downside Of Experian Boost

6:55 The Paid Option (eCredable Lift)

8:25 How To Boost Your Score To 700+

9:30 Who Should Use This Strategy?

10:45 Other Routes For Increasing Your Credit Score

11:40 Outro

in this video I’ll be diving deep into the no-credit-check Tomo Credit Card and give you the full picture and why you might want to tread lightly around this credit card company.

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So I interviewed one of the co-founders, Kristy Kim, back in mid-2019. Since then they’ve gone on to go through the Barclays Accelerator (powered by TechStars), raise a few million dollars, and build a team of a dozen or so people. All that to say that although this is a newer company, they’re not totally fly by night.

You’re not going to find Tomo Credit listed on BBB though, that’s largely due to the fact that they only

Now I’m a big fan of the core offering of Tomo core offering, however, there’s a pretty significant issue that I see when it comes to the longevity of this company.

Most of you know that the offering consists of a no-credit-required credit card that does not run a hard inquiry on your credit report. This is typically only a feature you will see with secured credit cards, but this is not (technically) a secured credit card.

How the Tomo Credit Card works is by evaluating other factors like your employment and bank account balance and activity to determine your financial behavior and if you’d be a good fit for the card. This means they aren’t even looking at your credit so no credit pull is necessary.

Now once you get approved for the card, this is where things really start to get interesting. One of the card’s big claims to fame is that they don’t charge interest, and this is true. There will be no interest rate on your Tomo Credit card.

So like I said, your Tomo Credit Card isn’t going to behave like a credit card and that’s because it’s a charge card. Except with a charge card, you generally won’t have a limit and your payment will be due every month. With Tomo, you do have a limit and your payment is due weekly. You also won’t see any late fees like you would with charge cards. That’s because your Tomo Credit Card will be set up to automatically pay itself off every 7 days.

So so far it seems like we’re looking at wins all around for the Tomo Card, so what’s the catch? Well no late fees and no interest seem awesome for beginners with building credit, there are actually a couple of reasons why this might not be such a great thing.

This comes back to the business model of credit cards. Credit card companies typically make money in three ways: interest paid by consumers, fees paid for things like late payments balance transfers and annual fees, and the small fee that merchants are charged when they accept credit cards.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the majority of these revenues come from the interest that credit cards are charging, which makes sense with the average interest rates at 18% and the average American carrying over $6,000 in credit card debt at any given moment.

Tomo Credit has essentially cut off the two most profitable revenue streams available to them and now relies 100% on the swipe fees that make up the vast minority of revenue for most credit card issuers.

So this leads to one of my main concerns with Tomo Credit, as it stands now, their business model doesn’t make sense. They would need so many of these cards in circulation being used extremely regularly just to break even, and that is not the case today.

The typical interchange fee that credit card issuers receive can vary from 1% on the low end all the way up to 3% on the very high end. For example’s sake, let’s say that Tomo is getting 2% from all transactions. This is their only revenue stream. They are also paying anywhere from 1% - 20% cashback to their users which could potentially result in negative cashflow on each transaction if enough people were earning the higher rates (you earn a higher rate by referring friends). On top of that, processing and relationship fees can eat out another 15% of their interchange, fraud and losses will eat up a few more percentage points of their revenue, and then they’ve got to have enough left over to pay their people (they just hired another developer in San Francisco for $85k - $150k) and spend on marketing.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:25 Background On Tomo Credit

1:20 The Tomo Credit Card

2:35 Why The Tomo Credit Card Isn't A Credit Card

3:55 What's The Catch?

5:45 Problems With Tomo's Business Model

9:00 Future Potential Changes To Tomo

9:55 How Tomo Might Respond To My Concerns

10:55 Another Concern On The Tomo Credit Card

12:25 Advice To Those Considering The Tomo Credit Card

13:20 Outro