It’s so many things to so many different people. It can be the amount of tax on a purchase, it is the average cost of a meal at a fast food place, and it is the amount that we’ll have to start placing into vending machines in the airport for a 20oz soda in about ten years, not to mention a gallon of gas.

Five dollars.

When I think about what I do with this seemingly insignificant amount of money, I cringe. I ate lunch yesterday @ Burger King, the total being $3.21. Since I use the Keep the Change program w/ Bank of America, they round that up to $4, so in my mind, it’s basically five dollars. When I go to eat at a restaurant, this miniature Abraham Lincoln in my pocket represents so much more to a waiter or waitress. My night of splurging is their livelihood, and some of them definitely know the value of that particular dead president.

Five dollars.

We know what five dollars is, but let’s take a look at what it isn’t. A regular ticket at a movie theatre. An appropriate contribution to church for a 45 year-old Wall Street broker. The cost to wash your car at a full-service location. A parking space in a downtown area. Five dollars is a lot of things to a lot of people, but in these examples it just doesn’t cut the mustard. So why is Da Hustler so stuck on this one denomination of money?

Quite simply: because it holds power.

You can change your life five dollars at a time, every day. When I started thinking about the power of Abe, I realize it was time to use it for my benefit. The simplest way I could think of was just to save it. Don’t spend it. Hoard it. It works for you a lot better when it is close to you, and you can’t be close to something that you are always giving away.

Da Hustler is doing just that – save my five dollars – and you can too! Just think about what you spend this money on every day: sure you have to eat, but do you absolutely need to eat those meals that cost, well, five dollars? You can eat healthier and simpler by using the dollar menu at a lot of places, and getting water as your beverage. Now you’ve just cut $2.00 or more from the cost of your meal, and you’re nearly halfway to the goal. What else can you cut? Morning coffee? Jelly doughnut? An unhealthy midday snack? That pack of cigarettes? Take a look at what you spend your money on each day, and I bet there is something that you can do without.

Voila! You’ve just saved your five dollars! Now what are you going to do with it? Well, unless or until you have built-up enough discipline to place yourself on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly savings plan, I recommend you place this five dollar savings in a jar, piggy bank, or transfer it to a savings account daily. Da Hustler does this, and I’ve found that it forces you to really examine what you spend your money on, plus gets you in the habit of saving your own money more regularly. The caveat is that you cannot touch the money that you save! You have to basically forget that it is there. Let’s look at the savings that you can realize after a whole year of this:

$5 day ~ $150/month

$150 x 12 = $1800/year

Not too bad, but even this doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of people to save on a regular basis. Let’s do what hustlers do and make this even more attractive: keep the same formula for saving, but add an extra five dollars the next month to your daily savings plan, and another five the month after that. Not only will you have to save more money, but you may have to also make more as well! But of course, that’s what hustlers do! Now here is the earnings with the revised example:

Month 1: $150 saved

Month 2: $300 saved that month

Month 3: $450 saved that month

Month 6: $900 saved that month

Month 12: $1800 saved that month

Over the course of the entire year, you would have saved $11,700! That’s a small car! (can you say Kia, Civic or Scion?) Not only will you save a boatload of money, but by the end of a year’s time you will be in a totally different mindset, because you would have forced yourself to find ways to make more money to save! Can you imagine being able to save $60/day? That means you would make a whole lot more than that to be able to put back that much and be comfortable. And one thing Da Hustler knows about money: the more you have, the more you really don’t want to spend it. This is why you rarely see millionaires going on extravagant shopping sprees; when you know you have the ability to purchase or do something, the appeal is that much less. Make this kind of thinking your goal, and you’ll be amazed at how much your life can change.

Five dollars at a time.

Dude, cut the cable.

Do you really need all those channels? Can you possible watch them all? Here’s Da Hustler’s reasoning: you buy unlimited internet access because you want to go on the net anytime, without having to wait for dial-up. You don’t pay per site, and you don’t pay for the length of time you are on the internet (but Comcast and others are using deceptive practices to seemingly penalize you for downloading too much — which is a whole different topic altogether). The same goes for your home phone service: nowadays, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services such as Vonage charge you a low flat rate for unlimited calls to the U.S., Canada, and sometimes other countries — many times lower than the phone companies themselves! No more paying per call or per minute.

Right now we are just waiting for the whole cellular phone industry to catch up to this new way of thinking. Greed and contracts make it to tempting to convert to the Metro PCS way of doing business, but it will be coming soon, to a city near you.

With all of this knowledge, why do you continue to pay for “packages,” “bundles,” and all the other crap that they try to include to make it seem like you are getting a deal? You’re not!! No human can possibly watch every single channel of cable television, and you can’t even TiVo all of them either. You are paying for something you can’t use: when you leave the room, go check your mail, go to work, go to the bathroom, go workout, power goes out, hurricane blows away your house, etc., the bill still keeps on coming.

And in the case of the hurricane, a bill will still generate even if you have no mailbox. But nice try!

I know some of you have to have your ESPN (yeah!) and Lifetime TV for women (barf!), but really examine how much you spend on these services per year: a $50 cable/satellite bill is worth $600 per year for something that is intangible. Something that is temporary. Something that used to always be free! Take a look at some common excuses, and see if you fall into any of these categories:

I save by bundling the package with my phone and internet	Drop cable/satellite, get a VoIP package and get a $20 unlimited internet account
My favorite shows only come on cable/satellite	Download them from the network’s website and watch them anytime
I have cable/satellite because it offers great reception/crystal clear picture	Save your monthly fee for a high-definition television (HDTV), and get free digital over-the-air broadcasts with the same clear digital reception (and you don’t have to pay extra for cable’s HD service
My town is boring and I’d have nothing to do if I didn’t have cable/satellite	Get off the couch and go do a hustle to be productive, make money and move to a bigger city
I currently have a special and it only costs me x dollars a month	That money could still be used to start a business or pay down debt
DUDE!! On-Demand rocks! I can see all the cool movies for one low monthly rate	DUDE!! The more you watch, the more lethargic (i.e. fatter) you may become. Go to the theatre and see a matinee for $5, then buy the DVD if you just want to see it again when it’s on sale for less than $10. (I don’t recommend Blockbuster because if you rent twice you could have bought the movie)
My kids love the shows that are only found on cable/My kids are the only reason I have cable	Send your kids to someone else’s house that has cable. It gives you more time to spend with your spouse and encourages and teaches sharing to your kids
I would download the shows, but I have no computer OR I don’t like sitting at my computer to watch them…	Connect your computer to your TV with a video cable to see the shows on a bigger screen. If you have no computer, save the monthly cable/satellite fee to buy one: you’ll spend less time watching TV, save on fees (more income), and have more time for a hustle (even more income).
Cable/satellite offers the video channels — MTV, VH1 & BET — and they often shows the newest videos FIRST	myspace.com and other websites often premiere the artists videos FIRST to attract a wider audience. Plus the networks have a backlog of videos so you can see them almost anytime online and send them to friends, a feature not included in cable/satellite choices.
I’m locked into a contract and can’t get out until the end	Depending on how far away the end is, you could either pay to break the contract and save the rest of the money, or switch to the lowest plan they have available, then wait until your contract is up to end the service.
My cable/satellite is included with my monthly lease/association fee payments	Stop bragging!
I own the cable company/I’m Bill Gates	OK, you are a certified and bona fide hustler! Congratulations!

Stop making the cable and satellite companies rich, and take back your life and finances by making this smart and simple change. I can almost promise you that you will not miss a thing.

Especially Americans.

You’re thirsty. You and some friends go out to eat at a local restaurant, and you decide to eat there. Or maybe you just want to have some ‘me’ time and you take in a lunch solo at the local Chick-Fil-A while kicking back reading the paper or enjoying some people watching while in the food court. No matter what you order, however, DO NOT get the large size of anything. Sure, you pay a couple of dollars more for the convenience of not having to get up as often, but that is another reason why Americans are so FAT.

Yes I said it.

Americans are largely fat and lazy due to the insatiable need for convenience. A king size drink satisfies the desire to have everything you want at your fingertips, while seemingly preventing the need to refresh a beverage more often. Or does it?

Think about it like this: a bigger drink comes in a bigger cup. The larger the cup, the more beverage it can hold right? Conversely, the more ice it can hold as well. So you may get a couple of more drops in the cup, but you also have more ice in it, which almost negates the benefit of a larger size! You are essentially buying the illusion that you are getting more for your money, but nine times out of ten you are paying for more styrofoam, plastic and paper.

Yum.

The small drink w/ no ice = the big drink w/ ice.

Instead, just get the smaller size drink whenever possible. Not only is it cheaper, but most places have FREE REFILLS! So stop spending your hard earned money just for convenience, and get your lazy but up and get a refill! Not only do you burn more calories, but you may find that you will drink less if you order less. The same can be said for food as well. Order the smaller size meal, and get accustomed to eating smaller portions to save more dough. Better yet, prepare some healthy snacks ahead of time so you spend less on meals to begin with! Your body will thank you, and so will your wallet.

Oh, and water is not only more healthy, but it’s free.

If you guessed Donald Trump, you’re right. I mean, the man has a doll for crying out loud, and yes, Da Hustler has one.

He has 17 different phrases, and they all kick your butt in to gear. He basically tells you to get out there and make it happen (or else, of course, you’re fired!) But he’s not the hustler in question.

When people think of hustlers, they tend to think of individuals, but surprisingly (or not surprisingly), some of the biggest hustlers are corporations! When you think about the many ways they use consumers for their own benefit, you begin to understand why I feel this way. Who else can charge people to withdraw their own money (banks), charge people to talk to human representatives (again, banks and other institutions), or force employees to be treated almost the same as if they were regular customers? Corporations are arranged so that the people who started them, the board of directors, and/or the shareholders will profit the most from any decision that is made, and oftentimes I can’t blame them for it. They are just an organized group of hustlers working together for a common goal.

However, nowadays these organizations are going overboard in how they deal with customers, by allowing piss-poor customer service, outrageous fees, and anything else that benefits the company at the expense of the patron. One such instance is highlighted by the new AT&T (formerly BellSouth). As part of the merger deal, they are forced to offer affordable DSL service to all customers, but of course the company isn’t exactly pulling out all stops to advertise this fact. I came across the specifics of this controversy on ClarkHoward.com, and what follows is a quote from his website:

AT&T has done something unethical. When they took over Bellsouth, as part of the deal they were forced to offer an inexpensive plan as one option. They did, offering a slower (768k) DSL connection at $10 per month. It’s a great deal. But they hide the link to this service on the website, making it almost impossible to find if you don’t know where to look! Well, Clark thinks this stinks, and wants you to know how to find the deal. Here’s how:

This direct link will show you all the details: http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=7690#10_basic

Or, navigate to it this way:

* Go to att.com
* Click “View Internet services”
* Scroll down page, and just above Terms and Conditions look for the text link that says “Term contract plans available”
* See “FastAccess DSL Lite with term agreement” and follow the instructions from there!

I respect Clark because he is one of the biggest hoarders known to man! Even though everyone in America — and across the world — won’t be able to get service from the new AT&T, you can benefit from this by researching mergers and acquisitions of companies in your area, and see if they have any stipulations that are meant to benefit the average consumer. The companies hate these ‘deals’ because they are forced to treat their customers fairly, even if it means they make little to no profit. But since knowledge is power, I want you hustlers out there to use this as a template to uncover the secrets that these organizations try so desperately to hide. As a hustler, you are always learning and evolving, and using these types of tools will definitely help to grow your hustle!

Stop acting like you have one.

This week, the topic of hoarding is the use of coupons. Some use them religiously, while others think it’s a foreign word. Whatever the case, this has to be one of the easiest and most overlooked ways to hoard your cash. Taking 5-10 minutes to clip coupons out of a Sunday paper can yield you hundreds of savings per year, and more when you count the number of retailers who will automatically double the value at the checkout (usually up to $0.50).

You don’t necessarily have to subscribe to the paper to get the deals, but a subscription sure beats paying out of pocket each time you want a paper. To give an example, my Sunday papers cost $2. Multiply that times 4, and that’s $8/month. Not bad considering you can save over $100 every week if you used all the coupons. I once saw my grocery bill go from $165 to $75 strictly by using the coupons that I had (needless to say, the people in the lone behind me were amazed! Don’t tell them but I was too!)

A subscription to the paper costs me $11.88 (tax included), and I get the paper every single day so to not miss out on any and all of the mid-week deals! I often get coupons for free movie screenings; last week I saw the Bourne Ultimatum for free (EXCELLENT movie, by the way), and had tickets to see J Lo’s new movie as well (but I didn’t go to that one. Hey, after the whole Gigli fiasco, I I don’t even see her movies even if someone else pays!). With the average price of a ticket hovering near $10, I’ve already made back the price of my subscription plus more! Plus the coupons usually admit two people in for free, AND before the movie officially premieres, so you can score points by inviting someone you’ve had your eye on and pay only for transportation.

Tight.

People wonder how I go to the movies for free all the time. I just tell them it’s because I’m a hustler.

Still on the subject of dating, don’t be shy about using coupons there too! People think it’s cheap to pull out a coupon when it’s time to pay, but those are usually the people who aren’t paying! I will whip out one faster than the time it takes to set the bill down on the table. If the woman doesn’t like it, she can pay her half, and then I know she wasn’t for me anyway! Paying full price doesn’t make you cool or elevate your lot in life, you just look like another fool that doesn’t know any better. Like Mr. T says, I Pity the Fool who doesn’t know the value of a coupon!