In today's episode of the Dad Tired podcast, Jerrad shares his top 7 resources for 2021. You'll everything from top books, to travel hacking, to the best coffee mugs for tired dads.
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My Top 7 Resources For 2021
Jerrad: In today's episode of the dad tired podcast I'm giving you my top of 7 parenting resources of 2021… all right [2:43] a couple things before we jump in here number one maybe during that introduction as we were talking about Hiya Health you may have heard some screams and chaos in the background if I open the store man it is a pure zoo outside my door pure chaos we have all of our kids here which is just crazy enough and then we have all of our neighbor kids here Leila and I always pray we moved into this home into this new town a year ago now and so we were praying God would you we didn't know anybody here so we were just praying God would you allow us to be Salt and Light wherever you send us we want to view ourselves as missionaries as people were sent by God into any neighborhood that you would call us to and so we bought this house and we didn't know anyone it would just praying for that I signed up to coach Elijah's soccer team [3:28] so that we can get to know more kids and anyway God answered our prayer and now we've got a house full of kids that live in this town and they're eating lunch and going crazy and so you'll hear all kinds of chaos in the background during this episode which is a good thing dude living on mission and seeing yourself as a missionary in service for the glory of God is exhausting and really hard and so rewarding and I highly recommend that you view yourself the same way also I want to say that as the world is opening up again I dude I'm just so excited to see you guys in the last year in 2020 we lost a ton of conferences and events and we just had that all those aside we lost out missed out on our DadTired cruise which if you know me it was just like the ultimate dagger because I love cruises so much and so we weren't able to gather a lot in 2020 so many things were canceled and as the world and country starts to open back up I'm just overjoyed I went on a [4:24] long walk this morning trying to incorporate walking in the morning part of my morning routine and I went on a really long walk this morning and was just praying for you and praying for the DadTired community and I was praying about what God has for a future and I was just so excited to see you guys again man it's hard to talk to this computer screen feels a little bit weird I've got more used to it over the years but just for a little bit weird and so I'm just excited to see you guys if you want to do a DadTired conference or event or whatever hit me up man [email protected] we can make conferences happen almost anywhere we've done them at really small churches and really rural areas or big churches in big cities we can do them anywhere so hit us up and we'll make it happen [email protected] [5:03] or dadtired.com/conferences and you can find all that all right let's dive in today is a little bit more lighthearted if you have been listening the podcast for a while you know that every week we're trying to help men lead their family well and sometimes it's heavy stuff that were talking about and sometimes there's tears involved and sometimes has conviction involved and so yeah we aren't shy about diving into the hard stuff when it comes to Leading our family well today though it's a little bit lighter so if you're just jumping in to the DadTired podcast maybe you stumbled across it and you're like but what is this all about today it feels a little bit different than most of our episode so go back and listen to the old ones but I thought it'd be kind of fun to give you the top 7 things resources that I found to be helpful as a man and as a husband and as a dad in 2021 [5:49] I'm just going to be totally honest dude most of the stuff is not like any spiritual leadership stuff it's not going to necessarily help you on your spiritual leadership journey so just fair warning on that it's just fun cool helpful things that I found on my man journey here to be husband father disciple so let's dive in all right number seven I'll start 7 and we'll work our way down to number one and they're in no particular order really number 7 care.com I had heard about care.com maybe you're familiar with it I hadn't really heard about it or used it much until we had baby number 4 I'm laughing because if I don't I will cry holy cow it is hard to have 4 babies 3 was not that hard to be totally honest with you somebody's asked like what was it like jumping from 2 to 3 wasn't that hard I had two older kids they were huge help and I was like man this is easy lets add four more and then we had number 4 and now I have started again with a toddler and a newborn and holy cow I forgot how hard that is so anyway all that to say I kinda got lost in my sadness there all that to say care.com was really helpful I had a friend Jeremy Pryor he's been on the podcast before [7:01] he's done some of our trainings in our family leadership program but he talked about delegating tasks that allow you to spend more time with your kids or with your wife and so when we had number 4 and things felt a little bit chaotic even things like grocery shopping or picking up you know like cleaning the bathrooms or cleaning the kitchen like all of these things just felt so daunting and so we went on care.com and we found some great people who helped out and it's really light like it feels massive to us because it when you have 4 kids but it's really not that massive to somebody who wants to help and and it's really not that expensive honestly dude so the way we've used care.com is I've hired tutors to help our we homeschool her kids and trying to homeschool right now with four and a newborn and toddler has been hard to do all the subjects so we've delegated some farming or we've farmed out some tutoring with the math that's been a huge help man and if you homeschool your kids or maybe your homeschooling because of necessity because of the school districts just finding a [8:03] tutor to help out in a certain subject that may be causing you tons of stress maybe that's super helpful we've hired babysitters so that we can watch a couple of the kids are all the kids or Leila and I can try to date again which is just yeah thats been a whole thing so that's really really helpful and we've hired help just to clean like hey can you clean come once a month and just like help clean our bath you not to like deep clean anything but can you just like clean our bathrooms and clean the kitchen I'm just being really this podcast to me this episode is more like two friends sitting down and just I'm just sharing like all the stuff that's going on in my life right now [8:24] and so this is been really helpful man to just have somebody come in and help out with little things so I highly recommend I put that on the list as if you're wanting to be husband dad disciple that's not super stressed out all the time and wants a little bit more time that you can spend with your wife and kids on the things that actually matter dishes don't really matter clean bathroom doesn't really matter even math doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things but time with your kids time with your wife all that stuff matters tremendously and so if there's a way for you to delegate some of it and for not that expensive highly yeah know I highly recommend that you do that so that's number 7 care.com and I also want to say this none of these are sponsored some of them I wish they were because they'd be great sponsorship opportunities but they're not they're not sponsored so that's just a free shoutout for care.com and [9:19] and I'm sure there's other sites that you can find good help on if you know of any let me know all right number six this one might feel weird to some of you but I promise you it's going to be a game-changer so my friend Ethan told me about this and if you remember Ethan came on when I did that should Christian dad's be preppers it was a really fun episode for me I like to geek out on some of those things sometimes go back and listen to that episode but Ethan always is telling me the best gear to find the the coolest stuff he's using he told me about this mug and we first told me about im like ok dude its a coffee mug like what whats so special about a coffee mug and I have to tell you I drink out of this thing everyday and I absolutely love it and again this is not a sponsored post I get no money for shouting them out I have no affiliate links or anything on there I just genuinely love their coffee mug if you're tired dad who drinks coffee this is your mug that you need to get [10:13] I 1 it's double insulated or vacuum sealed I don't know all the technical terms of it but it will keep your coffee hot for a really long time so I really like that feature but it's got that it's aluminum or whatever material I should have done more research it's a metal thermos mug that keeps your coffee hot for a long time but most of those have metal on the inside and so when you drink the coffee I know Im geeking out on this stuff and doesn't really make sense for your spiritual journey but just hang with me but when you drink the coffee it has a metaly taste to it very slight but it has a metaly taste what they've done is they've done ceramic inside so still very smooth coffee I feel really dumb talking like this about coffee but its really smooth taste will keep it your coffee warm for a really long time [10:59] but then also the way that they even made the lip of the mug this sounds so dumb but it likes fits around your lips perfectly I should have thought this through now that I'm talking about I felt I sound way dumber than I imagined I would sound talk about a coffee mug but I mean they thought through every detail even like the gripping of the mug all of it is just high-level and they make all kinds of different coffee products so if you're a coffee snob I'm not really I'll just do like a Keurig K-Cup in the morning but if you like coffee and if you like warm coffee I highly recommend you check out their mugs fellowproducts.com fellowproducts.com fellowproducts.com that's going to help you as a tired dad stay caffeinated [11:42] all right number five this one I could have put it if they were in order I might put this one is my number one recommendation for 2021 again these are not in any order but if they were this might be my number one recommendation for 2021 there is a book somebody recommended to me called hunt gather parent the subtitle is what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy helpful little humans now I'll just say this this is not from a Christian perspective by any stretch of the imagination it is not biblically based at all you know me and I'm always trying to give you good resources to help you lead your family well this is not necessarily well it's not a Christian resource at all although I will say there's so many things in this book that I feel like affirm the way that God designed a family unit I listen to this on a plane while traveling and I just was like I don't think I've wanted to get to the end of a book so badly in a good way I was just so hungry I guess they call that a page turner but I don't really know what you call that in an audiobook I just really wanted to finish it man it was a very very good book it was the first parenting book I had read that came across [12:54] or that hit the angle of parenting from a perspective that isn't Western so not European or American and it just looks at parenting while they study ancient cultures and how they've been parenting for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of years and what do those like parents know about parenting that we might not know as Americans or westerners who have really only been parenting for a couple hundred years are few hundred years so highly recommend this book I don't want to go on and on to full book report on it but it was a game-changer for me my first thought was ah man I wish I would have read this when my kids were really really young so at least 2 of my 4 will have a good parent in me and my older two are just doomed but if you've got kids man I highly highly recommend that you check this out hunter or I'm sorry hunt gather parent I will put a link for this in the show notes where you can actually if you don't have an audible and you want to try it I do have the link for that where it does give us it's an affiliate link so it would help the ministry if you want to use that link you're not already using audible [14:01] they give you two free credits which means you can download two books for free just to try it out and what I love about audible is if you don't like the book they're actually allow you to return it and get a new another one so if you don't have an affiliate link there so you can click that and check out hunt together parent highly recommend that again it would probably be my number one if I was ranking these in order number four we use what's called the Gizmo watch which is unfortunately Verizon exclusive so if you have Verizon this is a huge asset for you in [14:30] in your parenting Journey if you don't I'll give you a alternative here but essentially what the gizmo watch is it's a smartwatch for kids but doesn't have any internet access to it so what it does for them is it fun things for them they can play games like exercise games and track their steps and you can list chores and put chores lists in and stuff on there if you wanted to but what we use it for is it's essentially a way to get ahold of her kids and to track them which sounds really intense but youre parents so you get it if my kids we have a school right across the street from my house so my kids [15:01] like to go over there with her friends and play and if they do that I want to be able to get ahold of them I don't want them to have cell phones for as long as possible and so this allows me to track them I know exactly where they are it's has real time GPS built in so I can just go on my app and then find out wherever they are and I love that feature and then it also allows them to call me or text me if they need and you can have grandparents and parents and all that kind of friends if you want you can add whomever you want but they only have access to talk to whoever you want them to talk to and they don't have access to call anyone else other than those emergency contacts there's no internet access and so it's really helpful you know even when they were six we've been using these for years now even when they were 6 7 8 they were able to operate these things very easily I can get ahold of him easily they can get ahold of us and so it was really really helpful again that's only for Verizon unfortunately if you don't have Verizon another thing that we use when our kids walk when they forget to charge of watch is these Motorola walkie talkies I'll put it Link in there in the show notes for the specific ones we use and I'll tell you why I like these ones it's an affiliate link so if you click on it just to support the ministry it but these Motorola ones are super durable they have a really long range and they're also waterproof so you know with kids it's just really helpful they spill something on it they drop it in a puddle if they go out in the rain or whatever it's not going to they're just completely waterproof they even float and stuff so if you take them on a boat or kayak or paddleboard whatever they'll float which is awesome to have walkie-talkies on them so that's another great way I was just using those 12 minutes ago or 20 minutes ago to get ahold of my kids I didn't know where they were they didn't charge their Gizmo watch and so they took a walkie-talkie and I can get ahold of him from really far range so highly recommend that you check that out too alright I'm trying to fly through these for you number 3 we just bought you probably been targeted on social media for these but it's called the Dechoker the reason I got this I've been targeted on it for a long time again none of this that I'm telling you are sponsors so I don't have any that these are completely unbiased reviews of these products which by the way I only promote things that I actually love so even when you hear me promote something that's an actual add I've tried it and I really love it I'm really particular about that I don't want to tell you guys something I don't actually love but these are not adds the Dechoker they're huge on Facebook marketing Instagram marketing so you've probably seen it before but [17:26] I've seen and I'm like well probably never use that but the other day before we had one of these my daughter had fruit snacks I gave her a pack of fruit snacks and was going to make all kinds of caveat there yes I get my daughter fruit snacks she ate a fruit snack and they are organic basically means nothing except they cost more and I'm the dummy for buying anyway gave her organic fruit snacks she's eating it and she swallowed it and I could tell you could just tell her face she was having a hard time getting it down and so were like are you okay are you okay she wasn't able to say anything then she goes into full panic mode her hand start flaring so you can tell she's just in a pure panic so I run over there my Leila my wife runs over there she picks her up and she has her flipped over keep in mind my wifes a nurse right she's used to handling some more intense medical situations than I am she flips her over she's doing like the baby the little kid heimlich patting her on the back and she cannot get this thing out of her throat by this time she's in full panic mode shaking her arms flailing just completely freaked out my heart is racing so I take my finger I don't even know if that's what you're supposed to do and just panic I stick it I mean is deep down her throat as I can nothing's happening go even deeper I'm trying to scrape the back of her throat and get whatever's in there she ends up [18:45] gagging and throwing up a little bit and I thought oh we got it and then we set her down she's still choking she still had something in there that was choking her so I mean just this feels like if you as a parent you know this it feels like this is like 20 minutes I don't know how long it was actually we pick her back up we’re hitting her I put my finger back in there I'm able to kind of feel the fruit snack throws up again in this time of bigger one and it lets out everything that was in her throat she starts crying my wife starts crying my adrenaline is just like it is through the roof and I'm like oh my it is the absolute worst feeling in the world to watch your little one panic like that and not be able to breathe and so anyway I got on immediately I'm like I saw those Dechoker things and I'm getting it's basically like a plunger or a reversed plunger you put it around their face it plunges whatever's in their throat out pretty intense but it will save lives and they always have these stories of how they say they're products have saved lives so I bought two of them they're not cheap they're like [19:49] 49 bucks for one of them or $99 for two I ended up buying two one for our older kids want for our babies and so yeah kind of a necessity thing like not fun to think about but I think I think it's going to be helpful for you as a parent so the Dechoker that comes in and number three on my list number two I'm going to say is the clothing brand you probably have been targeted on this I'm a sucker for targeted targeted ads apparently number two I have BYLT Basics clothing you've made you probably seen them if your man you probably got targeted on them I ended up a couple years ago buying one of their shirts just one because they're not cheap there like you can spend close to $30 for a t-shirt so I bought one just to see what I like and if [20:31] I liked it I bought it ended up loving it fit super well the quality of it looked awesome it was a great shirt and then I was getting compliments all the time and I'm like I don't have time to think about style I'm getting too old I don't really care about looking good and all that kind of stuff but I don't want to be like the old if I could honestly dude I'd wear sweatshirts and sweatpants all the time like even out in public I've just completely given up on caring and I don't follow style at all but i got targeted on that bought a t-shirt ended up liking it look good my wifes like man you look cute in that [21:01] so I'm like ok jeez I need to buy more of these I've ended up getting a few more of these shirts absolutely love them I even got a couple pair of their pants again I'm not this not sponsored and now it's kind of the only pieces of clothing if I'm not wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and I'm like out in public these are kind of the only things that I wear what I like about it is that you're not thinking through like what is the coolest style am I up to date on trends [21:24] it doesn't really matter you'll look nice for a dad you still look like you care somewhat but you don't have to just think if you not to think about like what's in style and all that stuff there that's a little bit pricier it's not like Nordstrom expensive but it is a little bit pricier but they do make really high quality stuff their wrinkle-free good material so anyway I thought I'd throw that on the list so that you as a dad can cover that Dad bod some high-quality materials here all right last one here I feel like I've been rambling and scattered ADD if you made it this far thanks for hanging with me I want to just say this to some of these things if you made it this far you get a special treat here a lot of the things on the list that mug that I talked about hunt gather parent book that I talked about those walkie-talkies that I talked about I am going to be giving away a huge Father's Day gift basket for the dad tired audience so one lucky winner is going to win all of my favorite stuff there's even more stuff than what I've mentioned in this podcast but if you go to DadTired.com/fathersday you can get entered into win this massive Father's Day giveaway [22:31] and it includes a lot of these favorite things so again DadTired.com/fathersday enter to win the huge 2021 Father's Day giveaway that will start at the beginning of june and that way you can answer now if you listening this podcast but I'm start promoting social media in June 1st and will end June 13 well announce a winner and it'll be shipped to you Fathers Day that unfortunately is going to be US only I can't shift all that stuff Internationally so US only DadTired.com/fathersday to get on that list all right here's my last one [23:04] it is a little bit of travel hacking now this was a 2021 list but really this I discovered this years ago Leila hates me talking about the stuff because she's like Jerrad you're going to cause people to go in debt people need to be financially wise so I'm just going to say this there are ways to do travel hacking to go on family vacations for free or significantly cheaper than what you're currently paying I discovered this years ago when I was trying to take my wife to Hawaii until I Google like best deals or coupons or whatever for Hawaii and it came across this blog that said they went to hawaii for like five nights or whatever I cant remember all the details but it was something like 53 bucks Im like ok well this is obviously fake its a scam there's no way that anybody can do that I ended up reading the blog on how they travel hacked and how they got to hawaii really cheap and I'm like oh my gosh this is right up my alley I love this kind of stuff if you know me I get really into things for a really short amount of time so I just went like full fedge all into travel hacking learned as much as I could Leila was like do not do this you're going to bankrupt our family [24:19]t there's no such thing as a free thing yeah know like all this gave me all the talk well I went for it anyway despite her telling me not to do it and we ended up going to hawaii for almost free and she was like ok whatever you did keep doing it so since then that was years ago that was probably like 6-7 years ago I have gone full fledged into travel hacking I've told people this before and I've told Layla this before like if if I were not in Dad tired if God wasn't calling me to DadTired and I didn't want to do in my life I'd probably want to be a travel blogger because I just absolutely love this stuff I talked about this years ago I've gotten so many emails from you guys and sometimes people use that has exaggeration like oh I got so I really have got so many emails from you guys asking me to go into this deeper I wish I could I'm already like out of time here longer than I wanted to go on this episode but let me just give you two ways that you can start if this is something for you that being said though before [25:17] I dive into that sorry for the disclaimers here please know that if you carry any balance on a credit card this involves credit cards okay so if you carry any balance on a credit card you are not hacking they are winning that's the whole goal they give you big incentives to sign up for the credit card and hoping that you carry a balance on it and that you have debt with them for a long time and if you do you are not hacking you're losing they win you lose but if you are disciplined and you're able to pay off these credit cards and to spend what you need to spend and then to pay him off and treat it like a debit card not a credit card this is anti Dave Ramsey I know but if you're disciplined and you can be responsible financially there are ways that you can significantly hack the system [26:02] so that you have a bunch of travel point so let me just tell you if you want to do a little vacation with either your wife or with your kids and you want to do it for much cheaper I'm going to give you by 2 top recommended cards I'm going to put these in the show notes and I will tell you these are affiliate links so they don't cost you anything they're the best deal that you can get on these particular cards but they do give us a kickback so I just want to be always want to be really transparent about that so the first car that I highly recommend that you get is the Southwest Visa card that's through Chase I recommend that you get this one because I'm always looking for most bang for buck so if you're going for like high luxury you want to fly first class you want like the most luxurious experience this is not for you but if you're just going like I want free and its want to get there and enjoy the time with my family this is going to be for you the Southwest card has a massive sign up bonus 40 or 50,000 right now points that is enough that should be able to get you and most of your family depending on how big your family is to wherever you want to go anywhere in the United States for free and if not free at least 50% off you're going to get on flights right off the bat just by signing up with this card now the way that they get you is they're going to have you do a sign up bonus if you hit the minimum spending so lot of times that's two thousand three thousand dollars it can even go up to $4,000 but what they want you to do is they're going to give you that card and then they're going to say you need to spend a certain amount of money in order to get the the bonuses [27:27] so I highly recommend waiting until you have something that you need to buy if you going to do a kitchen remodel or you have a big piece of furniture that you want to buy or something like that wait for that maybe you were going to buy a new TV or something like that don't just go out and spend money for the sake of spending money to hit the bonus use it on things that you actually need one way that I've seen people do this and it's really helpful is to get gift cards at a particular store that you know you'll already be spending that money on so maybe Walmart or grocery store that you always shop at or costco places that you know you already going to spend a good chunk of money throughout the year just go use your new card to go get tons of gift cards for that store and then just use those gift cards throughout the year [28:08] so that's one way of doing it but when you hit that minimum spending all those points are going to get dumped into your account and you'll be able to then use them for a vacation of your choice and Southwest again it's the most bang for their buck it's a very family-friendly and they fly to just about everywhere in the United States and they even have a few International places as well the other card that I recommend that you get for your family travel is the IHG car that stands for InterContinental Hotels group they have the hotel's everything down from your Holiday Inn Express all the way up top InterContinental Hotels which are very I mean you can stay at Intercontinental hotels around the world for thousands of dollars very very nice expensive luxurious hotels but then they also have in their chain they also have all the way down to your Holiday Inn Express which are much cheaper Easy for a family very affordable so signing up for that card and let me see what the sign-up bonuses if I remember is like a hundred and twenty five thousand points 120000 points depends on what one you get if you want to get one with an annual fee it's a hundred twenty five thousand points if you want no annual fee it's 60000 points I actually recommend the one with the annual fee because they give you elite status so when you show up to the hotel they're going to act like you were their highest MVP member which often comes with free upgrades room upgrades and things like that they also give you a free Hotel night stay every year so if you think for your anniversary you want to take your wife to a special place and you're paying $89 a year to have this card well you might be able to stay at [29:43] a hotel that's worth a couple hundred dollars a night and so you can treat her to a nice hotel room for the night for your anniversary or for special birthday or whatever and you're make me even though you pay that $89 you're getting much more value out of that card plus for the sign up bonus 125000 points that's a ton of points that you can use to take your family on vacation you can find hotels for 15 20000 points a night so 24 60 80 100 120 that potentially 6 nights at a hotel just by sign up for the card and hitting that minimum spending so again I wish I could go into tons more here because I geek out on the stuff I feel like I'm purposely flying through but man it's a fun little system to hack if you're into that you don't need to travel a ton to get all these free things a lot of these credit card bonuses will get you what you need to have a free or significantly discounted vacation but again if you carry any balance there if you're in debt or you're not good at managing money I highly recommend that you do not do this its not [30:44] for you all that being said those are my 7 holy man I feel like I need to take a drink of water those are my 7 recommendations for 2021 thanks for hanging with me I know this was kind of a weird episode for DadTired we normally talk about spiritual leadership stuff but I thought friend to friend I just want to share with you a couple fun things and I'm figuring out or learning or using on my dad journey I love you guys if you made it this far I appreciate you a ton to go to dadtired.com/fathersday you can be entered into win that give away for a massive Father's Day gift basket I love you guys hope you have a great week we'll see you next week [31:19] |
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