Happy Saturday,

To quote Beyoncé: "All the single ladies." Because guess who's dominating the housing market? Women buying solo. We call it: The Single Lady Home Surge 🏡💃

• 📈 20% of US homes were owned by solo women in 2024 (that’s 2x the share from 30 years ago).

• 💎 Single ladies are the fastest-growing segment in luxury real estate (according to Sotheby’s).

Who’s buying? Both sides of the age spectrum… Millennial ladies are delaying marriage, and investing in homes instead. While Boomer women are outliving spouses and upgrading. From ski chalets to seaside villas—you don’t need a man, just a mortgage.

🎥 The White Lotus Effect:

Someone’s getting undressed, someone’s gonna die…

HBO’s The White Lotus isn’t just a hit series—it’s a tourism juggernaut.

• 🌴 Season 1 – Maui, Hawaii → Hawaii tourism spiked +20% post-airing.

• 🇮🇹 Season 2 – Sicily, Italy → San Domenico Palace (a former convent). Siciliy drew 3M more visitors (+20%) after its White Lotus debut. (Fun fact: Nick stayed here pre-WL)

• 🇹🇭 Season 3 – Koh Samui, Thailand → A secluded paradise already seeing a 312% jump in bookings—and the season hasn’t even premiered. (Feb 16 on HBO & Max)

The Hot Financial Power of White Lotus

• 📺 Viewership soared 50% to 10M per episode from Season 1 to 2.

• 📺 That’s bigger on streaming than Succession, on par with NCIS on cable.

• 📺 But the real star of the show? The hotels—and all 3 of them have been Four Seasons properties. So that got us curious…

Get This: Turns out The Four Seasons hotel chain inked a “global deal” with HBO — We’ve never seen a major media company & a major hotel brand hook up like that.

The Takeaway…  💡

Millennials Made Everything Experiential—Now We Want It Existential.

• Hollywood tourism isn’t new (GoT in Croatia, Emily in Paris driving 10,000 beret sales). But this White Lotus Effect goes deeper.

• How? The Four Seasons / HBO deal includes White Lotus-themed luxury weekends ($4K for full-body immersion).

• A White Lotus weekend abroad isn’t just a getaway—it’s $4K to swap side-eyes with strangers and wonder if you’re part of the plot... Would you book it?

• Our parents wanted materialism, Millennials wanted experiential, but now we want… existential.

Side Note: ✈️ The Missed Opportunity: Despite the demand, no direct flights from the US to Bangkok exist. Airlines are leaving money on the table—a first-class fumble

🤫 The Secret to a Perfect 850 Credit Score? Just Knowing It.  

First, let’s sprinkle on some historical context about the Credit Score:

• 1960s: When your parents got credit cards, it was like applying to a club (literally, one was called “Diners Club”).

• Then William Fair and Earl Isaac created a secret formula to assess how risky a customer would be (their company, Fair Isaac Co is… FICO).

• Today, the FICO credit score still uses a mystery formula to asses your credit-worthiness on a range of low 300 to high 850.

• FYI, there’s now a dating app that matches you based on credit scores. 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 

But one 52-year-old Texan spent five years trying to hit a perfect 850 credit score. He always paid his bills on time and had solid credit (in the 840s), but counter-intuitive rules in held him back:

• ❌ Closing old accounts actually hurt his score.

• ✅ Opening new credit cards helped.

• 😎 Having a $0 balance didn’t push him higher.

• 💯 Keeping a tiny balance—just 1% of his credit limit—finally got him to 850.

The Takeaway

The best way to boost your credit score is to simply know it.

Seriously—that’s half the battle. Studies show that just being aware of your number makes you more likely to make smarter money moves. It’s like stepping on a scale before a diet—you pay more attention.

• 90% of life is just showing up… and 90% of getting a high credit score is just knowing it

• Plus, there’s a correlation between people who open their mail and those who have a high credit score (even though that can be stressful). Ignorance ain’t bliss when it comes to your credit. 📫️ 

🤑 Financial Trickshots:

A low-cost, high-return strategy for maximum impact with minimum effort.

For a Dad-chelor party (also called a Man Shower or Dadchelor Bash) is like a bachelor party—but for a dad-to-be.

Jack’s going all-in on one this weekend. What should we cook tonight?

👯‍♀️ Tell a Bestie:

These are the headlines from our “Headline Hammer” of potential stories for the show each morning that we couldn’t fit on the pod.

• 🔥 CEOs Got Burned – Firings hit a record high last year.

• 🧥 Yak is the New Cashmere – The next big luxury fabric trend.

• 🇺🇸 It’s Tariff Day —Trump’s expected to put 10% tariffs on China, and 25% tariffs on Canada & Mexico on Saturday

• ☕ Coffee Prices Doubled, up 94% in the last year (dub-digit lattes)

• ☕ ☕ But Starbucks is doubling-down on stores & ceramic mugs, so the stock jumped 8%

• 🤝 LinkedIn passed $16B in rev - that’s more 3x more than Snapchat (& 3x Twitter’s final earnings)

• 🏈 Super Bowl ads hit a record $8M - expect AI like we saw crypto

• 🗳️ Utah’s new NHL hockey team is letting fans decide the name at the next home game

• 🖼️ The Mona Lisa is getting her own gallery because you crowded her to much.

• 👨‍🦰 ChatGPT users are 85% dudes

• 🤖 DeepSeek’s latest issue? OpenAI says it copy/pasted AI answers from ChatGPT

• 🔵 Blue Man Group ends its epic run

The Best Idea Yet ⚡️

🥤 Did you know that after it launched, Red Bull’s team left empty cans around US bars to trick students into thinking everyone was drinking Red Bull? #GrowthHack

Now Red Bull is the best-selling energy drink of all time — and it’s the latest episode of our deep dive series, The Best Idea Yet.

This weekend, listen to the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with… New 45-minute episodes drop every Tuesday… it’s simply The Best Idea Yet.

And one more thing. Jack is going Dad³-mode this weekend—a full Dadchelor Weekend™️ packed with a 9pm bedtime, excessive meat consumption, and mandatory dad jokes. Nick is shifting into recovery mode after a birthday month of Susie Cakes—lots of green juice (and likely spoonfuls of these - seriously, you gotta try that stuff).

Celebrate the wins this weekend, enjoy our latest ep of The Best Idea Yet on Red Bull, and let us know… what hotel you’d hit up because you saw it on a show 👀

Happy Lunar New Year 🐍 ,

— Nick & Jack