In this episode, I discuss my budgeting process using my Apple CC including our crazy high power bills. I also discuss using Visible as a cell phone provider, which is much cheaper than being on Verizon (even though Verizon owns them). Oh yeah, groceries.

One correction - I said we had to pick my son up from the airport on the 29th but it's actually the 30th which is a Friday.

See ya.

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email: don@callmedonovan.com

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Hey, what's up and good morning.

Today is 450 days of alcohol retirement.

Yay me.

I say what is today?

Oh yeah, it's the 19th.

This month is over halfway gone guys.

August is almost out of here basically.

And it's funny because I look at things by Fridays.

And the reason why I do that is Fridays are my grocery days.

The way I manage my budget is I put as much stuff on my Apple card as I possibly can.

I've got the cable bill goes on it, cable internet bill, the power bill goes on it,

which holy bejesus, the power bill.

Last month was $418.

And this month, which is due on the 30th, August 30th, is $418.

I've done some readjusting of my schedules for my temperatures.

I'm letting the house get up a little warmer during the day.

I mean, I know there are people that would absolutely die if they were in my house.

I set it for 78 during the day.

That means in our bedroom, which is where Lee and I spent most of our time, because

it's kind of set up like a small little en suite or apartment, if you will.

We got our separate beds in there.

She's got a computer desk in there.

We've got a sofa and a TV and it can get up to about 80 or 81 in there.

I mean, she's perfectly comfortable, but there's times where I feel like I got to get naked.

Yeah, man, power bills.

I've had to do some readjusting to see if I can get it back down.

But anyway, yeah, everything, I let it go on the Apple credit card.

And the reason for that, and I may have explained this before, is because you get anywhere between

1 and 3% cash back, depending.

And I've been doing this probably about two years now, I guess, coming up on two years.

I don't know.

Apple introduced their savings account with their interest rates and everything, or rather,

yeah, their interest rates based on the interest rates of the Fed trying to get the inflation

under control and all of the interest rates going up overall.

The savings accounts finally went up and the Apple savings account was somewhere like 4.4,

4.5% APR.

So it was pretty good.

And I've got it set up so where it all, all of that 1 and 3% cash back on transactions

automatically gets funneled into that savings account.

And the theory behind that is when it comes time to upgrade my iPhone, I'll have a pretty

good chunk of the money to go ahead and buy it outright because I made the decision last

year to never again, if at all possible, get on a contract with a cell phone company, a

cellular provider where I got to pay for 24 months, the hardware fee.

It's just ridiculous.

And the reason for that, as I've mentioned, probably also mentioned too, is I swapped

this all over to Visible, which is a company that is actually owned by Verizon.

You can literally get, I mean, at one point I was paying over $400 a month for cell phones.

That was six phones because I had two.

And you're probably thinking, only drug dealers have two.

I had an iPhone and I had an Android because there's certain networking diagnostic type

things you can do on an Android that you cannot do on an iPhone.

But anyway, that was ridiculous.

So I slowly started moving, as I could, people off of it.

And the downside, which is not really a big downside, but is Visible doesn't allow you

to have multiple phones under one account.

So you have to create individual accounts, which just means that if you need to do that

for a family of three or four, you just either use their email addresses or you create Gmail

accounts that are just for those.

And that's what I did.

Anyway, I moved this all over, except for my oldest son, Devin.

He basically is the only one left on Verizon.

He didn't want to move.

And the account is basically his.

And whenever I went through all of this, I had to do some calculations and I did a spreadsheet

where it made more sense for me to pay off my phone and my wife's phone, even if I had

to take the money out of savings and then move mine over and move hers over to Visible.

It just worked out.

I think I looked at hers over like an 18 month spread.

And I've probably talked about this before.

So you know, I apologize again.

But Visible is $25 a month flat.

They've got two, basically two plans.

I got 25 and 45.

For everything I need to do in South Central Georgia, 25 is perfect.

And I believe that I've seen them running promotions on TV right now where you can get

it for $20 per month for two years.

That's $20 a month for two years.

And this isn't $20 and 25 plus applicable fees.

It's not like, "Oh, it's going to be 25 by the time I'm done.

It's going to be 28 or 29."

No, it's 25, which includes all the necessary fees.

Just go ahead.

Somebody who's European in nature.

It's like, "Here's the fee."

Here's all the like 911 fees and this fee and that fee.

Nope.

Already in there.

Already included.

And yeah, I know it sounds like an ad for them.

I mean, I do have a friend link or whatever, but I don't remember what the hell it is.

So no biggie.

That's the reason why I do what I do with the credit card though.

It's basically I charge everything.

And then at the end of the month, I make one lump sum payment and I try to budget about

$2,500.

That's my target.

Sometimes I hope it's a little under it, but most of the time I'm a couple of hundred dollars

over it, which that's a pain in the butt, but sometimes you just don't have a choice.

That's the reason why I judge everything by Fridays.

I look at it and go, "Okay, I got two more Fridays, which is $300 more for groceries

because we average about $150 a week on groceries."

I say average.

If I were to really put pen to paper, it's probably a little higher than that because

there are definitely weeks like last week or maybe the week before last.

It was like $175 or $180.

And then last week, I think I got it closer to $150.

And we don't buy bullshit.

We're not one of those families that just buys multiple two liters of soda and bags

and bags and bags of potato chips and quick fix foods and stuff like that.

I mean, we get a little bit of that.

I usually have no more than two bags of potato chips, these big bags in our little pantry

closet area.

One's usually mine and one is usually Oriana's.

I get a 10-pack of Dr. Pepper minis, usually per week or sometimes it'll go two weeks because

I don't drink more than one a day.

And some days I don't even drink one during the day.

My biggest indulgence, those little Reese's mini peanut butter cups and Kit Kats.

And those can get expensive.

The big family bag of the Reese's is almost eight bucks.

And I usually, I mean, it's usually no more than one or two of those a month, honestly,

because I don't eat that many of them.

Yeah, man, the month is almost gone.

Tyler's birthday is the first week.

If I can speak, Tyler's birthday is the first week of September and he's going to be here.

His plan is, I forget what day it is, all I know is that it's going to be flying in

to Valdost airport on a Friday.

We got to go down there on a Friday afternoon to pick him up.

I think it's the 29th or something.

Honestly, I can't remember.

I have to just look at the calendar.

I'm not sure.

But before that, he's going to visit a friend of his in Kentucky.

He's literally flying from Washington state to Kentucky, spending a couple of days there.

And then he's flying from Kentucky down to Valdosta where we pick him up.

He's going to stay here for like two weeks, I think, two or three weeks.

He does this about twice a year now, about every six months.

I mean, I say every six months.

I mean, honestly, the last time he was here was back in, what was it, March?

What is that?

April, May, June, July.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's about every six months.

That'll be fun.

He's going to help me with a couple of projects as he normally does.

I had to fix two fence posts on the backside of our privacy fence Saturday because a couple

weeks ago I started noticing that the fence was leaning and then I noticed it was leaning

even more.

And this is a standard privacy fence where you use the four by four post in the ground

and then you got those eight by six, I call them cheaply made, but they're the overlap,

vertical overlap boards on panels.

You buy them in panels and then you attach them usually to like one by fours that are

stripped at the top and the bottom and then just kind of sit.

I think they cost about $50 to $70 a panel at Lowe's.

And the fence, I'm guessing because the house was built 1990, so this fence wasn't too long

after that it was built.

It's ragged as shit.

And I just, I have not had the money to replace it.

And to be fair, I didn't really take care of it as well as I should have.

The early years that we were here, I should have really treated this thing, but you know,

what's done is done.

So yeah, I noticed that two of the posts were leaning and so I got out there and I dug down

and basically about six inches under the ground, which is where the concrete that they haphazardly

used the post started cracking and breaking.

So I had to splint those bastards.

And I was telling Tyler about that and he says, so we're replacing the fence when I'm

there.

And I'm like, dude, I ain't got that kind of money right now.

And we calculated if we were doing it ourselves, that we're looking at probably four to $5,000

in materials, not labor, because that's around about 40, I guess, maybe 40 something panels.

I could be wrong.

I need to recount them.

And then you got to need about half of that in four by fours because you're going to want

to replace all of those.

And then of course we didn't factor in concrete and all of that, which is what I'd really

want to do.

So yeah, it's an undertaking that I really wouldn't want to do.

And I think it would take longer than he has because I mean, he's not coming here just

to work.

He's coming here to hang out and go visit the grandparents, the ones on my wife's side,

because my folks are dead.

Visit friends that he's had around here, work friends and stuff like that.

So you know, I can't expect him to spend all this time trying to work on my shit.

I mean, if we were, if we were able to work on this a couple of hours every day, I'm not

sure we'd be finished with it in two weeks.

And to hire a company to come do it, I haven't gotten any quotes, but it would not surprise

me one damn bit if replacing this fence just with the type of fencing that it is now.

Nothing special, no upgrades, nothing would probably run about $10,000.

And guess who doesn't have 10K in spare change?

This guy.

So I reckon that'll do it.

This week is a couple items on my agenda to do.

I got going to a client this morning.

They moved two computers into a different area on a desk and I've got to put in a POE

switch.

He's hiring two additional people, made some personnel changes, that kind of thing.

I might have another client or two that I need to see this week.

One client's supposed to be bringing me a Synology unit, a network attached storage,

because he operates out of Nashville.

And I was like, well, if I drive over there and get it, that's going to be a chargeable

trip.

He's like, hey, I go to Tifton all the time.

I'll give you a heads up.

And I was like, you bring it over here, I'll take you to lunch.

Don't know what day that's going to be, but we'll see.

And then I've got to fill up the gas can because probably by the end of the week, I'm going

to need to cut the yards again.

I have to do that usually about once every two weeks.

This time around, I've also got to look and see if something's wrong with the deck because

it was about midway through cutting last time and I think I heard something pop.

And I normally cut on the number two setting for the deck and it seemed like it started

to gouge after that, especially in the backyard.

So I'm not entirely sure.

I mean, I'm starting to get really sick and tired of this damn lawnmower.

I don't know.

I don't want to have to replace it, but the number of times I've had to have it worked

on, I bought it in 2015.

And I mean, it's a little 30 inch Troy built unit.

I like the lawnmower, but good God, every time I turn around, it's like I have to get

this company Chris's Mower Clinic.

I think that's it.

Anyway, they come and pick it up because I don't have any way to get it to them.

And so I have them come pick it up and they'll hold it for a few days.

Last time they had it for over a week because they had to replace the carburetor.

And I mean, and it still doesn't run right when you first crank it up, it needs to sit

there and warm up for about two minutes.

It sits there and just runs ragged as hell.

Then it smooths out and runs fine.

So Tyler and I are going to take a look at that.

Anyway, that's my week.

Hope you're doing well.

This recording actually makes it into the podcast this time.

We'll see.

All right.

It's about 717 in the morning here on Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday.

It's August 19th, 2024.

Have a good week, everybody.

See you bye.

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