An Easy Way to Make $50 a Month

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:
And look, I'm not making fun. I have been there.

Scott the Announcer [00:00:03]:
Live from the basement. It's building a better Dave. Check us out at better dave.com. Email us at dave@betterdave.com, or call in your Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson [00:00:29]:
Hello. It is me, Dave. This is gonna be a quick one. I, I do tech support for podcasts. And on occasion, I will get somebody that says, hey. And look, I'm not making fun. I have been there. You know, I I was bankrupt in 2004.

Dave Jackson [00:00:49]:
So when I hear, hey, like, things are getting tight. Is there any way? And they'll even say, I'm not looking for a freebie, but, like, what can we do to make this cheaper? And I get that. You're freaking out because there's not enough money at the end of the month or however that goes. Right? And I suggested to someone. I said, well, one of the things you can do is what I do. And I could pay for all these if I wanted to. I'm doing okay right now. But as I look at their website, I could pay $30 a month if I get the bundle of Disney, Hulu, and Max.

Dave Jackson [00:01:39]:
Alright. So there's $30. Now here are the here are the different services I've used. I like Hulu, especially when murders in the building is on. Netflix. Peacock, I occasionally will pop into. I have Paramount because I have Walmart Plus. But if I didn't have Walmart Plus, that would be probably at the bottom of my list.

Dave Jackson [00:02:01]:
I know there's a new season of Frasier on there waiting for me. So there's 4. What what do we got again? We got, Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount. I'm missing 1. And I can't remember what it oh, Netflix. Whatever. You get the idea. And right now, I'm watching Peacock.

Dave Jackson [00:02:23]:
Oh, I also have Amazon Prime, but we get the idea, Dave. And here's the thing. We used to, and we as society, used to watch all the same stuff at the same time. And the only thing that even comes close to that now are sports. Right? You're like, oh, man. You see that game last night? In the immortal words of Steve Martin, Buffalo beat Miami. You're sick. You are sick.

Dave Jackson [00:02:53]:
Right? Other than that, in the Super Bowl and maybe the Olympics, we don't really do that anymore. I remember going to work and making it to my cubicle back in the day, and we'd all be talking about what Howard Stern said on the radio because we were all listening to Howard Stern. That doesn't happen. And so one of the reasons that I used to get all these things is I didn't wanna feel like an outsider. And if somebody goes, oh, man. Have you seen Yellowstone? And I'd go, no. And they'd be like, what? And so then you're like, oh, it's on another service that I'm not watching or whatever. I also use YouTube TV.

Dave Jackson [00:03:38]:
That's how I get my TV, and I never watch live TV. I always watch it recorded. And so what I finally heard somebody throw this out, and I was like, can you is that really possible? And that is you cancel all but one. So right now, I'm watching Peacock and then anything else. Like like I said, I have Amazon Prime because I ship a ton of stuff, and that actually pays for itself. I might dip into Paramount. But even like Paramount, I barely watch, and I barely watch Amazon. So it's primarily right now, I'm watching Peacock.

Dave Jackson [00:04:18]:
And I was watching a show with Kevin Hart about some gangsters in Atlanta. It was pretty good. And it's, over. I was kinda bummed because I thought it was just like a miniseries. And, like, no. It's an actual like, there's gonna be a series 2, and there was a cliffhanger. Well, instead of paying whatever I'm paying on Peacock, I think it's $10, which is dumb because I got the version where you have to watch ads. Now that kinda works for me because I watch most of this stuff in my office on a computer, and I have a, what do you call it? A Chrome extension.

Dave Jackson [00:04:59]:
He said moving his mouse called video speed controller. And I watch every I I fast forward through all the commercials even though they say you can't. Yes. You can. And so that saves me. Right? If we look at this bundle, that saves me $30 a month, and that's just Disney, Hulu, and Max. If we count, I think Netflix is like $17 a month. You could get close to $50 a month by just watching one service.

Dave Jackson [00:05:29]:
And here's the other thing that it does. It saves you time from watching crappy stuff. Because there are times when you go to Netflix and it, you know, it puts that, vomit of things in front. I always love the fact that if I'm actually watching something and I'm halfway through the movie, I have to scroll almost to the bottom of the screen to go, oh, here's the stuff I was watching. They're like, here's new stuff. And I'm like, yeah. I mean, I kinda wanna finish this movie. That drives me nuts.

Dave Jackson [00:06:00]:
But you can save yourself some money by just using one service. Because then when you finally find yourself going, nah, I guess it could have I seen this before? I don't know. Well, that's when you go, nope. I'm not gonna waste my time looking. Because by the time you watched everything you wanted to watch on the one service, there are other things. Like, right now, I know when I log in to Netflix, and I think that's where I'm gonna go next. Actually, I haven't been on HBO in a while. So I might go to HBO, and there will be things there.

Dave Jackson [00:06:34]:
I'm like, oh, cool. I wanted to see this. And the other kind of cool thing is if it's one of those shows that is doing, like, 1 a week, you can now binge it because you couldn't binge it before because it was, you know, a new season. And so you actually kind of have a better use of time because you can blow through that series and then blow through the other series and that thing. And you you watch the 3 or 4 things on that that you want to. And when you find yourself going, have I seen this already? I don't know. I'm not sure if this is yeah. Okay.

Dave Jackson [00:07:07]:
Don't do that. Because over on Hulu or Peacock or insert Disney, whatever, there are other things waiting for you now. And it just dawned on me that there are many times I was paying for a service waiting for the next season to come out. Well, don't do that. It's really easy. That's the other thing is it's super easy to just log in to an account that you've canceled and go, okay. Bring it back. Now I realized that you're like, yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:07:37]:
But before, I had it on the $15 plan, and and they're not grand fathering anybody in this stuff. Everybody's rates go up, so you're not doing that, and you're definitely saving more money. So it's just one of those things where, you know, we could get into things like quit eating out. The, look. I'm I'm a fan of McDonald's. Way too much than I need to be. But it did dawn on me the one day to do the finances on that. Like, you can buy a 8 pack of buns for whatever and then a stack of hamburgers, And it takes you, I don't know, 5 minutes to make a hamburger on the George Foreman grill.

Dave Jackson [00:08:19]:
And it costs, like, ridiculously less than if you actually go to McDonald's. Remember when fast food was a, fast and b, cheap? And it's not neither right now. And they keep trying to make it faster, because now you can order ahead and they'll bring it out to you. But you're still you might as well go through the drive through. I've done that. And so realize by the time you drive to wherever, sit in the drive through or, you know, wait for them to bring it out, and then drive back home, you could have made a burger or 3 at home at a third of the price. And I think that's it. I think we're just like, oh, I'm tired.

Dave Jackson [00:08:57]:
I want somebody to do something for me. I want someone to cook for me. It's be like, it's really not that bad, especially if you got a Foreman Grill. That's an easy way to, to save money. And then just quit buying stupid stuff. You know, we've got, we just had Amazon pre pre Black Friday. I was in Walmart this week, and they had a, you know, flat screen TV that was taller than I was. Look.

Dave Jackson [00:09:32]:
I'm 61. I'm not a giant, but I I mean, I'm pretty sure if I laid down, this thing was bigger than me. And I just thought I don't know where I would put that. And it was like $228. And I was like, that's pretty cheap. And it dawned on me that, a, I have a pretty big flat screen in my living room that I never watch. And when I do watch, I watch YouTube on it, usually on my lunch. And so there was a part of me that's like, oh, I could get a bigger TV.

Dave Jackson [00:10:01]:
$200. And then I'd be like, how is that gonna fit my car? And I have to go borrow my brother's van to bring the TV home. And then the one time I did get the the big TV I had, I had to go buy a new stand because my other stand was very puny compared to the TV. So be careful buying things that you don't need. And, I have been doing a really good job this year for the most part of doing that, and I'm paying off bills faster than I normally do. And, my goal is to be debt free sometime in 2025. That's the goal, and I'm headed that way. And one of the ways I do that is by not paying for streaming services that I don't watch.

Dave Jackson [00:10:47]:
And so when that ticket came in, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna share this with you because you might think something like, well, if I do that and people are talking about Yellowstone and I haven't watched well, so what? You know? Yeah. But they might be talking about merging the building, and I had I don't have Hulu. So what? There are many other things to talk about. You're not really missing out on life changing information. It's not like, well, I was watching this thing on how I can cure cancer with, Manwich. And you're like, wait. What? Like, I need to no. There's none of that going on.

Dave Jackson [00:11:24]:
And anything that's really good that is not being talked about on the mainstream media, about how bad really the government is just in general. Like, the FDA isn't really protecting our food and, you know, the medical it's just it's all corrupt BS stuff. And, that stuff's not being talked on mainstream media. You gotta go to a podcast for that kind of stuff. So just thought I would share a money saving tip with you today. And, till we meet again, it's gonna get better.