I need to make more money

I'm about to move to a new place. Move in is September 1st. I have to prorate rent on my current place for three days, 1st thru 3rd, so I can move out and clean the place. It'll run about $210 for those three days. I have to pay $2,100 for the first month's rent. I have connection and reconnection fees for utilities.

It sucks!

This will be an extremely rough month financially, particularly because it follows an already tough month of August.

In August, there was school registration for both children, one college sophomore and one high school senior. Books for the college student. Band registration and fundraising as well as theater performance dues for the high school senior. Both need new laptops for school. One of the current nine-year old laptops is dead and the other one is dying.

I had to put our family pet's recent surgery on a payment plan with Care Credit. If I don't pay the $1,700 within eighteen months, I'll pay a whole lot in deferred interest.

I already had a payment plan for a recent ambulance ride and E.R. visit for the wife. That started out at like $1,400.

I also have a few more payment plans and just paying outs of accrued debt with interest that won't end for at least six months to a year.

But I try to remain positive. We have our health (barely/mostly). We have a place to move to (as long as nothing goes wrong). I have a job to pay for necessities as well as all this debt (well I have credit to pay and then some money from the job to make payments towards the credit).

So, life is good!

Weird, I felt like I lost a close friend

This was originally started like a year ago but life happens...

I recently had to say goodbye to a friend I've known for 15+ years. They've changed over those years a few times but I've always supported them as best I could. Though I often felt a little taken advantage of. Even when times were tough for me, I put the effort out to maintain the relationship mainly because my kids were younger and enjoyed having them around. However, slowly over the years they became more of an acquaintance as the kids got older. I mulled my decision over a few weeks time and discussed deeply with the wife. It truly was a tough call but it had to be done. I give and gave but we had to move forward with what's best. Being more forgiving, my wife is still not sure about the move but is making do. Truthfully, I feel much better each day since I ended the relationship. I'll always have memories but.....

I HAD TO GET RID OF 'CABLE' TV!

Initially, the adjustment was slow and difficult. Not being able to turn on the television and browse 100+ channels was weird at first. Eventually, we got used to it.

I did go buy an over-the-air HD antennae to get local channels because we didn't want to be completely without television channels. I found a highly-user-rated one at Walmart with a 50-mile range. I was intrigued at first because I've never seen the actual local channels via OTA since they were regulated to be aired as HD. Once I got everything hooked up and programmed the channels, NBC/Channel 5 showed the picture below.

I was like "Holy shit! That's a pretty damn clear picture." The wife was like, "Is that from the over-the-air antennae? That's an extremely clear picture!" I was like, "I know, right?!"

So, that's are journey into being disconnected from pay television. I needed to save money and we just realized that we were watching a lot of reruns of L&O, L&O:SVU, House and many others via USA Network or TNT. I've never paid for movie channels like HBO since the early 90s when I lived in my first apartment with a roommate to split the cost. I don't care to pay a premium to watch movies I've seen many times before and some decades ago (like E.T.). It's just throwing away money when one can pay-on-demand for recent movies via whatever medium is available.

Speaking of pay-on-demand, I must fully confess that we did have some access to certain 'cable' channels. My close friend came over one day and downloaded a few apps like HBOGo on my iPad. He logged in as himself and told me we could watch via his account anytime. It does require a re-log in after so many days/weeks and I'd just have him re-enter his information. We didn't watch many movies but more series like Game of Thrones and such.

Besides my buddy's login, I already had memberships with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. These two services help alleviate some of the transitioning pain but truly after a few months, we were so happy to get rid of the high-cost of pay television. I saved about $150/mo after rate, taxes and fees on my AT&T bill. I had to keep Internet and we still have a house phone which allowed me to bundle the two and save. Those monthly costs were like $95 after all charges are added and the deal was good for two years even though I had to only commit to one. So, not too bad.

One thing we did notice about over-the-air signal is that location of the antennae is important. We lived in the center two two-story condos all made out of brick and with firewalls in between. There were two-story brick condos very close behind us about twenty feet. The signal would flicker occasionally even when I had the antennae on the inside of the window pane facing the back condos at the highest point I could to the first-floor ceiling. I bought a fifty-foot coax cable to move the antennae to the second floor window near the highest point of the ceiling. I got a much better signal but would still occasionally lose signal especially when the weather was bad. I'm assuming it had a bit to do with the location but I could not get the antennae any higher unless I got a ladder and tacked to the top our condo somehow or had a pole/rod extend above the roof with the antennae attached from the side of the condo. Both options were not easily done so I stuck with what I had.

Just another thought, we noticed that WFAA/ABC 8 was the weakest signal of the 'big' four which also include KTVT/CBS 11, KXAS/NBC 5, and KDFW/FOX 4. Back when I was a kid in the late 70s early 80s, the weakest signals were typically channel 4, 11, 5 and 8 (ordered in weakest to strongest signal). That being said, I live within 15-20 miles of all the stations especially WFAA and it was always losing signal. In fact, there were days that we'd not have channel 8 come in and the weather would be clear skies and sunny. Anyway, we just thought that was weird since we should be in a very good location to receive the strongest signals.

Well, that's my story on cutting the cord. We'll see how long it continues.

Oh yeah, I also upgraded by Uverse Internet as part of the cheaper bundle. I was on like 6 MBPS upload speed but was bundled with 40 MBPS. That's all 'up to' speeds of course. I did a speed test just to be sure they weren't charging me for something that I wasn't actually getting. The speed test was almost exact when I ran it. See below.

Okay, now that's the end of this story for now...

Dermatology Is a Lucrative Career

Went to a dermatologist appointment today. The office was in a building I've passed many times. I've been in it once — to eat and use the restroom. This was during a time that I took my kids and some of their friends to enjoy a little bit of Easy Slider Truck. They were parked outside this building.

Anyway, the elevators have a wall-to-ceiling glass window wall at the back of the elevators. I don't recall if the sides did too because I was too busy looking out and down through the back glass. Three of four sides of the building are offices and the fourth is all glass windows to the outside world.

Once I got to the dermo's office level, the 13th floor, this was the view...and the dermo office takes up almost all of the 13th floor. Daughters or sons, find a dermatologist to marry. :-)

90 cents gas rewards at Tom Thumb!

I've been to Tom Thumb a few times to grocery shop over the past week or so but I haven't had to get gas since I haven't driven twenty minutes each way to play tennis each weekend like I used to a month or so ago.

Anyway, today, I had to gas up my van. The price per gallon was $3.19 but using my gas rewards that I've built up, you can see the price I ended up paying in the image below. That's a 90 cent savings! This is a huge bonus as my van normally takes anywhere from $50-$60 to fill up from almost empty. Today it was $37.50!

The cost of living in Hawaii vs Texas

I was looking for a cost of living calculator to see what a salary in Honolulu, Hawaii would have to be compared to what it is in Dallas, Texas. I don't remember the link but I think it was off cnn.com or money.com. The calculator already had an amount of $45k so I went with it. I selected Dallas and Honolulu and this is what it gave me.

Can you freaking believe that you have to make almost double what you make in Dallas to make a comparable salary in Honolulu?! What the hell!? It's that damn tourist industry making the COLA higher. I'm sure there is no way or barely a way that the locals are surviving on a minimalist's salary like this! $45k barely goes that far in Dallas!

It's also an interesting feature on this calculator when it shows where and what percent the increase is: 235% Housing, 55% Groceries and 50% Utilities.

No wonder there are so many houseless people in Hawaii—as I was told by a local the majority of the people on the streets are not homeless but houseless because they own a house but cannot afford to live in it. Sad...