The Wednesday Morning Weekly — October 9, 2024

So I noticed we were low on pork butt the other day after examining the contents of the chest freezer. Pork butt is a great affordable solution to beef roasts for stews, as well as for ground pork. Pulled barbecue pork butt is absolutely delicious as well — we are into BBQ here at home and have a Weber Smokey Mountain barbecue pit. Additionally with the ground pork, we can make various sausages including hot Italian sausage as well as chorizo.

We usually buy our pork butt in bulk at Sam’s Club because they usually have decent prices. However lately I notice they are quite a bit expensive at $2.28/lb:

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Update 10/9/2024. They sent me a VGC via Tremendous for $20. I used it to prepay my natural gas bill, which does not charge me a processing fee to use a card to pay the bill.

Mercury sent me an email today offering me $20 to fill out a survey as to why I moved my money out of Mercury Business accounts. I obliged and filled it out. Took about 10 minutes (about 30 questions perhaps) — figured why not.

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Update 10/1/2024. So I also got my “free” whopper from Burger King today for Q4. I put “free” in quotes since it’s only free if you purchase something else. So what I did was add cheese, which cost me 70 cents. Whopper with cheese. Total was 76 cents with tax and charged it on my Amex Business Gold for 4x cashback.

Originally posted on 9/30/2024.

Normally I don’t really write about deals but I have to since the Burger King Whopper is like one of my most favorite burgers of all time — love the flame broiled taste!

As you might already know, Walmart+ lets you get a free Whopper every calendar quarter from Burger King. Today is the last day of this quarter. If you haven’t already, perhaps grab one today and then tomorrow as well if you like! If you have multiple WM+ credits / accounts I guess you could get a few free ones today — share or put in the fridge, etc. 😺

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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice whatsoever. These are just my own opinions and personal preferences I am sharing.

I think I briefly mentioned here and there that I am into FIRE: Financial Independence Retire Early. I got exposed to this idea from the Mr. Money Mustache blog about 7 years ago. Summarizing, save as much as possible each month and invest it — e.g. 30, 40, 50 percent or more of your income.

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The Wednesday Morning Weekly — September 25, 2024

I don’t personally own a Keurig but I do occasionally get free cups of coffee made by them when I visit my local credit union. I do appreciate the convenience of them for a quick cup of coffee. Discard the old K cup, pop in the new K cup, put the cup under and press start — done!

The K cups are quite pricey though and really adds up to a lot over the year. Also I personally find that the K cup coffee doesn’t taste any better than the instant coffee we buy at Walmart.

So I had this idea I shared with a good friend of mine who owns a Keurig, who buys K cups. In this article I share what he thought of it and some photos he snapped for this article. This perhaps saves one over $500 per year and doesn’t sacrifice any quality of life / convenience.

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The Wednesday Morning Weekly — September 18, 2024

Disclaimer: I am not an estate planner. These are my personal opinions/ideas in this article, and was just wanting to share them with the community. Please consult with an estate planner for your personal needs.

In the bank account bonus hunting hobby, we open up many accounts. Sometimes we have large amounts of money in a few of these accounts to meet the requirements of the bonus. Or we have utility accounts, such as hubs, which we never plan to close; these accounts can have significant amounts in at any given time. Or we might have retirement accounts, both tax-sheltered and non-tax sheltered with large amounts in them as well.

I personally feel it is important to setup designated beneficiary/beneficiaries for every account possible if the accounts hold a significant amount of money. If you don’t set it up or the bank doesn’t offer it, when you die, it then goes to probate and the courts can decide when your beneficiary/beneficiaries get the money — which could take months or years, instead of a couple weeks.

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Update 9/17/2024. I am told that Pepper is now coding as Computer Software again (MCC 5734) on Amex for 4x MR — we’ll see. Pepper is so up in the air. I won’t be surprised if this intermittently works with ABG in the future. And I am not sure if Pepper is even sustainable. But I’ll work it while it lasts! Can’t resist 12-16x cashback on Amazon, Walmart, Sam’s Club etc.

The following originally written on 9/15/2024:

Pepper is a great app for purchasing dozens of various popular eGift cards at great discounts — you also have immediate access to the gift card after purchasing it with no delays. At this time of writing, Pepper often has 10x discount boosts on Amazon, Walmart, Sam’s Club, etc. eGift cards.

We used to get 4x MR when purchasing a Pepper eGift card with Amex Business Gold. The following are some alternatives.

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