Do You Need That App?

Episode 222: In this episode, we delve into the importance of keeping a watchful eye on your expenses. Without a doubt, you're watching those major charges coming across your desk, however,  today we discuss the significance of reviewing your credit card statements and breaking out recurring charges. By evaluating these charges, you can determine if you are still utilizing the services or subscriptions. We also share an easy way to  look at subscription apps on your phone so you can analyze if they're still needed and maybe just be able to put dollars back in your pocket. Lori notes, this week is all about business, which she takes not pleasure. Ha, ha. 

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

All of those had a lot of saying like that makes no sense. But I'm saying it's super easy, you know, to just throw in these another mine item, right? And we just think we have to pay it.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vondola Fever.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yesterday afternoon, I did my monthly duty of going through the credit card statement for Flower Click and expensing everything out. So my question is, do you do that every month for yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Vonda? I think you know the answer to that. Okay. Well, I kind of thought maybe I did, but I I thought you know my husband because you are my work husband. And I uh you are the same temperament as him. Here's the thing, and then we will get into the important part. I will tell you there was a time in our marriage years ago when my kids were younger and I wasn't working. I was a I was well, I was working, I was a stay-at-home mom, you know, right? That's when I'm a lot of work. Sunday school, and I was super busy, but I decided it would be a good idea for me to take over the bills. Oh, okay. My husband was like, first of all, he's like, why? And I was like, I just let me let me do this for you, let me take this burden from you. Which, you know, you know, Martin, he's I don't want to say it's controlling, but he's the money man. He's the money. He loves he loves he's a spreadsheet guy, the money guy. And I so anyway, he's like, okay, all right. And I was like, I I can do this, I can do this. So it lasted, I wanna say maybe two months, two rounds. I think things got late. This is back when we didn't have electronic checking to like now, I was like, it just didn't work out. I forgot, I didn't realize, dude, it just was not at my wheelhouse. And so I just not a surprise. Right, right. And the thing is, I just didn't like it. That's the thing. And he also didn't like to relinquish the control. So he was dying to get it back. It was a win-win that he took it back. And he was happy that I failed, and I was happy to give it back. So it was a win-win for both of us.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

You know what? You said something that is so true, and that's why I think a lot of shop owners or people with their personal finances have problems. It's not in my wheelhouse. Yeah, and you knew that. So it was not like, oh man, I failed. Nah, he he wanted it back, it worked out well. I know you well enough to say it, yes, it wasn't your wheelhouse, but if you had to do it, you would make sure it got done.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Before I got married, I balanced my checkbook, I paid my bills, I did all my stuff, but he has just always done it. I think it's kind of his security. He's a finance guy. I mean, you know, he's an engineer, he's a finance guy, and I've always trusted him. I don't know if that's right or not, but I know it's fine. And there's a security in that for me, and I don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Right. Well, a lot of times when you're in a position of owning a business like many of our shop owners, you don't have that privilege to have maybe a bookkeeper, or maybe you do have a bookkeeper, maybe you don't. But one way or another, you are the one who's responsible for every single dollar that goes through your shop. Yes. Which can be a real challenge. When I was going through things yesterday, what I realized is there are recurring charges that sometimes you don't even question. You're like, oh, here's a $10 one for mid-journey. What is mid-journey? You know, here's a $7.99 one for clipping magic. Yeah. Is anybody still telling you Ellies? I'm sure they are. And there's some that I'm sure can't be. No, I know. Yeah. The question is, you know, you sign up for some of these things. Yeah. And are they still using them? And and I think that's the same in a flower shop, right? It's like these things keep going on, and then we don't question them. It's like because we see them there every month.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

There's TikToks on this one that are like, what the heck is that $2.99 charge everybody gets from Apple? What is that? Like, you know, and I think I asked you a long time ago about it. You're like, yeah, I think it's for storage. And like how come we all get it? How do you turn it off? How do you we just exactly appears?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

It's just there and you just pay it every morning.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, you know how to do it, you just pay it. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I was thinking of that yesterday after you said that, and I'm like, you know, and everybody's like, oh, it's only that, but you have to look at it as okay, maybe I better dig into this because if it takes me one hour to solve that $299 and I don't need it, that's $36. I would have paid myself for that hour. Yeah. So it's like sometimes it's worth digging in because there is a financial gain for that for doing it instead of like, ah, I don't want to deal with it.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I recently, I mean, this is kind of one of the same things. So I have always subscribed to Audible. Because you know, I love to read. But the problem is I'm not great at listening to books. I've I've talked to you about this. I mean some people are can listen to podcasts and things while they're working, looks listen to books. My brain doesn't do that. I have to completely focus when I'm doing things. I can't do two things at one time. And so a couple months ago, I was getting, I was just looking through my email and I'll get a notification like your new month. And I thought, you know, let me look in here. And I have like six credits, seven credits, and I'm like, I will never use these. I'm never gonna catch up. I'm never gonna get seven books on tape. If I traveled back and forth like commuted to work, maybe sure, sure, that would make sense. You know, so I canceled the subscription because it was fit, it's 15, 6, I don't know what it was, but I'm like, I don't use it. But I had kind of forgotten, right? Yeah, exactly. I kept thinking, oh, I will use it, I will use it until that number kept getting so high. I'm like, I'm not gonna use this. I'm a physical book reader.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Process by reading, sitting there, maybe reading that sentence again, underlined, like I'm so I think that's what we're talking about today is just really being mindful of every one of those $2.99, $14.99, $10. I mean, things that are coming through. And if you have a bookkeeper in your office, they're gonna constantly see them and probably never even question it. Yeah, they don't know. So you as a business owner to have that, maybe it's every other month, take a look at those recurring charges and see if they really do make sense. I mean, like we of course have Buzz Sprout, which is for our podcast, and that's so much per month, and Squadcast. And I watch those to make sure nothing goes up or down, right? See if there's any changes on that. But I think especially with technology subscriptions, with people who are subscribing to AI. And I've known people who like, oh, well, let's try this one, let's try this one, let's try this one. And now they have three of them they're paying for, and they're probably only using one that they found out. Take a look at those and go, okay, I don't need this one now, and I don't need this one now. And I could be saving, you know, 40 bucks a month.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I going back to the bookkeepers, it's interesting to me. Some of our flower click members that have bookkeepers they protect those women at all costs. Oh, sure. Like like a really good bookkeeper that has been there since day one. Those people know what's up, they run the business. And the flower click member emailed me going, hey, can you send an itemized receipt for this? My bookkeepers needing like like you got good bookkeeper. Like they're few and far between, but you can tell, like these people know what they're doing. You gotta bookkeeper.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And you and I have had those conversations with potential flower click members where they're like, Ah, I need to bring my bookkeeper into this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yes. And it's like, okay, I guess we're gonna be successful because you're trustworthy. But and usually they come in and they're a little skeptical, like, what is this? What are we paying for? I'm like, you're good. You know, but then we've also had people with really bad booking. Yes, we've had some backstory. So those are few and far between. I just remember a couple. I mean, those are credit card statements, but what about like the wire service statement? I was even thinking, I don't know how billing is on like wholesale flower statements. Do they need to check those kind of receipts or is that a different okay?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

So I think when flowers are coming in, let's do that one first. When uh invoice comes in for flowers, typically the the employees should be checking those off when they come in, right? I have 25 of this carnation, I have 50 roses, and just double checking everything that comes in. That's just I think common that people are doing that, Lori. I think employees or flower processors that they'll take care of that. The one that they don't do is the other one you mentioned, is the wire service statement. It is so complicated for most of those that shops just like look at them and don't know what to think. And even bookkeepers don't know the breakdown of that. Um, so I've talked to many bookkeepers who are like, okay, so this goes here and this goes here, because some of it's a credit and others of a debit. And then you have to break out, okay, if I'm buying flowers from the vendor, I have to put that in the flower category for PL. If I'm getting containers from my wire service company, I need to break that out and it needs to go to cost of goods sold as well. So it gets confusing. It really does. And that's one thing that I do quite often is take a look at them and go, okay, you probably don't need this, and you might consider this, you know. So, and a lot of times it's just explaining to them what these fees are for. Right. But uh as we're talking, you know, there's some fees that can be taken off of there that you're not even aware of. Yeah, it's it's like hotels do that too sometimes. They do, Lori. And they're like, oh, that tax is because of the city, and this is because of the county. And I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Yeah, I know. My husband has argued some of those and they've removed them. Oh, really? I didn't know you could even look there. There's a couple ones. I don't know about the taxes, but but there's been a couple of charges before on our thing that he's like, no, and they've removed it. I can't remember where we were. It might have even been in Hawaii, but he was like, that makes no sense. This this is not justifiable. And it wasn't even that much money, it was more the point. You know, it was like, I don't know, $30 of something. But he was like, that's ridiculous. That but all of those had a lot of things. Well, that's what he's saying. He's like, that made no sense. But I'm saying it's super easy, you know, to just throw in these another line item, right? And we just think we have to pay it.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah. And that's happening, like you're saying, on credit cards, it's happening on the wire service statements. I mean, there's some of those things that are like you're saying that Mark's doing are a little negotiable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're just thinking about your bottom line, and that and that's what you have to think about.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Well, because when you look at that and think about for the full calendar year, all of that adds up.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Those three dollars is $36 a year. And we're like, uh, but you know, if you have two or three of those, get three of them, you're over a hundred bucks, you know, better stay in your pocket than somebody else's. So there's one thing that I find is very helpful, especially on credit cards, because when I was a shop owner and we did put things on a credit card, and then at the end of the month, and you have to categorize those and put them in the right category so you know, oh, these work for cost of goods sold. This is when I was feeding my staff, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yeah, for whatever.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, you know, this is for staff. So what we did, and I think many shops will do this, is they have different credit cards for different things. Like we had a fuel credit card, so it was just for fuel and any expenses for vehicles. So this was specifically went to the driver, he took it and got gas, and then anything that was about vehicles was on that card. Okay. Easy now. Then I just put that on my PL. I put it in the category it needs and it's easy. Other one is for travel. If you're traveling, like you're saying with Mark, whether I'm going to a hotel, whether I'm doing my flights, everything could be on the same credit card so that you have that categorized together. Again, merchandise, anything for cost of goods sold. These are all for my containers. Oh, these are for my fresh flowers. And you can have one credit card company, like I have American Express, but I have four different cards. One I use for, yeah. One I use for recurring charges. So that's like our mail or light and things that are coming through every month. And then we have one that we use for travel. And so it really does help when you're breaking things down that you know which category when that bill comes through. Oh, these are all travel. Oh, these will be categories for concurrence. Wow. This is really smart. It it helps uh, and and I know that other shops will probably be doing this, but it does help make it easier at that end of the month when you're trying to break down that whole statement of what the heck is going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Why do you choose like American Express over Visa?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Though we did some research to figure out what it was we were gonna do. We also have a Visa card because some places do not take American Express, right? So you have to have a Master Hurt or a Visa for back purposes. But I think it was the more the perks that we got, points that you could use.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah. Well, and that was what I was gonna bring up. Make sure you're researching and get something that's gonna give you a little something back, you know, as well. When we had shop talk this week, there was um that just reminded me, somebody said in the afternoon one that their shop just stopped taking American Express. And that because the why did they do because the percentages went up or something?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, the fee for the the percentage for American Express went up. Yeah. And it uh always has been more, you know, that it takes more, but evidently it must have gone up again. So I'm not sure. No. Everybody has to make those decisions of what makes the most sense for them. And the other thing is watch when you're paying your bills. Like if you pay your flower bill with a credit card, because some people will do that, make sure you're not paying that convenience fee. Yeah. Because you're better off to just write a check if that's the case. Yeah. Because that convenience fee, if you look at that, it's not giving you the convenience, you're paying for that. You're paying for it, but it also doesn't outweigh what perks you're getting on your credit card. 90% of the time. I mean, if you do the points guy, you know, look at him online.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Exactly. You know, yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, it's like seven-tenths of a cent that you're getting on some of those points. And so, yeah, it's not worth it. If they'll let you do it without, okay, that's fine. But watch when you're paying those convenience fees, what makes sense for you or not. Yeah. So the the other thing, Lori, then I wondered if you knew, is it on your phone? And I don't have an Android, but I'm guessing it's pretty much the same. You can check to see if you're paying a subscription fee for your apps that are on your phone. Yes. Because sometimes you sign up for the an app and so much per month, and you kind of forget about it because that happened to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Okay. It was a couple of years ago. Mark and I were driving back from Tulsa back to Houston, and it was during March Madness. Oh, yeah. And he needed to listen to a game. And so I downloaded an app, I can't remember which app, and it was like seven days free.

unknown 18:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah, credit card. Forgot. Uh, and then like six months later, I'm like, why am I getting these notifications for this billing of this random app? Anyway, I had subscribed to it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, learned that the hard way too.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

So you can get rid of it on your phone. So you just go to the your general settings, like go to settings and you just type in subscriptions and it will tell you what you have, and you can opt out at that point.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

So I didn't know that. It took me forever to figure out how to find it. I didn't know you could just type in subscription.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yeah, yeah. General subscriptions. And anybody who has children who might be playing with your phone and getting games and subscribing to games, I just said this is just a little tip. You might want to check general settings, go just type in subscriptions. All of those will pop up and hopefully have no subscriptions, which is fine.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

That's crazy. Yeah, good things to remember because that they always get you the it's free, but put in your credit card.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Mm-hmm. You don't even have to put your credit card in anymore with some of these apps because oh, you just have to like double approve because they've got everything exactly approved for this app, and you're like, okay, well, that's easy. Cards tied to my phone.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yes. Yeah, that makes it even worse.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So those are our tips for today, Lori. I mean, it's really n put your eyes on your bill each month, especially your credit card. Look at those recurring ones, see if there's anything you can get off of there. Be just be mindful of all those little extra fees that you could be putting money in your pocket rather than paying for something you're really not using. And then know your subscriptions and get rid of something if you can. So, this was really about business this time.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

I'm saying pleasure worries is all business. No pleasure. I don't take pleasure in any of this. That's why I don't do it. Okay, next week we'll do something a little more fun. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the Business of Pleasure of Flowers to your food. Or please.