life comes at you fast most of it is just smoke and mirrors we're here to clear the air whether
it's the can't make this up moments or the hard truths hitting our streets in our state
we're finding the signal and all that noise no spin no nonsense just the facts the fallout
and a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor and a little bit of humor. Grab your coffee. It's time for the morning drip on WRTO.FM Radio Free Georgia. Hey everybody good morning and welcome to the morning drip for what is today? Today is Wednesday 29th of July 2026. It's me Grady D and we have Mike B in the house once again.
It is midweek.
Yeah, it is midweek.
Well, that's how you say it in German, basically.
Mitvok is Wednesday.
Mitvok.
Midvok, midweek.
Okay.
All right.
That's cool.
I like that.
That's a little bit of trivia for the day.
Yeah.
Yeah, a little bit of trivia.
I like trivia.
That's actually one of the things I think sometimes aggravates my family is because I am one of these that loves to offer little tidbits of trivia, usually at the most inopportune times, like right in the middle of a show because it strikes me, you know, or I see an actor or an actress and I'm like, oh, I need to.
Where have I seen this person before?
And then I'm like, I need to do this?
I'm going to do this.
of our show notes for today.
That's actually got our call call in number, which is 229-520-5957.
And that's also our 24-7-365 text number.
Of course, you can email us morningdrip at wrto.fm.
And I have to apologize.
Last week, I think I may have said the morning drip.
It's I don't have the the in front of it, though I'm thinking about registering that domain just to be I don't know.
Now that I've said it, somebody's going to register it and hijack it from me.
But anyway, I'm doing that right now.
Oh, I appreciate it.
Just go ahead and forward that on over.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Morning drip at wrto.fm.
On this day, 1981, for any of you that really likes trivia, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a grand ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which was one of the most watched TV events in history.
I forget.
I saw the blurb.
It was like so many millions of people tuned in to watch this.
I don't understand the fascination that Americans have with British royalty.
I just I don't get it.
I think it's one of those things that we don't want, but we like to watch.
It's like no kings here, but we need to see the king or and queen in other countries.
Is that it?
Look how look how happy they are.
I mean, it's like it's like it's celebrities.
I guess same reason people watch with the Jersey Shore back in the day.
Was that back in the day?
Is that show not on?
That show hadn't been on in like a decade and a half, if I remember correctly.
I mean, Big Brother still runs their own like season 472, but I think Survivor is still older than that.
Yeah, it's about a thousand.
What's funny, and that always kills me as they do like two to three seasons a year.
So, yeah, that's like American Idol.
You know, the last time I saw it, it was like and what I mean when I say see it is I never watched American Idol.
I don't like any of those types of shows.
Yeah, I don't either.
You know, the OG is Star Search, so they can bite me.
But I think it was like season 34, and I'm like, this thing has not been going for 34 years.
You know, I know where I was 34 years ago.
Well, approximately where I was 34 years ago, and I can guarantee you American Idol was not on television at that point.
We didn't have any of the technology that would have really allowed them to do like the voting and what have you.
So, anyway, let's talk about the weather real quick.
It's going to be hot, hot, hot.
Looking at temps of 95 with a real feel of 111, mostly cloudy skies.
Might actually have a stray shower or two.
And as I keep harping on, stay hydrated.
You know, if you can take breaks, take them as often as you can.
Hopefully, you're not having to work outside.
Yeah.
I don't know about you, but I'm having to pattern my day around this weather to make sure that if I know I'm going to be in an environment that's unusually warm, that I need to make sure that I get there early.
And I'm peacing out usually by 10 or 11 o'clock.
Yeah, I need to go down to Miami and shop for some clothes.
You can't wear cotton in this mess.
Okay, you confuse me.
Why specifically Miami?
Because everybody wears a breathable, flowy white suit.
Did you see Miami Vice?
Is that show still on?
I used to actually have the Miami Vice get-up.
Every time I think of dressing in Miami, it's Don Johnson in a white Armani suit.
I actually had that suit.
Now, it wasn't Armani or anything, but I had the pleated pants.
I had the shirt, and I had the jacket, and that was it.
They were cheap rip-offs, knock-offs, or whatever, but I did have it.
I tried my damnedest in my teenage years.
Because we're talking about a show that was popular in the mid-'80s, folks.
And yes, Don Johnson's still around.
What's sad is I cannot remember the actor that played Tubbs.
Played who?
Tubbs, his partner.
No.
I don't know.
See?
Right there.
You know they've redone Miami Vice as a movie once, and they're doing it again.
I never watched the first movie they did.
I never did either.
It's got some great actors in it.
But yeah, now they're doing a reboot of the reboot, so I don't know.
They're going for – what's that franchise that went crazy?
Fast and Furious.
They're going for Fast and Furious numbers.
I don't think anybody can catch up with Fast and Furious, honestly.
Yeah, they can just make their own now.
I think they're ending at Fast and Furious 12, I believe, because the last one was 11.
They had Jason Momoa as the bad guy, which you want to see somebody chew through some damn scenery.
He was absolutely phenomenal in that movie.
He was hilarious.
I don't care what you say.
That was talent.
Yeah.
Have you seen the Minecraft movie?
No.
Oh, you've got to watch that, man.
That's another one where you take someone like Jason Momoa, who can – he can do the same types of roles that Dwayne The Rock Johnson does.
But – and it's funny.
Both of them have a massive comedic bone in them.
So in Minecraft movie, he's starring opposite Jack Black.
Oh, okay.
And, of course, now they're making a sequel.
But that – you would think, okay, Minecraft, how the hell can you craft a movie around a game such as Minecraft?
Believe it or not, they pulled it off, and they pulled it off well.
I think that movie's made almost a billion dollars or something, which is – just blows my mind.
And I went into it thinking, okay, this is going to look – this is going to be stupid.
No, it was funny as hell.
So – and it's available for you, Ben, so you can watch it anytime.
Okay.
Okay, so we're talking about – you know, we kind of veered off into movies and stuff like that.
But I come across this story that's talking about – and I've thought about not only what they are specifically talking about,
but a lot of all of our data, all right, even Facebook has a way when you can designate – I forget what the term is –
but you can designate somebody that can manage your personal profile when you have died
so that they can convert your page, if you will, your personal profile into a memorial-type site.
So it doesn't go away, but it lets people know that you're not conversing with a live person.
You might be conversing with a ghost, but you're not conversing with a live person.
And this one's talking about digital photos, making a plan for your digital photos after you die.
It's from popular science.
And they're talking about that, you know, as more of our lives move online,
that the experts are talking about how it's important to think about what happens to your digital photos.
and personal files after you die.
You know, used to – you'd have family photo albums that were stored on the bookshelf.
Many people now keep years of memories on their smartphones and cloud storage.
You know, you and I both have iPhones.
I know all my photos and videos go to iCloud, but they also go to Google Photos because I have – you know,
I pay $2.99 a month for extra – I think it's 200 gigs of storage with Google Photos
and then 200 gigs with iCloud for like another $2.99 or something like that.
And I also have mine backed up to my local network-attached storage.
So I've got them in three different locations.
So let's just say that if I take some photos that I shouldn't take or I make some video I shouldn't make,
I probably need to go to all three locations and make sure that they're deleted.
Yeah.
But if you're dead, you can't really be embarrassed.
That's true.
So to ensure loved ones can access those memory, major companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook offer tools that like users designate – that's it – legacy contact or a similar trusted person who can request access to their accounts after their death.
Some people also choose to name a digital executor in their will.
That's a new one on me.
Unlike a legacy contact, a digital executor can be given broader responsibilities such as preserving photos and important files, closing online accounts, deleting sensitive information, managing websites, or transferring digital assets according to the person's wishes.
You've got Everplans, which is a service that can help people organize those arrangements and document their digital estate plans.
That's something that I never thought would – it never occurred to me that that would be a business model, a service that would spring up on helping loved ones who are grieving deal with their deceased loved ones' digital assets.
I never thought about that.
Yeah.
We don't worry about that for ourselves because I think we can navigate that, but a lot of folks can't.
I mean, even we would have trouble in some cases.
You just find things you never knew of.
That is true.
I have – I'm not a very organized person to begin with, and all my efforts, every single time that I try to better organize my digital files, I only get about 50% of the way there at best.
There have been many times over my lifetime that I have started the process of trying to consolidate all this stuff into one location and provide my family with instructions on how to get to it.
The last attempt, and it's probably more concrete than anything else that I've done in the past, but it really doesn't deal with the photos, photos, videos, and that kind of thing.
But I created a share on our network attached storage for the family network, the office network, et cetera, called Family Files, and everything that I think is important that the family may need access to after I die is in there, and everybody has access to it.
And what I mean everybody is everybody's account.
It's not open to the – just open, open, but –
Right, everybody who matters.
Yeah, everybody that matters.
And my youngest son, middle child, he basically has the keys to the kingdom because he's an admin on basically everything I have.
And so my instructions to my family have always been, when I die, he's going to be your point person because he's going to be the only one.
And it may be his older brother, you know, together, but they're going to be the ones that have to go through and figure out all this stuff and get access to important documents, maybe life insurance paperwork and things like that.
Because when my mom passed in 2019, I had a hell of a time trying to figure out where all her documents were, and none of her stuff was digital.
None.
So I was relying on, you know, manila folders that said life insurance.
And the weirdest thing that actually happened to me was to get a check in the mail one day from a life insurance company.
There was a substantial amount of money at the time that I had no idea that she even had that life insurance policy whatsoever.
I mean, I literally just started calling people, calling companies and going, hey, this is her name.
I'm her son.
She's passed away.
Does she have a life insurance policy with you?
Because, and these, you know, it's not like I just went down a list and said, okay, I'm calling this one, you know, MetLife, New York Life, all of those.
It was, it was a list where she had at least had had policy sometime in her lifetime.
And so that was the only place I knew to, I knew to start.
So it, you know, with all the advancements in technology that we have, it really does open up other areas that we have to contemplate when it comes to our digital photos.
You know, how do we back them up?
How do we store copies?
You know, how do, how do we preserve all these things that used to be in a tangible format, but now only exist as an NFT?
No, I'm kidding.
No, no fucking NFTs.
So, yeah, do you have a strategy yourself for you and your family?
It's one of those things that's been in development.
I think about it a lot, especially being a sole operator in my business.
You know, if, if I kick the bucket, who's going to figure that out?
So that's, you know, that's even more complex, but as far as my family, I mean, it starts with my password manager.
I think that's, that would be the first place to go to figure out where I have an account.
Like you, you bought a, a used vinyl at some obscure record store.
One time you had to create an account.
So yeah, just, I want them all gone.
When I kick the bucket, I don't want my family to wonder if anybody has information to, to be compromised.
It's almost like you need some kind of kill switch.
It's like, if I don't check, if, if I don't go and click this button once every 48 hours, then it just goes out and wipes everything off the planet.
Yeah.
I'm kind of like that with, with, uh, I'm right there with you.
I have a password manager.
I'm the only one in my family that uses a password manager.
I have tried to get my wife to use one.
Nope.
Pen and paper.
Uh, Tyler, for whatever reason, I don't know why he just tries to remember them.
We'll get on him, but I've got, I've got to, well, like you say, you know,
that one time 10 years ago when I bought whatever it was and I had to create an account
and I've probably never logged back into that system, which means it usually winds up on a,
a list of compromised accounts at some point.
But yeah, I have on, again, in the, uh, on the network attached storage,
I have a folder with a file that has the email address and password for my, uh, password manager.
Because, you know, if they don't know that they're not getting into it, that the vault's encrypted,
the company's not going to give it to them.
You just shut out of luck.
And so, and the number of times I've had to use it because, you know, I'll, maybe it's a new PC or something.
I'm like, okay, well, I need to install Bitwarden again.
And then I got to log in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, it's, um, again, like I said, it's, it's an interesting thing to have to think about
along with what you normally would think about when, when you have a loved one that,
that passes.
And just like you, you know, I'm, I'm the sole person in the business.
And so it's like, okay, you, you got to figure out these services that we pay for
and we pay for them for the benefit of our clients and things like that.
And if somebody doesn't weigh in, those things keep getting billed, you know,
even though we're no longer using them because we're dead.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
Yeah.
It's, they made me think.
Power of attorney would be a good thing to do too.
Password manager and a power of attorney.
I haven't really thought about power of attorney.
Well, grant it to your wife.
If you kick the bucket, she can legally operate as you.
Yeah.
So if you do that before you die, then she doesn't have to go fight
to turn off services or cancel accounts or, you know.
Can you have two powers of attorney or does it just have to be one person?
I would assume you can give away your power to as many people as you want.
It's a free country.
Yeah.
No, I don't know.
I just, I just know it.
I did one.
I had to do one before I deployed for training.
And since I was married, I had to do a power of attorney because I think we were flying somewhere.
Shows the confidence in the aircraft.
We're going to be flying, but chances are higher you're going to die in the crash.
So go ahead and do a power of attorney.
You need to do a power of attorney before you get your butt on this plane, son.
That's wild.
That is, that is wild.
All right.
Well, for all of you out there in radio, online radio land and podcast land and all that,
what do you think about your digital photos after you died?
And more so, you know, all your digital assets, your, your social media accounts, your banking accounts,
just any and everything that you have out there.
Let us know 229-520-5957, or you can text 247-365, same number 229-520-5957,
or shoot us an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
We're going to take a break and we'll be back in a bit.
Your alarm clock is a liar.
It says it's time to wake up, but you're still sleepwalking through life.
Stop the snooze, start the brew.
It's the morning drip on wrto.fm.
We're serving up unfiltered truth, questionable advice, and enough caffeine-fueled energy to power the entire Piedmont Plateau.
The morning drip, because sleeping in is for people with nothing to say.
Weekdays, only on Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the morning drip.
It is the morning drip for Wednesday, the 29th of July, 2026.
It's me, Grady D, and Mike B in the house.
We here.
Hey, are you still on Verizon for your cell phone service?
I am.
Okay.
So, this is a little ad.
I want to talk to everybody about Visible.
And I've told you this story.
Several years ago, my family and I, we were paying over $400 a month for service with Verizon.
But we switched to Visible and dropped that down to $25 per phone.
And the funny thing is, Visible is owned by Verizon, and it uses Verizon's nationwide 5G network.
So, if you decide to leave Verizon, move over to Visible, you're not leaving the network.
You're on the same network.
It's just, basically, Visible is this no-frills cell phone service.
And it's not like you have to settle for reduced services or anything like that.
You still get, like I say, 5G if you're in an area that has 5G.
They actually have a plan that's a little bit more expensive.
I think it's either $35 or $45 a month where you get the ultra-wide 5G, you know, for those highfalutin places that have that.
We don't have that down here in South Central Georgia, as far as I know.
Unlimited text, unlimited calls, basically unlimited data.
And when I say $25, I mean $25.
It's not $25 and then this fee and that fee, and by the time you're done, it's like $32, $33, or $34.
No, it's a flat $25.
Or if you go to their other plan, it's a flat $45.
So, you know, it makes sense, you know, even if you're on AT&T or T-Mobile, to look at Visible.
And so, what I'm going to do is offer everybody that's listening to this live or in podcast form, go to morningdrip.show.com.
And if you do, we get $20.
You get $20 off of your first bill.
And you get some really good cell phone service and save some money on that cell phone bill.
So, there are a limited number of spots for this promotion.
So, you need to switch today.
And I want to thank Visible for letting us have them right here as an affiliate.
Talking about money, I like to talk about money.
Actually, I don't like to talk about money.
I like to make money.
I don't like to talk about it because it usually means I'm having to pay somebody.
How many checks do you actually write per year, sir, on average?
Dude, I had to reorder checks earlier this year.
Really?
Yeah.
Because I used to write them, you know, the pool service didn't have automated payments.
Well, they still don't.
I think they don't want to pay the fees.
And what else do I write a check for?
We have to, like, some school activity.
Mm-hmm.
Well, we need, you know, $25 for a field trip.
And, you know, you don't send a young kid to school with cash.
Or a credit card.
Yeah, or a credit card.
So, you know, those kind of things.
And just, look, see what I wrote checks for recently.
Oh, I write a check for cash so I can get my allowance every month.
You pay yourself a check instead of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, because even if you use a debit card, depending on which ATM, you're going to get dinged for some kind of service fee.
Yeah.
I paid the accountant for filing last year's taxes.
Yeah.
We get medical bills in the mail from diagnostics or the hospital.
You know, whatever insurance didn't pay, we have to pay.
And I don't want to make it easy for them, so I mail them a physical check.
Okay.
That's got to be the most passive-aggressive thing I've heard today is I'm not going to make it easy on them.
I'm going to write them a check.
Yeah.
And don't get me wrong.
Don't hate me for this.
But during COVID, I licked the envelope.
No, you didn't.
Uh-huh.
I licked it and sent it to them.
Well, I mean, that's fair.
Not when I had COVID, but when it was going around, you know.
Yeah.
I mean, I still, on the rare occasion where I actually have to mail something, I still lick the envelope.
I'm one of those strange people.
I actually like the taste of that glue.
Yeah.
Well, when you grow up with it.
Exactly, exactly.
Now, I know in a lot of situations, like in small businesses or what have you, where they need to send out a lot of checks, they actually have like a sponge or some kind of thing where you just run across it.
And then, because they don't expect the person to actually sit there and lick, you know, a hundred envelopes.
I mean, at some point, you lose your taste buds.
Yeah.
So, I honestly, before we get into the meat of this story, I think I write one check on average per year.
Now, I get checks from my clients that are not on some type of, because I have three different ways that I bill.
If it's under a certain threshold, I'm okay with eating the credit card processing fees, because it's an automated invoice.
It gets automatically paid when the invoice is sent out.
And I find that convenience of making sure that the cash flow is there.
I'll take the hit, you know, the few dollars that I take the hit.
The other way is if it's above that threshold and they're willing to do it, they can do basically the clearinghouse method, which they put their bank account information in, which I never see.
It goes through a third party thing like Plaid or whatever, and I get dinged a percent.
But then on the real big ones, no, they just they have to send me a check because even even one percent of a three thousand dollar invoice is more than I want to pay.
You know, yeah, but I do for some of them.
Yeah, they pay like they pay that day and they never complain.
That's a lot of money, but they don't complain and they pay it right away.
And I don't mind that.
So there's the reason why we're talking about this is there's a question.
Should paper checks be abolished like we've just recently abolished the penny?
And it seems that checks may be far less common than they once were, of course.
I mean, you and I are kind of examples of that.
You write more than I do, but they do remain an important part of the U.S.
payment system, especially for businesses, older Americans and certain large transactions.
As we just discussed, American still wrote about nine point two billion checks in twenty twenty four with a total value exceeding twenty four trillion.
You know, I'm not sure I'll ever get used to seeing numbers like that.
Trillion.
I can't fathom trillion, but says the average person now writes only about twenty seven checks a year down dramatically from one hundred and fifty in two thousand.
Would you say you're you're above or below that twenty seven checks a year?
Are you an average person?
It's probably below that.
Mm hmm.
Because it's tops to a month.
I gotcha.
So, yeah.
So at most twenty four a year.
Yeah.
The average check has gone to about twenty six hundred dollars, which reflects our continued use for higher value payments.
And as we've just discussed, that's because when you start getting into those numbers, anything electronic is going to hit you from one percent to three percent easily.
I mean, the credit card processing fees.
My accounting software, my billing software that I use notified me two months ago that the credit card transaction fees were going up.
And I'm like, OK, which is funny because they use Stripe and Stripe, as far as I know, did not raise theirs.
So I don't know if it's just OK.
They're like, well, we've got we we see an opportunity to make a little bit more money.
So we're going to raise these fees.
And oh, by the way, last week is like, hey, you know, you pay us thirty eight dollars a month.
We're we're not going to provide you with any new features.
But we're going to go up to forty three dollars a month starting in September.
I'm like, great.
That is fantastic because our board wants a new fountain in the lobby.
Some somebody needs to make repairs on their yacht.
Times are tough.
They are.
Small businesses do remain among the biggest supporters of paper checks because they provide greater control over spending, often requiring two signatures for approval.
I used to have one company, one client that did require they'd have to have two signatures, which did delay the payment sometimes, which did irk me.
But now it's now now now there's a singular person and that's not better because he's not available, but maybe one or two times during the week.
So, you know, it is what it is.
It does help avoid the credit card processing fees, as we just discussed.
Older Americans also continue to rely on checks.
I know my mom did more than younger generations.
I know my in-laws do and many consumers unknowingly use them when the banks mail paper checks on their behalf through online bill pay services.
That's like when I had all these trees cut down, I used I used bill pay to pay him.
And so they sent him a physical check.
And I'm OK with that because I don't consider that me writing a check because I don't have to go get my checkbook.
I don't have to actually write it out.
I don't have to mail it.
I don't have to hand it to him.
And I mean, he was sitting right here in in the office studio and I said, you find what bill pay, it'll it'll take like five to seven days to get to you.
And he's like, yeah, that's fine.
Don't worry about it.
So I will do that.
You know, I can't even remember what I've I'd have to look at my register to see what the last check was and why I wrote it.
Honestly, I don't remember.
But checks also remain common for estate settlements, insurance refunds and other situations where electronic payments aren't always practical.
If I remember correctly, part of this, what was in this this story is the fact that the federal government, I believe there was an executive order that Trump actually signed that the federal government will no longer send out paper checks.
You either that not that I ever get a refund anymore, but that's like whenever I pay my taxes, my taxes are automatically deducted from, you know, one of my accounts that I designate.
And so the flip side of that is like when Georgia decides that they want to share in the wealth of the of of the abundance of taxes that they've collected and decide that they're going to send out two hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars in refunds, if you will, or rebates or whatever they want to call it.
It normally gets sent back to the account that you use to either get your tax refunds or to pay your taxes.
They may send out paper checks, but that's because that's at a state level.
But as my understanding now at the federal level, if you are a social security recipient, which this affects the older folks, of course, you will no longer get a physical check in the mail.
It automatically gets you have to have a checking account or you have to have some form of a debit only account to get your your monthly income, basically.
Yeah, it's just like a direct deposit.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
And I understand.
I mean, direct deposit doesn't cost anything.
That's the thing.
As far as I know, no company that I've ever worked for that did direct deposit said, OK, well, this is costing us money.
No, it costs them more money to print the damn checks and even hand those to you than it is just to go in and go, OK, well, here's your here's your weekly pay and just hit a few buttons.
And it goes into your your checking account within 24 hours.
You know, well, think about it.
I got a I got a payment in the mail from a client and they they do so much mail.
They have a mail machine that electronically puts the postage on there.
Right.
The check they sent me, it cost them 78 cents to mail me that check.
Can you imagine how many I mean, just in Social Security checks that they mail out every month?
Yeah.
That's 78 cents per envelope.
I mean, it's, you know, and the wear and tear on a printer.
Those poor printers.
I hate printers.
But well, even if they got a reduced rate for like bulk mail or something.
Yeah.
I mean, we look at it as like you say, 78 cents.
But when you multiply that by.
How many millions?
Yeah, that that actually that adds up.
And so I do understand why it's like, OK, well, let's just do all this electronically, which I can't remember.
I talked about it last week or not.
But, you know, one of my clients doesn't do direct deposit even for his 10 or 10 or so employees.
And I'm like, why don't you?
Why don't you do that?
And he's like, believe it or not, we actually have about maybe three or four of these folks don't even have checking accounts.
And I'm like, OK, well, they need a checking account.
I don't I don't know.
They don't.
I don't care what their reasons are.
And I'm not being an asshole.
But, you know, if I was running a business that size, even with 10 to 20 employees, I am trying whatever I can to make sure that my expenses stay as low as possible.
You're getting a check.
You're getting your your your salary in direct deposit because you can go get a debit only where you don't technically have to have a checking account.
But it gets it gets deposited to that debit card, which is essentially still an account.
But I don't know.
I don't understand the reasoning for people that are like, oh, I'm not doing that.
I don't trust it.
OK.
All right.
You live the life you're willing to put up with.
Well, I guess.
Well, wise words on this Wednesday from might be OK.
Otherwise, in other words, that it's not our problem.
I mean, that's fair.
It is my problem if I'm the business owner and I'm trying to tell the person that you've got to if you work here, you're going to do direct deposit.
And they tell me, well, then I guess I'm not going to work here.
OK, well, well, you can work here.
I just can't pay you.
Yeah.
Well, I invite you and I appreciate the fact that you're providing your labor free of charge.
So you don't want to if you don't want to get paid, you don't want to get paid.
But, yeah, I guess some folks just don't don't trust banks.
Yeah, that's like and I'm probably going to get some flack for this.
But the place that I used to work for, we started implementing the time clocks and they were the type where they were biometric.
You put your hand in and punched in a four digit code.
And out of 250 employees that work for this organization, we had a handful that were like, I ain't going to do that.
That's the mark of the beast right there.
And I did everything I could not to laugh.
And I was like, OK, all right.
Well, and this wasn't my call because I was just in charge of, you know, the tech side of it.
But if it had been my call, I would have been the asshole that said, well, I guess you just won't get paid then.
Because if you're not clocking in and clocking out on this thing that we've put in that is going to streamline all of this and make processing your time sheets even faster and more accurate.
So while concerns remain about check fraud and bounce checks, those problems affect only a small percentage of the billions of checks written each year as the Federal Reserve weighs the future of its check processing system.
That's what I was talking about.
Many payment experts argue that unlike the recently eliminated penny, paper checks still serve as an important purpose, if I could read today, and should remain available as a payment option rather than being phased out entirely.
I do agree with that.
I think the ability to write a check should still be there.
But I do believe that every opportunity that you can do it, try to avoid writing a check.
As far as, you know, large numbers of checks, like what we were just talking about, Social Security and things like that, where it's going to cost a crap ton of money just to mail the damn things out.
Yeah.
I mean, we need instruments like checks for a myriad of purposes that, you know, some folks don't see.
But if I were, if I were driving down to Florida to buy an airplane with cash and I get pulled over with that much money, they're going to have questions.
Well, that's the reason why you do money transfers.
You've seen that on the shows.
You don't buy airplanes with cash.
I know that.
But just, I'm just saying, if you, if you carry, well, there's some amount that if you, if you, if you have on you, it's really weird.
There's a, there's an amount of money that you are not allowed to have.
Yeah.
Because, well, apparently you're up to no good.
You're doing something nefarious.
You're a drug dealer, something.
There will be questions.
I mean, if you're legitimate, they're all good, but they're going to waste your time.
Oh, the number of times you've seen our, you know, reports and articles about asset, asset forfeiture.
Yeah.
Where something like that, legitimately someone was carrying $20,000 in cash.
They got pulled over because they were speeding or whatever.
Number one, they should not have agreed to the search, but you know, that that's a different story.
And then the cops are like, oh, $20,000.
We need some new bulletproof vests because once they get their grubby hands on that stuff, you don't get it back.
Yeah.
I've heard that.
And, you know, and I'm not shitting on law enforcement in that respect.
I'm just saying that there are some greedy fuckers out there that will do that kind of stuff.
And then if you do get it back, it's going to take you probably a couple of years and it's going to cost you, wind up costing you more than the money you're trying to get back.
So, yeah, don't, don't be driving around with $20,000 in cash.
You probably should have checks.
All right.
Well, we're going to take another short break, but the phone lines are still open to 2-9-5-2-0-5-9-5-7 or send us a text 24-7-365, same number.
Your coffee is, well, you know, your boss is, well, you know, it's time to wake up.
Join the revolution of the caffeine addicted, The Morning Drip, every morning on WRTO.fm.
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Warning, make all sudden outbursts of free thought.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Morning Drip for Wednesday, the 29th of July, 2026.
Grady D and Mike B in the house.
Is this show still on?
Yeah, the show is still on.
Why is it not on?
Oh, okay.
Well, they canceled Miami Vice.
I didn't know.
Well, as far as I know, I have not canceled this one yet.
I'm trying not to.
Okay, you let me know?
Yeah, I'll let you know.
All right.
You know, might even do it mid, you know, mid-show like they did those poor assholes at ESPN.
Only reason why I know that is because it was on the Philip DeFranco show.
I have, otherwise, I don't give two shits about stuff on ESPN.
But yeah, I mean, right in the middle of the show, I forget the guy's name.
He'd been there like 11 years or something.
They were like, yeah, you're fired.
And he was still on the air.
So.
Good story.
All right.
Well, the phone lines are still open for a little bit longer.
229-520-5957.
So, last story.
Let's talk about Apple.
So, NVIDIA has been the world's most valuable publicly traded company for a long time now.
And Apple was at one point within this week.
They are, again, market value of $4.94 trillion, which surpassed NVIDIA's $4.75 trillion.
Again, trillion.
My brain.
It just explodes.
I mean, yeah.
Analysts say investors are rewarding Apple for taking a disciplined approach.
I love this.
Disciplined approach to artificial intelligence, keeping capital spending in check while competitors
such as Alphabet, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta invest heavily in AI infrastructure.
Apple's actually reduced capital expenditures over the past three quarters, a strategy many
investors believe will help protect profit margins while still expanding its Apple intelligence
features.
Now, side note here, I love the fact it was like we're taking a disciplined approach to
artificial intelligence.
A couple of years ago, their disciplined approach was instead of calling it artificial intelligence,
they renamed it Apple intelligence, which unfortunately they fell flat on their damn faces because it
was anything but intelligent.
Yeah, that was, we didn't see that coming.
We expected higher quality from Apple.
We're like, yes, cool.
And then, yeah.
And then.
Nothing.
Yeah.
Nothing.
I, Apple has this, they have this history of coming out with features that have already existed
in the other platform for a number of years, but when they come out with it, they come out
with it in such a way that it's never been done before.
Well, yeah, it's never been done before inside Apple.
And that's not to say that it's not typically a, a parody on par with the existing function
or feature on the other platform.
But a lot of times it is a little bit better, but Apple intelligence was not one of those.
Now I can say this, I am running iOS 27 beta two and Siri is, and I said her name,
worlds apart, better than what's in iOS 26.
It just is.
And you can go online, go to YouTube, go, go to MKBHD.
He actually did a video and it's, I love these when he does this.
It's actually himself talking to himself, but it's two versions of himself about how Apple's
logistics makes sense that they don't necessarily have to own the AI part of it.
They own the hardware and that's where they're going to succeed because to make their SIRI
version better, it's actually using Google's Gemini.
They, they actually went to Google and basically said, Hey, yo bro, um, we don't really know
what we're doing here.
So can you help us out kind of thing?
I don't know what the fuck that accent was, but it was horrible.
So I'm, I'm impressed with the new version.
Have you tried any of the beta stuff yet?
Um, I've been running the beta for a long time.
I just, I'm, I've never developed a habit of using Siri.
Most of the time I use Gemini on my phone, but I have been trying it out where I would
just default to, you know, hitting the button or saying, Hey, her name, and then asking a
question and about eight out of 10 times, it'll give me what I need.
But if I need to do an in-depth search question or whatever, I'll either bring up the Gemini.
I used to use chat GPT all the time, but I have discovered that Jim, the Gemini app on
iOS is, works really, really well.
I also have Claude on there, but I've noticed that Claude is, you and I use Claude code a lot,
but I've even noticed that the GUI side of it, where you do queries and stuff still tend
to be more technical in nature than just general queries that I've done that I'll typically do
with, uh, with Gemini.
Yeah.
I, I treat the different models like, um, experts in their own field or, or, you know,
chat GPT is better for, uh, the softer side of Sears and Claude is, is master of the hardware
department.
Yeah.
I agree with that.
So along with this, uh, Apple is now rolling out a new leasing program called Apple Upgrade,
which will allow us customers to lease an iPhone starting at $17.99 a month through a partnership
with Klarna.
Uh, Klarna is one of these, if I remember correctly, they're one of these buy now, pay later companies,
which it's a sad Testament to the state of our economy that this is the way people, I
mean, I have heard of people having to buy groceries using these types of services, which
is just ridiculous.
you know, I think it was DoorDash that accepts now.
Yeah.
DoorDash or Grubhub.
One of them.
Yeah.
You can, you can literally pay a per month for a pizza.
That better be a hellacious pizza.
I mean, granted.
And then a couple of months after they had that announcement, there was a lot of defaulted
accounts after that.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
That's, uh, man, that's, that's just irresponsible.
That's what I, that's, you know, I, and I'm, I'm not downing anybody that's looking at going,
Hey, I can't, I can't afford, I can't afford to buy a supper.
So I'm, I'm going to need to parse it out with four payments over the next four weeks or
something.
I, you know, look, I understand that.
Maybe you shouldn't buy a pizza, but then again, I'm not going to shame anybody for that
because sometimes that might be the only way you can, you can feed your family is, you
know, I don't know, a $10 pizza from Domino's or something, or buy two of them for 20 bucks.
Yeah.
No, well not through DoorDash because it's going to cost you $43.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I mean, we even take advantage.
We primarily 99.9%.
Uh, if it's, if it's, um, pizza from, from a pizza, pizzeria, if you will, like that, it's
always Domino's for us.
They don't deliver to us out here.
So we always take advantage of their standard $7.99, single topping, two topping or whatever.
But when they do the unlimited toppings for $9.99 large, that's what we did last time.
And I dropped $60 on pizzas and wings because in our family, even when we have four of us
here, you know, that's that we we've calculated it out.
It's only a few bucks per meal.
So we'll eat on pizza for like two or three days, but I only do that about once every two
months because of the fact that it costs so much.
And I wait on their deals like that, but I can't imagine, you know, $65.
And then I'm like, yeah, I'm going to pay for this over four payments.
What?
Okay.
Yeah.
You could take one of those four payments and go to the grocery store.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I mean, I can buy-
Unless you live where we live.
We can't walk to the grocery store.
No, we've got to spend $2 in gas to get to the grocery store.
So I don't know.
Let's see.
It's $3.89 a gallon last time I filled up the Explorer.
So diesel's $5.
Again, it had gotten below that, right?
I think it went towards 4.20.
It didn't get below four, but I've been driving a lot less lately.
Probably out of necessity.
Yeah.
I just don't want to go anywhere.
Well, there's that.
And I try to group my travel together.
It's like, okay, you know, if I need to go see a client, I'm like, can I group these where
I need to see them?
I need to take care of this and I need to do that.
Oh yeah.
I don't go to town for just one thing, unless it's an emergency.
It's like Monday, we went to a client.
I took my daughter with me.
Then we left there and I had to go to Walgreens to drop off my phone to return it so I can get
my $560 back.
And I think there was one other place we had to go by and then came home.
So I made it a circuit to do that.
Yeah.
But yeah, the program offers one and two year leases for iPhones, similar options for
Apple Watches, Macs, and iPads.
Customers can return the device, purchase it, or upgrade to a new remodel when the lease
ends.
Sounds just like leasing a vehicle.
I mean, I can see the allure of $18 a month and you always have a new phone.
So, I mean, it's like double the insurance coverage, accidental coverage cost.
But the thing is, they say starting at $17.99, deeper into the article, which is not in this
summary, and the phone that I have right now would run like $45 a month.
I have a 17 Pro Max, I have 256 gigs of storage, so I didn't go, because I have discovered over
the years of owning iPhones, I don't use 256 gigs of storage on my phone.
I look at it now, I think I've used 100 and something.
And that's with the number of photos and videos that I take, which is probably lower than a lot
of people.
I've got a friend that's got a terabyte version of it, and he runs out of space.
I'm like, what are you doing with your life?
Why do you need that much space on a smartphone?
Because he doesn't want to buy a video camera.
I guess.
I mean, quite honestly, who needs to?
The cameras on these things are so phenomenal.
I mean, they're shooting entire movies on iPhones now, so.
Yeah.
But yeah, they say the new program will replace its existing iPhone upgrade program in the
United States.
And the thing is, when it comes to Apple products, for me personally, I have an Apple
card, so unfortunately, I cannot do this with iPhones anymore because they changed it, but
I work around it.
Years ago, you could buy an iPhone and pay for it over 12 months interest-free.
Now they require you to be connected to a cell phone company.
And unfortunately, of the list of cell phone companies that they give you.
Visible's not one?
Visible's not one of them.
So I have to buy my phone outright.
And so, like I say, I have to work around that.
But I still like, I'm still looking at potentially upgrading my laptop or getting a Mac mini.
I don't know, but it will be on that card interest-free over 12 to 24 months.
That's how I bought the current MacBook Air that I have, which is a 2022 model, which even
four years later still kicks ass.
I really don't have a valid reason to upgrade it unless I want a larger screen because that's
what I'm looking at is this is one of the smaller screens and I'm getting older and I can't
see shit anymore.
But this announcement comes as Apple prepares for expected product price increases driven
by rising component costs as investors await the company's quarterly earnings report, which
that right there, as I notated in our comments, is the reason why I went ahead and took the
leap and upgraded to the 17 Pro Max, even though the 18s are coming out in less, probably in
a month, month and a half.
But...
Oh, well, it also says right there the reason they are raising prices for the consumer.
investors await the company's quarterly earnings report.
Yeah.
So can they just eat the extra cost and provide a less expensive phone that we don't have to lease
monthly?
I mean, can they come out with a phone like they came out with a MacBook Neo?
You know, a lower end device that still gets the job done and still gets the job done fairly
decently.
Even though...
Yeah, a phone my dad would use.
Yeah.
Even though they went up 20% on all their other product lines.
I mean, the Neo started out at $599 and $699.
Now, it starts at $699 and $799.
The MacBook Pro that I was looking at went up by $500.
So, you know, that was a deciding factor for me not to pull the trigger at that point because
I kept debating, debating, debating, debating.
And so after that happened, and then I saw that they were raising the iPhone prices in
Japan and other countries, but they had not done it yet in the United States, but potentially
were going to even before the 18 came out.
That's the reason why I did what I did and upgraded my phone because I won't need another
phone for...
I think they say the average upgrade cycle now is four years.
People are keeping their phones for up to four years before they actually look at trading
them in and upgrading.
And so that's essentially four new phones because they come out with a new phone practically
every year now.
They do.
So now they're looking at, okay, now you can do it for every two years.
We'll just keep you on the hook.
Look, from a business standpoint, this kind of makes sense because we're all looking for
cash flow.
We're all looking for residual income.
That's the reason why everything is a God-blessed subscription now, but not everything needs to
be a subscription.
Not everything needs to be where I pay so much per month.
Just, I mean, this is like what we used to do when we would actually get our phones on
contract from the cell phone companies.
You know, your cell phone service would be 50 or $60, but you had a hardware fee of anywhere
from 35 to 45 or $50, depending on which phone you got.
And you could not get out of the contract unless you paid off the phone, which is what we all
did.
We paid off all of our phones when we moved to visible because I pulled out the abacus, aka
the spreadsheet, and did the calculations of how much it was going to cost me for the remainder
of the months versus the savings that I would get by switching over to visible and what I'd
have to come out of pocket to pay off the phone.
And it made more sense to actually pay the phones off and move over to visible than it
was to continue to pay another 12 or 14 months with Verizon.
So the analysts believe the leasing program can make higher price devices easier for consumers
to afford by emphasizing lower monthly payments instead of upfront costs, while also encouraging
more frequent upgrades.
And the earnings call will also mark Tim Cook's final quarterly report as CEO before he transitions
to executive chairman with long-term hardware executive John Ternus taking over as Apple's next
chief executive, which is going to be interesting to see what John does with the company.
I don't know.
Is he going to add another couple of trillion dollars during his tenure?
You mean like Cook did?
Yeah.
I think they're just waiting on five trillion and then Tim can step down.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Almost there.
Well, fortunately, I find myself still in the position that I would not necessarily need to
do this.
And, you know, I'm I'm not one that likes to shit on people when they can't be fiscally
responsible.
They can't manage budgets.
I mean, God knows I've had my my years where I've made some really stupid decisions on what
I spent money on, how much I spent and things like that.
But again, this this is very telling of where we are as a society here in the United States
when we literally are having to finance our a phone, a device that you pretty much can't
get by with not having one in modern society.
Now, you know, you just it's almost a given you don't have a phone.
You're almost shunned now if you don't have a phone.
And look, it's like not having a bank account.
Exactly.
I mean, get a flip phone.
You can get you can get those for 60 bucks.
I mean, just something.
But anyway.
All right.
Well, that's it for today's show.
I appreciate everybody that's not listening live, but phone lines are closed.
But as I said, you can text that number 24 7 365.
Let us know if you have any comments or questions or what have you about anything we covered in
today's show.
Or you can send us an email morning drip at WRTO dot FM.
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and broadcasting it.
So go over to morning drip dot show to get this episode and all the previous episodes.
They're up for free for 14 days.
And then it's just $7 a month if you want the back catalog.
So that's it for today.
Remember, it's going to be up to 111 degrees on the real feel.
When I walked out here at seven o'clock, it was already 80 degrees with a real feel of
91.
So it's going to be a rough one.
And you got to be careful because heat stroke ain't no joke.
And just overheating without a heat stroke ain't no joke.
It'll I have felt the effects of some of the stuff that we've been doing around the house
on Fridays and Saturdays.
So take care of yourselves.
And any words of wisdom, Mike B?
Um, you got three.
Like, comment, subscribe.
All right, everybody.
That'll be it.
We'll see you in the morning.
Good morning.