Just as with my food budget, I give myself $400 every month for discretionary spending, which consists of everything from clothes, to books, to paper towels, to restaurants. Things like annual vehicle registration, gifts for my nieces, and expensive car parts are outside of this budget, but I’m still frustrated how I exceed this $400 […]
Good Success vs Bad Success: Competition, Self-Esteem, and Purpose
It might seem odd to label success as either good or bad, but I think there’s some value in recognizing the difference. But first off, some background. Lately, I’ve been thinking more about a question I had some time ago: how can you choose to reject something and not also condemn it? This is easy […]
Rejecting the Lies of Self-Help
I recently purchased a book on financial independence written by one of the FIRE couples whose blogs I used to read. I was a little shocked just how the lead author approached her life. Having grown up in abject poverty, her general contention was that this poverty had the positive side effect of teaching her […]
Saving Money on Groceries
I budget about $400 every month for groceries, and this seems to be a realistic target. But not all too many years ago, my goal was $200 every month, although I rarely achieved this, typically spending closer to $300. Then the pandemic happened, and everything has gone up since then. This still kind of shocks […]
Diet Religions, Part 2: Holy War
Truth is hard to know, and it’s almost harder to know in a world full of potentially inaccurate or misleading information. When people say that you should question everything, they fail to acknowledge just how impossible of a task they are requesting, as sometimes even the most basic of subjects can lead to a world […]
Trusting the Food Supply Chain (or Not)
In my previous post, I defended buying pre-mixed foods, but I wanted to also present an argument against these, for the sake of completeness. The argument is that the food supply has largely become corrupted as companies cut corners, introduce harmful chemicals and pesticides, and otherwise rely on deceptive labeling to trick consumers, and this […]
Preparing Food to Scale
There’s often a financial benefit to preparing your own food in bulk, but preparing everything is a chore and doesn’t always offer the benefits you might think. I am a lazy cook, and any food that takes me more than 30 minutes to prepare has my immediate suspicion. The only exceptions to this rule are […]
Anxiety as Status Symbol, Part 3
Since writing the first two posts on this subject, I’ve actually been sleeping much better. I’ve started getting more tired earlier, and I have even taken a few naps in the evening, almost as if my body is catching back up with what it really needs. I suspect the stress had been building up for […]
Anxiety as Status Symbol, Part 2
I finally went hiking today, and it gave me a lot of time to think about what I wrote the other day. Ironically, I prayed the night before that I would wake up at the time I needed to get myself out the door, so I don’t know if it was just an answer to […]
Anxiety as Status Symbol
It’s a boring Sunday evening, and a voice at the back of my head tells me I should go to the gym. It tells me this because the more I go to the gym, the better prepared I will be physically for exploring the high country; more importantly, the more I go to the gym, […]