Category: Economics

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I have finally figured out a decent custom setting for making einkorn bread in my Breadman bread machine, but while making my most recent loaf, the machine started producing an annoying squeaking sound. For awhile now, I’ve been finding some grease at the bottom of the pan, so I decided it was time to replace […]

I’m a firm believer in learning and developing skills over time, but I have to acknowledge that these don’t always work in employees’ favor. The first thing that comes to mind is how academia gleefully encourages people to pursue academic degrees even when those degrees can’t afford their own expense, but this also carries into […]

Just today, I learned about a medieval town that hired inspectors to test the quality of the saffron being sold in their marketplace. Saffron was expensive then, and it’s still expensive now. Apparently, the spice dealers had started spiking their saffron with various other ingredients to increase profits, but some paid for this deception with […]

In 2022, I was fully expecting to move out of state in 2023, so I went to my barber for what I thought would be the last time, and left him a rather large tip to thank him for being a great barber for the past 8 years. One month passed, and it became clear […]

People often think they can get something for nothing, and while this can be true on rare and isolated occasions, it is not true in the long run, and it is not true reliably. This is nowhere better illustrated, perhaps, then in how people often relate to insurance, warranties, and property management companies. Insurance As […]