I’ve kind of stopped caring about the gift-receiving aspect of christmas in recent years. So I mainly look forward to the family Raclette dinner on christmas eve and meeting some old friends who come home for christmas.
I'm sorry you're going through that. I was there just a couple of months back and found some really good deals on heaters at my local thrift store. I found a plug-in radiator for $7.99 and a couple of small space heaters for about $5 each, which really made a difference.
I feel you. This is the second winter we’ve only been able to heat one room to at least 18C, and that’s not warm enough for my disabled ass. My electric throw blanket is on 24/7 though and is incredibly efficient - it costs less than 25p a day. I would highly recommend one if you can manage the upfront cost. Also wrist warmers are highly underrated imo - cheap, you can knit/crochet them yourself, your fingers are still free for touch screens and they seem to keep me warmer than just a hat alone. Wishing you more comfortable times ahead, friend.
Getting myself some replacement earbuds (specifically, Pixel Buds Pro). Batteries are toast in my (very) old Sony ones, and I’ve got a ton of Google store credit, so they’re gonna cost me very little.
A huge part of living poor is buying and selling items when you no longer need them. This applies to a lot of things but I have the most experience with cars. For the love of God, research exactly what you’re trying to sell. Learn everything about it, it’s features, age, learn how to fairly and objectively grade its condition, and learn what the actual value of it is (not just what you want to get). If you don’t know exactly what you’re selling, there are so many people put there who will try to get one on you by lying about it. The other day, I had someone tell me that my car wasn’t worth as much as I had it listed for “because it wasn’t one of the manual ones” for a model that was only released in automatic.
Photoshop Mix was the simplest and best app I ever found for iOS. Sadly, if you didn’t install it before PS removed it from App Store you can no longer download it.
It requires a bit of financial discipline, but having a credit card that you religiously pay off in full every month can be a really powerful budgeting tool when money is tight. It lets you combine paychecks or borrow from a future week’s budget so you can take advantage of bulk prices or a really good sale price to stock up on things you use a lot of. And once you get stocked up on all your staple items, the money you would have spent on those things gets freed up for other things for weeks, or maybe even months at a time.
Speaking of stocking up on bulk items, my Costco membership has saved me a ton of money since I’ve had it. It might not make the best budgetary sense for everyone, but my membership fee more than pays for itself just with what I save on gasoline. Even when they don’t have the best price on something, often the quality you get for the price still makes a lot of their stuff worth it for me. But even if I don’t find a deal on something it’s always nice to be able to grab a huge rotisserie chicken that I can make meals out of for most of a week for $4.99.
There used to be a hobby shop in town that catered to all kinds of things, from metalworking, to mini figures, to sewing and leathercraft. Model kits, trains, science kits, and if I remember correctly they even had a small section dedicated to chemistry supplies.
That was when I was a child.
Now that I’m actually in to several of those things, it’s closed. My parents used to go for TTRPG stuff.
I’d love to not have to drive an hour and a half to pick up a leather stamp, or pop in to see if they got a new shipment of metals I need. And don’t get me started on outdoor hobbies. The best we’ve got is a few shitty national chain sporting good stores.
Learn to fix things yourself. Mend your clothes, fix your bike or car, patch drywall, whatever. Learning to do things gives you the option of to save money doing it yourself. If you don’t learn, your only option is to pay someone else to do it.
Same goes for home repair. Learn to spackle and patch drywall, change a doorknob, install a toilet, snake a drain, and replace a capacitor or heating element in your hvac system. These are things anyone can learn to do with minimal tools and inexpensive parts, but will cost hundreds to hire a professional.
Changing the oil in your car only requires a spanner, pan, and household stuff like cloth rags. You can do it in your driveway faster than you can drive it round-trip to the dealership. I’ve saved heaps over the years.
House painting is a good skill. I knocked over $20k off my house build price by picking up a paintbrush. It was about 2 weeks of work and maybe $1k in supplies.
Learn computer maintenance. Like, how to format it and start over. How to diagnose and fix small issues. So many people buy new computers just because their old one is clogged with cruft. I fixed computers that others threw out, and avoided upgrade costs for decades.
Most importantly - learn to cook. Home cooking is so much cheaper.
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