I miss my geo metro. Bought it for $350, it was super easy to work on, and the 3 cylinder engine was so pathetic it was amusing. The person I bought it from had painted flames up the front and back. You couldn’t help laughing at yourself when you drove it.
You are not wrong. I’ve been pretty fortunate in my adult life and I’ve adjusted the threshold as I go. Really the point is to slow down your decision making and reduce impulsive purchases.
…also, thank you for calling me out. I grew up pretty poor, and didn’t ever make much more than minimum wage until I was over 30. I think I internalized the frugal lifestyle as part of my identity during that time, and I often forget that is not my situation anymore. I appreciate the occasional reminder to be more grateful of my current privilege.
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.
To add a light structure to this approach I always liked the “wait $100 a day” approach. Want to buy something that costs $300. Wait three days after you have decided you want it. Want to buy something over $1000, think about it for a couple weeks. A $50 impulsive purchase, maybe think about it over lunch.
My regular day was: Feet: boots over heavy socks over lighter socks
Legs: pants over thermals and sometime a layer of sweatpants in between
Main body: hooded canvas coat over heavy sweatshirt over long sleeve shirt over thermal shirt over T-shirt. alternating layers tucked into pant layers
Head: jacket hood over sweatshirt hood over heavy winter hat.
Hands: usually bare for the work I was doing, but when I could, I put them in some fantastic mittens my brother gave me that have been nicknamed “bear vaginas”.
If I got too warm, I could shed upper layers pretty easily to regulate temp, but rarely did I ever need to do more than lose the coat and sweatshirt.
I keep my recipes in a git repo formatted with markdown and pushed to GitHub.
It is easy to view on a phone or tablet, I have a history of changes I make over time, and it’s easy to share with other people.
Any new recipes I find online I can usually edit fairly quick and add it to the repo so I don’t have to scroll through someones family history and how it relates to some dish every time I want to make it.
It’s very much the solution of a programmer, but it works well for me.