It occurs to me that spending less on certain items, such as flour tortillas, seems asinine compared to the cost of many other things in life. Dropping the tortilla price from $0.25 to $0.08 each doesn’t sound like a very high ROI, so why would I focus on this sort of thing? This actually represents […]
Author: risky
Failing to Spend Less on Groceries, Part 2: Examples
I realized that in my last post I didn’t dive into as many individual foods as I had planned. Here are some additional thoughts on these. Now, the potential problem with all of this is that it assumes you have the time to prepare and cook your meals. I despise spending too much time in […]
Failing to Spend Less on Groceries
My grocery budget was an absolute bloodbath this past month. I normally budget $400 each month for groceries, which still feels high, but I somehow ended up spending over $500. That comes out to about $5.37 per meal, or about $16 per day. WTF? Now, I’m not (necessarily) here to judge other people based on […]
Privacy and the Dispossession Cycle
For 99.99% of human history, one’s personal life was private by default. Only in the past 20 or 30 years has basic privacy come under serious threat. The first systematic invasions of privacy started with the mail system. Once society at large found ways to deliver messages and items using a relatively fixed address system […]
Reflections on the Lottery
I recently saw a meme about a young woman who won $1m in a lottery and instead of opting to receive the lump sum, she opted to receive $1,000 per week for the rest of her life. It was tagged with the term “financial illiteracy”, and was dogpiled by people who thought she must be […]
Boosterism: Technology and AI as the New Gold Rush
I’ve recently been rereading “The Trail of Gold and Silver: Mining in Colorado, 1859-2009”. I feel like I should remember this, but I’m struck by how much fraud went into the early Colorado Gold Rush. We talk a lot about fake news and propaganda in the media today, but this has existed for a long […]
Forming Political Opinions in the Church
Not too long ago, my pastor said something to the effect of “You should really support Israel”. This is my own paraphrase, and it doesn’t do justice to his more gentle demeanor, but it still caught me off guard, as I immediately found myself wondering, “What does that even mean?” Do I support the decisions […]
Specialization and the Exploitation of Skills
We all have limited time on this Earth, and consequently, we all have limits to the skills we can develop. This is not to discourage us from learning in general, or to suggest that we can never be competent at or knowledgeable of a number of things, but it is to acknowledge that life requires […]
Systemic Violence Against Privacy
Starting last week, I began to step away from the news cycle, simply because the violations against privacy taking place in the UK, as well as their rapid, cancerous spread across the West, are so distressing to me. You can only watch so many videos on YouTube attempting to assemble the pieces – every day […]
Investing is Overrated: Reflections from Extended Unemployment
Several weeks ago, I took a rather large distribution from my now much-reduced retirement savings. In theory, this distribution should get me through the rest of the year, but seeing how much I’ve spent over time got me thinking. Investing is overrated. Now, don’t get me wrong: setting aside money has made these years of […]