{"id":547,"date":"2025-03-28T16:16:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T16:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/?p=547"},"modified":"2025-03-28T16:16:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T16:16:18","slug":"but-staci-why-not-spend-a-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/?p=547","title":{"rendered":"But Staci, why not spend a little $?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A dear friend asked me why I always think about it and then say &#8220;no&#8221; when she goes through the work to find inexpensive items for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the answer is I&#8217;m just barely keeping my head above water.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of money right now is pouring into lifestyle changes anticipating disaster.  Take your pick&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1. physical disaster (gun classes\/practice, privacy film for windows), <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2. financial disaster (have everything ready for when no more money is coming), or <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3. technological disaster (my pii -Personally-Identifiable-Information &#8211; is leaked out into the world and my life is sabotaged). or, if I get <em>really<\/em> lucky, it could be all at once.\ud83d\ude12<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4. and that&#8217;s actually leaving off supply-chain disaster, when my necessary foods or meds are no longer available.  That&#8217;s also stealing money away.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So besides not wanting to give yet more money to assholes who already have more money than god, and throw it around to get their way, there&#8217;s also security concerns with smart devices listening to you, and political pressure could cause 3 to become 2 or even 1.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That, and my usual quest for a healthier body and a time-management method that actually works for my ADD self (probably doesn&#8217;t exist), means a lot of my money just trickles away. Plus all regular stuff, too. I spent $25 and bought ebooks of old favorites so I can get rid of my paper copies. I spent $10 and bought a cute pair of pants to wear to easter with the pretty blouse I got at goodwill for $3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, car insurance and maintenance. I should&#8217;ve had the shocks and timing chain replaced right after I got the car. but that&#8217;s gonna run me like $4000. And the money isn&#8217;t there. Once or twice I&#8217;ve hit zero debt but &#8230;it just trickles away, I&#8217;ve got all good intentions but I think I make like 5% too little, so it just creeps up until I&#8217;ve got a small mountain of debt again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I talked to my therapist and she said I put too much pressure on myself.  But there&#8217;s nobody else.  If I don&#8217;t do the things, they don&#8217;t happen, everything from cleaning the toilet to paying the bills.  It&#8217;s all me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m tired and broke and mentally burned out with trying to do <em>perfectly normal stuff<\/em>.  That&#8217;s what gets me.  It&#8217;s nothing above and beyond.  It&#8217;s just&#8230;normal stuff.  I don&#8217;t have a shopping addiction and I&#8217;m not planning for a trip to Europe and I didn&#8217;t over-buy on a major purchase and have a giant mortgage\/car payment.  It&#8217;s just normal day to day stuff.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which actually adds to the stress-load.  Cuz I&#8217;m always questing for something that will <em>make it all magically be enough.<\/em>  What if I cut out this or that, but it&#8217;s all Avocado Toast, y&#8217;know?  It&#8217;s all little stuff, easy to cut out but with basically no impact.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, time to go back to work.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m going to take off work early today and try to get some painting done.  I think this is too much house for me, but if I sell it now, I&#8217;ll lose money.  I need to get the upstairs finished and the kitchen floor done, bare minimum, if I want to make money on the sale.  I don&#8217;t know if I want to sell.  but right now it&#8217;s just all too much.  It&#8217;s all too much.  I&#8217;m drowning and there&#8217;s no lifeguard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dear friend asked me why I always think about it and then say &#8220;no&#8221; when she goes through the work to find inexpensive items for me. And the answer is I&#8217;m just barely keeping my head above water. A lot of money right now is pouring into lifestyle changes anticipating disaster. Take your pick&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sectorzz9.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}