okay i know this isn’t an advice forum BUT! as a 5-year-old adult i feel like im stuck on the tutorial level. do you have any handy tips for creating a budget? or grocery shopping strats (like buy xyz at dollar tree, buy abc at this other place)? o mighty pen i beseech thy wisdom
okay so i am ABSOLUTELY not a fully fledged Adult yet (at least in my head. i cannot overstate how much i am faking it until i make it.), but a few things i have learned in getting to this level in the adult game:
i need a simple budget to stick to. i tried doing itemized stuff (gas/toiletries/groceries/fun money/etc.), but that just DID NOT work for me. too much to keep track of. now i just have an excel sheet of basic categories. i get paid twice a month, so i split my budget into pay period A and pay period B.
first up with those categories: put down everything you HAVE to spend money on, i.e. bills: water, electricity, insurance, car payment, etc. here's a free tip from me: link your rent/mortgage payment to a savings account and just transfer half of whatever you owe there each pay period. i, a moron, once paid $20 a month to a rental place to split my rent into two parts for me to pay WHEN I COULD HAVE JUST DONE THIS THE WHOLE TIME. 🤦 okay, now that you have your bills put down, figure out your averages. some places will do this for you and tell you what your average is and other places will not. now, this is just what i do, but i then add $20ish on top of the average for my variable expenses. (so for my car insurance, it's usually about $100, but I earmark $120). this helps cover me if it suddenly varies a smidge, and it gives me a little built-in cushion. in tight months, i can dip into any excess, but in usual months, this just gives me a little cushion in my account to help prevent overdrafts for any unexpected little expenses (like a scentbird thing i paused for three months and forgot to go back and cancel and they did it without giving me a heads up) (BASTARDS) (...just as a totally random example)
after you have your bills (so what you HAVE to pay each pay period) done, think about your savings. i have a house, so i round up my payment each pay period to add a little bit of savings over time, and i also try to put SOMETHING into savings each pay period. sometimes it doesn't happen bc life is life and life is expensive, but even just a little bit for a rainy day is good.
after bills and savings, we're left with excess. i keep this as a lump sum for anything else i will need to spend money on (toiletries/fun money/groceries/etc.). i know some people itemize this, but that doesn't work for me. i have one lump quantity of money to spend, and that's it. it's easier for me to keep track of, and it also helps me keep the mindset of "do i really want this?" (for example: do i want a $5 matcha latte and a $4 croissant now more than i want almost $10 to spend at the grocery store or a craft store later?) (sometimes the answer is yes, but often the answer is no).
this is a matter of personal preference, but i like to highlight anything that doesn't automatically get paid in red so i remember that that's money *I* have to move the day i get paid. so as an example:
as for which stores to buy things at, that's really gonna vary based on your local stores/whether you coupon or not. i have the walmart app on my phone, so my go-to if i'm not sure if something's a good deal or not when i'm in a store is to open the walmart app, check the item, and see if it's the same or if walmart is cheaper. this is helpful for couponing bc sometimes even with a coupon/store "special" (@ cvs y'all are bastards about this), walmart is still cheaper. so my "is it a good deal?" answer usually depends on this.
if you wanna get into couponing, a good starting place is krazy coupon lady. couponing is SUPER helpful for me bc it means i never have last minute "oh goddamnit" expenses, like having to buy toilet paper and papertowels on a slim week. if i have a small stock of things, i can buy when it's really cheap and not have to pay full price or buy it unexpectedly on a week when that would cut into what i can pay on groceries.
as a grownup tip: SIGN UP FOR REWARDS PROGRAMS. you're gonna get better deals, and a lot of places will even let you earn points that you can put towards discounts on gas or groceries.
also with groceries, learn when your grocery store puts things on clearance! from trial and error, i've learned that the grocery store near me usually puts clearance out early on saturday mornings, so that's when i go to get some good deals. (i meal plan pretty loosy goosey, as in "stir fry veg with tofu" or "salmon with potatoes and a veg" so i can keep it open for a good deal).
also check the sales paper! a lot of stores put it online, so you can just give it a quick look before you even make your list and see what's cheap. (i know some hardcore people will go to multiple stores to get the best deals on multiple things, but i don't personally have the dedication/gas money/patience for that). (i'll check the sales papers for aldi/my local grocery store, and then i'll go to the one that has the better deals on multiple things i want).
this is also a personal thing, but i also like to put all of the things i'm planning on getting into the online cart as if i'm doing grocery pickup, and then i'll know how much it'll be. sometimes i will then do pickup, but even if i don't, i'll know how much wiggle room i have if something in-store calls to me. (so for example, if my grocery budget is $70 and i know the things i'm planning on getting are $50, i know that i'll have about $20 to spend on a treat or something i find on clearance in the store. i may not spend this and it can go towards something another day, but it helps me not have a surprise at checkout if i know "okay, i have my $50 main purchase, and i picked up $12 in extras. i'm still in budget.")
related to that: plan your meals. it fucking sucks. it's annoying. it's easy to forget what you even know how to make. but it'll save you so much money and wasted food. if you want, you can write down meals on popsicle sticks and just pull at random when you're planning. then you just make a list of what you know you'll need, and you'll minimize what gets wasted because you KNOW you'll need what you bought.
ALSO related to grocery shopping (i'm sorry for so much grocery content, but SO FUCKING MUCH of life is just Groceries): prep what you can prep the day you get it. "i'll do it later" no you won't. that's satan talking. wash your fruit and put it in a tupperware or reused jar. it'll be ready when you want it with no further prep, and it'll stay good way longer. it takes more effort, so you just have to ride the momentum of grocery shopping. for me, i just get home, put away the rest of my groceries, and leave out what i need to prep. then i prep it and put it away as it's good to go. it takes like half an hour when i get home from start to finishing clean up, but it's the only way i'm gonna use everything and let as little as possible go bad.
okay, i'll stop now bc i'm pretty sure this got longer than you expected, but i hope this help! again, i am absolutely not an expert, but these are things i've learned through trial and error that work for me! i hope at least one or two is helpful!
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there's something so dismal about how so much of tv fandom's energy nowadays seems to go towards trying to prove to big corporations that their show is good enough to save. like whenever a new episode or series comes out it's "remember to watch it all in 24 hours or it won't get renewed!" "play it on repeat for a month or else it'll become another piece of lost media!" "don't stop talking and posting about it during the hiatus or else this season that's already in production might not air!" "if this tag trends on twitter for long enough we might get eight episodes instead of six!!!" it feels less like we're enjoying a show that so many people worked hard on and more like we're trying to create rituals to please the gods (which replace gods with The Algorithm and you're not far off).
like i haven't even been involved in fandom for that long but even just seven or so years ago if a show did well enough that it was nominated for awards and trending on twitter and having well attended comic con panels then it would be renewed for at least a season or two. and back then being renewed for another season meant "we're for sure going to get a new season next year!" with almost no possibility of cancelation. and even shows that did just okay ratings wise would easily get 5+ seasons.
and it was more fun. when i was watching Doctor Who or Arrowverse or whatever in 2014 i could enjoy and critique the media itself instead of constantly being nervous about whether the next season will be cashed in for nostalgia bait or have its episode count cut or be postponed for three years or just outright canceled because it was slightly less popular than last year. like the fandom would still stress out over potential bad narrative choices or whatever but we would also get excited about the future.
maybe it's just my own perceptions but i just tend to find myself favoring fandoms for shows (or at least eras, i'm looking at you Doctor Who) that have been completed. i like Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death and Strange New Worlds and Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the latest Doctor Who era but i just find it hard to get invested when there's so much anxiety around if there will be a future to those shows and so much of the fandom activity revolves around that anxiety. and then as a result when the show does end for good (whether through cancelation or design) the fandom starts to fade away too because so much of it was based on the temptation of The Future.
and i'm also quick to admit that production in pre-streaming era shows had their own problems (once popular shows running for 15 seasons and jumping the shark just because it's a cash cow, tampered down diversity in the interest of "popular appeal", the whole quantity over quality issue, etc) but at least the fandoms were more optimistic and focused on the story itself instead of just being angry about the eternal potential of cancelation or outright deletion.
(also there are obviously much larger issues to the streaming model re: residuals and everything else brought up during the wga and sag strikes but that's all been said much more coherently so i'm just speaking from my own perspective as a fan. and even then there's still definite overlap between the fandom anxiety over renewal and the real world economic anxiety for people involved with production over "will we have a job/be paid". it's far too early to tell but i really hope the strikes will help to solve this problem.)
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