Anonymous Mess

Or that's what I'm calling it, anyway.  Because EVs do indeed zoom. Yes, we financed a new car, a thing I thought I would never do. But the cost of interest over the next five years -- the life of the loan -- is less than a third of what we've spent on gas in the last five years.  Even after we factor in the cost of charging the vehicle, estimated electricity cost + interest is less than half of gas spending in the last five years. Maintenance/repairs would go down anyway with a new car -- but without a gas engine, we shouldn't have to maintain anything but the brakes and tires over the first five years. (And with regenerative braking, even the brakes get less use, and thus less-frequent replacements, than with a gas engine.) Our battery is covered for life -- so long as we own the car, they'll replace the battery if there are issues, including just age. Overall, with the tax incentives, I believe we're paying about what we'd pay for a certified pre-ow...

It's time. Our champion workhorse of a vehicle needs to be replaced. In the last sixteen months, we've averaged over $300 a month on repairs. The latest system to go wobbly is the transmission, notoriously expensive to repair/replace, and the odometer passed 200,000 miles last month. So it's time. And expected. But circumstances have changed. My original plan, dating back over a decade, was to replace this vehicle with another certified pre-owned, low-mileage (under 20k), high-reliability car.  Heck, my original original plan was to be able to purchase said replacement outright, and we had saved about $4,000 toward that goal when we fell into The Trough of Loss and Despair and Immense Financial Obligation, five years ago, which swallowed that $4,000 whole (and kept going). Back then, Spouse and I sat in offices all day, Spouse commuted by train, and my round-trip for work was under 30 miles. In an average week, our mileage was under 200. Now, Spouse drives to clie...

I just spent $640 on a new monitor. Not this one precisely, but you get the idea Cue PF Frugality alarms: Alert! Alert! Unplanned purchase! Funds diverted from debts still outstanding! Activate guilt shields! Criticism incoming! Yeah, I'm cowering. I know, I know. Why spend $640 that you (broadly speaking) don't have when you do have a functional, if aging, monitor and you're trying to get out of debt? Because unfortunately, "functional" isn't quite good enough. I work from home roughly once a week, and Spouse uses my monitor when on call at the new job. At work, we both have dual, (reasonably) high-res monitors, because our employers understand our workflow has us moving between applications throughout the day.  To illustrate, in my usual work at the current client, I am checking/have open at a minimum: Specification documentation, usually Excel or Word An integrated development environment app, mostly for the display aspects of my work ...

Random Subset of Reasons Why Job Hunting Is Like Dating, and Therefore A Super Shitty Part of Adulthood Reason #1: I hate hate hate it. Seriously, why don't I just uncap my marker here and write "JUDGE ME YOU TOTAL STRANGER" across my forehead? Reason #9: Interview/date clothes. They are a lie, a lie that you wear, and also overpay for, and then worry about snagging/ripping/staining or otherwise knocking them off their pedestal of interview-and-date-worthiness. A pox on them. Reason #11: Unbearable self-consciousness. As an alpha-introvert, barely bearable self-consciousness is my default state when in a room with any stranger, so why not turn that up to 11? Reason #12: They will make nice, and chatter about where they like to lunch and the latest project they're working on, and tell you how interesting your story is, and you'll think, hey, maybe this isn't so bad/could actually work. They'll smile and promise to get back to you before next Wednesd...