There’s a unique frustration that comes with financial mishaps—especially when they’re out of your control. They might seem minor on the surface, but their emotional weight can derail your entire day, leaving you feeling powerless and exhausted. This past week, I had two such experiences. Neither was catastrophic, but the sheer helplessness they caused lingered…
I confess. Sometimes I am cheap. And sometimes it backfires. And today, I am going to share a story about it. So I’ve just moved out into the suburbs. My partner and I quickly realized the bus schedule is a lie and it doesn’t run nearly as often as we thought and in reality, the…
Money is one of the most common talking points at the moment. It’s no secret that costs have soared, leaving many people struggling to make ends meet. Managing your finances won’t eradicate high rates of inflation or expensive rent and mortgage costs, but it can help to reduce the risk of getting into debt and…
So I have a wildly frustrating silly little money story to share this week that is the epitome of a developed world problem, but here we go. I am a grad student living in London. Because of this, plane tickets to European countries are very cheap. Plane tickets home to the U.S. are not. A…
Why is customer service so often as difficult to navigate as possible? Let me share a story about Chewy and PayPal and the ridiculously frustrating $1000+ I have been chasing for two weeks now. A few weeks ago, I woke up to a bunch of emails from my Chewy account saying I had purchased $1034…
As a follow up to my post the other day, I was left thinking about how I was sort of regretting not paying for a more expensive apartment to the tune of an extra £400-500 to enable making going to the gym easier. And then in the same paragraph groaning about the £4 to take…
I have a really strange update from London. My apartment has an electrical setup that requires me to go to the post office, load a “key” (essentially a thumb drive) with up to £50 at a time and then put it in the meter at my apartment. The meter tracks my electricity usage. If I…
I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking a lot of about the weird income streams I’ve cobbled together. I’m trying to see if there’s any kind of pattern to how I’ve done this or if it’s just a pile of dumb luck. See, when I head over to England, several of my income streams will…
Welcome to my rant in which I am disgruntled that life seems like it should get easier as you get older, but in reality, in a million little ways it never does. Sigh. Living with your parents is hands down my number one tip to save money. It’s not an option for everyone, I totally…
So I’ve deleted and blocked a lot of my social media lately in an attempt to detox from it a bit. The only one that is easily accessible to me is my Instagram on my phone. I left that alone because I only really follow a few close friends and never really felt like it…
I thought I would share my experience with the free Covid tests you can get by mail in New Jersey, in case anyone else is wondering about that experience. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a massive drive through site at the local university that was actually really efficient. As the vaccine became…
It feels right on the heels of a post talking about how awesome I still am with some frugal moves that I reveal the other side of my nature too – I make some weird impulse buys. And I am super susceptible to Facebook/Instagram marketing. Besides the fact that they are on to my candle…
Ya’ll, I sat for a while trying to figure out what to write about today. I have to be honest with you. I don’t have a lot of motivation these days. The majority of goals I usually have are largely on hold thanks to the pandemic. It’s pretty much survival mode over here. I’d actually…
(Image Credit) It can be easy to be drawn into ventures that involve breaking the law. Money can often look much easier to get your hands on if you’re willing to break the rules, and a lot of people end up going down this route when they feel like they don’t have any other choice.…
I think the number one mistake we all make at times is letting producers and hiring companies use our passion against us. It’s easy, especially at the beginning of our careers, to feel so thankful that we get paid anything to do what we love, that we accept less than we’re worth. This is also…
I read this great post on productivity porn over at Bitches Get Riches a little while ago and I have been mulling it over ever since. I flipping love productivity porn. It started early. Hints from Heloise was literally my favorite part of the newspaper as a kid. Who knows why 9 year old me…
So, after an approximately 4 year run, my old glasses from GlassesShop.com finally bit the dust. I have to say, they held up pretty well. I had gotten them for free in return for a review, but if I had to buy them myself, they would’ve cost $32.90. They weren’t the most comfortable after…
To be honest, I don’t have a clear answer on this yet. In the personal finance world, there’s a pretty simple calculation that applies. If you can make more per hour than the activity costs, you are likely wasting your time. For example, if you’re fretting over whether or not a cleaning service is worth…
Am I the only one who has bought some weird stuff during quarantine? I mean, maybe I’m usually too busy to fall down into some of the weird online shopping wells that I’ve fallen into during the last few months, but the fact is – some odd items have bought. They have not all been…
With my university contract coming to a close at the end of June, I’ve had an eye out for any side hustles that can prop up my income until the theaters start to reopen. I recently received an email through the full school distribution email about a $400 a week part time gig through LDS…
I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but that’s sort of how I figure out stuff financially (in case ya’ll haven’t figured that out over the last seven years of this finance journey), but I’m still fixating on the $24 a day. I went a little off the rails today. I started out the…
Here are some money things that still puzzle me. Mortgages Man, I thought buying a house wouldn’t be so complicated. How naïve, was I? Mortgages are wildly confusing. Not only how to find a lender but what you need to qualify for one, what the different types mean, etc., etc. I mean. Ugh. What the…
I may be in a sort of unique position that my job eats up 100% of my time when I’m out of town but provides me with quite a few days off in return. Like currently… seven weeks of days off. This has been a common theme during my years of cruise ship and contract…
Last summer, I bought a pool. It was one of those $300 above ground things that you can pick up from Walmart. My mom and I had a longstanding, wildly unhealthy tradition of baking in the sun and floating. It was our favorite summer pastime. So now, it’s not only one of my favorite summer…
Albert Einstein is often credited for this famous saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Today I figured I’d spill the beans on a personal finance blogger fail of mine. I am super susceptible to Pinterest advertising. Like, it’s a problem. On the plus…