Some of the things I’ve bought over the years

(aka Amazon is sometimes a dangerous game)

I’ve talked before about how I’m a natural spender. I’ve been noticing a tendency lately to want to buy things—and I succumbed and bought two prints the other day. At some point I’m going to run out of wall space for those, but I suspect it’ll be that event that makes me finally stop, not some act of self control on my part.

I had a tab open earlier today for a pine-scented candle. It took me a few minutes to blink, take a second look at that tab, and close it out. I’ve got a bunch of candles. Hell, I have the supplies to make my own. I don’t need an expensive holiday-scented candle, as fantastic as that would smell. I’ve got better things to do with my money. But I still had that tab open. Continue reading “Some of the things I’ve bought over the years”

So I went to Portland

In case you somehow missed the many Instagram photos, last week I made it to the west coast for the first time in my life (I previously hadn’t gotten further west than Vegas despite a massive west coast to-visit list). I went to Portland to visit my friend T, who was one of the people in my study abroad program in Chile, and who became my first post-college roommate. This was a group reunion though—my friend K and I both live in DC and took the same flights to Portland, and our friend R flew in from Michigan to join us. It was a party! Continue reading “So I went to Portland”

Everything you never wanted to know about my shoes

When this goes up, I’ll likely be in the midst of trying to get an hour or two of sleep in between my red eye flight back from Portland and dragging my sorry, jetlagged self to work (boooooo). Actually, I’m hoping I’m asleep at the moment and not dealing with a delayed flight/still trying to get home from Dulles, which might as well be in Canada for how far away from DC it is.

(I’ve learned a lot from this trip: mainly, Frontier sucks and will change your flights 12+ hours on you just a few days after you book them; it’s a good thing I have family in Denver since I didn’t originally have an overnight layover there; and also, the limit of how long it takes to get out to the suburb wasteland that is the Dulles airport does not exist. I already knew this but it was reinforced in the process of trying to figure out just how many hours I needed to leave before my flight on Thursday evening. The answer was four, for anyone wondering.)

So light, frivolous post it is! Continue reading “Everything you never wanted to know about my shoes”

The single person’s guide to a Costco membership

Is it worth paying for a Costco membership? That’s a question I’ve heard asked a lot in the personal finance sphere, and it’s one I mulled over for quite a while myself.

I grew up watching my mother shop and cook for five people (um yes, my parents are Costco members), and I’ll be the first to admit that it took me a very long time to figure out how to grocery shop and cook for one after I graduated from dorm life to apartment life. As part of that transition, I suspected I was going to have to say goodbye to Costco for the foreseeable future, plus there wasn’t one close enough to me to justify going anyway. Continue reading “The single person’s guide to a Costco membership”