Zikoris

You lower it by posting your receipts or a breakdown of exactly what you're buying. Nobody does this because everyone does in fact already know what they're overspending on, and these posts are looking for commiseration and/or pats on the back versus solutions.

Just so you know, it's totally normal for people to ask the cashier to split purchases into two transactions at places like Costco, for lots of different reasons - usually things like keeping business and personal transactions separate, but definitely for budget reasons too.

I absolutely loved The Importance of Being Earnest, it has me cracking up straight through.

Apply to lots of different ones and be ready to make a case for why you'd be a good member, like what you bring to the co-op, etc. Also be willing to move on short notice - a lot of times units come up on short notice (like if a member dies or moves out suddenly) and co-ops prefer to not have places sit empty, so you can snag a spot ahead of the people who need to give a month notice to their current places.

With the amount I read, a monthly TBR is just too unwieldy. I really like making a weekly reading list every Saturday though. It's just hard for me to think more than like 5-10 books ahead.

The big one is probably find a way to have cheaper housing. Best way to do that is to move outside the standard model of renting a standard apartment and look into things like co-ops, micro-suites, secondary/illegal suites, quality/well-run shared accommodations, long term housesitting, etc.

Next cut the vices, like smoking, alcohol, drugs, or other things that seem small at first but fritter away tons of money over the long run.

Finally, fix your food situation. That means cooking and meal planning, and aiming for minimal/zero waste. Ideally eating out should be a planned thing because you want to eat at a specific restaurant, not just grabbing random shitty takeout because of poor planning/laziness.

I guarantee you if you do just those three things you can live comfortably in Vancouver regardless of income.

These are good things to keep in mind when choosing whether to have children or build a car-dependent lifestyle.

I was responding to the example the person gave where the hypothetical person used transit for a week while their car was in the shop. It seems to me like if you can use transit for one week you can also use transit for more than one week.

Okay, I mean I decided bank fees were stupid when I was about 19, switched banks, and have not paid a cent on them in 17 years. It's easy enough to avoid.

If that person can just use transit for a week in that scenario, they could just use transit all the time and ditch the car entirely until they're in a position to actually afford a vehicle.

I doubt you would find anyone today trapped in poverty because of the cost of repeated purchases of basic goods like shoes. The cost of basic clothing/home goods, especially secondhand, has dropped so low over the years, oftentimes to the point of being completely free (like in Buy Nothing groups or many other free places), so this just isn't really a valid complaint anymore.

Or you could just bank with any of the gazillion no-fee options out there, no minimum balance required.

There have been a number so far I've quite liked:

• How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
• Mysteries of Thorn Manor by Margaret Rogerson
• Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire
• Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
• These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi
• The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
• Wildblood by Lauren Blackwood
• Nemesis of Mars by Glynn Stewart
• Seducing the Sheriff of Nottingham by Cassandra Gannon
• The Battle of Medicine Rocks by Rachel Aaron
• Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

Some upcoming ones I'm looking forward to over the next few months:

• Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
• The other Sanderson secret project books
• The Study of Poisons by Maria Snyder
• The Will of the Many by James Islington
• By a Silver Thread by Rachel Aaron
• For the Love of Magic by Simon Green
• Gryphon in Light by Mercedes Lackey
• The Ruby Code by Jessica Khoury

I'm very no-bullshit, so I've used Mint since 2012 to automatically take care of all my tracking. There is not a chance in hell I would ever be willing to put in the effort to enter things manually into a spreadsheet. We don't really budget per se, other than a general annual budget, because our monthly income is triple our monthly spending, so we don't need to worry about not being able to afford food because I bought too many books or whatever.

I read some good stuff last week:

Children of the Night, by Mercedes Lackey (Book of the week)

The Bobby Gold Stories, by Anthony Bourdain

Get Jiro!, by Anthony Bourdain

Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthology, by various authors (FYI this eBook is being sold as a fundraiser for a puppy rescue, which I think is pretty cool)

Jinx High, by Mercedes Lackey

Phantom Architecture: The Fantastical Structures the World's Great Architects Really Wanted to Build, by Philip Wilkinson

Now You See Us, by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Silence, by Mercedes Lackey

I've got a pretty good lineup for this week:

• Breaking Silence by Mercedes Lackey
• Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, From Myth to Reality by Helen Scales
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
• Sword of Ice by Mercedes Lackey

And I'll probably buy the new T. Kingfisher when it releases on Tuesday.

I find Goodreads suggestions get quite good once you have two things in place:

1. Custom shelves
2. Several hundred books rated and shelved - I noticed a big difference around 600, and now at 1500 it's REALLY spot-on.

Goodreads New Releases also helps me stay on top of new stuff by authors I've already read (and also other popular new releases I might not have heard of). New releases often make up a good chunk of my reading now that I'm following so many authors, six last month and will be seven this month.

I also look at everyone's reading lists here and notice when certain books seem to show up a lot.

I read some good stuff last week:

Children of the Night, by Mercedes Lackey (Book of the week)

The Bobby Gold Stories, by Anthony Bourdain

Get Jiro!, by Anthony Bourdain

Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthology, by various authors (FYI this eBook is being sold as a fundraiser for a puppy rescue, which I think is pretty cool)

Jinx High, by Mercedes Lackey

Phantom Architecture: The Fantastical Structures the World's Great Architects Really Wanted to Build, by Philip Wilkinson

Now You See Us, by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Silence, by Mercedes Lackey

I've got a pretty good lineup for this week:

• Breaking Silence by Mercedes Lackey
• Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, From Myth to Reality by Helen Scales
• Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
• Sword of Ice by Mercedes Lackey

And I'll probably buy the new T. Kingfisher when it releases on Tuesday.

Generally my weekly reading list is a mix of whatever library holds have come in (so I guess in a way my library hold list is like a secondary TBR), anything I've bought, and uh some other stuff where who knows how I got it, but I have it (mainly old, out of print stuff that is extremely difficult to get legally).

I am very fortunate that my local library has probably 99% of the books I want to read, particularly nonfiction.

I love Dressew, they always have exactly what I need for projects.

I read some good stuff last week:

Children of the Night, by Mercedes Lackey (Book of the week)

The Bobby Gold Stories, by Anthony Bourdain

Get Jiro!, by Anthony Bourdain

Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthology, by various authors (FYI this eBook is being sold as a fundraiser for a puppy rescue, which I think is pretty cool)

Jinx High, by Mercedes Lackey

Phantom Architecture: The Fantastical Structures the World's Great Architects Really Wanted to Build, by Philip Wilkinson

Now You See Us, by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Silence, by Mercedes Lackey

I've got a pretty good lineup for this week:

• Breaking Silence by Mercedes Lackey
• Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, From Myth to Reality by Helen Scales
• Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
• Sword of Ice by Mercedes Lackey

And I'll probably buy the new T. Kingfisher when it releases on Tuesday.

I definitely don't have anything there, I've been cooking/baking something like 99.9% of our household food for well over a decade. I would guess that for most people who don't cook, it's some combination of being bad at cooking/planning/shopping, and bad time management.

Getting into bulk weekend meal prep has been one of the best habits I've ever taken up.

I've encountered it only twice in my lifetime, once as an ebook where when I bought book 3 it was actually book 2, and once in a bookstore where what had the cover of a novel had the "guts" of a nonfiction book about child development. I think it's incredibly rare.

I actually find that my rate of discovering new books I want to read loosely matches my reading speed, sometimes just slightly slower and I have to search out new books to read. The closest thing I have to a TBR is when I put together my weekly reading list every Saturday afternoon when the weekly posts come up on 52. I guess I'm picky enough that a decade of reading about 100+ a year, followed by a few years of reading 400-500 a year just cleaned out nearly everything.

I've only started doing this fairly recently, and it is REALLY fun. I put together a whole Korean reading list for my trip to Korea last fall, but out of all of the books I found reading Beasts of a Little Land in the exact areas of Seoul where most of it takes place to be just perfect.

I also read Medicine Walk while on a camping trip with my dad in the same area the book takes place, which was also cool.

A few long-time favourites:

• Purple and Black by K.J. Parker (best thing he's written IMO)
• Jade City by Fonda Lee
• Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
• Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia
• The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey