This is my “I’m being a shill” moment

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I recently discovered Instacart is able to deliver Costco and…

OMFG

GAME CHANGER. STUFF is CHEAP and at VOLUME.

Granted, not Commercial Foodservice Company cheap, but for home use this is fucken ferpect.

  • Got 20 lb Basmati rice for like, 20 bucks.
  • 6 lb of pasta elbows for *checks notes* 6 bucks
  • Eggs are stupid cheap, pick how many you want.
  • Bleach? I got me a lot of bleach.
  • EVOO! A gallon of it is 15 bucks!
  • Canola oil! 6 qt are 10 bucks!

I got some more things to round out the pantry for pasta production but for getting all of this stuff delivered? I can probably order once a month and 80% of my grocery shopping is done right there and then.

Now, they don’t have everything at the store available. They don’t have kosher salt (well they do but it’s the Kirkland brand. I prefer Morton or Diamond). The meat and fish selection is somewhat limited but they got the basics on there. Produce is good but I’d rather mosey down to the neighborhood coop for that.

Again, for me the angle here is the delivery; I bike everywhere and carrying all the stuff on my last order on my bike rack would probably require at least 5 trips, so the 8.99 delivery charge is totally worth it. This isn’t a promoted post (ugh) but there are many use cases for exactly this kind of thing at this volume, which is right in between “let’s pick up groceries on the way home” and “I need to open a sysco/us foods/reinhart account”:

  • People with more than two kids. Kids eat a fucken hell of a lot. You ate a lot when you were a kid, you just don’t remember it.
  • Disabled/sick people.
  • People who literally don’t have the time, like when you’re working 2 full-time jobs. Good luck finding time to cook, much less to buy the groceries.
  • People without cars, like myself.

Anyway, click on this here referral link so I get a fucken discount on my next order and you get cheap groceries. Everyone wins.

And in that moment I was happy

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So the coffee grinder that I have is… mine! All mine!

First time in my life I’ve got a coffee grinder for my own use without having to depend on work to be able to grind beans using a quality device. It’s just a “cheap” Baratza Virtuoso I got off Amazon but… again, it’s all mine and no one else’s.

I won’t have to wait for a distracted barista at any of the coffee shops in town to grind the coffee for me. I’ll be able to do a good— nay, a great! cup of french press, or Hario V60 pourover. I’ll be able to do cold press in a good way without having to waste ground beans.

I won’t have to deal with the li’l temperamental pice grinder I’ve been using for years to brew my stuff. I can actually use to grind y’know, spices; at least until I get an actual burr grinder for said spices.

Yesterday I used it for the first time for a couple of cups of french press.

It was perfect.

I’d like to not stress about money kthx

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I started working at SysadminJerb about… six months ago or so. I’m looking to pickup a second job hosting at a finer restaurant since I’d like to be able to talk to more people on a regular basis; Working by yourself in a datacenter is not conducive to long conversations in person.

So why is it that I’m having a hell of a time budgeting my money? I’m realizing I’m spending more than I really want to and right now I’m not sure… why. This isn’t a problem I had to face when I was working in a restaurant full time, so now I’m just spinning my wheels trying to figure out why this is happening, and more importantly, how.

I think I’ve got the why figured out: Since I have loads more free time than I ever did before, I now have that much more time available to spend the money I’m making even when I don’t mean to be spending that money.

The how it’s a bit harder but I think that, over the past few months, the average amount of money I spend in small transactions has gone up along with the amount of transactions that I do during a pay period, which follows the fact I have more time to be out and about than I did before.

So now I’m on the search for a budgeting tool that will help me with this. I’ve tried using Mint before but… at this point in time they haven’t added any new features in a while and I’ve had a devil of a time connecting it to my auto-pay accounts, so it let’s me track only some things instead of everything. I’ll try it again since it’s free but if it doesn’t work out I’ll just let it go and never look back.

I’m also looking at other tools like You Need a Budget and Financial Gym. Right now I’m thinking those are nice but… they’re paid and I would prefer to not add more pressure to my wallet.

So as a first step I’ll try Mint, then if that doesn’t work look around for a spreadsheet I can use on google sheets, then if that doesn’t work I’ll try YNAB and the rest. I don’t have a need to track everything but it would be nice to have a better overview than the stuff my bank has for me.

Right, this all reminds me: I can actually use these tools because my income is more or less stable now compared to what it was before: I can count on a solid 40 hour work-week month after month, and before I had to actively fight for working hours. So that’s a big change.

I probably just need to cut a few services here and there that I have not been using to their full potential, or ramp them up so I do use their full potential.

Going to be habit changing, to say the least…