I just had so little sleep, that is it not worth mentioning that I even did sleep, haha.

But anyway...

I've got nothing in particular to write about at this hour on a Wednesday morning, but here is some stuff anyway. I would have things to write about (or come up with something worth writing about) if I had instant coffee on hand, but as I mentioned in the last blog post, I am completely out of coffee until I go to the store tomorrow. So, I am just "cold writing", lmao! But I DO have a Diet Pepsi here, so not all is lost.

High of 27 degrees today, so no chance of a hike today, unfortunately. 10 degrees outside right now. Frigid.

budgetary matters, bills, frugality

Also, in an attempt to continue to reduce expenses/bills, I am thinking of either only using services that have an annual plan, or just cancelling non-annual services all together. Now, some services don't offer an annual plan, but there are ways of adding credits to my account (like on Linode), and I can just keep the account balance "charged up", and not have to worry about a monthly expense every single month. But this "pay X amount of dollars every month no matter what" BS has got to stop. It basically becomes a regular bill and is a fxxxing burden. Let me pay once and forget about it, or pay more and give me a lifetime membership, or something, but I cannot (or will not) pay for something every single time 30 days rolls around. It's not 1998.

So, I will likely cancel Tidal, and just make playlists on YouTube, or download the music on the open web and put the songs on my phone/MacBook (since I only listen to a couple hundred songs on a few playlists, anyway). Then I will only have to worry about these expenses (annually):

  • Linode ($120 per year)
  • DNSimple ($60 per year (whenever I DO switch over))
  • ProtonMail ($50 or so a year)
  • Plausible Analytics (because I am shallow - $90 per year)
  • Standard Notes ($30 per year)
  • Geocaching.com ($30 per year)

...and then domain renewals (currently, there are three(3))

So shit, $380 per year - just on tech-related stuff! Yes, the costs are annual, but damn! Plausible and Standard Notes may come off of that list, we will see. Currently, I pay nothing for either one of them, and PA will end in 20 or so days, but I can still continue to use SN (as I have used their Free tier for years now and I am more than OK with it).

So, that's where I am with that.

I think being frugal is going to be a "theme" for me in 2022. I don't need/want hella stuff, and what I have Right Now is really more than enough. I had a couple small shopping carts of "necessities" made out in a couple online shops of random doo-dads, of this and that, of things that I can genuinely live without - so I deleted those carts, and I should really make an effort to delete accounts with certain online shops altogether at some point. So I will do this soon.

back later