I saw they cut my auto-refill discount for my phone plan by $4, raising my phone by from $60 to $64 with the 20-gb hotspot plan. Just another cost on the budget — but with remote work and the library closed it’s kind of important to have Internet at home. That kind of sucks, but I guess everything is going up in price. May 1st my rent is going up too, and I just adjusted my bank to reflect the additional $25 a month. Car insurance is due on Monday. At least I should be getting a good tax-refund and the stimulus check this month, and I think I will be able to otherwise stay the course on my budget and savings. Once office life resumes, I can go back to the more basic data package, that will save money, to offset the cost of bus fares for commuting.
That’s because understanding personal finance is an uphill battle for many Americans. We’re not taught about the practicalities of money in school, because the truth is many industries profit from our ignorance. While wages have hardly budged in decades, shareholders and CEOs have never been richer. The cost of living in many major cities is prohibitive to just about anyone but the super privileged, or those willing to take on a lot of debt or make enormous sacrifices. While the stock market soars, just 52% of U.S. adults actually owned stock in 2016, according to Gallup, and the wealthiest 1% of households owned 38% of all stock shares in 2013. The government is actively working against consumers to make it easier for financial institutions to prey on its citizens, and a single medical bill can send a person into debt for the rest of their lives.
“Central banks know what they are doing—basically lowering the return of safe assets to increase demand for risky ones. Once you do that, you know a bubble might appear, but the cost of not doing anything is probably even higher”
I really hate that my phone sends me stock market updates. It’s just particularly helpful, because I’m not a day trader, and any one day event — or even a year long event — is likely to have much of an impact on savings for retirement or long-term investment.
If I had a restaurant it would operate much in this fashion:
You would pay the clerk upon entry your budgeted food amount, such as $30.
The menu would list food options by an easy to multiply interval by gram or kilogram. For example, if you wanted Marconi and Cheese, you might see that the cost was $2 per 500 grams including all taxes, fees and tips.
You could order any amount you wanted (such as 450 grams), and the kitchen would produce a portion based on your request and bill you based on your request (you might get 472 grams due to difficulty of dividing the portion, but you’d pay only $1.80).
When you made your order, the amount you the total cost of your order would be displayed on a big LED digits over the table.
If you reached your budget, there would be no more food served.
If you were below your budget and were you were still hungry, you could always order a side or desert, but your total bill would be prominently displayed on screen until you paid it and left.
If you were below your budget while leaving the restaurant, the clerk would pay you back any unspent money.
Such radical transparency and flexibility would force consumers to be responsible on what they ordered, and not get a portion bigger then they could eat or had budgeted for. It would make people thoughtful about their meal choices and how much they bought. There would be far less food waste and fewer people leaving the restaurant, upset that they spent more then they planned to spend.
Too much of America exists today on an “All You Can Eat” rule — either you pay a fixed fee before you enter, or they keep a tab running, and only at the end of the night do they tell you what your tab is. This is incredibly wasteful, it causes people to eat and drink to way too much, and not think about the consequences of their consumption both financially and on environment.
I really enjoy watching consumption and meters, and figuring out how much I can spend out of my allotted budget. Much like programming microprocessors, where memory and CPU speed is limited, it forces me to be thoughtful about my consumption. Indeed, that’s one of the really appealing things about eventually owning an off-grid home — watching the battery bank, my energy consumption in propane, wood, and other easily measurable uses.