sausage rolls and spending habits
i want to say i have okay spending habits. they aren't terrible per say, but we could be doing better. im not in heavy credit card debt, nor have i ever really been in debt. the thought of owing money to some entity and them also making money from me owing them is so unsettling. i'm not as disciplined with my spending and i would hope to be though.
i tend to spend pretty haphazardly on food. it's something i need to survive, and it's not like i can go without it. not to mention i'd rather jump off an office building than submit myself to eating food i don't like or low-quality mass-produced food. i often think about those personal wealth gurus that tell me spending 5$ on a coffee will never allow me to retire. what kind of life is there left to live if i can't have yummy treats and drinks every once in a while? the food options in toronto are ridiculous nowadays and i can't believe my eyes when i see coffee shops selling muffins for more than five dollars. i know we aren't in a post scarcity world, but do we really need millions of overpriced hipster cafes? it's not right.
i think the thing that i miss the most about europe in general has to be the quick food options. im not talking about fast food restaurants, but rather, bakeries and patisseries in train stations and on street corners. i miss being in budapest and buying five sausage rolls because i was too lazy to find a place to eat on the way to the museum. you're not expecting a full meal, but these small foods help you tide over when skipping a meal for a very cheap price. on the other hand, if i want to tide over my hunger on my way home, here in toronto, my only option is a five-dollar blueberry muffin with an expected tip (i don't tip when i get food to go, unless i go there often).
clothes have always been a contention point for me. as much as i want to buy cute clothes, i am very specific with what i like, and when i like something, i find i fixate on it until i get it. i sort of need to push myself back and hold off on buying them immediately, not to mention i need to consider if they fit into what i have in my closet. most of my bigger purchases have always been thought of over long periods of time. the watch i bought last year was the result of me browsing and looking for five months until i got a scholarship from my school. likewise, the necklaces i just bought were from me watching a few episodes of nana when i was seventeen and wanting a tiny black orb ever since.
fashion and shopping itself works off the premise that these clothes aren't going to be available forever, the manmade sense of scarcity when shopping makes it so much worse than it has to be. i might have not had an immediate need or use for the jacket, but if i left it there, then i'd probably never see it again. i bought a leather jacket a few weeks ago, and its cute and all, but it's also winter... i won't get to wear it at least until late winter early spring, and by then my taste might change. even though it was more of a calculated purchase, i'm kicking myself in the foot right now for buying it at such a weird time.
one off microtransactions are the bane of my existence. recently, my biggest microtransaction offender has been the webtoon app. i sort of did this to myself, but i bought coins to read the fast passed chapters of tower of god, then with the excess coins, i would read fast passes of other webtoons, and now i can't really stop or else i'll need to wait months for the free chapters to catchup to the fast pass ones. i regularly follow around ten weekly series, each costing something like seven dollars per week, so in total, at around five us dollars for fifty coins, liberally, i'm spending around 10 dollars a week just to read. it's a very small amount for me, and it brings me some joy to read these series, but i always get annoyed seeing these microtransactions pop up in my credit card statements.
i don't touch apps with those sorts of systems, its predatory and just overall ruins the experience of the app if all i am to the developer is a cash cow. i won't lie though, i've been a victim of this many times. i played genshin impact and that game is just terrible with it. people tell you that you don't need to spend on the game, but don't realize that all of the fun and ease in the game results from you spending money. not to mention the same manmade scarcity tactics them employ when advertising in game currencies at fifty percent off, while still being grossly expensive. gacha games are its own category of evil and i avoid them nowadays.
league of legends is also guilty of this to some part with their cosmetic skins. i don't hate their monetization system as much as i hate the monetization system in gacha games, but still, the fact that you are promoted to spend money to look slightly cooler to others you won't ever meet is so odd. i don't spend much in league of legends. i'll throw a few dollars every once in a while, but i don't outright buy skins. when i have time, i'll buy the new battle passes and completely clear them, which makes me feel a bit less guilty since i extract a lot of value out of those passes. my own account is almost ten years old, so over the years i've amassed something like two hundred in game cosmetic skins through events, occasional sales, twitch rewards or free loot boxes.
is this what we are expected to be nowadays, a series of transactions?