Frugality update: Quarantine edition

Proooooobably needs an apostrophe

I'm feeling a bit guilty as I write this for a multitude of reasons. The first is that I haven't posted about frugal stuff for almost a year. I haven't stopped my practices at all, it just felt like there wasn't a whole lot to say. Also is reading about all of the strangers and friends who are in a rough situation right now, and the fact that they just didn't have the same opportunities to save. I always thought of lifestyle and habit blogs like this as a 'take what you can' kinda situation. Sometimes I read advice from people I have nothing in common with, and part of my brain shuts off and I just can't learn from it. I hope that we can all, during this massive time of adjustment, emerge from the 2020 Covid Quarantine period smarter.

First and foremost: You cook. You cook your ass off, Trinity.

Crockpot chili, cheap and requires no skill.

At some point in the past, I shared disappointment finding out that cooking at home isn't always massive savings compared to eating out. I bake cookies as a hobby, and that can be $3 to get a decent chocolate bar and eggs on a good day when I have the other dry ingredients stocked. I'll pass the $2 Oreos or Chips Ahoy and miss out on instant gratification AND no associated cleanup or packaging labor! I also find myself paying more to make tacos at home than getting them from taco buses in the area. Thankfully, these are exceptions to the rule. Now is a great time to try recipes, especially with certain product shortages. Everyone in the world is suggesting this, my only addition is to dust off some of those cans and boxes in your pantry or frozen vegetables and get to work! I've got about 20% of my freezer left before it gets empty, a goal I've had for a while but never could reach. We'll see how I do, but now's an easier time than ever to try and use all the food you've bought in the last year. The quarantine has hit restaurant employees particularly hard, but if you've read any of my posts before, you'll know that I wasn't supporting that a whole lot in the first place. Nothing against them, I just think I should be making a lot more money to afford to be waited on. No one deserves to lose their job, and not everyone has time to cook every meal for themselves, but this blog is aimed at folks looking to make financial improvements, and eating out a lot is one of those lifestyle choices that drains your wallet. Consider it, at least.

Backlogs:

Err...add 4 generations to this stack of N64 games

The one and only release, which I preordered last summer, was Final Fantasy VII Remake. Other than that, I'm working on two backlogs. One is the growing digital mound of 100+ games, most of which were "free" through the totally paid PS+ membership. The second backlog is more recent physical games that still have a resell value, like all of my Switch titles. Once the quarantine is lifted and the games wiped down, it's time to eBay those suckers! Same thing goes for paper books. I enjoy the benefits of digital books, like reading one-handed, the long-press dictionary, and checking out books instantly at my library's website, but occasionally receive paper books as gifts. Well, now's the time to read them before I pass them on.

I'm also clearing out all the movies I want to watch on Disney+ so I can drop the subscription and switch back to Netflix. I miss the documentaries!


Tasks around the house: Some of these are quick enough to knock out during your breaks if you're working at home.

Being home more often means I have to look at all the extra junk I live with. I have leftover flooring, sound panels, and shelving from used lots I bought from Craigslist. Getting that centralized into a donate bag, box or closet means that once donations are accepted again, I can get it out of the house and dedicate the space to something else.

My wife cleaned the refrigerator racks. Not a glamorous task, but it's gotta be done.

I sanitized all the utensils in a bleach bath. Ditto to the window frames.

Caulking and touch up paint. There's a skill gap between when I first moved in 18 months ago and what I know now about some home projects. I'll be looking to redo some of the spackling where I didn't know to sand it down before painting. Leah from SeeJaneDrill on Youtube is a sage when it comes to that.

Clean those drive-thru receipts and food bags out of your car and don't forget to wipe down the inside of your windshield.

Check expiration dates and chuck stuff. Medicine, dry and canned foods. Keep note what you're throwing out this way. Maybe you didn't need that 5-pack of Dayquil if 2 are now purple and one is crusted over.

I gave all of my shoes a bath and air dried them. The better-made pair will get another 3 months out of this while the cheaper ones will get an extra month. Also, we're almost ready to hang-dry laundry outside!

Why is this stuff frugal? A cleaner and roomier house means you stay healthier and aren't paying for things you don't use. Some people rent EXTRA storage to hold things they don't need to use daily. If you're living without it, why do you still need it?

Next is my own plug for khanacademy.org, where you can take courses for free. The courses are built under teacher supervision, and it's a great way to review what you already know or learn some new stuff! I wanted to see what universities were teaching as far as budgeting and personal finance. Personally, I think the biggest challenge to online learning like this is accountability.

Bonus financial crossroads food-for-thought: I bought a used car for cash a while back, and it doesn't do distances very well. My income guided me to a manageable mortgage...that happens to be an hour+ drive away from friends and family, so the rare visits have an additional layer of wondering whether my car is going to make it. The current debate is whether to save enough to buy a newer car, or buy stock that's currently at a discount as everyone shifts their investment priorities. One way to still get in my visits is to rent a car each time. It sounds silly until you realize that I only make that trip a few times a year, and the rentals should equate to $400 or less, versus saving $3-4000 on top of whatever I could get for selling the car. Granted, the 2020 Quarantine is doing the decision-making currently.

Alright folks, thanks for reading and don't spend all your stimulus checks in one place!

PAX 2019 was a hit!

I guess _I_ was enforced...

This year, I Enforced and attended my third Penny Arcade Expo! My section was Classic Console Freeplay, which is one of the many things that sets this gaming convention aside from other 'gaming' conventions: actual gaming! To explain: Tokyo Game Show has a few dozen developers showing off their games, and if you're not in line to play a demo, then you're looking at booth babes, cosplay or gaming-related merchandise. I would say (ridiculously hot) cosplay is the main draw, and game demos and swag are tied seconds. Tokaigi, held in the same space (Makuhari Messe in Chiba) as TGS, is a little more about actually playing games, with consoles, PC and handheld stations. I did a quick run-through of Seattle ComiCon, and saw a lot of gameplay with prizes (awesome!) and a shitload of cosplay.

Zagreus and Aphrodite (Hades) and Red (Transistor)

PAX, however, probably has all gaming conventions beat: there are giant rooms for tabletop games, a room of beanbags for handheld gaming orgies, an entire floor dedicated to the current 2 consoles, another floor of PCs, another 2 floors for console and PC tournaments, a floor for classic consoles (from NES to Wii/PS2/Xbox), gaming trivia all around downtown Seattle, pin collecting and swapping, digital slot machines that dispense prizes randomly to attendees, and scavenger hunts. There are even run-of-the-mill cardboard puzzles. Of course there's cosplay, anime, trinkets and discussion panels, but the amount of gaming here is next-level.

I was on the team that checked out games to attendees who would sit down at stations and play with friends. There were 32 stations, and most were in use the entire 4 days. Considering loans are 30-minutes at a time, that's a lot of activity! There were faces we saw all four days, as it's a great time killer for certain events. Sometimes, you just don't want to stand in line for 3 hours to play a 20-minute demo. In general, I worked my normal full-time job, and did PAX for the 3-day weekend, and now I'm lumbering through my normal workweek. Sleeping 8 hours took priority over attendance, so I only showed up a few hours early to tour the expo before my shift, and didn't hang around much after.

HOWEVER. I definitely saw some shit!

Lead voice actor Logan Cunningham!

For me, PAX belonged to SuperGiant, the makers of Bastion, Transistor and Pyre (review here). One day, the key dev team held a panel where they told their story of working on these games and how the team met teach other. I got to meet the lead voice actor but was too nervous to do more than tell him I was a fan and smile. I didn't tell him that in the 2 weeks of playing Bastion, I narrated everything I did around the house in a gravely voice. After my enforcer shift, SuperGiant's composer put on a concert with key tracks from those three games as well as their newest, Hades. There was also an orchestra and his other vocalist. During that sweet hour at the Paramount, we were treated to a light show, some anecdotes and almost every duet from their games. Chills the whole time. Getting so much exposure to this independent developer was an amazing experience. If Motion Twin (Dead Cells) ripped through PAX, I would have met my two favorite small developers and that would just be hard to top.

I also went to the Make-a-Strip panel, where Penny Arcade founders Jerry Holkins (Tycho) and Mike Krahulik (Gabe) drew a brand new comic and answered all kinds of questions from their e-nor-mous fan base. To think that these two average-looking dudes from Spokane started the 15-year-strong convention for almost 100,000 people from all walks of life to flock to Downtown Seattle by writing a comic about two roommates playing videogames and talking shit.

If you can make it to Seattle for the Labor Day weekend, then sign up to Enforce at PAX in May!

SuperGiant composer Darren Korb

June update

It's been a while since I posted! Part of it is that I've gotten some new tasks at work and classwork is as engaging as ever. I'm studying adult learning theory and there's a load of stuff to learn...about learning.

I've also been up to various house projects! It's been so rewarding investing time instead of money into little projects. Then, something unfortunate happened with OfferUp. I switched out my SIM card to test it on another phone, and the app suddenly required me to verify my account through phone number. Well, you might know that I use Freedompop, a carrier that gives you a 200MB data limit and phone number free every month. The caveat is that the phone number isn't recognized by services like Uber and certain verification services like this one. After a week of exchanging emails with Offer Up's customer service and no helpful suggestions how to get back up and running, I had to close my account. So unless I want to lie about my phone number, I'm out of luck for Offer Up, one of the less-flaky FREE person-to-person selling methods.

Another reason I haven't posted is because of conflicting feelings. I'll come right out and say that I failed one of my major commitments of avoiding spending money on games. Almost monthly, at this point. Luckily, that's averaged out to about $25 per month, but I still feel conflicted about dispensing advice that I can't follow. Another thought was the responses to frugal decisions in eliminating joy from your life to save money that reaches vegan and crossfit levels of annoying. But I have to remember that this is a blog post and readers have chosen to come here. Also, the satisfaction I experience of doing what I can to put money elsewhere outweighs the 'little joys' brought by having an underpaid person prepare my coffee, food, or wearing the latest cheaply-made brand name clothing. So, take what you will from my frugal habits if you haven't already, and you might be surprised how easy some of this is to make into a habit.

I've still been economically and ecologically sustainable in my normal ways:

Cooking for myself. Sundays, I put 3 cans of beans, tomatoes, spices and whatever cut of meat in a crockpot all day, and by the night I can freeze at least 4 days of lunch. I've been eating this chili 4-5 days a week for about 6 months. Food variety comes for the other two daily meals and on the weekends. I order pizza (carryout!) and eat out twice a month. There is room for improvement, here!

With the exception of screws, a new bathroom motor and cover ($30 total), all of my home improvement has been through secondhand methods. Through OfferUp, I bought some tools for about what they'd cost to rent as well as some custom-ordered cellular blinds that turned out to be the wrong size for the seller, but the right size for me. I basically got 4 for the price of one.

House parties with friends. You get control over the drink selection, and there's no need to shout over air horns!

Hang-drying laundry. This works out to about $10/month in savings, but the smaller eco-footprint is where it's at. Clothes last longer and it's easier to follow up with proper organization than just loading everything into a basket and forgetting about it.

Live on bus lines. I walk 10 minutes to a bus stop that drops me off 10 minutes from work. 350 sqft studios downtown are $1050 per month. My mortgage and HOA dues are roughly the same for a unit twice as big. I'm building equity, too. When I was looking at the place, the bus route was a qualifying criterion for my move. One look out the window on any given day at the daily car accidents remind me that I don't miss driving.

Don't compromise if you have time! I'm writing to my supervisor about why we shouldn't use certain business accounts for office supplies. The argument against me is that they save money on some things and spend more on others in a giant compromise. The problem is that I'm looking at data that we still come out spending 40% more than necessary. You can either spend time working to pay for things, or spend time saving money. This applies to me for groceries: I know what's worth it at Costco vs other stores, and visit 3 different places to get the best prices. Then again, I have the time to do so, and get to torment my wife along the way with fart sounds and car sound effects and everything.

March Ballin

I had to invent my own theme song for how paid I'mma be this month. This is a PSA that if you got paid Friday March 1st and you're on a bi-weekly pay schedule, you will get THREE checks this month and one other month in 2019. I also filed taxes this last weekend and am expecting another paycheck and a half. Our orange leader's tax reform shafted a lot of people who were planning on their usual tax return numbers, but us frugal folks aren't too roughed up. Disappointed, but not in financial crisis, right?

I have two thoughts on tax refunds. One is that a refund means you overpaid taxes the whole year, and the federal government got an interest-free loan from you. If you have unlocked the key to the universe and know exactly how much in taxes to have withheld over the year to end up at $0, then investing that money is better. In my case, if I knew the secret, my $1800 refund would be $1980 if I had invested every cent into my Vanguard account at 10% in 2018. The other thought is that I respect people who take the more convenient option of having extra deductions during the year and do impactful things with their yearly refunds. Well, more impactful than our blinged-out Moet-pourer at the top of the post.

image from johnlund.com

If my refund is what the software said it would be, half of it is going to an extra mortgage payment. The remaining money will go towards upgrading the house. The fan was $30, but labor to install it could be $400. I just paid $100 for over $1500 worth of eco-friendly cork flooring for my whole living room, including gas to pick it up. If I'm patient with OfferUp and Craigslist, I can get better blinds for the two windows in my unit for < $100. So far, all of these pursuits are investments and will add value to the home. You may be rolling your eyes at my corny dedication to investment with the windfall, but I also spent a large chunk on something super frivolous: a PS4 Pro. My current system works fine, and this new one won't allow me to play new games or anything; it's a graphical upgrade and runs quieter.

Keep raising the wage floor!

Products with integrity...

According to TheGuardian, Amazon raised the minimum wage across warehouses and Whole Foods stores to $15. One of the main arguments against raising wages is always that hours will be cut. So, Whole Foods cut working hours to compensate. All of this is predictable behavior, but at the same time, Yahoo Finance says, "Thanks to the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), Amazon’s federal tax responsibility is 21% (down from 35% in previous years). But with the help of tax breaks, according to corporate filings, Amazon won’t be paying a dime to Uncle Sam despite posting more than $11.2 billion in profits in 2018."

So, Whole Foods, a store whose workers can't realistically afford to buy their own goods, will cut hours, meaning their (generally high-earning) patrons will be waiting longer for service. One user mentioned having to make room for employee shoppers who are gathering goods for home delivery orders. The long-con here is that customers with time constraints will then switch to Prime Fresh and get Whole Foods delivered to them. I won't be surprised if Amazon beats $11.2B this year, but no one is doing anything useful with those profits. I think the argument against raising wages comes with the complete acceptance that companies will behave this way, but the largest ones really don't have to, not with such huge coffers.

Shout out to Trader Joes for having happy employees who, while not millionaires by any stretch, can at least afford to shop at their own stores. In the same way you can't leave Costco without muffins, I can't leave TJs without lava cakes.

January 2019 = VR

Holy moley Angelina Jolie in a kimono no obi! I recently finished up Horizon: Zero Dawn, which required me to sprint through a ~5 hour main quest line on Ultra Hard New Game +. It was nice to get the story all at once instead of spacing it out over dozens of machine-hunting and sidequests.

Finishing a AAA title always gives me satisfaction and the most first world problem dilemma: what do I play next? This usually results in a week of avid tv or movie streaming while I mull over what game I'm going to complete next. This time while I do that, I get to spend time with my latest acquisition: PS VR. This system is better than I could have imagined. 

I'm gonna getcha!

Virtual Reality is one of those things where doing something mundane like throwing a tennis ball between your hands provides much more entertainment than the real thing. I usually think about the physics and programming involved to do these everyday things realistically and it sends my mind spinning. Growing up, we saw wireframes and random geometric objects that were usually supposed to convey hacking in 3d or a war simulator. Most recently, in Black Panther, that Vibranium-sand that opened the movie with a legend that turned out to be a real Wakandan invention. Err, I guess that was AR (augmented reality), but it was an interactive digital model, so nyah. Anyway, the real VR product is loads better. It's really hard to convey in words and 2d pictures the thrill of solving puzzles by physically moving your body to get a better vantage point, or dodging attacks or even tilting virtual objects and moving your face closer to see details. The gameplay doesn't need to be complex to be enjoyable in VR if you're like me and are wowed by the tech itself.

CoD: Jackal Assault doesn't even let you
do pilot controls...F MINUS

There are at least 200 PS VR titles of varying quality. I don't do horror, so that cuts out half of the selection, and that leaves puzzle games with almost no art direction. Low polygon count and tech specs don't necessarily mean the game has to look ugly; an art director coordinates that stuff. Then there are the must have VR titles: Astrobot: Rescue Mission, The Playroom and Beat Saber.

The Playroom VR is free to download and comes with a set of multiplayer games and even has a trophy list! In one of the titles, the VR headset player is a monster who is stomping through town (the player headbuts obstacles) while up to 4 controller players run for their lives across the city. The tables turn when they get to a platform and huck items at the monster's face. In another title, the VR player is supposed to aim their flashlight on ghosts to scare them away while whoever's looking at the TV can describe where the ghosts are. And that's another thing: all of the titles I've played have a TV display at the same time the VR person is in the headset, which enables multiplayer and gives observers more to watch than a fool with a glowing face.

Then we get to Astrobot: Rescue Mission, which sets the standard for VR. JapanStudio has created a family-friendly cute Mario alternative. This game plays like any of the 3d Mario games, except with VR enhancements like perspective puzzles and hidden items that will have to constantly looking around. The graphics are solid, the colors are bright, the music is good, and the game is stable. I haven't seen any glitches and the game is incredibly user-friendly. This game has really, REALLY cool boss fights and my wife and I are trying to space out our sessions so that we can savor the experience.

I bought this rig after playing Beat Saber, which is the other killer app for PSVR. In the headset, you are dodging walls and slicing boxes with dual light sabers to cool electronic beats. Anyone watching you will see that you're dancing, and it's quite amazing to see two genres that emerge from the same actions, depending on perspective. It's like a horror movie that's a comedy if narrated from a different character's perspective.


Other than VR, I wrapped up a few smaller developer title and started playing a game that's been missing for 10 years: Onrush. Onrush is the new Burnout. This is a car game that forgoes racing and instead encourages you to destroy other drivers to win. OnRush captures the sense of speed really well, and there is no racing in it: instead, there are objectives like hitting targets to prolong a countdown, keep speed inside a zone while fending off attackers, or knocking opponents into traffic and other wholesome ideas. Onrush was one of the free PS+ games in December 2018, and is fun as hell!

Winter break Pt 2 ft superhero movies

Avengers promo? They have promos all the time.
The listed regular price of $22.99 never happens.

So, I got a Sinemia membership, which is one of those subscriptions where you can see x movies for x dollars per year. You go to Fandango and check your theater for seats, sign into the Sinemia app and manually enter the movie showtime, upon which a credit card number is generated, which you go back and enter on Fandango to get your tickets. At this point, you are charged about $3 and Sinemia pays for the rest. When you show your confirmation email to get in at the theater, you also sign into the movie through the Sinemia app. It's a bit convoluted, but even with the not-really-hidden surcharges, you're shelling out ~$6 for a primetime showing. Not a bad deal with some patience and reading.

Anyway, my first experience got me into a showing of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which was a great way to round out Black 2018. Like (my previous review of) Dragon Quest XI, the movie was a living, breathing comic book. After coming off JRPG stories of insisting that darkness is bad and light is good without really explaining why, Spiderman deals with sympathetic villains and twisted 'good guys,' and my brain was almost stuck in the mire of Japanese character writing. This movie hits quick and good, and knows its place in its own world as well as the real world. It does a recap of Spiderman's existence, and kind of eye rolls its way through a 1-minute backstory. Isn't this like the 5th retelling of Spiderman in the last 15 years? 2 of the 5 lyrics in the 90s cartoon tell you all you need to know about Peter Parker: 'radioactive Spider-man.' Anyhow, I don't want to spoil the movie, but one thing I appreciated was that while 15 year old Miles Morales had awkward moments, that wasn't the entirety of his character. It's nice to acknowledge that teenagers are complex human beings, too.

Dolph Lundgren as an advisor? Sure.

The next night, I saw Awkwardman, which had all the teenage awkwardness and bland morality to be expected of a movie with a high budget. King. Kill king. Get power. Power good. Jokes. The score reminded me of Man of Steel in the sense that the one-song soundtrack was great...but it felt like one continuous song. It manifests itself when whoever is Black Manta decides to be Black Manta, which I thought would be his theme. (Dude! Sick!) And then, you hear the three-note theme when he's preparing to do something sinister. (G'hee! Awesome!) And then he disappears for an hour of the long-ass film to some inter-kingdom squabble, and you hear the theme again. At that point, it's just a rogue theme that plays whenever the hell it feels like it. Rupert Gregson-Williams, who previously kicked our asses with the Wonder Woman soundtrack, just wasn't utilized here. I know that the effects will look great in 4k, but at my showing, the actors' heads floated on bodies that weren't theirs, and there were loads of awkward effects like putting the trident up to his face. What the fuck? Point it at someone, it's a weapon! Lastly, the giant sea creature that gave that awkward-ass roar when Arthur...ehh...wins at the end and makes a generic-ass speech. I laughed a lot during Aquaman, and definitely enjoyed the experience. I'll be watching it again, but it was awkward as I've ever seen!

Liam Neeson approves!

In gaming news, I started Horizon Zero Dawn, and boy am I glad I waited. In spring in 2017, I had reached a divergence of this game, Far Cry Primal and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I was pretty sure they'd be similar experiences, and ultimately chose to be disappointed by BotW and pleasantly surprised by FC Primal. Horizon Zero Dawn is pretty much Far Cry: Primal, though, and that's not a bad thing. The hunting and gathering are pretty minimalized and you spend more time fighting the dino-machines and conversing than preparing for your journey. Crafting is pretty quick and you can bypass it with money, but that requires more stopping to fight on the way to your mission destination. I paused through the main story and have been doing side quests and stuff and got back to the main story after a week or so of other stuff. Just when I was about to make fun of the story for having a really predictable twist, the scenes start to elaborate and this is where it's really shining. The world was destroyed by human greed and overambition, sure. The plan to save humanity is where the writing in HZD establishes itself and I'd encourage everyone to play it.

Other than that, I have been really thoughtless about frugal gaming. While HZD was only $10, I had an instant love affair with PS VR and splurged on a used bundle. Going forward, I'm going to challenge myself to go as long as I can without spending money on games this year. Foot, prepare to meet Mouth at a later date!