don't fall for the illusion of good deals. i remember so many times when people would be interested in buying one thing, and would only need one thing. for some reason though, if there is an active deal where you save a certain amount of money if you buy multiple of the same item, people will think they are saving money by going out of their way to buy multiple things for that deal, when they were only originally intending to buy one item.

if this applies to a consumable such as food or tape you consistently need for whatever reason, then this situation makes perfect sense, as you are buying in bulk and will save time and money over time. if this applies to a blender or something where if you buy an air fryer with it, you save on the air fryer. if you already had an air fryer or really didn't need one to begin with, this is a total scam that tricks you into spending money on a luxury you never really wanted. it is so easy to focus on the potential savings of a deal and so easy to ignore the waste that is involved to get a deal.

i faintly remember an episode of the office (us) where they have a costume contest and the prize is a whole book of coupons. oscar points out that you would have to spend an insane amount of money on the particular things this book is advertising to save money overall. but in order to get there, you have to be exceedingly full of consumer greed to want all these specific things all of a sudden. what is the point?

so many have fallen for this and trillions have been made off of it. keep your desires about what you want to spend money on simple, adjusting them as things break or new opportunities present themselves. keep this especially when you go out to buy things, and see when your conscience tries to add things to this list based on what you see in stores.

June 12th, 2025
carpooling utilizations

for the specific instance of my job, i am traveling a city over just to get to work. i personally do not like driving and would much rather have a shorter drive or not drive at all of that was an option. i had the idea after about a week to potentially carpool with one of my coworkers, as he only lives a few minutes away from me.

this would involve him picking me up and dropping me off everyday and i would in return give him half to the full amount of his gas money. he said giving half was fine which was very generous and amounts to twenty bucks a week. this works out great because he gets to save some money each week by taking a few extra minutes each day to pick me up and drop me off, to and from work.

remember to not be a picky or annoying passenger, try to be as courteous and out of the way as much as possible. make it very clear that if he ever wants to play music loud in the car, make calls, make stops on the way home or anything of that sort, tell him its completely fine. also be as quick as possible when getting picked up or dropped off, its all about not being a nuisance its an absolute blessing to find an arrangement such as this. you can also do without money and instead, alternate the weeks you drive each other to work. this was my original plan but i really don't like driving so it worked out.

the benefits for doing this are great, you can sort out any morning business on your way to work if you have a tight morning schedule. this saves you money every week and a big benefit that you might not thing about is the mileage that you are keeping off your car. finding ways to use the money you would have used in your car for equal or lesser counterparts through means such as carpooling is great as you are putting less strain on your car.

doing this will mean less oil changes and a longer lifespan for your car. do keep your car though in most instances, in case of an emergency and remember to still use it for small personal trips throughout the week to keep your car active.

by being observant in your potential opportunities and realizing that there is no harm in asking, you can gain free time, save money and extend your cars lifespan. $ mega monies... $

May 27th, 2025
make shift work pants

starting a new job, i knew that it was inevitable before my old pair of everyday jeans would begin to be destroyed at the knees from kneeling on concrete and shredded at the thighs from using an angle grinder. my options were to either forget those pants and buy an expensive pair of work pants at the store or to find a way to continue using my pants. my lady is a fine seamstress, so I decided to just get her to put a very large patch using old denim fabric scraps from an old project and covering the ripped knees and thighs. it took her about half an hour, a little elbow grease to fit the pants in the confines of the sewing machine, and a small amount of thread to stitch the denim securely to the pant legs.


voila, the result was great. this double layer of fabric provides more warmth as well as further difficulty for a tear to be bad enough to expose the skin of my legs, as now it has to simultaneously make a hole in the same spot. when that time inevitably does come, no harm in simply putting another layer of denim or other strong fabric.

it would not be sensible to get a sewing machine and learn basic sewing to do very small stuff like this, unless it provided enough of an effect to overwhelm the cost of time and money to begin any sort of sewing endeavors, this would make it good. just by doing this, we have saved at least $50 dollars if i decided to buy a nice pair of workpants that would have just done a similar method of double layering in some chinese factory. the lesson is to utilize your skills to save you money. you know how to cook? make food. you know how to sew? fix your clothes? you are a plumber? plumb your pipes and the pipes of those you love to save them and yourself money. these basic examples illustrate the benefits of using your skills to save money. do not waste the time and money buying all the tools needed to make a one time repair. don't get a sewing machine and learn to repair if you are a single bachelor who works at the bank. use your brain and apply it to your situation. we always have clothes we want to get rid of, take an old pair of jeans that do not fit anymore and sacrifice it to save your other jeans. the possibilities are unending. you could make some of these things last a lifetime.

simply imagine the intense savings of being to utilize this repair ability for all of your future children, continually fixing their clothes as they hand it down to eachother over time. this world is too impermanent to not be mindful of opportunities such as this...
$$$$$$$$

October 14th, 2024
a game of wizard

so i was at some church friends house for lunch a few sabbathes ago, and they had this game called wizard, a card game of values where you have to interpret your cards well enough and predict how many times you will win before you play, your predictions volidity determines how many points you get. we found this game quite fun but i knew that to buy this game, in the original brand, would be a ripoff for me as card and board games usually are. an extra $10-$20 dollars for practically a regular deck of cards. i was not going to fall into that trap, so what i did was i went to a dollarama and bought two decks of cards (like $2.50 total) with an old gift card given to me years ago, I took some cards from the other deck (two jokers and the two cover cards that come with decks) and turned them into jesters and wizards in the first deck. i then had an deck of cards with identical contents to that of one that i would have spend roughly $10 more on. i will not give in, a way can be found. these little things build up over time and it lets your personal belongings be more personalized. this same thing can be done with uno and other card games. you can borrow a copy of a board or card game, scan it and print it out. i did this a while ago with settlers of catan but i had some difficulties with the board, though you can always find solutions. one of these solutions involved buying a knockoff of these types of games on a website such as aliexpress, wish or alibaba. since this involves items where the quality is identical to an official version (printed paper and cardboard), it is not very important; you will sometimes see a radical discount on these websites. Other options include 3d printing, lazer printing and other printing option, though only sensible if you have these printers yourself or know someone who has access to these. i could have also just kept trying and not give up (:().

October 14th, 2024
broken ghettoe-ass bakpak fix

broh so my $20 walmart backpack's that i got 8 years ago, the zipper began to stop work and i would have to take like a full minute trying to manipulate it to work. after a week of this, i thought about getting the zipper switched out so it would work once again, but consulting the master sewer, i found out that changing a zipper on a backpack takes a very long time and it not worth the effort (why spend several hours fixing a cheap bag?). In this case since i only hold big books and items, i thought to turn my bag into a satchel of sorts, grandfather its mechanisms to keep its usage ongoing. We had some fabric we had extracted from a couch (washed) and pinned the zippers to be stationary to the side of the bag, about halfway up on eachside, and sewed a piece of that couch cushion fabric along the top of the bag, to flap down and attach to added velcrow along the front of the bag. This lets the bag stay conceiled with a very low chance for stuff to fall out (unless you turned it upside down and shook it violently) and a loud velcrow to go by to access the contents of the bag. It looks sort of out of place but if i were to add a few patches to it, it would look more natural. Now I can continue to use the bag for a long time before the bottom probably wears out (and I can use the same couch fabric over the bottom, making the bag look even better). backpacks seemingly become useless the second the zipper breaks, but with this sort of thinking, you can continue to find use in it.