Steph's Weekly Low Buy Spending Recap #19
all the bills are going up all at once... anyone else really struggle to keep birthday secrets?
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Hello dear friend! I'm sorry for my absence last week, I had some annoyingly time sensitive work deadlines and when you combine that with still not having my usual amount of energy… I just did not have anything left to give when it came to making my usual weekly recap post!
As usual, this post is just too full of goodness for email, so make sure you click above and head to the app/website to read to its full potential!
Actually, before I get any further into this I'd love to hear your opinion on something regarding these weekly newsletters! They've always just contained a bit of a snapshot look into my week through a financial lens, focusing purely on what we've spent this week with a little bit of what I've been up to this week thrown in.
I've mentioned in the last newsletter or two that I've recently switched to a dumb phone… I am officially two weeks strong on that now! I've been watching some content around decentralising smartphones and one point that was made in a video I was watching was that we don't really get recommendations from people we know any more, or even just for real people in general. It's mostly just recommendations from algorithms!
It got me thinking… It would be cool to feature some recommendations in here and possibly some other things that aren't just purely based on finances! After all, my content overall isn't just about personal finance… It's about crafting a life on purpose that you actually like and enjoy, and a pretty big face of that is finances but it's not the only aspect of it that I talk about.
So, I'd love if you would vote below! Would you like to see some little snippets that are finance related in this newsletter? I'm thinking recommendations around books, TV shows, movies, YouTube channels etc… Not a whole bunch all at once but at least one thing a week that I really enjoy and if there's anything else you would love to see in these useless is as always, please feel free to leave that in the comments! I sincerely like hearing from you guys and hearing what you like and what you think. I don't do this just to hear myself speak… or seeing myself write as the case maybe 😂
Thanks in advance for voting!
I have to tell you, I feel like I've been having a little bit of a crisis of Faith when it comes to social media recently. Specifically short form social media. I think we all know now that there's so much junk out there. There's a lot of good too, but there's also a lot of bad and sometimes I wonder about my place in it all. Am I okay with the role that I play in contributing to short form social media? Is the fact that I try my best to put out content that gets people to think, that isn't fear hungering or rage bait, that I partner with brands only that I already use all that I really like and want to use myself… Does all of that make up for existing in a virtual world that I think ultimately… Is kind of bad for people?
See this is the thing though, I don't think that social media in general is a totally bad thing. I don't think people being addicted to their smartphones as a good thing, hence why I've switched to a dumb phone myself because I couldn't stand how addicted I was to my iPhone any more. But I still enjoy scrolling through Instagram and TikTok… Even if it is hard to filter through all of the junk to find the gold.
But I also can't ignore how manipulative especially short form social media is. I don't know… Like I keep saying, I don't have any conclusions on this yet. I'm just asking myself a lot of questions but as always, I am finding long form content to be a somewhat safe harbour in the storm. Not perfect by any stretch… but I don't think anything ever will be.
I'm so enjoying YouTube and Substack, a lot more than Instagram and TikTok if I'm really honest. If I’m confessing everything, it's tricky when most of my income is caught up in short form social media rather than long form. In someways I would love to just click my fingers and switch 80% of my efforts to long form content, but at the moment… Well, I'm sure you can understand that you can't just up and quit your job without trickle-on consequences. 😂
That feels like a really good time to put a subscribe button in though! Whether you subscribe for free or you pay for your subscription, you're really helping to support my efforts with putting out as much free content as a humanly can, and I appreciate it so incredibly much.
Okay, enough rambling about that for now!
This week was a very quiet week spending wise, which is nice because last week really wasn't. I know we didn't recap last week, but there were definitely a few instances of shopping that occurred. I really needed new jeans, and new socks… it was one of those weeks, you know? I also bought my dumb phone which was $110. It all adds up!
This week thankfully, other than rent our expenses were quite low. And that's in spite of our car insurance going up… And our health insurance going up. Thankfully, the health insurance only went up about $2 a fortnight, but our car insurance went up by $42 a month! It was only $81ish to begin with so it went out by half the original bill!
On Monday, I made the fateful decision to finally get around to updating our address with our car insurance. Something that I really should've done months ago. You could've knocked me over with a feather when I was then told that our premium would be going up by $42!
I was actually really surprised that this went up so much, we moved to what is known to be a much safer area so I have no idea why the cost changed, but who knows what really goes into figuring out those figures. I found out today as I was researching new car insurance companies (spoiler alert I have definitely found cheap options so we will be switching once I pick one) that sometimes even just someone's name changes the insurance premium? At least according to the lady I spoke to with Youi.
Speaking of them actually, what's up with their ‘we must call you’ system? The benefit was that I was able to tell the lady on the phone that the premium was too high and she was able to offer me a 10% discount on the spot, so I guess that's not something you would get if you were just getting online quotes… But still, it was half an hour on the phone (today actually, as of writing this).
The top-up payment for this came out on Tuesday.
The other purchase I want to highlight from this day was my hairbrush!
I don't know if I mentioned it here, but I did mention on my Instagram stories a few weeks ago that one bougie thing I would totally splurge on. If I had the finances spare is a Mason Pearson hairbrush! They look absolutely amazing and I've had such good things about them, I would go for the one that is a combination of nylon bristles and boar bristles.
Well, when I was googling that I actually ended up stumbling across a dupe at chemist warehouse of all places. I kept an eye on the price - $39ish when I first checked - it happened to spot it at half price so I got one for $27!
Also pictured is a new anti frizz hair oil that I'm trying that I got with my weekly grocery hall, you'll see the video of that and me testing it for the first time a little further down.
I can't speak to the longevity of this brush yet, though you can see that the lady Jane logo is already coming off which I actually find hilarious 🤣 but it does seem to have a decently smooth effect on hair! To the point where Matt keeps running off with it and brushing his beard with it because it also is working well at smoothing his beard… At this rate I may need to go and buy him his own, haha.
Once again, let's just say three cheers for acupuncture! I was absolutely hanging out for this appointment by the time it rolled around, and I think it's really helped because I have felt a little bit better since then.
Thursday was grocery order day! Our grocery budget this fortnight is a little bit smaller than usual due to an extra tight budget fortnight, but it's actually ended up working really well. I explain a little bit more in my whole video that you can see below, but I also was able to use the tail end of a gift card and some store credit from my previous order so the order total $77 but I only had to pay $64.30 by the time I also used a new discounted gift card!
I hit a big milestone (or at least it's big for me) this past week with my YouTube channel! I've officially hit monetisation status, or at least the first tier of it. Fun fact, there's actually two tears to the whole monetisation process. The first one enables you to open up memberships, the second one is where you start to earn money from views. I'm very very close to that one and I think I should hit it in the next week or so.
It's so nice to feel like my hard work is paying off. When I tell you I've battled so much imposter syndrome over the years with social media, I've started and stopped and started and stopped so many times, and always fallen short of my goals, because I would get in my head and freak out about it and then quit. So it's extra meaningful that I am hitting this milestone after making YouTube videos off and on for 12 years!
Any watch time that you give me is such a gift and really helps again to financially support my content efforts in a way that cost you absolutely nothing so thank you so much for watching! And for subscribing of course.
We paid rent this day so… There goes $2000! That's a month worth of rent, to clarify $2086 to be specific.
The other fun purchase of this day was something for Matt for his birthday! I won't be posting a spending recap newsletter next week as it will be Matt's birthday and I will be officially off the clock for most of the week! We also have family visiting later that week so it'll be a really fun week.
Anyone else absolutely hopeless at keeping birthday surprises secret? I've got some plans that I've just made for Matt's birthday, nothing crazy just things that I think he'll enjoy and will make him feel special… But it's so hard to keep them all to myself! I also really want to just go ham and spend a whole tonne of money on presents for him. I can think of so many things to get him! I'll have to see how self controlled I can be 😂 if there's one way that I do struggle with not spending money, it's when it comes to buying gifts for people. I love giving people gifts and surprises and making them feel special!
What's your favourite cheap or free way to celebrate birthdays?
We had girls night on Saturday! It's turning out to be a really nice tradition almost. We're being a lot better about organising our next girls night the night of the current one so that we have something in the calendar at all times, and it's a really nice time to be able to catch up and just chat. We're very low-key people, and it's so nice to have friends that you're comfortable hanging out with even when you're exhausted. We all said that if it was anyone else that we were meant to be hanging out with, we probably would've cancelled from being so tired 😂
We didn't really do much, we just got some really good takeout and hung out in my living room and talked the whole time. We thought about watching a movie… But then we blinked and it was 10 pm and we're all basically grandma's and like to get to bed early, haha.
It's also turning out to be a really good opportunity for some of our husbands to catch up and have their extra nerdy game nights. I love a board game, but I am not someone who enjoys those really intense board games that take 4+ hours to complete. Our husband's on the other hand…
And that's it for the week! Like I said, quite low-key but I'm really glad about that because I feel like the next week and a half is going to be a little bit intense! I will be back here in two weeks to update you, but just to give you a little bit of a sneak peek, we have a concert coming up this weekend, Matt's birthday, some medical appointments and then a family member visiting for four days so there will be a lot of out of the ordinary things happening… But I'm really looking forward to it! It's nice to take it easy before having lots of plans though.
My plan for this week is to again try and take it easy until the weekend so that I don't burn myself out especially since I've been sick. Anyone else find it really hard to not overdo it? I find it so hard to slow down and stop when I need it! I just have so many ideas and things I want to do… And that's not enough time in the day!
A movie recommendation…
It's been a little while since I've seen this movie, but it's a really good one that's worth watching if you haven't seen it already!
I love an unlikely friendship movie with a really good meaning behind it. It's also just generally a really well-made movie and if I can also recommend a YouTube channel… Here's one video from a channel I've been watching a lot of videos from over the last few weeks as I've been doing my ‘switch to a dumb phone’ journey.
Got anything you've been really enjoying lately? I'd love a recommendation! Especially if it's a book… I feel like I'm running out of fiction books in my to be read pile.
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