Given the insanity in the world right now with spiking energy costs, ill-conceived federal spending, and generally piss-poor state government timing, I’m once again cutting a lot of my usual expenses to weather the storm. This ranges from shutting down / cancelling fun stuff I do online to adjusting my grocery spending and even how I run appliances here at the house.
For example, I’ve trimmed my weekly grocery bill from around $120 to around $60 by clipping coupons, taking advantage of in-store deals, and only purchasing essentials… No more deli salads, fancy lunch meats and cheeses, flavored seltzer, and pre-made meals; it’s all about five dollar tv-dinners and long-term storage things like canned goods now.
I’ve got about 90 days of reserves food-wise, and just recently finished eating all of the “expires in 2022” stores so everything in the pantry is good to at least mid-2023.
Interestingly, King Soopers (my local go-to for groceries) recently started a service called “Boost” which is a $95 / year thing that’s intended to offer cheap grocery delivery and in-store deals – but it also offers double the gas points for groceries. So, today I put twenty-two gallons of $3.39 high-test in the 300 after taking advantage of the $0.90 off a gallon for buying groceries.
If I time it right, I can tank up my gigantic planet-destroying hemi for pre-Biden prices and either save a few bucks or drive a bit more for the fun of it.
Speaking of that gigantic planet-destroying hemi, I need to mention that the only reason I have it is because I live five miles from the office and only go in every other day during the week. So, compared to someone driving a hybrid back and forth to Boulder every day, I’m not even moving the carbon footprint needle.
My utility costs have also gone up quite a bit thanks to the state government deciding to turn off 90% of all fossil fuel use by 2024 – but not really having a plan for how they will do that without everyone freezing to death or lighting the hundred year old power grid on fire… Regardless of hoi polloi problems, they press on and the expense of “going green” is showing up on everyone’s bill… Which is fine, because inflation and recession have been redefined away and spiking PPI is a myth or something – so why not raise everyone’s utility costs?
And because everyone is supposed to get an electric car, which is yet more load on the above-mentioned hundred year old grid and hit-or-miss green systems, the local utility is switching everyone over to time of day billing. This is to try and bribe everyone to turn off the A/C in the afternoon and use their dryers and dishwashers late at night so that when everyone gets home from work and plugs in the car, the state doesn’t melt down from the load.
This means I now do laundry Saturday night versus Saturday morning; not a huge hardship. But it does save a few pennies due to the reduced electric cost in the evening. I’ve also adjusted the washer to run the spin cycle longer to extract more water in order to hopefully not run the electric dryer for as long.
All in all I will survive the 2022 insanity just like I survived 2020 and 2021, it’s just getting a bit tiresome and I’m getting a headache from all of the facepalming.
Listening to "It's Not the Night" by The Cars