So part of me going on what I guess I'll call a budgeting kick for 2022 is that before ADHD meds, I made as many subscription/recurring services as I could annual instead of monthly, both because it's cheaper and because "Now I only have to remember it once a year."
The problem with this is that while my ADHD brain would frequently forget things that happen once a month, it has absolutely no ability to recall something that happens once a year at what is essentially an arbitrary and random date.
So part of me assembling a budget involves figuring out when these things fall due (mostly by noticing the debits as they happen) and then making a note of that so I can plan for it in the future instead of just having it happen when I least expect it.
Even with the unexpected debit sucker punches every year, this worked out pretty well insofar as many of the ups and downs of my business as a crowdfunded internet busker are cyclical and since I would only buy an annual plan at a moment when my pockets were burning...
...they tend to come up for renewal at similar moments of the year, most of the year.

I'm learning that mid-January is a bit of a painful exception to that. Reconstructing past-me's thinking, I'm sure that these were gifts to myself using Christmas money, gift cards, etc.
I'm canceling the services that I subscribed to and don't actually need and/or stopped using, and some of them have pro-rated refunds that come automatically. Others I'm requesting a refund with "accidental renewal" as the reason. No expectation, but... nothing ventured.
The stuff I actually use or can't drop without securing data and making other arrangements that might require research... that's a different story. And I'll have to decide if I want to keep them clumped up in one month at the start of the year, or try to stagger them.
It works out to be the same money either way (money is fungible, which is why it's so useful, in comparison to stores of value that are non-fungible) and if I have mastered budgeting by the end of the year then it won't be a hardship come next January.
When I caught that this was happening I wondered how I'd never noticed the pattern before, then rememebered/realized I have... I go through this every January. I could just never figure out what to do about it before something else happened and I forgot about it.
As usual when I tweet about budget stuff, this is me thinking "out loud" in writing about what's going on to get my thoughts in order, and doing it in public in case it's helpful to anyone to see someone else working through it and talking about it.
But also as usual, I can't afford to say no to anyone who wants to show appreciation with a tip and/or help me get over this bump and/or build a cushion as I work on creating a workable budget for myself and build/renew the skills of managing my finances.

paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr…
As ornery as I can be about parasocial stuff, I am grateful that Twitter gives me a space to work things through and I do enjoy most aspects of my life as a public microdiaryist.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Alexandra Erin

Alexandra Erin Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @AlexandraErin

13 Jan
The thing that really sucks about the way so many "blue-tinted" folk (as @AnaMardoll aptly put it) jump on any criticism of the Biden White House pandemic response with accusations that we're helping the GOP is... yeah, I'm going to convince as many people as I can to vote blue?
And it sucks because what I want is to be able to hand people reasons to be excited and enthusiastic about doing so. And the Democrats in power right now could deliver some of those. With relative ease, in the sense that there's no clear path for the GOP to block some of them.
And it sucks because I already know people are going to tell me they see no reason for them to vote for Democrats. Which is something that always happens, but this time... unless something big changes, I'm not going to have anything to say to them that feels worth saying.
Read 9 tweets
12 Jan
If you want to understand why the right-wing fringe keeps taking such big swings on what seem like lost causes, just think about the Far Side cartoon with the spiders spinning a web at the bottom of a slide, captioned something like, "If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings."
Now please also stop and think about how many people were convinced that Trump taking the White House was about as likely as a flimsy little spider web catching a kid coming down a slide.
I know those two tweets aren't the most original, deepest, or most sophisticated political analysis I've ever posted, but when I think about the takes that political pundits get paid to pump out, I have no problem shaking the tip jar after it.

paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr…
Read 4 tweets
12 Jan
Today in my journaling I found myself using the word "anxietize" (conjugated as "anxietizing") to describe the specific act of engaging in anxiety over something.

I know "worry" is already a verb, but this is more specific. Like "procrastinate" is more specific than "delay".
I specifically realized that I had been anxietizing over stuff related to NiNoBilMa, because somehow in taking the last week of December off from it for rest and the first week of January off from it due to illness, I lost sight of the fact that December was always a test run.
So I've been metaphorically clawing the walls because the idea was *supposed to be* that each month's program builds on the writing skills gained in the previous month and what I've got for this month just feels like a better planned and organized version of last month.
Read 7 tweets
12 Jan
So I haven't seen it yet, but...

If Eternals reveals that MCU Thanos *is* still Starfox's brother, and Starfox *is* an Eternal... there is suddenly a much better (still messed up but less nonsensical) motive that Thanos could have had and I don't know if I'm rooting for that.
Like, obviously the Russo brothers didn't envision their Thanos as trying to cull the universe in order to slow the Celestial maturation rate and it would be a bit ham-fisted to try to make that his Secret Retroactive Real Motivation.
Buuuuuut while it would be bad storytelling to try to make it fit in now... it would have been better storytelling if it had always been there, and it's not like the MCU hasn't ignored previous characterization and continuity to keep things moving forward.
Read 9 tweets
12 Jan
Today I had a Team Give Timmy's Teacher The Plague person act like calling an elementary school a "germ factory" is some over-the-top hyperbole we made up just now for the pandemic.
The school I went to and every single one I visited as part of an intermural event of any kind was built according to a Cold War plan where they believed that ventilation was a form of communism.
The shift back towards school closings isn't ideological. It's practical. It's not even preventative. Schools are closing again because in the worst spots they don't have enough staff to operate safely or effectively period, even without factoring in added pandemic challenges.
Read 7 tweets
12 Jan
Men Stop Making The Exact Same Joke A Woman Just Made Back At Her But Worse Challenge 2022
Nothing illustrates the "not listening, just looking for an opportunity to speak" school of communication more than a guy who sees/hears your joke and decides to "riff" on it by repeating it back to you in a less clever way.
And they *always* say the same thing: that they were just riffing, playing along, joining in, and they don't understand why that's a big deal.

The big deal is that... if you were riffing along with your male bro, I feel like you'd feel the need to add something to what he said.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(