Birthdays, Photos, and More: Replacing Facebook A Step at a Time
If you’ve been following the site for the past 10 years, you’ll know that my update frequency rises and falls from year to year and season to season. Likewise, if you’re following my GitHub profile, you may have been wondering, “What’s Hunter Davis been up to these past few months?”.
This past week has been an interesting one. I made it through the entire week without purchasing anything, then splurged on some fast food this weekend. I am definitely feeling some mental push-back against my spending habits.
Q: When is a doughnut not a doughnut? A: When it costs 50$.
During the first week in May, I considered myself quite thrifty. I bought a used magnifying glass from a thrift store, along with an ancient pair of studio headphones I plan to refurbish. Neither are produced by companies that still exist. Having not made a corporate purchase since the 1st, I was feeling fairly economical. On May 6th, that all changed.
Though it was a couple days before the official kick-off, I went ahead and started the investing week early. For the first time, starting Monday I followed the ‘Only Pay Yourself‘ investment and lifestyle strategy I created earlier this week. Any time I needed/wanted to make a purchase, I first had to acquire (at minimum) 1 stock from the company that makes/distributes/produces said product or service.
As of May 1st, 2013 I am undertaking a new financial endeavor. You can read all about it in this blog post. To summarize:
Long time readers will know that I had ads on the front page of this site for many years, but removed them a few years back in lieu of a ‘donations’ button. As I’ve not once received a donation (and frankly I miss the income); I’ve re-added the ads to the bottom of articles. That way you can get through the entirety of a front-page post (and half of a multi-part article) without being advertised to. Hopefully they are not too intrusive, and I think it strikes a fair balance.