4 April 2024
Finally switched our car insurance over to California yesterday... Between that, the tax bill we are about to get hit with and all of the other California expenses plus income tax... we've just about hit the point, six months into our move, where we've realized we can't quite live the same way we did in Seattle.
Car insurance doubled, electricity tripled, and state income tax went from 0 to quite a bit more...
So this morning I started purging all of my non-essential subscriptions. I think I've only kept four newsletters on auto-renew (zero Substack's, thankfully), a bunch of app subscriptions have been cancelled too. The only thing I'm keeping in print right now is McSweeney's.
And to be clear, this is not a woe-is-me situation. I'm the first person to say to people when they complain about taxes and rising prices, that, maybe rather than complain, take stock of all you have and realize how much is not essential. So that's what I'm doing.
In all likelihood, I'll resubscribe to most of these things when we get a bit more settled and used to the costs out here. I like to be three months ahead on our budget in YNAB (excluding savings) and we've fallen to only one month ahead, which for a super risk-adverse and cautious person, is a bit nerve-wracking—especially in my current line of work.
The one thing I don't want to stop is commissioning pieces for foofaraw. I don't think I'll be commissioning illustrations for every story anymore like I had planned; I have about five illustrations in the hopper though. But I'm doing everything I can to keep my current contributors going and trying to get up to one fiction piece a week too.
Today's Song:
Penny pinching and Manhunt on Apple TV+. Pretty straightforward 😜