Are you going to Kachka? 
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Kachka isnāt open until dinner, but Lavka Cafe upstairs was! No Herring Under A Fur Coat for me (my favorite dish there) but I had a giant delicious gf buckwheat blini filled with pulled pork and sauerkraut and it was so good!!
And even more happenedā¦
I booked our 10th anniversary vacation!
Massage Friend said sheās going back to visit Albuquerque to see family next year and asked if I wanted to join her. I tagged along on a trip in 2019, and because of snow flight cancellations we ended up staying an extra day and went to Santa Fe and had the most amazing spa experience at Ten Thousand Waves (Japanese style spa and guest house in the mountains). I had been talking to Marmalade about it just yesterday and said we should have our 10th anniversary celebration there. And weāre super chill about romance stuff (mom came with us to Valentineās dinner etc) and would love for Massage Friend to come stay with us in the suite for one of the nights. I wanted to book their fanciest room but it was all filled up on the calendar, but then I finally found two consecutive nights so I just went ahead and booked it! One night for just us, and one day/night where we can hang out with our friend (sheās like family to us). I figure we could stay at a nice hotel in downtown Santa Fe for a couple of nights before that, and then we wonāt get all spaād out!
Of course, being me there is a 10% gift card promotion at Ten Thousand Waves that ends tomorrow and Iād like to figure out our plan so that I can optimize my savings 
But $500+/night suite: booked (without balking at cost)! Private soaking tub at $69/pp, will be booked once reservations open! Massage at $219 for 80 minutes, will be booked! Maybe two massages: a shiatsu massage and then a foot massage. I hope Wolfgang from Austria is still there because he has the most amazing hands ever!
I feel like half of my enjoyment of things is just the anticipation, and Iām very excited. I should plan us an amazing trip to Santa Fe! Marmalade is worried about the cats because we had been counting on Massage Friend to take care of them, but we will figure it out. Iām sure Former Roommate can come stay for a few days!
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I canāt decide if I hate Charles or just feel really sorry for him. Maybe both.
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Iām all caught up! Wow, that 2-parter with the guy with $11 million who shops at the Dollar Store and whose wife is close to divorcing himā¦ the funny thing is that his wife is like āIām fine if I fly first class and he wants to fly in economyā because thatās literally what I think might happen next time Marmalade and I go to India together. I would be the one in economy. Sure, we could afford to both be in business class but I canāt freaking justify it!
Maybe I need to set up some internal rules, like if we hit a certain net worth, then I will give myself permission to do it. But as Ramit has shown, having more (or tons!) of money doesnāt change who you are. I literally get a thrill when I get a good deal. So, need to figure some things out. Also, once Marmalade FIREs I think Iāll get more paranoid about excess spending.
When do new episodes drop? 
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Maybe the trick is figuring out what things you can get deals on that wonāt impact your health/enjoyment? Maybe flying to India should be off limits for the deal thrills lol
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Yesterday on our walk Ry and I listened to that one as well and it was hard because for some of the things he said we were both like, well yeah, duh! And then for other things we couldnāt believe he was being so nitpicky and not working as a team with his spouse. We both laughed about the frozen blueberries - those got added to the costco list yesterday 
I started with the most recent episode and am working my way backwards, so I have a lot to listen to still.
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Iāll be honest some of these couples are really bumming me out! And maybe even a little too close to home when I remember some of my parentsā fights about money. 
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I just listened to the episode with Serena and Brian, where she wants to buy a house but they donāt have enough enough in savings for the down payment because he is working on a startup instead of working for a wage income. What confused me is that they never even considered getting a cheaper house. She wants a house that costs well over a million dollars and they never once broached the idea of just buying a cheaper house.
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Itās not a deal to get an economy ticket but itās a very bad deal (to me) to fly business class! 
Marmalade is tall and it is much harder on his body. It was $6K extra for the round trip. Granted, these were tickets purchased on short notice because his dad passed away, but even if we bought the tickets well in advance it would probably be $4-5K extra.
Letās see, this could buy me:
- a central AC unit
- a handmade walnut bed frame and nightstand by a local artisan
- a super luxurious weeklong vacation, staying at nice hotels, eating fancy food, getting spa massages. Which Iāve never been able to justify the expense for.
Iāve gotten a lot better about not feeling guilty about spending money by seeing how much our investments rise and fall. Thereās nothing like seeing it drop by $80K in a few days to be like āok, maybe that $15 I saved by buying grocery sale items really doesnāt matterā Basically Iām a Ramit case study but with less crazy numbers (and I donāt shop at Dollar Store).
If they live in the Bay Area (which I suspect they do since heās a tech start-up guy), you canāt even get a decent house in a good location for under a million! When I left in 2005, my colleague had purchased a brand new townhouse for $800K in Santa Clara. Thatās not even a more expensive area. Last year Marmalade was showing me the run down 3b/1b houses (really not nice) that you could get for $800K. Iām so glad I didnāt stick around there!
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And if thatās what they were listed for in 2020, they were probably actually going for $1.5 million. Laughing/crying emoji.
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Yeah, my assumption was that they have a reason to stay in the bay area (jobs? family?) and house prices there are just ā¦ broken. 
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For several years up until a year ago, my brother and his fiancƩe lived in Denver and flew to San Francisco for work because that was cheaper than living in San Francisco anymore. 
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I keep thinking about how the podcast is interesting because, once you start making enough money to cover your basic lifestyle + save some amountā¦you have to learn to spend money in a way thatās useful to you. And that still feels so unnatural to me.
I mean, if it costs the WWF X dollars to send mailings and they get back 2X in donations, is that a bad thing? As long as their overall impact is still good?
I kind of arbitrarily decided I would try to donate 10% of my take-home pay once I felt pretty secure with my income. My partner doesnāt do a budget for charity like I do, they just donate opportunistically when things come up.
For researching charities: I usually look up their latest annual report and read what they claim theyāre doing (including their disclosed % spent on fundraising), and look at the compensation of their highest paid people. I donāt think nonprofits should try to eliminate all overhead; I want their employees to have good pay and benefits and focus on their work, not on penny pinching. But also I donāt donate to places that spend millions of dollars on executive compensation. And then I spread my donations across a bunch of orgs so that if I make one bad choice, well, it feels like less of a problem.
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I felt like they could have sent a normal mailing, it didnāt have to be a multipage glossy color thing, practically a magazine! Also, I got on their mailing list because I donated, so it didnāt get them a new donor. Edit: I think I was additionally pissed because itās an environmental related charity and I viewed it as environmentally unfriendly.
But I am also someone who got so mad at UNICEF for literally sending us a book one year that I wrote them and said weāre never giving them money again because of said book. I donāt like charities that send you stuff to make you feel virtuous about giving to them. I mean, a letter of appreciation is fine (hereās the impact you were able to make, thank you!) but extravagant mailings or gifts totally rub me the wrong way. Iām so glad weāve figured out organizations that are doing great things and that we feel good about giving to, and donāt have to deal with this anymore 
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I donāt mind address labels or stickers or calendars. I hate letters asking me to donate more. But Iāve decided neither will sway me, I will make my own charity decisions irrespective of things I am sent. The waste aggravates me but if I and others like me donāt respond to paper products and respond better to FB ads or something, maybe in time they will stop? Maybe?
The paper waste does annoy me but Iām not in the business so I donāt know what works. And as @iualia said, not all overhead is badā¦it pays for employees and offices and health insurance. I donāt even mind moderately expensive executives because nonprofits compete against for-profits for executivesā¦ but a significant fraction going to The Cause obviously matters.
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My options for 3br+ houses are (a) over 750-800k (b) over an hour from work ( c) zero safety around neighborhood and schools. In LA, not SFā¦
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Oh gosh Iām listening to this and itās my parents and me, though Iām not that rich but we have enough money that I could just buy berries regardless of if they are $4 or $8ā¦
My parents thoughā¦ my goodness. Itās them. Never able to have the exact thing we wanted, always less, no matter what that goalpost was to start with, it needed to be shifted down. Even now. They have millions and very low expenses but always allow themselves less than what they want. My mum claims she canāt afford to retire. I believe it has nothing to do with money and a fear of creating a new identity after work. There is no way a doctor after a career of over 40 years, having no mortgage, and always living frugally canāt afford to retire?
We have a mortgage so we always tell ourselves we are not rich. At what point do we let ourselves have the things we really want without compromise or months of agonising (specifically about the cost and not other values like the environment or ethical manufacturing)?
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The house couple is so sad.
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Something Iāve done to help with this is add a ābuy priceā to my wishlist. I add the price I feel comfortable paying, based on gut feel when I first ide tidy we want the item but adjusted to reality of Iāve already done research. I know about how much it sells for normally, Iāve identified the exact make & model we want, and now I just wait for it to go on sale OR I recognise its worth it more to me to have it now than waiting for the next sale time. That helped me get my stand mixer last year, and itās helping me get my food processor this year (havenāt seen it for the price I want, will buy after boxing day regardless because thatās when Iāve decided weāll get more benefit from having it than from waiting longer).
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Thatās a really good idea!!
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