Money date No. 18: One huge move and a little bit of hope
Financial challenges of travel, book launch wrap and a pricy decision to get some relief
A week of traveling really brought my newfound commitment to simplicity into perspective. The experience had me doubling down on my desire to divest from the corporate economy — and drove home just how difficult that’s going to be.
I flew Delta and was reminded of the dehumanizing experience of deregulated air travel. I stayed in a Seattle neighborhood that’s been completely taken over by Amazon HQ and transformed into a creepy technocratic robot land. I ate at several independent-seeming restaurants, then saw the same company name in my credit card transactions over and over. I called a cab but gave up and ordered a Lyft after waiting in the cold for 20 minutes; the Lyft was there in two.
But this dystopia was disrupted by some lovely moments in the Pacific Northwest, too! A delightful group of people joined Marian Schembari and me at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland for an unrecorded, non-streamed, never-social-media’d, very human conversation about budget culture. (Thank you to those of you who were there! Amazing to meet you IRL 💖 )
I also got to sign books at Powell’s in Portland and Elliot Bay Book Co. in Seattle and tread their creaky wooden floors to browse stacks of new and used books. I rode public trains and buses for $6 a day. And from Portland to Seattle, I rode Amtrak, which is a government-owned corporation and not degraded from profit-seeking the way private airlines have been. So, there’s still hope out there!
(On another hopeful note: I made a huge move this week that I’m not quite ready to publish outside of the paywall but have to discuss in this money date…)
💡 Inspired by a Healthy Rich contributor, a money date is an exercise I crafted for You Don’t Need a Budget. Subscribers can follow along in a private space after the paywall, and I encourage you to steal my questions to guide your own reflections!
What’s the most joyful thing you did with money this week?
OK, here’s the huge move:
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