Money date No. 43: Gardening season (just not for me)
Plus, a diner breakfast, a questionable Amazon purchase, business taxes and more
I’m writing this in my den with a video in the background of an old woman canning a ton of fresh vegetables from her garden. Working outside, in the sunshine, surrounded by lush, green plants and some cows and chickens somewhere in the distance…
It’s not a life I want to live — I don’t want to dedicate that much time to growing, storing and preparing food — but it can certainly look appealing. I like that my partner dedicates his time to growing food in our garden and helps us live more simply, at least for a few months each year.
If you follow other personal finance content, you’ve probably been encouraged at some point to grow your own food to save money, but I wouldn’t suggest that. Gardening enough to feed yourself is a lifestyle, not a little hack. And in my part of the world, the growing season is just a few months long with one harvest at the end. It would be a full-time job to grow enough in those few months, then preserve it somehow for the winter, to feed my family sufficiently to cut our grocery bill. I’m happy to pay for others to do the bulk of that work for me. Don’t feel bad if the gardening bandwagon isn’t for you!
My life has been pretty simple and uneventful as I’ve settled into my new job, so I have little else to report. I had to work hard to avoid once again giving thanks for sunshine and our slow crawl toward summer, and this gardening check in is basically a sneaky way of doing that, after all.
Let’s move on to my money date :)
💡 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!
