Bills

There are a ton of blogs about early retirement and savings etc but I'm working my way through one in particular right now.  It is written by a guy who retired super early and talks about living extremely frugally while not sacrificing anything that truly makes you happy.

Anyway the post I'm reading today talks about cell phone bills.  And he gave a calculation to see how long your cell bill is delaying your retirement.  Mine was depressing... my cell bill is extremely high because I am also using my phone service for internet.  It turns out that paying my bill is costing me 3 years of retirement.... I can't believe it!

I am still locked into a 2 year contract but I wonder what the fee to get out of it would be.... Maybe I can sell the contract to someone else or something.  This stinks, I knew it was high but this blog really drove home the point.

I need to get my finances in order :(

At least I don't have credit debt or need any more loans, but I am still paying off school loans.  I hate seeing that stupid interest payment calculation every month.  I pay extra whenever I can just to try and get rid of it, and I check the tracking website kind of excessively.

I wish there was a magic debt fairy who would consolidate my debt into a ball and set it on fire.

Failing that, this is really childish but I wish my parents would pay it off and I could just owe them!  My parents don't collect interest, except in favors.

My mom actually contacted me the other day asking if my credit card was still cosigned with my dad.  I guess so?  I never changed anything on it, but I should.  She said I should take him off ASAP so I can start building credit.  Ummmm I'm in Japan assholes, I can't exactly walk into the bank where I opened the card and ask them to change my account.  It's already getting flagged for fraud every freaking week because of purchases from multiple countries in a short timespan.

Oy gevalt.


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The problem with Adderall Diet

Adderall is completely over-prescribed lately, and to top it off people are starting to fake adhd just to get it.  I've heard a ton of gossip ranging from "it's not so bad" and "it should be made legal as a study aid" to "it's just a low-dose of meth."

I'm not even kidding on that last one.  The compounds in Adderall are no joke, but prescription meds are seen as free diet pills by a lot of people, because insurance will cover it.  In fact, there are tons of people searching for diet pills that work like Adderall, and to them I've gotta say meth is a hell of a drug.  But seriously guys, don't kill yourself chasing the Adderall diet.  It's not worth it.

Sick & troubled people use Adderall to lose weight.  Here are quotes from just a few girls I've known personally.  I guess you could see these as testimonials for the Adderall Diet.

"i think taking adderall triggered my ED thoughts. its so hard to get hungry after i take it. u usually have to force myself to eat, but then i realized i can just embrace to empty feeling that never could achieve when i was bulimic"

"the best diet pill is adderall. point blank. i lied to my doc to get it and i havent really had an appetite since."

"Then, last september, i made friends with a kid who had adderall & didnt take it.
Spent the last year & alot of money buying it off of him. Dropped down to 95lbs, barely ate anything...ever.
Ex boyfriend of 4 years broke up with me because of it. But thats okay because he was cheating on me the whole time anyway.
A month ago, the kid with the adderall lost his health insurance & cant get it anymore.
Havent been able to find another connection, & have gained 12lbs as a result."

 "I am 5'3 and i have yet to take diet pills i was just wondering what everyone really thought about them. I take adderall sometimes to help me study and my appetite becomes suppressed. I also drink coffee every morning so that helps... oh and i am 18 freshman in college."

 If you're lying to a doctor to get Adderall or faking ADD for a prescription, it's time to re-evaluate your life.  Adderall and weight loss are definitely correlated, but is it really worth it?  Adderall, Diet Coke = breakfast of champions?  As you can see from these quotes about the Adderall Diet, it can really mess you up.  And if you don't change your behavior to lose the weight, it's going to come right back when the prescription runs out.  Adderall is not a long term weight loss solution, it is a quick fix that will not help you.

In my opinion, using Adderall for weight loss is like taking any other illegal drug.  There's a veneer of safety because it's prescribed by a doctor, but it's prescribed to cure a chemical imbalance.  If you don't have that imbalance, you're adding chemicals that your body doesn't know what to do with.  You can throw off your own natural balances and get totally fucked up by it.

Adderall tolerance works just like any other drug tolerance too, and as your body fucks itself up and stops making the chemicals, you're going to become more and more dependent on the drug to control yourself.  Does that really sound like a good idea?  People get stuck in this cycle of fear of weight gain and constant increasing dosages trying to stave off the inevitable yo-yo.

Anyone seen Requiem For A Dream?  Sound familiar?

Don't do it.  The Adderall Diet is just a crutch that will erode your own willpower and addict you to a drug you can't afford.

Non Weight Related Goals

I need to save money, and I need to make myself accountable for doing it.

There are a lot of things I could and should be changing about my lifestyle if I want to save, and yet I am simply too lazy to do any of them!  (laziness is a reoccuring theme in my posts isn't it?)

Mainly, I suppose, because I dread interacting with people here.  It's just always so difficult.

My number 1 thing to change is my internet connection.  I am currently paying $40/month and it is terrible at BEST.  I could be paying $30 per month for a "slower" connection with a different company, which would actually be faster because my current connection is NOT getting the advertised speed at ALL.

So let's write it all out...

#1. Change internet providers (save $10/month)
#2. Finish setting up my garden before my plants die in their pots ($20/month)

I've already sunk a bunch of cash into gardening, but now that it is so cold I don't want to do ANYTHING outside at all.  That has to change, I need to follow through.

#3. Buy my coworker's car when he leaves

That doesn't have a monthly balance, but right now I'm renting, and even with insurance and all I calculated that I will save about $1,000 dollars overall if I do this. That isn't counting what I might get from selling it myself when I leave.  I would just ask my successor for a token amount, maybe $500 for it, since I know there will be issues with the car later.  (not going to get into the aged car insurance system in this post- trust me it's a lot of bother)

 #4. Get rid of my TV (~$5/month)

They make you pay a fee just for OWNING a tv here!  How crazy is that? I am paying monthly for the privelege of having a TV I never use.  However, it is difficult to throw away and I possibly might not be able to at all.  I have to check on it.

These are the basic living expenses I could "easily" aka through legwork alone, get rid of.

$35/month + $1500 over 2 years = $2340

That's no chump change!!!! I have to get off my butt and start calling companies and telling them I want OUT.  I let myself be pushed around way too much when I first got here, and I am literally paying for it.

Starting diet pill ingredient reviews b/c it's so hard to find anything unbiased.

I’m going to add yet ANOTHER category to these posts… I guess I’m just never satisfied. I want to do some diet pill ingredient reviews.

 There used to be an AWESOME site which was doing ingredient reviews, but then he started doing full reviews of pills. And then he obviously realized how much money the companies would pay him for marketing their products / good reviews… and it was all downhill. Last time I went on his site, the ingredient reviews weren’t even findable anymore under the massive BUY DIET PILLS! Shit pasted all over it.

 Talk about abusing your google pagerank… it used to be a great resource and now he ruined it for the money. It’s really hard to find legit unbiased diet pill advice, and there’s no way my little teeny blog is gonna reach anyone on the web, and if it did, there’s no reason you should believe that I’m unbiased. Hell, I might sell out any day. But I’m determined to stick to diet pill ingredients and not pills themselves, which lends a little more transparency to the issue.

What if the diet pills don’t tell you the ingredients? Then don’t buy it. It’s that simple. Diet pills which have a “proprietary blend” or whatever bullshit are just hiding the fact that they don’t use anything proven, or else are stuffing with questionably legal/illegal stuff. There’s a difference between extremely mysterious diet pills and ones that don’t tell you exact amounts of everything. I don’t have a firm opinion on whether to buy when they just don’t tell you the amounts… but it’s loads better than the diet pills that tell you NOTHING and just claim that someone, somewhere, proved that the pill worked.

It's the small things.

Just sitting around this morning, enjoying the laziness. I had to wait for a delivery anyway. I ordered a bottle of mint syrup and a pump from amazon, so that I can drink coffee like starbucks in the morning. Mmmmmmmmint. So nice. There's nothing better than a cup of sweet milky coffee in the afternoon, sitting in front of the window next to your plants.