Put 3 frozen chicken breasts in the instant pot, add 1 cup chicken stock, sachet of taco seasoning, half a cup of salsa, and a tin of kidney beans, pressure cook for 17 mins, break up the chicken and mix back in, serve with sour cream and grated cheese. Amazing.
Cookies! He’s not interested in salmon, ham, cheese, tuna, or any of the usual things. But you have a chocolate chip cookie and he’s in your face until you give him some. He’s not allowed the chocolate, and I don’t think that’s what he wants, he just loves the sweet beige American diet.
The main toxic boss got ‘laid off’ shortly after I brought up the issues with management, so things have improved since then. And Zoloft made me realize I had an underlying issue with a lot of things, so I guess it was the push I needed.
I am at one and it’s incredibly toxic. I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety after a year here and I regularly have mood swings. But the money is good and I work from home, so I’ve got that going for me.
When I moved from the UK to the US I left a fairly nice job paying £30k a year (this was back in the 2000s) and had to start again from the bottom. I earned $6 an hour, and my then bf and I sublet an apartment for $600 p/m (he was on a grad school salary that worked out to $9 an hour). We bought discount food items and everything was thrifted, we didn’t save anything, and we went nowhere and did nothing. I have a memory of us buying a sandwich from the gas station as a treat and making it last all weekend (tbf it was like a footlong sub).
Fast forward to now, we have a combined income that puts us in the top 10% of the country. We own a house, luckily got in before prices went insane, so our mortgage is actually less than our sublet was (adjusted for inflation). We still thrift and buy reduced meats from the supermarket, we travel more but because our jobs pay for it, we do eat out a lot more but I still cook most weeknights.
We’re better off now by a long shot, but we’re still careful with our money, and have crafted some neat tricks to make sure we don’t spend beyond our means. If we bought all the new clothes, groceries, cars, and vacations like the movies suggest is normal for a middle class couple, we’d go broke quickly. Also, having zero kids helps massively.
Sometimes I look at what we’ve achieved and what our net income is, and it’s wild to me that people survive on less. Sure, we enjoy things now vs. sticking to essentials at all times, but it’s wild that people are expected to live an entire life just getting by on the basics. What’s the point of having community, taxes, and law if you still live paycheck to paycheck, surviving just to work and sleep?
Bright colors! I will often be drawn towards the clothing section for kids because the patterns, colors, and styles are so much more fun!
And riding on trains. As a Brit living in the US, I miss train commuting a lot. Just sitting there watching the world whizz by, and for 4 minutes you’re basically in a group with all the people in your carriage, like you’re in school again, only this time it’s like the Class of 19:07 to Woking.
Same same. Dental hygiene and face care routine is a must twice a day, but other than that I can go a couple of days without a shower. I’ll be the first to admit I can get a little stanky, but there are no other people around to witness it. I think the issue with these unwashed people OP mentioned is their willingness to enter the public domain at peak stank, and their inability to notice it themselves.
Thrift stores out of season. Look for your winter jacket in June, you’ll get the nicer brands, and most thrift stores will do some kind of rotating discount on certain colored tags. Most ‘dry clean only’ items can indeed be machine washed on gentle.
Preserved and frozen meats and fish can be made into fantastic recipes. We do salsa chicken straight from frozen in the instant pot, and I make a killer pasta with tinned sardines and breadcrumbs. The benefit of these is that you can buy them on sale and don’t have to worry about cooking them quickly to avoid spoiling.
Drugstore makeup can be just as good as expensive stuff. Aldi moisturizers are incredible and $4 a pot. I splash out on super expensive shampoo and conditioner, so I don’t have reccs there, but my husband swears by Aldi’s black and white bottle stuff.
And this tip is a little wild, but learning to forage can be immense. There is so much free edible food around you, from flowers and leaves that make delicious tea (passiflora flowers), weeds that can substitute salad greens (lambs quarters, kudzu, and wood sorrel), to absolutely delicious fruit that you couldn’t even buy if you wanted to (pawpaws!). Use the golden rules of having three different ways to identify it (three sources, don’t just use photo ID apps, learn the description, not just the visuals) and also know the sickly lookalikes, and never forage for carrots or parsley.
I am remote and run my department (it’s just me). There are some customer facing things but I have clients in all different timezones so it actually works out well. I typically clock on at 10am, take a long lunch, and often do a few more hours in the evening if clients need me.