I made the best Pad Thai I have ever made tonight!
Granted, it was the first time I have ever made it, so the bar was low. However, since it is one of our staple dishes when we get Thai food, it was actually comparable to what we buy, but didn't quite have the same depth of flavor in the sauce. All in all though, it was bloody good. I know this because my wife didn't complain about it, and if she isn't complaining, it must have been alright.
Thankfully, she is illiterate.
It did remind me however that I should spend more time in the kitchen than I do and cook dinner a bit more often. I am sure that my wife would like that also, as we tend to be one of those "make what's easy" families, and end up not making anything too complex. A salad with some meat, or some potatoes and fish. It is good food, but relatively plain, and I grew up in a family that ate quite spicy.
I was reading an article the other day from Australia, where one of the major supermarket chains was selling some kind of trolley divider that split into several compartments, based on what kinds of food were being bought. The idea is that it will influence people to buy more good food than bad. After this, I was thinking why I don't have a tool in my banking which breaks down my buying attached to my own shopping, since we predominantly shop through the one chain using a loyalty card. Just about everything should be there.
I mentioned this to some colleagues and found out -
It is there!
The app is only in Finnish and Swedish, and I didn't read it so closely. while I don't like being tracked, this particular supermarket is a cooperative, so the users are generally also shareholders, even though most don't own much, like me. However, the prices are comparable to the other chain (it is almost a duopoly in Finland) and we get bonuses from other areas too, like on our insurance payments. The bonuses come in the form of in-store discounts, but more importantly, cash back that collects into the account and can be used the same as any debit account. And it doesn't have to be at the same chain.
However, I was interested in looking into our buying behavior and it lets me dive in over the last year and see it split into all the various categories. What I was surprised to discover was that 20% of the total cost was on fuel. We don't drive as much as we used to, so I was expecting it to be lower, but over the last year, it has been normally over €2 a liter and up to about €2.40, which means between about about $8 and $10 per gallon. I was looking at the cost in the US at the moment and it is averaging under $4 per gallon.
I can dive into each one, and it will give me a breakdown on the categories in those categories, and then I can keep drilling down.
So for example, you can see that the "ready food" is quite high on the list, but drilling down it is possible to see why, as there is a 12-month graph available and through those months, we didn't have a kitchen and only a microwave available - so we were eating more pre-made food, like salmon and mashed potato, or frozen meals. We were also cooking at my wife's parents' place and freezing it to reheat later.
I missed fresh food.
Now that I have found this section in the app, I am going to spend time getting to know what I am buying and where I have some opportunities. Grocery shopping becomes habitual and it is common to buy the same things over and over, and get stuck in a rut. And of course, there are the expenses.
For me though, I think the larger opportunity isn't in saving money or in getting more creative in the kitchen. Rather, it will be that diving through will help me build a map of my diet and hopefully help me make better decisions. My diet isn't that bad, but at the same time, I am likely blind to a lot of the extras I eat, so getting that picture will likely prove valuable in supporting my newfound practice of heading to the gym.
As I have mentioned before, I see exercise as a keystone habit, for once in the groove and starting to get some results, it spreads into other areas of life. Diet might come first, then it could be neatening up the house, the personal appearance, then the workspaces and the career. It affects everyone a bit differently, but the trend line is toward improvement in multiple areas.
Is anyone else using these kinds of apps?
And, when it comes to the money side of things, I was mentioning how much impact a few extra dollars on a mortgage can make on the length of the loan, so any savings here could be diverted straight into the mortgage each month.
Eat a little healthier, save a little money. Shorten the loan.
Winning.
Whilst this is god information to have, unless I am using it to improve life, it is useless. When I was talking with me colleagues about it at lunch the other day, they haven't been using it much at all. It is one of those "forgotten" tools in their app range and it is probably sitting next to the icon of their poison of choice social media. It is a funny thing how much time we spend entertaining ourselves and filling our heads with information that doesn't improve our lives, and how little time we spend consuming what could, if we applied it.
I am trying to get back into the groove of improvement again, because even though I have very low motivation to do so, I still have to go through the motions of making life as good as it can be for me, and those I care about at least. We have a lot of tools at our disposal, but they are all useless if we aren't using them well.
Economics starts at home.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
