The Credit Card I Finally Canceled
You know that credit card you keep meaning to cancel but never do? Mine was a Chase Sapphire Reserve that I’d been paying $550 annually for since 2019. Every January I’d tell myself I’d use the travel benefits enough to justify it. Every December I’d realize I hadn’t.
This year I finally pulled the trigger in March. Not because of some grand financial awakening, but because I was irritated at seeing the charge hit my account again. The customer service rep tried to downgrade me to the regular Sapphire. I said no. She offered to waive the fee for a year. I said no again, which surprised us both.
The weird thing? I felt guilty for weeks afterward. Like I was admitting defeat or giving up on some version of myself who travels constantly for work and racks up points at fancy hotels. But that person doesn’t exist. I drive to most meetings and stay at Holiday Inn Expresses when I travel for fun.
Buying the Wrong Mattress on Purpose
Our old mattress had developed what I can only describe as a crater where my partner sleeps. We’d been talking about replacing it for months, doing that thing where you research extensively but never actually buy anything.
Instead of getting the $1,200 foam mattress we’d bookmarked seventeen times, I bought a $400 one from Costco. Not because we couldn’t afford the expensive one, but because I was tired of optimization paralysis. Sometimes good enough is actually good enough.
The Costco mattress is fine. Not life-changing, not terrible. Just fine. And you know what? Fine is working out better than I expected. I sleep the same amount. My back doesn’t hurt more or less. The only difference is we have an extra $800 in our checking account.
The Subscription Audit That Revealed Too Much
In June, I went through our credit card statements and found $127 in monthly subscriptions I’d forgotten about. This wasn’t the usual suspects like Netflix or Spotify. This was the meditation app I used twice, the meal planning service that made me feel guilty about not meal planning, and something called “CreativeLive” that I genuinely could not remember signing up for.
The meditation app cancellation was easy. The meal planning one required a phone call where a cheerful person asked why I was leaving and whether there was anything they could do to keep me. I explained that I don’t meal plan and never will, which seemed to confuse them more than it should have.
CreativeLive turned out to be a photography course platform. I apparently signed up during a 2 AM rabbit hole about learning portrait photography. The course is still sitting in my account, 0% complete. I kept the subscription for another month out of shame before finally canceling it too.
Investing in Something I Actually Understand
After years of putting money into index funds because everyone said I should, I bought individual stocks for the first time. Not because I think I can beat the market, but because I wanted to understand what I was actually investing in.
I picked five companies whose products I use regularly and whose business models I can explain to my grandmother. Apple, Microsoft, Costco, Johnson & Johnson, and Visa. Nothing sexy or revolutionary. Nothing that’s going to make me rich quick or fund early retirement.
The portfolio is up about 8% since I started it in May, which is fine but not the point. The point is that I actually read the quarterly earnings reports now. I understand why Costco’s membership model works and why Visa makes money on every transaction. It’s made me more curious about how businesses actually operate, which has been worth more than whatever return I’m getting.
The Emergency Fund That Wasn’t Emergency Enough
We had $15,000 sitting in a savings account earning 0.01% interest. Financial wisdom says this is smart. Inflation says this is expensive. In September, I moved $10,000 of it into a high-yield savings account earning 4.5%.
The extra $400 per year isn’t going to change our lives, but it bothered me more than it should have that our money was actively losing value while sitting in a “safe” place. The high-yield account is with an online bank I’d never heard of six months ago, which feels slightly risky and slightly grown-up at the same time.
I kept $5,000 in the local bank account because some emergencies need immediate access to cash. This feels like a reasonable compromise between paranoia and optimization, though I’ll probably second-guess it until something actually breaks and I need the money.
None of these decisions feel particularly wise or foolish in retrospect. They just feel like choices I made with the information I had at the time, which is probably the best any of us can do. If you’ve made similar money moves this year, or completely different ones for completely different reasons, I’d love to hear about them.
