With all the money we’ve all saved being covid antisocial

Post Reply New Topic

My mom would approve! Ha.

After my dad bought the 1960 Valiant, my mom was complaining about spending money so he asked what she wanted to spend money on and she said a larger cement patio + aluminum and glass awning -> and so it all got installed last Summer.

Fantastic!! ! Enjoy!!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve read one of your longer poems in its entirety. Glad I read this one! Enjoy your garden window!! !

Only a couple costs of mine went down cuz of the pandemic, the city buses became free & Biden implemented the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. The EBB program helped people on certain government programs like Medicaid, SSI, & food stamps afford their internet by giving their service providers up to $50 a month credit on their bill to cover just the internet portion of their service. The EBB program just changed & will now be up to $30 a month so $20 less but it might would last a couple years. Also the stimulus checks helped me & my girlfriend out a lot but I highly doubt that there will be anymore till the next administration takes over & the next administration would try to cut the other various social programs The economy has improved during the last year but it's mostly been the rich who benefited & the rate of inflation & income inequality is a lot higher than it was when the pandemic started. That along with both sides blaming & hating the other for making the pandemic worse & spreading the virus(we are all f#cking spreading it) is causing me stress & helped me become misanthropic again I always had few interests & hobbies & my main 1s since before the pandemic started have been spending time with my girlfriend, listening to music, watching TV, spending time on computer like this forum or looking up stuff, & playing older video-games. The main expenses with my hobbies has been my internet bill, cable bill, cellphone bill, & very rarely buying a new phone or computer part when necessary. I do really like eating out which I do less now but I always been happy with fast-food, fancy restaurants are not my thing. I also go out less & walk less nowadays partly due to the pandemic & my girlfriend not wanting to go out as much & I'm sure doing that less is negatively affecting my physical & mental health.


I read an article fairly recently that the US public image is extremely frustrated & unhappy with the government & various pandemic related things in the country & society & rest of the world but lots of individuals are actually happier in their personal lives than they were before the pandemic despite that their wages increased at a much much lower rate than inflation. I'll explain the reasoning.

Lots more people are working from home than before the pandemic started. People tend to find working from their home more relaxing than going in to work. Also on average that gives workers about an hour extra each workday. Workers from home are not having to commute to & from work & they are not dressing up as much to stay home as they would if they were going in to work. That saves workers on gas for their cars & wear & tear on their cars. Some are choosing to go without a car & rely on public transportation or friends & family to bring em places as needed, or share a car with someone in their household instead of each owning their own car which saves them money on their car expenses. Some people were a lot more social than they wanted to be due to feeling obligated like social chit-chatting with others at work when they'd rather not or would travel across the country to visit relatives they cant stand being around. Traveling can be very stressful for lots of people even if they like seeing their family & friends & traveling can also be very expensive. The pandemic gives some people a convenient reason to avoid traveling to visit others. They don't want to risk catching Covid or possibly spreading it to someone they love, or they cant afford to travel. Some people were very big on partying & some partiers had been wanting to cut back or stop but didn't know how to & now they have their opportunity. Not partying saves money & can be very good for some people's mental & physical health. Before the pandemic some non-independent adults faced a lot of negative stigma because they were living with their parents or other family. Also some adults living with parents or family were resented & put down for not being as independent at their age as their parents were. This contributes to the non-independent adults having mental health problems which can make becoming independent a lot harder for them. Plus some adults moved out due to feeling pressured despite the fact that they could not handle independent living well & that took a major negative toll on their lives & their health. The pandemic helped some non-independent adults face less negative stigma from society & potential romantic partners & be better accepted by their families. Lots more students are able to have online schooling at home than before the pandemic which some kinds find to be a surreal break from being required to physically go to a school, like kids who were bullied a lot, kids with social anxiety, & kids with some distracting behaviors that got them in regular trouble like fidgeting or talking to themselves. In some ways society is less focused on physical beauty & not as materialistic as it was when the pandemic started. People don't care about dressing super nice or sexy to stay home & people are less willing to pay big bucks for fancy clothing & makeovers cuz it's harder for them to afford to & it's harder for them to justify the expense since they are going out less. Supplies are harder to come by & harder to afford so people are less concerned about keeping up with the Joneses. Some families & couples that are living together are spending more quality time together than they were before since they are spending more time together at home instead of going out doing their own things as much as they used to.

That said while plenty of people may find their own daily lives more enjoyable, relaxing, & fulfilling than before the pandemic, there are also plenty of people who find their daily lives to be much more stressful & difficult to manage. Some people who were struggling before the pandemic are struggling even more now. There were plenty of disableds before the pandemic who were on various benefits but also had jobs cuz they needed a little extra money & to get out their house some & to feel productive. Some disableds lost their jobs due to the economy getting worse & unemployment going up or have a much harder time finding employment for those reasons, & some were forced to quit working due to them being immunocompromised or living with others who were. There are also non-disabled workers who lost their jobs for similar reasons or had their hours cut. Plenty of disableds & non-disableds had health insurance through their jobs & losing their jobs or having their hours cut got them kicked off their employer health plan. Some find health insurance harder to afford since losing their jobs & their current health insurance may not offer as much coverage as their employers one did. Medical costs have gone up quite a lot since the pandemic started. Medical costs have been rapidly increasing since before the pandemic but are increasing much faster now. The pandemic is forcing us to rely on technology a lot more than before & some people find technology very frustrating to use. I am one of em despite me being an Aspie. My dyslexia & slow mental processing speed along with me not having much money, cause me to be waaay behind most people my age with understanding that stuff. That's some of what my post sig is referring to. I WANT tech to actually work the way it is supposed to but there seems to almost always be lots of bugs & kinks to workout whenever anything new is released & lots of things require upgrading even thou the newest is usually even more buggier & confusing than what it's replacing Plus there's people who died or lost loved ones due to em catching Covid or for unrelated health issues cuz of limited access to quality medical care. Then there's both sides of the political spectrum playing the blame game instead of realizing & owning responsibility because they both f#cking failed the people

Thanks!..

How about building a doomsday shelter? That will surely be the next "new normal".

I don't have the money, knowledge, or space to build a doomsday shelter, so I'm doomed. But I'm a waste of a human being anyway.

A good root cellar would come in handy for tornados and war.All the food would be in there ready.

They should be built out of Kegos cuz people would need to drink to deal with the stress of everything

*Awkward hermit noises*

Ahem, I haven't really lived that differently from usual. I can't afford to eat out, go to cafes or movies or anything a lot anyway (or well, I could afford to go a little more if I didn't save for traveling, but since I do, no can do), so the change wasn't that big. I saved a few months worth of bus ticket money when we got in to lock down, but that's about it... though of course, I had a trip planned for autumn of 2020, but then the restrictions came and I couldn't go, so that money's still lying around. That I'm gonna use for another trip, or to be exact, have already used, so unless there are more restrictions in the next few months, I'm going abroad for a week in April. I'll try not to spend too much on souvenirs and the like but eh, that plan probably won't hold all that well.

Extra money? What extra money?
I was never social in the first place so there's been no savings.
I didn't get any stimulus money because I'm on disability.
We had one of the longest lockdowns in the world - pretty much two years.
It's still not over. We're still masking and having restricted entry.
It's cost me a fortune getting everything delivered for two years.
I have only been in a grocery shop twice since March 2020, for emergency stuff.
All food, drinks, meds, clothes, housewares, books, gifts, pet food, toothbrushes ordered online.
Delivery fees, shipping / handling fees, service fees, exchange rates, curbside pick up fees.
Tipping all the delivery people.
Shipping all returns by post (often Fed-Ex or Purolator)
Making all my food from scratch, with delivered ingredients.
Buying cleaners, four air purifiers, and hundreds of N95 masks.
Latex gloves by the box-load.
Not to mention the massive inflation, high cost of living, and price-gauging.
Increases in land tax, electric, heat, gas costs.
Being home ^ spending more on heat etc.
Investments haven't made much - or some even dropped.
Food prices sky rocketing.
Donations to charity for the less fortunate.
Single parenting is very expensive.
My daughter unable to work because of being immunocompromised.
Paying her bills and buying her masks, food, etc.
Helping my mother with online grocery orders, masks, delivery fees.
Psychologist fees for depression / anxiety - unable to see my partner for months.
Psychologist fees for daughter - two years of isolation / not seeing friends, during her young 20s.

If I saved any money at all, which I didn't, it would go to debt or I'd give it to my kids.

Luxury dream item - New windows for the house @ $40,000.00

I would think that a VR headset with good software would be the most easily obtained thing on your list. They're like 600 bucks and available off the shelf everywhere. Software is getting better and better I hear - chances are it'll be very, very good, within a few years - like Star Trek Holodeck good. Will be way easier And cheaper to obtain that than a '93 Mary Kay pink Cadillac.

I live in an apartment and not in farmhouse. I don't have a root cellar. Even worse I live in the third floor of an apartment building with lots of windows, so I can be blinded and have shard of glass deeply impaled into my flesh when they shatter. Just like that horrific from that anime Barefoot Gen when Japan was nuked in WW2. And even if the nukes aren't close enough to kill horribly but quickly we can all die a nice slow horrible death from the radiation.

I grew up during the cold war. I was no stranger to the fears and horrors of what would happen if we had WW3. One time as a kid I heard something on the news about nuclear winter and it gave me really bad anxiety and wondered why the entire world hadn't stopped doing everyday stuff. I picked up our newspaper and was surprised to see they still had comics in it (which it doesn't anymore), because I thought they would have stopped running and be replaced with doomsday messages. My dad said to just not worry about it. Yeah dad, that's like telling a frog not to croak.

And then the 90's came and the cold war supposedly ended. But of course anything that's even slightly good is too good to last. Just kill me now. Or better yet, kill all the other idiots in the world so I won't have to be.

i'm looking for one that does not require a gaming machine or a smartphone digital plan to configure/activate. no smartphones. was told in the next 5 years there should be entirely self-contained VR goggles, no smartphone required.

I had no idea they were a cell phone accessory. I’ve never seen any of them in person and this obviously have never used any. A coworker has one, and my nephew bought himself one. I just assumed they require a computer of some sort to connect to because they’re just a display - like a monitor is. Not sure what they have to do with cell phones ???

the people at Best Buy told me i needed to have a digital service plan with a smartphone to use the VRs [oculus] they had on sale. there was one that required a gaming machine. one made by sony that needed a ps5 or something like that.