Hello! 👋

I know we’re just on the other end of Black Friday, but I guess I have to address that. 😅 I did buy a few things in the Black Friday sales, but I thought about my purchases carefully and even left them until last minute on the Monday.

💰 My approach to Black Friday

When Black Friday rolls around, I usually use the opportunity to buy something I was planning to buy anyway (because we all like a sale, don’t we?). I’ve come a long way from just buying stuff because it was on sale – something I struggled with before I even became a minimalist and before I made more intentional purchases and tried to spend and save better.

I ended up buying coffee, some new underpants, some new gym leggings, and something I didn’t plan for was buying the We’re Not Really Strangers game. I had been looking at their Instagram page while they had a sale on. I’ve only recently started getting into card games – and I love games where you get to know people and connect with people better – so I decided that this would be a fun game to play with the people in my life and ordered it.

I honestly didn’t need the gym leggings that much, but I recently found the brand V3 Apparel and their seamless leggings have been amazing. I just can’t go past something that works really well for me. Most of my leggings have been non-seamless and I did want a few more to add to my collection while I could grab them at a discount.

🏖️ Short holiday

Nick and I went on a short three-day trip up the coast this week. We were originally going to go interstate to South Australia, and we’d waited until they had no COVID cases for months, but unfortunately some cases emerged as soon as we booked our flights and accommodation. It was a shame but we cancelled that trip and decided to go somewhere local – we can to SA another time. So we spent $1000 or so on that short three-day trip.

I will definitely be writing a blog post about our short trip with some nice photos too! 😆

📱 New iPhone!

I bought the new iPhone 12 mini and a case to go with it, which set me back a thousand dollars. 😅 I had a gift card Nick gave me for my birthday earlier this year, which covered a bit of the cost. I love the phone so much so far. 😆 The battery life shits all over my old iPhone 7, and I can comfortably use it without needing to panic about charging it in the middle of the day (even though I am mostly at home and working from home). I had my iPhone 7 for four years, so it was definitely time for an upgrade, and I’d put aside enough money so I could pay for it, so when the credit card bill arrived it wasn’t so much of a rude surprise.

🥗 DIY salad

A couple of months ago I mentioned buying pre-packaged salads at the grocery store, and how it was saving me quite a bit of money. I decided to go one step further and buy ingredients to make my own salad, so I’m actually spending even less on my lunches! I have bought lettuce/spinach, a bottle of balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese, and tomatoes, and have been buying roast chicken and eggs. It’s been a little time consuming but my salads taste far better than the pre-packaged ones, and I am wasting less plastic. 🙌

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As we’re coming close to the end of the year, I am anticipating spending some money on Christmas gifts for my family, but other than that, I aim to save as much money as I can going into 2021.

I plan to write a blog post reflecting on the entire year and my intentions for 2021. Stay tuned for that post, and as usual, thank you for taking your time out to read this. 😌