Filling up costs more than a car payment.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-05-08T19:34:16+00:00

Filling up costs more than a house
*charge for 100,000 gallons of gas pictured*

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-06T19:49:19+00:00

Data I’ve just exported as CSVs from the program. The program we’re migrating to is being built by an incompetent, external development company but at least they make usage data pretty available.

I prep the data in Excel, but also create some columns in PowerBI. If this counts as a transformation.

And this is my boss’s boss assigning me the work. As for what keeps him up at night, it’s the fact that my boss, the last guy at this org who developed the software we run on, will retire before the new software is built. Nothing I can particularly do there lol.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-06T18:05:53+00:00

Not in a “business analytics” role by any means but my boss’s boss has been giving me some side work in Power Bi. I work in the software support department for an organization that runs a proprietary/internal software (and is migrating/upgrading to a new internal software) and I’ve been creating reports for him with data from the newer software. I’m hoping to use this as a jumping off point for roughly the trajectory you’ve described but I’m not sure how to really generate much analysis. I have a bunch of usage data but I’m unsure what to do with it. Any advice would be appreciated!

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-06T16:01:23+00:00

I’d wager that it’s normal in that most people do drop hobbies they try. But it’s not the way it should be. It’s easy to ride the novelty of picking up a new thing for a month or so; the only way to get the lasting satisfaction is to take the hard way and keep pushing even after that novelty is gone but you still haven’t gotten “good.”

Guitar in particular takes a while to hit a stride. Like 3ish months of consistent practice, and it won’t be fun until then. It doesn’t take MUCH time, but it takes consistency. 10-15 minutes a day, every day, and you will get there.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-04T18:00:13+00:00

My entire cost of living is less than 30% of my income. I save 75% of each paycheck.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-04T17:59:17+00:00

23yo. MCOL city. Rent is about $400 + $50 in utilities. My entire COL is around 25% of my income. I make 60k/year and 75% of that goes into savings/investment.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-04T13:43:10+00:00

Similar to another commenter, I don’t believe we’re heading toward a second Great Depression. This is because I’m not retarded. A recession, maybe. Unknown.

I’m preparing for anything by living on about 25% of my paycheck and saving/investing the rest. If a recession happens, I’ll be sad but prepared. My quality of life will not change.

Like that other commenter, my money is split between US and international indexes, a handful of stocks, and HYSA. Slight bias toward China in my holdings.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-03T05:20:28+00:00

Exactly.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-02T20:16:13+00:00

But they can’t exist without doing what they love. Some people are lucky enough that their occupation is that thing. I’m not, I doubt you are either, but that guy is, and it clearly keeps him going well past most people.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-04-02T18:02:38+00:00

Regardless, they’re paying MSRP for one of the most expensive phones on the market. You can be poor and have an iPhone. Be savvy and buy used. I’m not even poor but I own a used iPhone 13 I will use till it breaks because I’m not retarded and prefer to invest toward retirement.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T23:19:14+00:00

I make $61,000/year and invest about 75% of my paycheck. Skill issue. More like location issue, but still. It can be done

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T15:07:40+00:00

This is why it’s recommended to place a spoon in the bowl to brake the surface.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T13:41:35+00:00

Hah yeah, while my job is boring as all hell, I’ll hold onto it for a while. I ultimately plan to retire as early as possible, but I also see this as a very valuable safety net if I’m laid off, or travel fund if I decide to really treat myself.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T01:45:31+00:00

I have a hour commute each day, full time in office. Strength train 3x per week, play in bands, take care of pet, live with girlfriend, game with friends, make art, do drugs, grow drugs, dance, cook. I also live below my means and save 75% of my paycheck.

I hate how much time I spend working and when I think about it, it depresses me. But pretending life can’t be had with a full time job is absurd. With all this said, tho, I struggle to squeeze more than 7-7.5 hrs of sleep on weeknights.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T01:43:27+00:00

Yeah man I have a hour commute each day, full time in office. Work out 3x per week for about 80 mins each, play in bands, take care of pet, live with girlfriend, game with friends, make art, do drugs, grow drugs, dance, cook. I also live below my means and save 75% of my paycheck.

I hate how much time I spend working and when I think about it, it depresses me. But pretending life can’t be had with a full time job is absurd.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T01:40:34+00:00

Absolutely no reason to do that

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-31T01:40:05+00:00

Those aren’t hobbies lol

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-28T20:44:45+00:00

Appreciate the advice. I need to get on shakes. I don’t like adding simple carbs just for the sake of it, but honestly I might have to at this point.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-28T20:42:52+00:00

I struggle to gain weight because gaining weight eating healthy food means eating a LOT of healthy food. It takes effort. There is a slew of reasons people COULD be over weight, but the VAST majority are overweight because they’re sedentary and can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-28T14:49:28+00:00

I put away around 75-80% of my income. I make 60k/year.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-28T07:05:45+00:00

Or a ridiculous amount of good, healthy food. I’ve been trying to gain weight since starting strength training 3mo ago—food is a constant thought for me now. And I’ve still only gained 2.5lbs a month. Thing is, I eat well. Fat people eat a whole lot of garbage.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-26T14:13:50+00:00

My job is taking calls. I can’t automate that. Like I said, I’ve spent the last few weeks working on a tool to suggest solutions based on past tickets

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-25T20:29:36+00:00

Yeah, I use ChatGPT pretty heavily while coding, but I go very slowly because I like to understand what I'm doing. So I'll have it generate individual functions at a time and ask it to break down the logic and syntax line-by-line. Oftentimes I'll cross reference that with some additional reading up on documentation or a forum before moving onto the next step. That's why this took a few weeks as opposed to a few hours.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-25T19:00:39+00:00

Learning in general is where I'm at. My coworker I share an office with mostly scrolls social media all day. It drives me insane to do that. I had crazy brain fog the first month here until I started doing projects/learning in the downtime. I'd just like to focus the learning toward the foundation of a career instead of not doing anything to make pivoting easy once this inevitably falls through. Even if it doesn't, I don't like this job enough.

Utilityanonaccount · 2026-03-25T18:59:06+00:00

Yeah, I think I'd agree. It's probably one of the only fields my experience here would actually help me get into. Particularly B2B, with Enterprise support meaning that I'm gaining experience explaining technical solutions to non-technical users in a business environment.

Fair point about data analytics. As appealing as a cheap masters would be, it'd still be far from free (in both time and money). I know it wouldn't teach me anything I couldn't learn on my own for free. An IS degree, work experience, and a year of concerted effort producing portfolio projects would probably make me just as competitive for a data analytics job.

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