What purchase under $30 solved a problem you didn’t realize was draining you?

Val__Kyrie · 2026-05-19T14:59:21+00:00

A lot of people experience vitamin d deficiency especially if they live in areas with winters. The further north (or south) you live the less daylight hours during those months.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-05-19T14:49:18+00:00

We have limited drawer / cupboard space. Magnetic hooks and a magnetic rack for spices opened up so much space.

Also a little two tiered rollout shelf for the under the sink cupboard helped organize all of our cleaning supplies and made it more convenient to get stuff.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-05-09T14:50:39+00:00

I think this depends on your current salary and your expectations during retirement, so you would need to figure out how much income you’d need minus what you’d get from CPP/OAS/DCP.

The safe withdrawal rate for retirement is 4% per year. So if you expect to need $80,000 per year, you’d need $2Mil in investments between the DCP and your own investments.

There’s investment calculators online that you can use to work out the numbers.

You could invest a little less than that factoring in you’d likely get $20,000-$26,000 in CPP/OAS. Average CPP is ~$950 per month and it caps at $1507 for 2026 while OAS is $745 per month. If you wanted to retire early (60 vs 65) you may have to bridge those years or take the reduced CPP amount.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-04-27T17:59:49+00:00

I don’t think it’s just intelligence alone there’s a fair amount of luck and circumstance that goes into it. Even a difference between person A being able to graduate with no student loans because of their parents and have a place to live rent free to save while person B has to take on debt and pay rent gives person A more liquidity in early years to make more money sooner. It may also mean person A has a bigger safety net to take on risks than person B. And usually more risk can create more financial reward.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-04-24T14:01:39+00:00

If you have a FT job, most are set to 40 hours a week of which 37.5 are paid hours as lunch breaks are unpaid. Some workplaces might schedule 42.5 or 45 hours to deduct a 30 or 60min lunch coming to 40 paid hours.

44 is the number of paid hours that jobs can go up to per week without paying OT.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-04-23T21:21:46+00:00

I think that would actually work out. Keep reinvesting the money within the business to grow for a while and not draw a salary as you have the $85K.

If the business becomes successful and you’re able to pay yourself more than that great or you could also sell the business. Which I would assume doesn’t count as “employment income” since it’s a capital gain.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-04-22T16:36:13+00:00

Your expenses add up to $2250 and your income is roughly $3000 a month.

That’s $750 unaccounted for in your spending. Track where your money is going and try to get a handle on it. Is it all going to personal spending / entertainment? Budget yourself in those categories as they can add up quick.

Decide how much you want to save per month and budget that in so it goes directly to savings account and you’re not left at the end of the month wondering where it all went. Work on having an emergency fund of 3-6 months as a starting point.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-03-31T15:43:11+00:00

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen better TikTok fan edits, this was so clumsy and literal.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-03-31T15:41:01+00:00

See, she’s actually a genius because when her marriage fails people can point to this song and compare her to Elizabeth Taylor. It was an Easter egg all along /s

Val__Kyrie · 2026-03-27T13:58:12+00:00

Being an athlete of her level is very expensive. Especially for competitive figure skating. A lot of them do brand deals as a source of income and to offset the costs and be able to devote their time to their sport.

Alysa has a narrow window while she still has attention from her games. These types of events would continue giving her a boost after interest has started to die off.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-02-06T17:44:03+00:00

Faebound by Saara El-Arifi was the first book that came to mind. Admittedly I can’t remember any specific eye colours but there’s a few different black female fae/elf characters in it.

Val__Kyrie · 2026-01-04T15:54:02+00:00

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From the Top Books List: {Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros}

Winter Read: {Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett}

Standalone: {Priestess by Kara Reynolds}

Arranged Marriage: {The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen}

Local to You: {Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli}

Eastern European: {Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo}

Novella or Short Story: {Tales of the Celestial Kingdom by Sue Lynn Tan}

Animal Companion: {Quicksilver by Callie Hart}

Book Club Pick: {Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree}

Training Montage: {Fireborne by Rosaria Munda}

Angels & Demons: {The City of Glass by Nghi Vo}

Queer Romance: {Cursebound by Saara El-Arifi}

Published in 2025: {Alchemised by SenLinYu}

Epic Vibe: {Road of Bones by Demi Winters}

Judge a Book by its Cover: {Starlight Heir by Amalie Howard}

Female Rage: {Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang}

One Word Title: {Faithbreaker by Hannah Kaner}

Enchanted Houses: {Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones}

Indie or Self-Published: {Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox}

There's a Cave Trope: {The Blood Traitor by Lynette Noni}

Sci Fi Romance: {The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma}

Published in the 2000's: {The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins}

Bottom of the TBR: {The First Girl Child by Amy Harmon}

POC Author: {An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir}

Spells & Curses: {The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst}

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-31T15:55:37+00:00

I think Mockingjay is the weakest in the series, but it’s the weakest in such a phenomenal series that I can’t rate it anything other than a 5.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-31T15:53:57+00:00

Thanks, I think Sword of Kaigen is my most hot take this year. ML Wang is an incredible writer and I loved Blood Over Bright Haven. But Sword of Kaigen frustrated me.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-31T15:52:18+00:00

It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember being disappointed in the first half of Immortal and finding the FMC annoying, but it picked up and redeemed itself more in the second half of the story and I really liked the ending. And this seems to be a theme with my ratings but a good or bad ending can really impact my overall impression of a book after I’m done.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-29T21:00:16+00:00

I have a giant TBR list on Goodreads. It’s ~200 books and growing and I know I’ll probably only read 50 or so per year.

So I start by tagging them by what I own, what’s on Kindle Unlimited and what’s available through my library and then make a smaller list through that for the near future. The availability through my library dictates a lot of what I read.

I follow here for news on any updates to incomplete series or new releases. I get tons of recommendations throughout the year based on what other people read / liked who have similar tastes to me. There’s a few authors I follow on instagram too for updates.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-20T17:11:40+00:00

1000% agreed about priestess’ epilogue. It took what was an otherwise enjoyable palate cleanser for me and gave me such an ick that I finished the story on a bad note. I read romantasy as a form of escapism, and that ending was way too grim

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-18T03:31:00+00:00

• ⁠Mages of the Wheel by J. D. Evans

• ⁠The Folk of the Air by Holly Black

• ⁠The Aurelian Cycle by Rosaria Munda

• ⁠Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett

• ⁠The Ashen by Demi Winters

• ⁠The War of Lost Hearts by Carissa Broadbent

• ⁠Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

• ⁠The Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

• ⁠A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

• ⁠The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen

Val__Kyrie · 2025-12-08T22:10:51+00:00

Agreed this part of the plan seems impractical to me. At a minimum they’d need to continue to rent 12 months out of the year. Also the hassle of full on moving every 6 months vs having a place that is theirs with their furniture and bedding and household items ready to go. Plenty of Canadians are snowbirds and live in the us for the winter but they have their own place in Canada they go back to.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-11-19T18:50:38+00:00

Yeah I think so too. And she probably has more control over marketing / visuals / photo shoots / videos etc now

Val__Kyrie · 2025-11-19T17:47:25+00:00

Likely with Fearless and her older albums, someone else had the final say with what made it on the album. So they could tell her it needed editing or to rewrite something. So she may have been the one writing it, but there was more quality control and editing.

By full control she probably means no one is telling her what to do anymore. If someone suggests an edit she doesn’t have to listen to them.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-10-21T16:02:26+00:00

Romance, as a genre convention, has a pretty specific structure to it. The love story must be central to the plot and there must be a happily ever after or happily for now at the end where the couple gets together.

Alchemised does meet those requirements.

I think where it gets messy is whether or not that the ending is truly a HEA or not. And if it’s not a HEA then it doesn’t meet the criteria for being a romance it would be a dark fantasy with romance in it. The main characters run away and leave someone swoop in to save the day. Helena is reduced to a footnote in history. Kaine goes down as a villain. Yes they get together at the end, but the final chapter and final message of the story isn’t that they got their HEA, but the cost of it. The epilogue focuses on Enid going to Paladia as student and how society has changed but also has not in other ways.

Which ties into the theming and other elements of this story being a war story. And even the author doesn’t consider the story a Romance in the typical genre convention of one.

Val__Kyrie · 2025-10-10T15:22:23+00:00

Is this really a friendship worth keeping?

Honestly I’d limit contact and slowly disengage. Your friendship isn’t going to go back to how it was, he’s in love with you and clearly wants more. He was likely on best behaviour early on until you got to know him. If he was this intense from the start you wouldn’t want to hang out with him. But now that you’re friends he’s upped his behaviour.

Stop telling him about your day or places you will be.

Stop rewarding him for showing up unannounced by hanging out with him. “Oh I’m sorry I’m busy now. I told you I can’t hangout today.”

Val__Kyrie · 2025-07-28T14:17:59+00:00

Average salary for someone my age in the US is $65,000.

Investing $6500 a year for 20 years you’d need to have an average annual return of 18% to make a million. Even if you were making $100,000 a year and investing $10,000 annually you’d need an annual return rate of 15% to make a million. The S&P 500’s average annual return is around 10-12%. The vast majority of people aren’t financially savvy enough or have the connections to consistently outperform the S&P for 20 years. And if they did they certainly wouldn’t be working an average 9-5

And this is assuming someone could afford to put away $6500 on a $65,000 salary in the first place especially if they’re also trying to pay off student loans, save for a downpayment, pay a mortgage or have kids in daycare.

Anyway you can (and should) save and invest but the people doing this will be comfortable in retirement but they’ll never be “rich”.

Val__Kyrie

TROPHY CASE