Your Money Update #25

For March, I received $367.75 in Patreon subscription donations, thus far.

From this, $31.00 was deducted to ship a hoodie with the bombin' Licentia logo to one of my more dedicated Patrons. I hope they enjoy it and tell many interested parties about my modlist when asked!

I'm going to be blunt. A new medication caused my appetite to skyrocket, and my attempt to keep grocery budgets low kept me perpetually disgusted with my at-home meal options, so I wound up ordering too much delivery of fast food. I probably spent $100 - $150 on this for March, but most of it was added to credit card debt, so it did not come from any of my "regular" income. I hope to rid myself of that medication and do better. That admission made...

$205.11 of your Patreon subscription fees went toward the cable bill. This bill provides the fastest Internet available in the county for my work. Surprisingly for a relatively rural area, it's 1Gbps. (Thanks Joe Biden!) I also pay for my Aunt's cable TV (she seems to be too old to get the hang of all these newfangled streaming apps) for which she gives me a little back. However, a small entitlement I was receiving for COVID relief was not funded beyond April, so this bill will probably increase by $30.

$24.90 of your Patreon subscription fees went to purchase the game Being a DIK on GOG. It is an adult visual novel with the 3D polygonal graphics I prefer. I hope to use this game to inspire my own visual novel one day. It centers around a college kid and all the sexual escapades he gets into at university, and I find it's a lot like that old Leisure Suit Larry college game (minigames and all) but with fewer jokes and actual porn included.

$106.74 of your Patreon subscription fees went to pay my Capital One QuickSilver debt. Most of this was small runs to the gas station for cigarettes and snacks—usually extremely late at night. I use them to fuel my all-nighter study and modding sessions. My breathing is starting to be seriously affected by the smoking. I hope to work up the courage to quit before next year, maybe when school is out in the winter.

I also received $326.94 in Discord subscription donations, of which 10% were deducted for fees.

$49.95 of your Discord subscription fees went to the credit card bill mentioned above.

$215.00 of your Discord subscription fees went to keep the lights on and the computer powered. This is essential to my work, so Uncle Sam permits me to write 100% of it off on taxes.

$38.31 of your Discord subscription fees went to pay my water bill, which is obviously essential. I think it's rather low because I don't go anywhere, so I don't clean up a lot and wash a lot of laundry. Ah well.

A friend told me that GeForce Now was awesome with a 4080 tier, and I can't afford one of those outrageously expensive cards, so I wanted to try it at $21.19 of your Discord subscription fees. While nice, I doubt I would use it very often, considering how you kind Patrons donated me some hard drives with THICC amounts of drive space. So I canceled it.

The remainder was $2.49. It probably went toward an energy drink or something, I'm crazy for those.

In personal news, my medication has recently gone through several changes including MULTIPLE generic manufacturers and an attempt at switching to a whole new drug so I could receive the brand name. Given how sensitive I am to psychoactive drugs, this was mostly a horrible failure and resulted in tons of side effects, lack of motivation, impulse spending, and poor personal management. I hope my treatment can improve and I'll find a balance between stink sloth and hate energy.

School is going well and I am keeping A's on all my assignments, and while two of my classes are completely caught up, one of them is behind by about two weeks of work due to the difficulties mentioned above as well as a Professor that takes days to respond to my coding questions. Rural educational opportunities suck.

With regard to my modlists, I continue to maintain the three "primary" lists: Licentia, Servitium, Parabellum -- as well as two non-Bethesda lists -- Cloud Machine for Final Fantasy 7 and Venture Forth for Baldur's Gate 3. The BG3 one has been getting many questions lately, perhaps you should come by, join the crowd, and check it out. I have heard rumors that Larian will not offer DLC partly because they intend to create a modding platform as robust as Skyrim's, where users can change the gameplay mechanics and even create their own campaigns. That will be amazing! And it would make great sense -- Bethesda has coasted on Skyrim's replayability for almost 15 years.

I sat here for 15 minutes trying to think of something else to write and came up blank. I suppose I will sign off now. I hope to see you around Jolly Co-Operators (my Discord server), and maybe you'll enjoy it enough to become an active regular.

caco