Everything is affordable

That's the bad news

I was on YouTube and saw Dominic Hart show off his thermal printer that he uses for journaling. It just hit me in all the omigod-I-want-that-in-my-journaling-practice spots.

But I couldn’t just buy it, even though I could easily afford it.

No. I had to only buy the printer with my secondhand sale proceeds.

Let’s rewind. I went into 2026 on an unofficial spending “ban”. I had just come off spending Christmas decluttering and taking mental inventory of all the items I actually owned, and it appalled me at how many knick knacks I seemed to have gathered. From clothes to empty notebooks to watercolour paint tubes… I seemed to have amassed quite a bit in my 11 years living in Hong Kong.

I had this mental setup for myself - if I were to move out of Hong Kong next year, what would I bring? Everything that I’m either happy to part with in December or bring with me can stay. Everything in the weird middle of “Oh I might need this” simply must go. So I donated a boatload of stuff, then listed a bunch more on Carousell, a secondhand sale site in Hong Kong.

In the interest of not accumulating more unnecessary stuff, I decided to put myself on an unofficial no-spend year. (h/t Bhav Sharma for the inspo even though she is much more strict about it).

So the thermal printer had to wait. But then I sold a few camera gear and could afford the printer. I hit the order button and excitedly waited for my new love to arrive.

When I opened the package, it felt so so so glorious. I have used the printer almost every day since and it’s now a part of my official journaling arsenal.

If this happened in 2020, when I was in a retail manic state and was buying my way out of pandemic boredom, I know that would have bought that printer in a heartbeat. I also know that it wouldn’t have felt so great to buy it, because it was just cheap (pun intended) dopa to counter the monotony of everyday life.

Because frankly, everything is affordable. Many items, restaurant bills, unnecessary stuff like supplements costs a mere fraction of my income, and so I don’t treasure them as much.

Humans are good at adapting. This is both our strength and our vice.

A few weeks ago I drove past the street where I used to rent comic books when I was a kid. I had such little disposable income then - just pocket money from my parents - so renting made sense. Now I would just buy books. Heck, that week I bought five Indonesian books (books are excluded from the spending ban). But it’s not like I need to keep referring to them. I read through a book, and they never get touched ever again.

My purchasing power increased drastically since twenty years ago. Not only because I now have a full-time job, but the rising middle class and mass production means that there are more options for everything. I was asking my Dad about it, and he said that even when I was a baby, there simply just wasn’t that many things to spend money on. If he had extra change then he’d buy street snacks like bakso (meatballs). But if he had even more extra money, he’d just pocket it. Because it’s not like he was going to buy 4 portions of bakso to eat that same night.

Now before buying anything, I find myself inflating the costs in my head:

• What’s the cost to dispose the item? Do I have to put in the time and effort to sell/donate it?

• What’s the cost to move the item? How much space would that item take up in a box when I’m moving flats? What’s the mental load of having this item shimmied around Hong Kong in a moving truck?

• What’s the cost of space that the item takes up? What else could go in that shelf that it’ll take up space in? What else can’t I buy once I have this?

I don’t think life was always this affordable. I don’t know how much things cost exactly, but I imagine my grandmother would buy a pan and just make it last, whereas now the recommendation for non-stick pans is to replace it every six months. Just two years ago I would buy things and use it and throw away. But this feels so so extremely wasteful, so I’ve stopped doing that.

It’s ironic that although stuff is more affordable, I want to not afford or get easy access to it.

---

Update log:

• 🥹 Thanks to everyone who has been showing love to Bite-Sized Creativity. Mega mega shoutout to Steven Foster who helped me get this over the finish line.

• ⚡️ Had Michelle Varghese diagnose my Substack growth this morning. She’s a great writing coach and sharp as heck in pinpointing what I need to level up on. Book your free diagnostic call with her here.

• 📖 Reading Katabasis by RF Kuang. She’s really funny and it’s amusing to read Hell described in her way.

• 💃🏻 Met Trinity the Tuck while she was on her Asia tour!

• 🤓 Gave a lecture about personal branding. Nothing like a group of uninterested adult teenagers to reeeally humble you 😅

• 🤖 Still tinkering with vibecoding - this time building a v.0.0.0.1 of a story-led LinkedIn post writing tool.

Work with me: https://go.beckyisj.com/workwithme

Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.