If anyone would like to join me in recreating the “Love Shack” video, please read the following in your best Fred Schneider voice and hop into my sweet new ride: “I got me a car(t), it seats about twenty, so come on/And bring your jukebox money.” This sporty import boasts plenty of cargo space and tricked-out custom wheels: I swapped its original pneumatic tires for flat-frees at a cost of $25 per tire, which will be partially offset by selling the pneumatics to a neighbor. (Now that I can’t regale Joe with exaggerated stories of “lifestyle creep,” you’re going to be subjected to boring details like this sometimes, and I apologize for that, even though one could persuasively argue that Boring Details would’ve been an apt name for this site from the start.*)
He thought the concept was silly, at least as it concerned the splurges Crankenstein and I made as our income grew, but financial nerds know that lifestyle creep is real — and particularly dangerous for physicians.** Back when Tom regularly had meltdowns at work, driven to despair by petty fears that Crankenstein and I might live too high on the hog one day, Joe knew that what I wanted the most was to salt away a super-sized emergency fund and make up for lost time with Crankenstein’s retirement savings. He made fun of me when I reported attending salary splurges like store-brand lactose-free milk (Lactaid was still too expensive) and admonished me for sacrificing a Tennis TV subscription during the years Crankenstein and I were supposed to split expenses but couldn’t due to her therapy costs and student loans.
The Gorilla Cart would’ve prompted additional jokes and commentary because assembly’s supposed to be foolproof — and I’m the fool who proved that isn’t the case. “I’m a 76-year-old woman and put it together myself in less than 30 minutes!” read several online reviews. But the Earth repeatedly orbited the sun as I fumbled with washers and bolts and cotter pins, and Crankenstein was postmenopausal by the time the ordeal had successfully concluded. I still need to make a plywood liner for its bed, which will beef it up a bit (the wire’s not as strong as it looks), and then we’ll use it for a variety of outdoor purposes, including moving our power stations and solar panels around the backyard as necessary.
Here are two smaller stations that are easier to carry by hand. We could’ve supplemented the largest unit with add-on batteries but preferred the idea of separate stations of various sizes for flexibility’s sake. If we want to use the big one to power the fridge during a power outage while smaller models power our Internet router and Crankenstein’s work computer, we can do so without running extension cords hither and thither. And we can pass the smaller ones around to neighbors or loan them to friends while retaining a backup. They’ll also be easy to transport for recharging via outlet if the weather isn’t conducive to solar charging.^ Finally, we wanted to hedge our bets. If you put all your eggs in one basket and that power station breaks, its extra batteries won’t do you much good.
Here’s the front and back of our DELTA 2 Max, which offers an array of charging options. (Please forgive Muriel’s fur, which clings to everything in the house, including my soul, despite daily sweeping or vacuuming.) Not pictured are the two ports on its side that can connect to extra batteries. I’m not sure whether we’ll pursue that in the future; unless they come down quite a bit in price, we’ll probably put that money toward a whole-house generator or Powerwall alternative instead. The cost of these power stations is something I’ve run out of time to discuss as midnight approaches, but we purchased ours during holiday sales and saved quite a bit that way.
I’ve also run out of time to proofread this or cover other recent goings-on here, so tune in tomorrow for a slew of corrections and maybe even an explanation of why I’m not sure these gadgets (unlike lactose-free milk) qualify as lifestyle creep.
* It could’ve been worse, I could’ve detailed the various discounts I stacked — like using a cash-back credit card to purchase a discounted gift card from the retailer, or utilizing rebate sites to earn cash back on the cart and tires — and added up the savings. Maybe what’s missing from my life right now isn’t a child or fulfilling relationships or a higher sense of purpose. Maybe it’s that I stopped meticulously tracking my spending and savings in a spreadsheet several years ago.
** “Using the phrase ‘lifestyle creep’ is fine as long as you accept you are the modern day equivalent of a character in a Bret Easton Ellis novel,” he once lectured me, and I laughed too appreciatively to protest “No, I could never praise ‘Sussudio’ like that.”
^ During our last multi-day outage, only a handful of houses on our street lost power. We could’ve rolled these across the street, or taken them to the library or friends’ houses not too far away, and charged them quickly using wall outlets. Rapid charging on a regular basis isn’t great for battery life, but having the option to do so during longer outages is fantastic.