Thinking Out Loud #19

+ Did you grow up watching the “Moomins”? I loved that show as a kid and when I randomly and unexpectedly saw a Moomin character pop up in my Instagram stream, I knew I had to use it as inspiration for my April bullet journal layout. I chose the snork maiden.

+ I am on my 8th book for this month. Yaasss! Can’t wait to share my April reads with you. There were some good ones.

+ I went to Costco a week ago to cash in my rewards (a whopping $2.74 for last year. I know. Amazing. I just don’t earn the same rewards on the Costco Citibank Card since they switched from Amex, which I still use quite a bit more). I also decided to downgrade my membership for that reason (because we only shop at Costco maybe 4-6x per year). The clerk was really nice and after looking at my rewards check decided to retroactively downgrade my membership for the last year, which meant I practically didn’t have to pay anything else to renew for the next year. Awesome.  Customer Service FTW.

+ I am working on a couple more finance posts. I hope you’re up for that. I also hope that you’ll be sharing some details about your finances with me. I feel like we should be more open and transparent about finances altogether.

+ My run this morning felt hard. When it shouldn’t have. But I guess there is no “should” in running. Some runs feel easy, some runs feel hard and there is no rhyme or reason to why particular days feel harder than others. Just keep showing up!

I am linking up with Amanda from Running with Spoons for Thinking out Loud again.

  1. Yeah, they’ll give you a refund of membership if you don’t hit the minimum. We are the opposite when it comes to Costco. We got one check for the Costco VISA and another check for the additional Costco discounts, so I think both checks combined to be over $300. We clearly spend way too much at Costco. ;-) But we also put gas, restaurants and travel on Costco, which racks up quite a bit.

    Love how cute the Moomin always are. I was bummed that when I went to Hong Kong, the Moomin Cafe had shut down. :(

    You’re a reading machine!

    1. What do you mean by “the additional Costco discounts”? I used to earn more rewards on my Costco Card when they were still with AMEX… I used to charge travel, etc. to that card too… but when they switched to Citibank, I kept earning my rewards on the Amex card (and I do get a nice reward check there).

      There was a Moomin Cafe in HongKong? OMG!

      1. Ah, I don’t have the AMEX, so that’s probably the other check I get – the big one through the Visa. :) And then the other check is the Executive Membership 2% reward, which is an additional 2% on qualified Costco purchases.

  2. I’m so glad that you’re going to be talking more about budgeting and money soon! I really love your approach to finances, so I always learn a lot from your posts. Looking forward to it!

    1. You have totally inspired me with your posts to think about some more finance posts, because I think it’s such an interesting and important topic! Stay tuned.

  3. You know, I’d never heard of the Moomins until recently so it’s fun to see it on your blog today. You drew that free-hand? That’s so awesome. I wish I was a better drawer. LOL

    -Lauren

    1. Well, yes, free-hand… but I had a picture to look at and pencils are my friend, so it took a few takes before I got it right ;)

  4. That is awesome that the Costco person retroactively applied the different membership rate. That is so unexpected but so awesome! We don’t have a Costco membership but Phil’s mom does so she gets things for us occasionally. She loooooves Costco.

    I’m excited to read your finance posts!!

  5. I’ve been mostly unable to run due to some tendonitis for a few months now and I’m finally able to do 20 minutes run and it’s both easy and hard at the same time. But I’ve had a lot of runs over the years that were not as good as they should of been or that just felt hard. Sometimes there was a reason – improper fueling before or during, the weather, bad sleep – and sometimes a perfectly good day with a perfectly good-feeling body just resulted in a hard run. It’s a mystery.

    1. I am sorry to hear about the tendonitis. They can take a while to completely heal. I hope you can get back to running soon (it’s when we can’t run that we miss it the most, right?)

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