Rant n Rave: Moving, Identity Theft, and Minimalism

Rants:

I was check­ing over my accounts in Mint when I noticed some­thing strange. Appar­ent­ly, I had appa­rat­ed to the East Coast and gone on a wild $10 shop­ping spree at Build a Bear. No joke. Some­one stole my cred­it card infor­ma­tion and bought $10 worth of mer­chan­dise from Build a Bear. It was painful­ly obvi­ous I had­n’t done any­thing of the sort since I live around 1500 miles away from South Car­oli­na. So, part of my after­noon was spent on the phone with my cred­it card com­pa­ny try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened, can­cel­ing my old card and fig­ur­ing out where to send the new one.

I’m incred­i­bly grate­ful to USAA for mak­ing this process as pain­less as pos­si­ble. This is why I keep an eagle eye on my accounts, so I can ver­i­fy all of my pur­chas­es as gen­uine (or not). In the next few days, I’ll also log into one of my free cred­it reports and ver­i­fy noth­ing else has been com­pro­mised. I’d hate to learn some­one had opened a card in my name and be on the hook for what­ev­er they bought. Con­stant vig­i­lance is key! (Now I sound like Mad Eye Moody. Great haha).

This next top­ic is halfway between a rant and a rave, so it’s going in the mid­dle. I am SUPER incred­i­bly excit­ed about liv­ing in my new apart­ment. As you can see, it’s a real­ly nice place. Vault­ed ceil­ings, a fire­place, A DISHWASHER!!!, 2 bath­rooms and a huge pantry.… it’s got every­thing I want­ed and more. My fur­ni­ture more or less match­es now since I sold off some of my cur­rent fur­ni­ture as well. It not only fits per­fect­ly in my new place, but my build­ing has an ele­va­tor that han­dled every­thing I put in it, to include my con­sole table and my queen sized mattress.

That being said, not every­thing went 100% smooth­ly. The weath­er was cool and rainy, so some of my box­es got a bit wet while in the truck. I also had some fur­ni­ture get a bit scuffed despite the mov­ing blan­kets sur­round­ing them. The sin­gle thing that made me most upset was all my fault, so I have only myself to blame. I was attempt­ing to wheel the dol­ly off the truck and it tipped over on the ramp, dump­ing the box­es 3 ft to the side­walk below. I was car­ry­ing the box with my cook­ware in it. My amaz­ing set of orig­i­nal Vision­ware that I picked up for a steal of $25 at a garage sale. I had 8 pieces with match­ing lids, which goes for about $200 on eBay. Now, I only have 5 pieces left since my big glass skil­let, my soup pot and my quart pot all broke. I also lost a bread loaf pan, but that was­n’t Vision­ware so I was­n’t quite as upset about that. I still have enough of them left for the basics of cook­ing, but I will need to go replace­ment shop­ping soon­er rather than later.

Now that I’m all depressed again, lets get on to the good, hap­py stuff!

Rave:

Most of my stuff has been packed up in box­es for the last 2 weeks, and I have anoth­er week to go before I can start to unpack. In my old place, I have an air mat­tress, my com­put­er, some dish­es, some clothes and some toi­letries. That’s it. My aver­age hap­pi­ness has­n’t real­ly gone down since I lost access to all my stuff. It got me to start think­ing. What do I actu­al­ly need to live my life? What makes me happy?

I’m very proud of my col­lec­tion of books, movies, and craft equip­ment. I’ve spent a lot of time, ener­gy, and mon­ey col­lect­ing all of them. But, I’m start­ing to real­ize I don’t real­ly NEED them like I thought I did. Am I a bit bored with­out my TV and video games? Sure. But I rarely play them through­out the week anyways.

I have a goal to do an expat assign­ment with work at some point in the future. When/if that time comes, it will be eas­i­er for me to get rid of a bunch of my unnec­es­sary stuff rather than pay for a stor­age lock­er for it all. After all, it’s just stuff.

How has your life been going? Do you have a rant or a rave to share?