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Comment by evil-olive | Hacker News Reader

A related strategy - always keep a spare of crucial household items like this (dishwasher soap, toothpaste, etc). Don't buy a new one when you run out entirely, buy a new one when you use up your primary and switch to the backup.

eg, I'm about to "run out" of toothpaste, in that the tube on my bathroom counter is almost empty. I have a full tube sitting in one of my bathroom drawers. When I pull that one out, I add toothpaste to my shopping list, and the new tube goes into the drawer as the new backup.

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Another related strategy: Pay an extra month on any recurring bills at the start (for services that allow you to maintain a credit balance). Then, just pay your bills as normal, except that you have an automatic one month of grace period for everything because you have a credit balance. This has saved me numerous times because of absentmindedness.

>This has saved me numerous times because of absentmindedness.

Aren't you costing yourself tens of dollars per year in lost interest by doing this? You're essentially giving them an interest free loan. A calendar/reminder app doesn't have this problem and is more reliable (on the off chance you forgot twice in a row, for instance).

I used to do this until I became competent with that sort of thing.

If you're the sort of person for whom this is a bandaid, a calendar won't fix it, and you're also not the sort of person who cares about $15/year. Hell, I haven't missed a bill in well over a decade, and I don't care about $15/year.

I think you might be overestimating what the opportunity cost is. A $100 loan to a utility at today's interest rate (say a high-interest savings account) is probably $1-2 per year.

Only worry about lost interest after you have maxed out all your investment and are holding no cash. Once you run out of cash to invest, then you can tap into these reserves. Most people though keep cash on hand anyway, accruing no interest.

Also, you might want to use the shelf space for something else. And the apartment may have a high cost per square meter so it would cost thousands in storage space.

Or better, have all your bills paid automatically.

That only works well if you're diligent about reviewing them. If the power company suddenly thinks you owe them for a new $2000 power meter, it's good to know that before the money comes out of your account (or onto your credit card).

I'm not that diligent so burden of manually making sure bills are paid is a great way to force me to check that the bill makes sense!

Just came here to say this actually happened to me. About 10 years ago I lived in a high-rise apartment in Chicago. One day we got a bill in the mail for ~$50,000 -- turns out, I got billed for the entire building. It took weeks to sort that out.

3 weeks prior to the automatic payment, the power company sends me a notice of the exact amount that's going to be taken out. I review it every month.

You are far more diligent than me! If I know the bill is getting paid, I have a tendency to put it off.

I do the same and wait until all the bills arrive at the beginning of each month to do them in one batch and do not like the cognitive overhead. Now wondering whether it would be possible to set up semi-automated payments. You get a notification about your bill and if you click/tap through it gets paid. Still in control but less manual steps. Maybe there are services for this use case already?

Also, buy in bulk and when it's on sale. Those things usually last a long time, and there is a very very low chance you'll end up not needing those items anymore in your household, and even then you'll have bigger problems than 5 tubes of toothpaste left over in your drawer.

It's like Toyota's kanban cards. When there's only N left the card says get M more of these items.

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