Over two years ago, after I finished reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth, I said that I was tempted to buy the Library of America’s complete collection of Philip Roth’s novels, but I didn’t. I couldn’t quite justify spending $240 on this collection, so I set that temptation aside and moved on with my life. However, that idea never left my thoughts, and earlier this summer, I was fortunate enough to earn a somewhat massive (for me) raise at work, and because of that, I tucked away some money every month until finally… well:

This arrived today. Needless to say, I’m happy.

Last week, Ted Gioia wrote a good article about Barnes & Noble’s recent turnaround, and in it, he quotes James Daunt, the current CEO of Barnes & Noble:

Back when he was 26, Daunt had started out running a single bookstore in London—and it was a beautiful store. He had to borrow the money to do it, but he wanted a store that was a showplace for books. And he succeeded despite breaking all the rules.

For a start, he refused to discount his books, despite intense price competition in the market. If you asked him why, he had a simple answer: “I don’t think books are overpriced.”

I don’t think books are overpriced. Books, to me, have always been the one exception I’ve made when it came to my budget and how I spent money. If I really wanted a book but I really didn’t have the money, I bought it anyway. I understand how irresponsible this sounds, and it is… or was. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can afford to do this now without amassing any form of consumer debt, and in fact, the one reason why I’m not buying books all the time is because I live in a small apartment and I don’t have the space to keep them all. So I have to be a bit judicious about it (says the guy who bought more books yesterday).

I don’t think books are overpriced. And they’re not. Most paperbacks cost somewhere around $10-15, and hardcovers are maybe $10 more than that. For what books offer, that’s relatively cheap. I like buying paper books because I like writing in them (see here), and I like holding them. I’m not opposed to eBooks—hell, at the end of 2020, I wrote about Standard eBooks, and just yesterday they released about half a dozen new books, some of which just entered the public domain, and I downloaded many of them. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis sounds AMAZING. I simply prefer holding my books and writing in them. There’s a simple pleasure whenever I start a book for the first time and I bend the front cover behind the back of the book and I hold it in place as I read the page on the right, then as I get deeper into the book, I do the same but with the back cover—ahhh, I love doing that. Anyways.

I don’t think books are overpriced. Even though I only read 10 books last year, I spent $1,273.84 on books anyway. That’s a helluva lot more than I spent on music, I can tell you that much. I spent most of that money on Bookshop.org, and yeah, they charge more for books than a place like Amazon, but again, I don’t think books are overpriced. I’m happy Barnes & Noble is doing well. Whenever I make my way to Missoula, I usually try to stop at the local Barnes & Noble (after first checking out Shakespeare & Co., the best bookstore around), and I usually come away with something good (they had Spanish versions of Don Quixote and One Hundred Years of Solitude last time I was there, so I bought those).

I love books, and I love spending money on things I love… so yeah, that’s how I spent $1,273.84 on books last year. Fuck’s sake, that’s crazy, lol.

I love music (who doesn’t?), and in America, you show how much you love something by how much you paid for it, so how much did I spend on music this year?!

I spent $937.22 on music this year. Is that a lot? I feel like that’s a lot. That’s an average of $78.10 a month, which, yeah, feels about right. That’s also about 93 to 94 albums in a year, or about 7 to 8 new albums a month, which, yeah, also sounds about right. I think one of the main questions some people will have is: why not subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music or another streaming music service? And my answer to that is:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck streaming music services. Fuck them all to hell.

I used to subscribe to Apple Music. For a few years, actually. I paid for their $99 annual plan, which came out to $8.25 a month. For $8.25 a month, I could listen to all the music I wanted. It was great! I listened to everything, and I discovered many great new artists. All in all, I had a great time with Apple Music… until I canceled it during one fire season. I had plans to renew it later, but I wouldn’t need it during fire season because I would be in the mountains where service was spotty and where I wouldn’t really have the time or the energy to listen to music anyway. And when I canceled it, I saw the last few years’ worth of music—music I’ve spent time listening to and curating and rating—vanish. Of course it vanished, but I still felt like a big part of me just died. All my new artists, all my playlists, all the work I did to curate my library to my tastes—all gone. So what did I actually pay for? All those hundreds of dollars?

For limited access to an infinite number of songs. I was renting this music—it wasn’t mine. And right then it hit me:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck streaming music services. Fuck them all to hell.

The only music left in my music app was all the music I purchased before I subscribed to Apple Music, before I spent hundreds of dollars on… honestly? Nothing. It’s like spending $20 for a movie ticket—the cost is in the experience, and for $99 a year, I was allowed access to this musical experience for a limited time, and if I wanted continued access to it, I would have to spend more and more of my money. I would have rather spent that money on buying my music—for sure, far fewer albums than before, but at least I would own them.

And so, that’s why I’ve spent $937.22 on music this year, and why I will continue to spend more than $99 a year on music, more than $8.25 or $9.99 a month on music. Besides, the artists making this music deserve to get paid, and they get paid more when I buy their music directly rather than if I streamed it.

Do I recommend you buy your music, too? I don’t care. If you want, I guess. If you’re happy renting your music from these big companies, then more power to you. For me, though, I’m just fine spending almost $1,000 a year on music, and I will continue doing so for as long as I have money to spend.

Like when I paid off my car loan back in June, I really don’t know how to feel. Part of me, of course, is happy that I’m done with this debt—my last debt—but the other part of me is ho-hum about it because this is something I’ve been planning and building toward for the past few years. And now I’ve done it.

I’m debt free.

What do I do now?

Just a quick update to declare that I paid off my car today. I’m about 3 months early from doing so, giving me a chance to pay off my student loans earlier than expected. I first started to seriously think about this debt in November 2019 and by December of 2019, I made a two year plan to pay off all of my debt. Now that I’m here, with one debt paid off and another one in sight, I don’t know how to feel. This is an entirely new emotion for me, and I don’t have the words to describe it.

All in all, I’m happy and ready to keep going.