The Hidden Costs of Your Lifestyle

Most of us don’t notice it, but it can cost you years

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $1,000 Mobile Phone Shopping Spree

The Ultra High End - $100 Amazon eGift Card

The Superpremium - Tiramisu from Terra

The Premium Core - Puracy Stain Remover Cleaning Spray

The Accessible Core - The Hidden Costs of Your Lifestyle

The Affordable Luxury - Prize for Online Social Game Day

The Everyday Luxury - Update on Online Social Event

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $1,000 Mobile Phone Shopping Spree [ARV $1,000]

• Odds: For every 130 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) Shopping Spree

• Contest Period: July 3, 2024 at 10 AM CST to July 30, 2024 at 10 PM CST

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner of Issue 34 Ultra High End contest is GIANINA from IRVING, TEXAS! Here’s her submission for “photo of a unique structure”:

Congratulations GIANINA, you won $100 Massage Gift Card. Time to get those knots out and relax! Check out the other submissions:

I actually thought this would be a harder prompt, but everyone had really different examples of “unique structures”. I was really expecting 10 buildings. Great work everyone!

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $100 Amazon eGift Card [ARV $100]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) $100 Amazon eGC

• Contest Period: July 17, 2024 at 10 AM CST to July 23, 2024 at 10 PM CST

This week’s focus is time wealth. Because time is a valuable currency in our lives, humans have always pursued efficiency to reduce time waste. Amazon is a great example of this focus towards efficiency that has us now receiving packages in days rather than weeks, and sometimes hours rather than days. There are obvious negatives to this pursuit; however, this is not the main focus for this week, so let’s move on to the fun part.

I’ll be giving away $100 Amazon eGift Card to the week’s contest winner. I use Amazon to get supplies for my hobby shop, but also, it’s a great place to find items that maybe seem extinct in normal stores. It has become a near-necessity in my household because of the time it can save. I hope it can do the same for you, if it isn’t already.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Tiramisu from Terra. My wife and I pride ourselves as being knowledgeable about tiramisus. Why? Because we tasted dozens if not hundreds of different tiramisus from restaurants and stores all over the world. My wife loves Italian food and I… don’t, specifically pastas. But I do love the Italian desserts!

Tiramisu has been our go-to dessert at every Italian establishment for nearly 20 years. We even get it at grocery stores, in ice cream form, in macaron form, and even in wafer treat form. Because we’ve had so many, we are quite critical about the taste of each one we order. I wouldn’t say perfect, but it is the most unique that we’ve tried, and probably the best and most accessible tiramisu for us.

Terra is an upscale, Italian restaurant inside of Eataly. Eataly is an Italian store with many restaurants incorporated within the store. There are many things to love about Terra; however, the tiramisu tops them all. We have gone to Terra just for dessert, and I would recommend you do too.

Their tiramisu has all the standard components of any other tiramisu like the espresso, the cocoa powder, the cookie and cream. However, the textures, quantity and quality of ingredients are top-notch. They have definitely refined their craft. There is the right about of espresso, the layers are just thick enough, the cocoa powder on the liquid cream makes it not overbearing (causing a coughing-fit) like many tiramisus, and smooth textures combine to a delicate, yet firm dessert. So, if you find yourself in Eataly, grab some tiramisu at Terra!

The Premium Core

The Momofuku Chili Crunch was a hit! If you receive an email from me about it, it probably means you did not make the cut since the items are limited in quantity due to costs. But if you didn’t, you can expect your Chili Crunch in a week or so.

This week I’m giving out something my family relies on quite often, Puracy Stain Remover. We have 4 small children, and they don’t know the difference between a napkin, a shirt, and their hands. They use them all interchangeably. Therefore, we have a lot of laundry and a lot of stains.

We are a no fragrance household due to personal allergies and irritations. Most products we use are of the “free and clear” variant. Puracy makes plant-based, kid and pet-friendly cleaning products that not only keeps our children’s skin from breaking out, but actually cleans extremely well! There haven’t been any stains that Puracy stain remover haven’t been able to lift and we see ourselves using this for many more years.

Deal #1: I’m giving out a Puracy Stain Remover Cleaning Spray to the first 5 members that sends an email to [email protected], in the email just let me know what is the most common stain you need to lift?

Only the first 5 will receive a bottle, so don’t delay!

The Accessible Core

The Hidden Costs of Your Lifestyle

Like previously mentioned, as sentient beings we strive to be more efficient to save what is most precious to us, time. In doing so, we’ve developed processes in our lives to help us save it, like faster cooking methods and transportation mediums. However, many times we become too engulfed in our seemingly efficient lifestyles that we end up costing ourselves time to live such lifestyles.

If you’ve read previous newsletters, you know I don’t advocate planning your entire life out, and a hybrid planned/spontaneous lifestyle actually tend to make you live happier and live. This article is just to show the time cost of things in our lives we rarely think about.

1. We all know how little social media attributes to our daily value; however, we do it because it fills our time. On average a social media user spends 2 hours 23 minutes on social media each day. That’s 10% of your day to something with little to no meaningful value to most people.

2. Many assume it is faster to dine at fast-food drive-thru than to cook your own food. On average a diner waits 6 minutes 13 seconds in a drive-thru, drive 15-30 minutes to a restaurant, and cost about $16 per meal. That means you can spend between 36-67 minutes and spend $16. That doesn’t even include tip or gas fees. However, if you were to stay at home most people say it only takes 30-60 minutes to cook a PM meal and it will cost an average of $4 per meal. Meal prep is the key if you want to fast and efficient!

3. Procrastination. Yes, we all do it to some degree, but let’s dive in to why we shouldn’t do it for our time-sake. Let’s assume every small task takes 1 minute to do, then if we skip 100 tasks, we can just spend 100 minutes to finish them all on the same day, right? Nope! If a task normally takes a minute, it takes a minute because you can focus on one thing. However, with 100 tasks, your mind will become a laundry list of priorities, importance, and necessities, so you tend to take longer on tasks that would have been easier, and you will have to take time to decide on what tasks to do, and worst of all, you take time to do them putting off other tasks. If you have a task that takes less than 5 minutes normally, getting it done immediately can actually save you more time in the future compared to putting it off. Don’t let small tasks become a mound that now is daunting.

These are just some of the biggest time-affecting things we do in our modern lives, but take time to think about the others you may have. The time you spend analyzing your lifestyle may end up saving you hours, days, years.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 34 Community Poll Results

Here’s the results from last week:

1. Everyone wants to know the remaining time they have to live, regardless of how it will make them feel. However, some of you mentioned so you know how to spend the rest of your time, but since we don’t know, does that mean you’re not spending your time wisely now. Just a thought.

2. 60% said time is money and 40% said both, time is money and money is time. I think we can use the word “depends” on everything, so instead, I think most people would agree time is our most valuable currency as it is the reason most of us save, invest, or work. Also, that money is not time, but can provide opportunities to get more time (financial freedom) or generate more time (health).

3. Everyone voted for some form of online game social, so I’ll think of something we all can take part in and set something up.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

I got great feedback for having an online social. Looks like it’ll be some form of game, and the majority voted for Friday PM. I will find time and a game so we can set up the online social, we will also need a prize so it’ll be more competitive, so help me out in the polls.

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