It began, as these kinds of interesting thought spirals tend to do, on Reddit.
"Whatever your addiction, vice, or habit," the post read, "what does it cost you every week?"
Answers ranged from a few dollars, to a few hundred; from a few hours, to nothing at all but firm grip (imagine what that could mean at your leisure). All the regular contenders were there, of course - cigarettes, the odd pokie flutter, takeaway junk food - but there was something captivating about the idea that stripped away the moralistic and looked at vice as a hard practicality.
When the numbers are all written on the back of the envelope, it's interesting what makes the list.
This week, for example, I've spent about $32 on takeaway coffee, adding to a figure well north of $500 for the financial year to date. Even more goes on lunches (my monthly takeaway bill is upsettingly higher than my utilities for the last quarter).
Netflix got $22.99 last month. Another $20.99 went to Spotify. $120-odd in parking fines (whoops). I could have probably saved the $53.65 that I spent on fuel in February if I had just walked to work like I'm always saying I should - and I could have avoided the fines.
But you get the idea. In the unforgiving rigidity of the spreadsheet, our habits start to look different. Sometimes they can be big, and life-altering, and sometimes it's a takeaway coffee, but really it's all just things that we don't necessarily need but that we want enough to keep using even when it's probably better for us to abstain.
I didn't need to spend almost $30 this week on The Economist and GQ anymore than I necessarily need to take work home with me as often as I do - and it would probably be better for me if I didn't - but I do it anyway.
The nearly $1000 spent on wine this year could have paid down, instead of adding to my credit card debt, but wine is nice and credit card debt isn't.
I haven't bought a pack of smokes for more than a year, but I still bum one off friends occasionally. And I should probably delete the Uber Eats app and put that money into a gym membership, but burgers are nice and I should probably do a lot of things.
We're 11 weeks into 2024 and, if you're anything like me, chances are you gave up whatever halfhearted but ambitious New Year's resolution you made about 10 weeks ago.
A handful of data crunches from back in January showed that most resolutions tended to circle around these kinds of themes - namely, getting control of vices (whatever form they came in) and in doing so, maybe saving a few quid.
Weight loss accounted for more than 360,000 Googles searches on average around the New Year period according to one of the data sets that tend to land in journo emails at the start of the year. Trends also show a dip in searches for the same as the year gets underway.
The cost of living was equally front of mind according to a Compare the Market survey that returned a seven-per cent spike in respondents saying they wanted to save money in 2024. Three in four Gen-Zers in that same survey said they wanted to save money this year compared to about one in four Boomers and just under half of Gen-Xers.
Gyms famously see a spike in memberships at the start of the year, and then a lull as the weather starts to cool off and the mornings get a bit darker, but Sunrise Fitness owner and head trainer Steve Henderson said - at least when it comes to new joiners - motivations are changing and so are the numbers of the those people like me falling off the wagon when the temperature drops.
For one thing, Steve said that contrary to what we might think based on what's in our Instagram feed, the majority of his members aren't just signing up to look good. Most (and, interestingly, irrespective of age) are joining up because they want to feel better; looking better is just a perk.
His members at Adamstown want more energy, they want to feel healthier and eat healthier, and feel less stressed, and while he admits that the beginning of the year tends to be the busiest time in the gym, the winter dip isn't all that outstanding, proving that those who have jumped on the wagon aren't falling off that easily.
As Steve says, there are no quick-fixes, but his members are willing to work at it.
"We rarely see people who say, I want this great body or I want a six-pack or something like that," Henderson said, "It's more about wanting to be healthy and reducing stress."
It's telling that, as our lives are dictated by our relationships to work and phones and feeds and email and the seemingly endlessly rising prices of things, that we're looking more than anything for a chance to get out of the rat race and work on ourselves.
I probably didn't need to spend that $180 on books that I still haven't read since I bought them last October - and it would almost certainly have been better for me had I saved that money instead - but, as with all vices, books are nice. And so is coffee, and wine, and superfluous copies of GQ on the coffee table, and chocolate, and sleep and Netflix and - when I eventually get around to it - joining a gym.
