Welcome to Money As If, the newsletter for people who don’t even know how to feel about their finances anymore.

Today’s conundrums:

— Jeanine

So by now, many of you are probably familiar with my basic money philosophies — also known as the Money As If schtick. They usually involve one or more of the following:

That last point is why these newsletters tend to end with a Thirst Trap. It’s also why I’ve long been mulling a Spending Diaries series where I profile, say, someone who has happily purchased every Taylor Swift album variant ever released or spent $5,000 to visit Disney’s immersive Star Wars hotel just one last time before it closed.

And I mean that quite earnestly. I’m not trying to say the economy is bad without saying it’s bad, even if to me it feels that way.

I genuinely cannot tell who and how many people right now, at this exact point in time, feel like they are struggling and who and how many people, conversely, feel A-OK about their financial health.

My sense is that more people fall into the first bucket than the latter. The post-COVID K-shaped recovery, after all, is a well-documented thing, and you have to look no further than last week’s consumer spending data to see its lingering effects.

People are still spending, yes, but those people increasingly represent a small portion of the population. The top 10% of earners now make up close to half of consumer spending, a record high, in fact. The rest of us are just treading with inflation.

Given that and other similarly depressing news, it’s felt tone-deaf to glorify spending or write about stuff that even seemingly glorifies spending in our recent issues. (I agonized over sharing that Dave & Buster’s receipt last week, for instance, without at least one caveat about how Teddy and I don’t get out much and I wanted to elaborate at length about how we don’t spend frivolously on big things and how I barely buy clothes, remember? And on and on and on.)

Similarly, it’s felt irresponsible not to cover and provide curated advice on what people can do to address trending money issues, like a flailing job market, an untenable health care system, or the AI uprising.

But I also — and I’ve said this before as well — want Money As If to feel like at least a little bit like a respite from financial doldrums and, if anything, I’ve been worried that recent issues have become far too glum.

I’d love to know more about what you want to read about — and I’d also like to hear which parts of these issues you most enjoy and what new recurring series you might be interested in. So, if you have a second, please answer the survey questions below.

I’ll use your feedback to inform future issues — and, of course, if you’d like to request something specific or ask a particular question, feel free to email it to me at [email protected].

In case you were worried that I missed out on a great once-in-a-lifetime deal on a new Mazda CX-5 Signature by not buying one in August (and you might one day suffer the same fate if you don’t jump on a dealer’s purportedly timed offer), well, I can happily report that I did not.

Behold, my September offer, which, OK, is a little less lucrative than the August offer, which promised me up to $1,100 off the vehicle price as opposed to $850, though I’m sure, if I really wanted to, I could talk my good friends Matt and Trudi into honoring the better deal. (Plus, again, I’m pretty sure long-time Mazda drivers always qualify for a $1,000 loyalty credit.)

Of course, I don’t want to, mostly because auto loan rates, despite the Fed’s best efforts, remain quite high, over 7% across various terms. Plus, at this point, I’m curious about what offer I’ll get in October.

You’ve done it all. Built your business, clawed your way into the green, pulled every lever you could pull. And you did it all by digging in.

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Nowadays, most financial takes are boilerplate. These aren't.

And, finally, today, in things I would buy my husband if I could, you know, just buy my husband things …

I liked all three of Selena Gomez’s Ralph Lauren wedding dresses, but her new hubby Benny Blanco kinda stole the rich sh*t show with his custom 18-carat white gold and diamond Jacob & Co. watch, plus diamond and platinum tennis bracelet, no?

Word on the street puts the cost of this bedazzler at around $1 million.

Because the heart wants what it wants, I guess.

Got questions, comments, receipts, tips, thirst traps, etc. you’d like to share? Send them to [email protected].

_{This article is for educational purposes only. We don’t recommend or advise individuals to buy, not buy, sell, or not sell particular investments or other assets, as everyone’s circumstances are different. Also, it’s your money and ultimately up to you to decide the best use for it.}