YouTube Shorts doesn’t even work properly for me. At least half the videos, that are suggested to me, I’ve already seen multiple times before. Boring, as you said. I’ve found myself staying off of social media or news sites more in the last couple of weeks. News’ll make me depressive, social media bores me. Then again, more time for hobbies!

I just went the ol’ VPN route and got a YouTube Premium family subscription in Turkey. It’s about 2€/month for 5 people; peanuts essentially. I wish I could avoid giving money to Google entirely but I’m mostly using Apple devices to consume YouTube content and my four friends who share the subscription with me do as well. So yeah, that’s the trade-off I can live with.

Yeah, beef jerky, even when making it yourself like @CloverSi@lemmy.comfysnug.space does, can be quite expensive depending on where you live. Thankfully beef jerky doesn’t require high-end cuts of beef. Round Eye is one of the preferred cuts and even in regions with relatively high prices for beef (e.g. Germany) it’s still quite economical compared to store-bought Jack Link’s.

I think, at least for non-savvy people, that buying individual stocks is not a great idea anyway. If you’re investing to have long term capital gains something like the MSCI World ETF would probably be the better choice. If you invested in that specific index fund in 2016 you’d have doubled your money by now, even during this economic downturn. Sure, you can make more money in a shorter time day trading but that shit is damn near a full time job and more risky unless you heavily diversify your portfolio (which you should do anyway).

Another poster mentioned stocks of the company he works for. My company for example distributes a good amount of their yearly profits to their employees. Meaning that once a year you can choose between a couple hundred bucks one-time payout or get a bunch of company stocks for a heavily discounted price, but they’re trade-locked for two years. At the beginning of 2020 I chose the stock option and the shares got bought right at the beginning of the covid dip. When 2022 rolled around I had essentially quintupled my initial investment in the discounted stocks. So that’s another great tip, provided you company offers similar plans.

:(

Do you have a personal device with your own password? I’m sure there are journaling apps out there. It’s not quite the same as pen and paper but better than nothing. Best of luck to you!