The Month Of Thanks: November 2025 Recap

I’m writing this post while looking at the gorgeous fall leaves outside my NY apartment window. It’s a fully Knives Out vibe here and I am loving it. So let’s see what I got up to this month!

I Went Back ‘Home’

That word is still weird to say without quotes 🙂 . I arrived back in NY after 3 months of travel and I was curious what would happen to our apartment over that time.

Of course my overactive imagination went wild and then…nothing happened 🙂 . We had family come over once to grab the mail and check it out during those months and it was fine.

Next time if I go away for multiple months, I think I’ll ask them to come more times for the mail because we had a surprisingly large amount (mostly spam 🙁 ), but otherwise the apartment was as we left it!

It wasn’t very dusty and spiders and cobwebs hadn’t taken over. Nice! 

Now we’re going to be in our home for our longest stretch yet – 3 months and it’s during the dark and cold northeastern winter. So we’ll see how it goes! So far it’s been good because we have huge windows with lots of light that look out on changing leaves and the rolling hills of Upstate NY, which is quite beautiful. 

I’m also enjoying some aspects of small town life that I didn’t expect. For example, I loved going to our local library and chatting with the librarian after printing something and then walking to the local insurance broker to chat about much cheaper auto insurance (I talk about that in detail below).

And my most hilarious example of small town life is my Partner running outside after he saw a window washer. This was because he wanted us to get a few of our windows cleaned, but they’re far off the ground and difficult to reach.

That day he saw a guy with a window washing squeegee extender thing working on our neighboring building and ran out to ask them if they could do our windows too. We obviously offered to pay them but they said “No – that’s ok.”

Say whaaat? However, we insisted and were able to pay them. But literally what are small towns? My city girl heart isn’t used to this. 

Then in mid-November it snowed and our little town looked like Stars Hollow – it was so peaceful and beautiful to look at. And during those days I was even more glad I didn’t have to drive through that kind of weather to get to work every day 🙂 .

That fact definitely helped me enjoy the snow’s beauty instead of shake my fist at it. It felt like we’d leapfrogged over Thanksgiving straight to Christmas for a few super cozy days. 

But the main focus of this month was family. It’s been amazing to be surrounded by people I love every day, seeing my niblings and having my first family Thanksgiving in at least 5 years. At this moment I’m really glad we got a homebase this year 🙂 . 

I Visited New Hampshire

My Partner and I did our first road trip in our car to see my aunt in New Hampshire. I hate to admit it, but I can see what car people are talking about – this particular trek was much easier in a car than the car/train/bus combo we had to do previously 😉 .

I can see how having a car becomes a slippery slope, but then again I don’t think I would have gone for a car/train/bus combo at my old age of 36 even if I didn’t have a car this year. Anyway, seeing my aunt for the first time in about a year and a half was lovely even though it was a quick trip and I’m happy that our homebase is relatively close to her.

I Voted

I mentioned in an earlier recap that I applied to have Early Ballots mailed to me and it worked! I received my ballot in the mail and was able to easily mail it back and vote in the November 4th General Election. I used Ballotpedia to get more information on the proposals on the ballot. 

I Got Cheaper Car Insurance

A few months ago a reader recommended that I check out an independent insurance broker when I was complaining about the high cost of my Progressive car insurance. I had never really thought of independent insurance brokers and had dismissed them assuming they were scammy. 

However, it seems like I was wrong 🙂 . I contacted a few local independent insurance agencies and heard back that they were offering auto insurance with the same exact protections for half of the prices that all of the other companies were quoting me. 

I was paying Progressive $93.50/month and an independent insurance agency quoted me $42.58/month for Erie Insurance after I clarified that I drive less than 10K miles a year because I don’t use the car for any type of commute. A 55% discount! Curiously when I went directly to Erie’s website they quoted me the same as Progressive. 

So these independent brokers do seem to be providing much better deals than going directly to the insurance companies. I’m not clear on why that is since I always assumed that having a middleman makes things more expensive, not less, but feel free to let me know in the comments if you know how this works. 

The bottom line is that now we’re paying less for the same auto coverage. I got to walk down the street to talk to a human person in my town who is selling me this insurance and this experience was overall surprisingly pleasant 🙂 . 

When I signed the contract digitally for my new insurance, my broker emailed me my temporary insurance card (which I printed at the local library for 25 cents 😉 ) and then 3 days before my insurance with Erie was set to start, I got a packet in the mail, which included my actual insurance card. Perfection. 

I Signed Up For USPS Informed Delivery

USPS has stepped up their game in the 5 years since I’ve had much to do with them 🙂 . I’ve been using Traveling Mailbox while being a nomad, but now that I have a real address again I moved all of my mail to my current address. 

• How Do I Get Mail As A Global Nomad? A Traveling Mailbox Review

While doing so, I discovered USPS Informed Delivery, which has similarities to Traveling Mailbox. They send an email or text with an image of letters that I’m about to receive and send a notification when I receive that mail or a package. I love it!

I Did My Nails

My adventures into themed nails continued this month! I bought two pairs of Dashing Diva nail stickers for the Thanksgiving season. One is called “Fallen Leaves” and the other was “Fowl Play.”

However, I wanted a mix of both on my nails so for the first time ever, I mixed and matched nail stickers to have the turkey and leaf nails of my dreams 🙂 .

In other nail sticker news, I also tried Dashing Diva’s Gloss Base Seal for the second time and sadly, similar to the first – I hated it 🙂 . It’s supposed to make the nails adhere even better, but it seems to do the opposite of what it claims. So that was a waste of money – oh well.

I also experimented with putting some of my nail stickers on “upside down” after I saw a NailTuber do it, but that doesn’t seem to work for my shape of nails. It was worse than the “right side up” application so I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing.

However, on the positive side I did learn a new trick. I often have trouble using a nail file on the very corner of my nail stickers to get them off in that location, but this month I realized that I can pull them off and then use a nail clipper. Pulling them always leaves a little “tail,” which doesn’t look good, but for some reason it clicked this month that I can just clip that part off – duh 🙂 . 

I Learned More Cheesemaking

I mentioned this above, but I continued learning how to make cheese at home! After making chevre (or technically bouvre since it was made with cow’s milk) this month we made Mozzarella!

We used milk from my SIL’s farm. She’s such an impressive homesteader and she makes her own yogurt and butter and kindly let me assist in her first time making mozzarella.

The mozzarella was yummy and great for our first attempt, but we have some edits to try and make it better next time. In case you’re planning to make this recipe with raw milk, here’s what we’re planning to change next time in this mozzarella recipe:

• Reduce the Citric Acid by 40% due to the natural acidity of fresh raw milk
• Also after adding Citric Acid, we should try letting it sit for about 10 minutes before adding Rennet
• The recipe is unclear on how much salt to add to the brine – I think they meant to write 2 tsp (instead of whatever “2-3 tbs. of salt” means) because 1 tbsp was too salty so we drained it the first day

Anyway, I had a great time making this cheese and was so happy and impressed every time I ate it. My homesteader transformation is underway 😉 .

I Played Video Games

I’m turning my attention to new-to-me games! So let’s see what I tried this month. 

The Quarry

After my favorite horror film channel, Dead Meat covered The Quarry I knew I had to try it and it’s very scary, but very fun 🙂 . 

It was 85% off on Steam and it turns out that it’s a lot more stressful to be inside a horror movie in first person and control these characters, compared to watching a horror movie – who knew 😉 . I also discovered that I’m not good at quick-time events so I was already having a very different game than the above play-through, which is actually available in full on YouTube. Here’s video 1/4 if you’re interested:

Anyway, the Quarry has been very cool and I’m both scared and excited to finish it. And on the complete opposite of graphic styles – I also played a 16 bit game that was built by one guy:

Happyhills Homicide

Similar to the above, that same YouTube channel made me curious about Happyhills Homicide and I’ve been enjoying it! And it’s also FREE on Steam if you want to check it out. 

And in case you’re curious, here is the first and (as of this writing) only interview with the game’s creator:

Cities Skylines II

After giving up on Cities Skylines II in frustration and continuing to just play the OG version (Cities Skylines), I gave Cities Skylines II another chance this month and that might have been a mistake 🙂 , but we’ll get to that later. 

Luckily there do seem to have been some positive changes since I previously quit the game. Everything seemed to be working and the tutorial is now very helpful with a lot of detail. 

However, the most helpful parts were often buried beneath multiple paragraphs and not bolded or emphasized, such as the fact that in this game, a coal plant shouldn’t be over groundwater and should be downwind from housing. Neither of these considerations were in CS1 and are new to the game. 

A positive is that I really enjoyed the changing seasons in this version of the game. It changes how everything looks and is very beautiful.

On the negative side, I did experience some frustrations with this game, such as the fact that we have much less control over traffic compared to the first game, including the locations of specific stoplights and stop signs. We can only change an entire intersection, which ruins my awesome traffic strategy.

Also several reviewers said this about Cities Skylines II, but I must agree – a lot of the changes in this updated game are one step forward, but two steps back. It’s pretty wild that this game came out two years ago and still doesn’t live up to the OG despite being almost double the price. 

After experiencing these frustrations, I decided to put the game down again and play the OG version instead when I saw this news:

So I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not invested in CS2 because it might become a dead game like other ones on this developer’s roster. 

I Knitted

My most time consuming hobby continues to overtake my life 🙂 . This month I made my first footwear!

They were slippers for my Partner, which also would be my first foray into knitting something that someone else would wear daily.

I finished the first slipper after working for hours multiple days in a row to finish it so his feet would be warm. And then I thought I’d want to take a break before doing the same thing over again for the second slipper, but the next day I wanted to knit! I guess I’m addicted now.

I also cast on for my next big project: the “Knives Out” sweater! I shared my gauge swatch in a previous post and then I didn’t do anything while I worked on those slippers, but I dove back this month and am working on the first sleeve! I should be done by next month so I’ll share pictures in my next recap.

I Hung Out With People

This month involved some of my usual virtual meetups, such as that weekly call with my Mom and Weekly Movie Nights where we watched movies including the below. If you’re curious about my ratings of movies, I have a Letterboxd account here.

1. Predator: Killer Of Killers
2. Predator: Badlands
3. Frankenstein (2025)
4. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
5. Death Becomes Her
6. Die Hard
7. A House of Dynamite
8. Next Goal Wins

I also had some fun experiences with friends and family, which included:

• Daily Morning Coffee Time with my MIL and SILs
• Weekly Family Dinner
• A Handmade Pizza Party/Knitting Hangout
• A Mozzarella Cheesemaking Party
• An Anne Of Green Gables Viewing Party
• A KPop Demon Hunters Themed Birthday Party
• Family Thanksgiving!!!

I Read 10 Books

Here were my favorite reads this month:

1. In this Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work by Kyla Scanlon 
2. Winning You by E.M. Lindsey

To see the other books I read this month and my ratings of them, I have a Goodreads account here. I’m getting back into the groove of reading, all snuggled up in my apartment and I love it so much 🙂 .

My TBR pile is overflowing and I am excited to see how many of those I make time to read before the end of the year. I’m currently at 174 books read for the year, which is 46 less than 2024.

We’ll see where I shake out at the end of the year, but it looks like knitting has officially been taking up a fair bit of my reading time 🙂 . Oh well – the books will still be there when I have time to read them. 

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

1. The Month I Became A Millionaire: October 2025 Recap
2. How To Get The Most Out Of Your Library Card: Sister Libraries, Free Passes And Apps
3. How I Furnished My Apartment For Under $2,000
4. Slow Travel Review: Auckland, New Zealand – The Land Of Nature And Cafes

I also wrote an interview for another finance blog. It’s a follow up on this 2021 post on Making Sense Of Cents. Here’s the latest one:

• I Retired 5 Years Ago With $500,000. Now I Have $1,000,000

I also almost posted all of my photos and tips from my latest trip to Iceland on Instagram. This took a significant amount of time and effort like all my posts on there so I wanted to add it here to commemorate my efforts🤣. I’m trying to be completely up to date on my Insta by the end of the year. We’ll see if I can do it.

And this month in the realm of “weird opportunities I declined/ignored” we have:

• A reader asking me if they could pay me for advice. I’m not interested in being a financial consultant and definitely don’t have anything close to the qualifications to do so, so I declined taking their money. However, I told them that I was happy to give my thoughts for free if it’s about a topic I have knowledge on and it was 🙂 
• A company asked me to partner with a famous VPN company – Does this mean I’ve made it since so many YouTubers I watch partner with them on their videos🤣?
• An AI mediation app (*vomit*)
• An E-bike brand (I’ve never owned an e-bike so no…)
• Airbnb Hosting Support (this is very weird because I’ve never owned an Airbnb 🙂 )

Physical

Sleep

My sleep has been lovely this month. I fell asleep easily (sometimes earlier than planned, such as at 9pm #Late30s) and at times have awakened before my Partner’s 6:30 am alarm. 

However, I enjoyed those early mornings by starting my day with a book in the quiet while watching the sun rise. It’s been really lovely and I’m curious if this means I’m turning into my mother 🙂 . 

Honestly, I wish. She sleeps 6 hours a night and is completely well rested after. Maybe one day…

Food

I had challenging goals for this month, and I’m happy to say that I hit them! I ate keto 93% of the time and took 2 days off keto – and yes, one day was Thanksgiving 🙂 . 

I’m going full steam ahead trying to balance enjoying the holidays and all the delicious food that comes with it, with seeing if I can hit my goal of maintaining my 30 lb weight loss from last year.

And so far it’s going well! I don’t feel deprived and am even more appreciative when I am eating delicious holiday treats. We’ll see if that feeling continues into the Christmas season – candy canes are a weakness of mine 😉 . 

Exercise

I’ve continued my daily PT/pilates/yoga exercises and have added a few new things! One was daily body weight squats and later in the month I started heavy lifting again!

I’m so happy to be back lifting – it’s challenging and always makes me feel awesome. It’s amazing to see how quickly I can comfortably and easily increase my weights. Let’s get “swol” 😉 . 

Lifting wise, I am once again doing Stronglifts 5×5, which involved rotating the below exercises: 

DAY A

1. Squat 5×5
2. Bench Press 5×5
3. Barbell Row 5×5

DAY B

1. Squat 5×5
2. Overhead Press 5×5
3. Deadlift 1×5

I also had fun doing this exercise routine with one of my SILs – it kicked my ass 🙂 :

Mental

Learning

So it’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this month:

Astronomy

My astronomy explorations this month were sadly limited to watching the Full Moon right outside my window on a clear night. It was beautiful and bright!

However, the sky was sadly not clear when I wanted to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. Oh well 🙂 – better luck next year. 

Cloudy skies were also against me when I tried to see if I could spot the Northern Lights when they were visible in the US this month. Luckily I could just reminisce on my time spotting them in Iceland two months ago. 

View this post on Instagram

Birds

Birdwatching this month was pretty good given how cold it was 🙂 . The highlight of the week was watching some Blue Jays scare off a Red-Tailed Hawk from a tree. Get ‘im!

Other than that, here are the birds I saw this month across two states:

NY State

White-Throated Sparrow, Blue Jay, Red-Tailed Hawk, Black-Capped Chickadee, American Pipit, Great Blue Heron, Baltimore Oriole, Dark-Eyed Junco, White-Breasted Nuthatch, American Goldfinch, American Crow, Northern Cardinal, American Robin, White-Throated Sparrow, House Sparrow

New Hampshire

Northern Mockingbird, American Herring Gull, Ring-Billed Gull, American Crow, Black-Capped Chickadee, Great Black-Backed Gull, Song Sparrow

Random

• A group of bears is called a sleuth
• Antarctica is the highest continent in the world with an average elevation of about 7,200 feet above sea level

Creativity

My creativity is luckily going well! I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do PurpleMas this year, but after beginning to write December posts far in advance, I decided I could do it. So PurpleMas is happening! 

View this post on Instagram

As a result, I’ve been writing a lot more than usual, but it’s been really fun overall, which is great. I was curious if I would be able to keep up the momentum without something like a NaNoWrimo word count driving me, but it turns out I’m ok without it 🙂 . 

Emotional

My emotions were good this month, which was surprising given the decreasing sunlight and increasing cold. Being around loved ones continues to increase my spirits and also quickly decrease my social meter 🙂 . 

However, now that I’m not visiting family and have my own space, I can enjoy my introvert time while my social battery refills guilt free! I’m hoping this trend of good emotions despite winter weather continues. 

Money

The end of the year is approaching! And as I explained in the post below, I’m already way over budget 😉 . 

• 5 Years Of Early Retirement: Finances, What’s Changed And What’s Next?

However, that’s for good reason and I’m not worried about it. Such character development 🙂 . I’m more excited to update my end-of-year spreadsheets and see where everything netted out.

Stay tuned for posts about that coming soon. Meanwhile, here’s where my net worth ended the month after I hit a Millionaire net worth last month:

View this post on Instagram

Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to in November! I had a wonderful time settling into my home and experiencing some wonderful family time. I’m both scared and excited to see what December and its Christmas decorations, freezing temperatures, and lack of sunlight brings. I’m sure it’ll be awesome 😉 . 

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly (2020)

1. Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
2. Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
3. Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
4. Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
5. Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
6. Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
7. Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
8. Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
9. Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
10. Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
11. Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
12. Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday

Monthly (2021)

1. The Month Of Rest: Early Retirement Month 4 (January 2021)
2. The Month Of Birds: Early Retirement Month 5 (February 2021)
3. The Month of Change: Early Retirement Month 6 (March 2021)
4. The Month of Atlanta: Early Retirement Month 7 (April 2021)
5. The Month of Portland, Maine: Early Retirement Month 8 (May 2021)
6. The Month Of New Hampshire: Early Retirement Month 9 (June 2021)
7. The Month Of The Northeast: Early Retirement Month 10 (July 2021)
8. The Month Of New York State: Early Retirement Month 11 (August 2021)
9. The Month Of City Hopping: Early Retirement Month 12 (September 2021)
10. The Month Of The Southwest USA: October 2021 Recap
11. The Month Of Santa Fe: November 2021 Recap
12. The Month Of Family: December 2021 Recap

Monthly (2022)

1. The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap
2. The Month Of Thailand: February 2022 Recap
3. The Month Of Spring(?): March 2022 Recap
4. The Month Of México: April 2022 Recap
5. The Month of Mérida: May 2022 Recap
6. The Month of Seattle: June 2022 Recap
7. The Month of Washington State: July 2022 Recap
8. The Month Of New Hampshire: August 2022 Recap
9. The Month Of Maine: September 2022 Recap
10. The Month Of Acadia: October 2022 Recap
11. The Month Of Argentina: November 2022 Recap
12. The Month Of Holiday Cheer: December 2022 Recap

Monthly (2023)

1. The Month Of Snow: January 2023
2. The Month Of New Hampshire: February 2023
3. The Month Of Sea: March 2023
4. The Month Of California: April 2023
5. The Month Of Seattle: May 2023
6. The Month Of Chicago: June 2023
7. The Month Of Montréal: July 2023
8. The Month Of Troy, NY: August 2023
9. The Month Of Australia: September 2023
10. The Month Of New Zealand: October 2023
11. The Month Of Puerto Vallarta: November 2023
12. The Month Of Warmth: December 2023

Monthly (2024)

1. The Month Of Family: January 2024 Recap
2. The Month Of Costa Rica: February 2024 Recap
3. The Month Of San José: March 2024 Recap
4. The Month Of The Solar Eclipse: April 2024 Recap
5. The Month Of Arizona: May 2024 Recap
6. The Month Of Upstate NY: June 2024 Recap
7. The Month Of Montréal: July 2024 Recap
8. The Month Of Canada: August 2024 Recap
9. The Month Of Iceland: September 2024 Recap
10. The Month Of Switzerland & Italy: October 2024 Recap
11. The Month Of Amsterdam: November 2024 Recap
12. The Month Of Holiday Cheer: December 2024 Recap

Monthly (2025)

1. The Month Of Yuki Matsuri: January 2025 Recap
2. The Month Of Auckland: February 2025 Recap
3. The Month Of Sakura: March 2025 Recap
4. The Month Of Seattle: April 2025 Recap
5. The Month Of Settling Down(ish): May 2025 Recap
6. The Month Of Machu Picchu: June 2025 Recap
7. The Month Of The UK: July 2025 Recap
8. The Month Of Bath: August 2025 Recap
9. The Month Of Iceland: September 2025 Recap
10. The Month I Became A Millionaire: October 2025 Recap