IntroIntro
Starting October 2025, I began to track some of the items we buy at least a semi-regularly with sats. The idea is to visualize inflation in sats over time.
This is the 4th post of the series, documenting how our purchasing power changes for stuff we buy with sats. (Link to part 3, Jan 2026).
Background, LimitationsBackground, Limitations
We've been spending & replacing for a few years. While we could feel things getting cheaper in sats over time, we didn't actually track and measure it for specific items. This is what these posts are about.
We spend a a few months of each year in South Africa where we can buy heaps of stuff with bitcoin. Towards the end of March, we'll head off to other countries for around half a year.
Meaning, next month's post will be the last one featuring real sats spent numbers for a while. That is, unless I stumble on other places where I can spend my sats.
For now, I am leaning towards continuing the series with a big fat asterisk by converting fiat numbers into sats. It feels wrong, so I'll mull it over a bit more.
My current thinking is I'd rather have continuity than sitting out the series for 6-7 months.
I'll make a call by the next post and declare it there.
The Numbers, NaoThe Numbers, Nao
| Item | Date | Sats/Unit (avg) | Change |
| Electricity | Jan | 242.136 | 12.56% |
| Feb | 311.957 | 28.84% | |
| Fuel | Jan | 1429.050 | 4.40% |
| Feb | 1815.179 | 27.02% | |
| Milk | Jan | 1135.477 | 2.19% |
| Feb | 1462.874 | 28.83% | |
| Phone data | Jan | 4657.885 | 3.84% |
| Feb | 6120.379 | 31.40% | |
| Water | Jan | 4657.188 | -0.60% |
| Feb | n/a* | n/a* |
Units: Electricity in kWh, water in kilo liters, phone data in Gb, fuel and milk in liters.
*We didn't need to buy any more water in Feb, so no data.
Inflation in terms of sats has been fairly high again, despite the short breather in pace during the past month.
This is expected. As is a return to deflation at some point, some time in the future.
SummarySummary
Seeing sats price inflation isn't surprising since things are still priced in shitcoins. Yes, the very ones that now buy more Bitcoin than in the months prior.
And that might go on for a few more months or who knows? We might also see sats price deflation next time around. Only time will tell. And I'll be here to tell the tale.
On the plus side, we've been doing this for almost 4 years now. So at least we know things are getting cheaper in the long-enough-run. :)
Do you notice the inflation trend influencing your spending habits?
Thanks for these updates.
No, it doesn't. For two reasons.
First and foremost, we live a frugal, sorta-minimalist lifestyle anyway.
We're nomadic 6-9 months per year, meaning we don't buy much other than food, reasonable accommodation when abroad, and tickets for our travels.
Most of our spending, therefore, are necessities.
Secondly, I use a bit of a mind trick that goes hand in hand with living (at times significantly) below our means:
We replace more than we spend and I keep track of all purchases & spends.
I then simply track the spends in a FIFO manner and calculate the "nominal discount" in our reference shitcoins, comparing how much we paid for the very sats we're spending now.
Currently, we're spending sats we bought (read: "replaced") in August 2023. In effect, we paid about half of the value in shitcoins compared to what we get when spending today (after mentally converting the spent sats back to shitcoins.)
That takes a large part of the sting out of it. And the time gap between when we replaced sats to when we spend those keeps building. So, the longer we stay the course, the bigger the benefits we reap from it.
Very cool! I've been interested in convincing my family to try something that's a bit more nomadic, but thus far we've only flirted with it in transitions between more settled things. It is very attractive to me.
The mental accounting you do makes a lot of sense. I can see how it helps with perspective.
If I may ask without it sounding too probing, how do your children do with the nomadic lifestyle?
Not at all. We don't have kids. So we're doing it in easy mode. :)
We met a few nomads who do, though. That is genuinely another ball game, but not impossible.
Those who appear to thrive as nomads, have embraced home-schooling and seek out / arrange lots and lots of ad-hoc socializing events for the kids.
Not having a fixed set of friends is a problem for just about all of the kids. Their parents look to offset that, eg. by frequently stopping by locations where one of the kid's close friends live.
In one case I know of, they also often invite the "settled" children over to join their travels during the school holidays. Of course that only works because their parents trust them, or join the trip themselves.
Hooray!🙌🏻
The bull run fixes this!
For all those who call me a fiat maxi please do know as things get cheaper in sats is because the fiat price went up