Living in London, it's easy to watch your bank balance quickly decline 📉. It's a similar story in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh - big cities have seen cost of living increases across the board, including -

• Rent

• Supermarket food shopping

• Amenities including cinema, bowling, alcohol

• Energy prices

We are all looking at ways to save and ensure we aren't caught out by the increasing cost of living. If you want more money, you have 2 options:

Save money where you can - public transport instead of Uber, eat more home cooked food, cancel lesser-used subscriptions. The truth is, we waste a lot of money on things we don't really need or things that don't benefit us, at least in proportion to how much they cost.

Increase how much money we make (payrise, second job, charge more). This is really hard. When was the last time anyone got a payrise?

But this mainly focuses on getting money and keeping it. And it got me thinking... what's actually worth spending money on?

🛌 Sleep optimisation

Over the last few months I've been compiling some ideas into a list of things that I think are worth spending our hard earned money on. Like the point of this email, they focus on improving health, happiness and productivity. Today's focus: spending money to improve our sleep.

Enough good quality sleep: the foundation of a healthy, happy life

Sleep affects our mood, appetite, weight loss, concentration, energy levels and immune system, amongst many other things. Therefore, it affects our relationships, learning, athletic performance, job satisfaction, how long we live and how well we live.

Think back to last weekend's extra hour in bed following the clocks changing back. Did you feel more refreshed? A study published in the British Medical Journal and popularised in Matthew Walker's fascinating and equally terrifying Why We Sleep, found the following relationship between this extra hour in bed and heart attack related admissions to hospital in the days after:

Daylight savings time and myocardial infarction: Open Heart 2014

And when the clocks change forward an hour and we lose an hour in bed?

Essentially, good quality sleep is the foundation of all health and happiness. This is the starting point when we are looking to make improvements to our lives. It's easy and effective to make changes with a huge upside - both short term and long term.

Here's what you should spend money on to improve your sleep - I've grouped them into 3 key areas.

☀️🌝 LIGHT

Controlling light and keeping your room dark while you sleep is key to improving sleep quality. Get an eyemask (£5-£20 on Amazon) if you can't block light using normal curtains.

🔊 SOUND

Similar to light, sound wakes us up during the night for small periods of time. We don't remember them, but they take away from the total hours spent actually sleeping and disrupt our deep sleep. Get some earplugs, I use foam ones (£5-£20 on Amazon), or perhaps use white noise to block sounds from outside (any speaker will do).

🥵 COOL BEDDING

Our bodies need to cool down in order to sleep. That's why you find yourself sticking a leg out or looking for a cool side of the pillow. We're never too cold to sleep, but we do get too hot to sleep. Sleep scientists suggest a room temperature of 17-19 degrees celsius is ideal.

Duvets should be cool and breathable - layering clothes is a better option that you can remove than a duvet that is too warm.

Clothing for bed should be loose, breathable and cool. If you don't have anything like this, Uniqlo is a safe bet (~£20).

Hopefully this was helpful - let me know if you have any thoughts!

This Week I’m: ⬇️

🎧 Listening to the excellent 2 hour audiobook Caffeine by Michael Pollen about the spread, affects and our addiction to, caffeine. He's an all round literary genius with a penchant for writing about the human experience and psychoactive substances. He also wrote How to Change Your Mind, an excellent book about psychedelics 🍄

🍿 Watching Alt Shift X on YouTube for his amazing half an hour explainer vids on House of the Dragon, essential for any GoT nerds

⚽️ Thinking about the World Cup is only 3 weeks away...

As always, thanks for reading. Pass this email to someone else and share the love - and of course reply with any thoughts / opinions.

Cheers 🤙🏻