I’ve been thinking about this idea a bit more recently again. The idea of reducing ongoing obligations in the hopes that some day covering what obligations left would not cause stress in good or bad times. It’s really been a practice in understanding perceived value of the things that are traded for money.
The biggest subscriptions for me are my housing and food costs. There isn’t much I can do about reducing either of these to zero in any meaning way without causing adverse affects to my quality of life. In simple terms I don’t want to be homeless and I would like to continue to eat and live.
The eventual goal is to get housing down to practically zero by paying off the house I live in and using investments to cover the monthly utilities and property taxes. This likely won’t happen until 2030, which means at least 7 more years of dependence on some form of work to provide for myself and my own, what some would say family.
Making this rough plan around 3 years ago was all I could think about at the time. It consumed me. The hope of freedom and the fear of failure before reaching the goal seemed to be the only thing I could muster. After time I realized this was probably an extension of some more needed time to grieve. I still need that time, although the need is not as severe. This means the goal of a subscription free life is a long term goal that is still a top focus.
Creating and pursuing this goal is really about trade offs. Pursing this goal means I will not be able to funnel most of my resources, time and money, into things like entertainment. It also requires for more conservative choices in career goals and where I can stay or how much I can spend on housing. These bigger decisions have for the most part been made. While I can alter them in some ways I don’t think I can reach a more optimal state.
This leaves me with the smaller decisions. Like housing this has come down to in a lot cases owning instead of renting. One of the first things I decided to not rent was disk storage. I wanted to store the photos I took somewhere that didn’t require mush cost, especially on a ongoing basis. Another of the smaller decisions I came to was to stop renting a note taking tool after I came to decision the tool was not worth the cost. More recently I’ve come to decide I want a way to stop renting my digital entertainment, which include tv shows, movies, and music. This has probably been the most costly to setup, but has taught me a lot about quality and the cost of ongoing subscriptions.
I’ve come to learn I don’t mind spending money on upfront costs like time, effort, and money to create something more personalized and of better utility to me. I’ve learned a lot of these ongoing subscriptions in the need to appeal to a wide swath of people tend to have make trade offs that aren’t bad, but are opposite to what I want from a service. By taking more control of some of these services I can better cater to my needs and I have a better appreciation of the services that I do keep as they better meet my needs.
This journey has also taken me a lot closer to understand more things in general. I’ve had to research, tinker, and try out new services and solutions I wouldn’t have known about or tried previously. I’m hoping to keep this tinkering spirit alive as I age. This I think is key to make sure the best solution for my needs is being used at a given time, given that a subscription free life is in reality a life with more varied work, especially since that work means a less dependent life.
I want to in a future blog post detail how I’ve removed some of these subscriptions, which in reality is just starting to own more instead of renting, and what I’ve replaced these subscriptions with. What are some of the trade offs I’ve made for each solutions.
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