How many subscriptions are you currently enrolled in? Do you have any duplicates? Amazon Prime Video AND Hulu, wow. How luxurious.

I’ve been reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau and came across a quote that made me realize the rent collection business models that have arose through the internet, Spotify, Netflix, Birchbox, Dollar Shave Club, etc., are mostly unnecessary spending that diminish our own personal autonomy and wealth. I say this knowing full well that Audible, Apple Music, Sam Harris, Headspace, the YMCA, and SimplyPiano will all charge me this month. I too am a fly in the web.

Recently, there has been a wave of minimalism that has swept the western world. With books like The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, gaining renown as a means of not letting our wealth become transmuted solely to things we own.

“A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.” – Walden

This mindset, about looking not just at the item or service, but at the whole package, the baggage that comes along with a decision, reminds me of Ryan Holiday’s exploration of The Dress Suit Bribe. The meat of his post being, “…seemingly benign decisions trigger commitments to larger ideas than we might imagine. In the case of something like a mortgage they are literal contracts that require decades of a very particular kind of lifestyle.”

Most people are looking at what they get out of a deal, they fail to see that there is more to the picture. You buy Netflix, but what do you really pay for it? Surely it is more than just the money you send them, it is the time you spend on their platform, it is the time you spend discussing with others the shows you watch, it is the time you spend daydreaming about the next episode.

These are all hidden costs associated with that one purchase that affect your lifestyle. You can expand this to just about any decision in life. Should I choose that employer? Should I follow her on Instagram? Is this the right apartment for me?

All of these decisions have hidden costs.

However, that is not something to fear. Instead it should be something you think about often. Rationally auditing the decisions you have made so that you can make better ones, change previous ones, and help others in their quest for a better life. Like The Dunbar Hierarchy, you can expand this to your relationships.

Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I ask you to examine, what subscriptions do you have that no longer serve you?