Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like I’m not a big subscriber to stuff, but I have, off the top of my head:

- YouTube $10/mo and super worth it

- Netflix $15/mo and lately meh

- AppleTV $10/mo and meaning to cancel again

- AMC $10/mo ditto

- Apple Music $10/mo and want to cancel but need to figure out migration

- Adobe $10/mo for PS+LR and pretty happy with it

- DropBox $10/mo and I guess, whatever

- 1Password I forget how much…

- Old-School web hosting about $10/mo

- GitHub $5/mo, tribal membership fee

- Digital newspapers and magazines, probably around $50/mo or maybe double that?

…plus a few obscure software subs that are sort of “pro” and Amazon Prime which is for fast delivery to rural America a few times a year, plus a bunch of domains, plus Patreon including at least one software person. Plus whatever I’m forgetting.

My goal for media is to have one streaming movie/TV service at any one time, and go back to paying for music one album at a time. But who knows if I’ll get there. My monthly software cost will definitely increase soon.

And despite all this, I think I’m pretty conservative and don’t have too many subs. Someone with a good income who subscribes on a whim, probably spends at least double this much.

You may not consider yourself a big subscriber, but you are paying $1700 a year in subscriptions. That is pretty substantial.

Also YouTube music is pretty decent and replaced Spotify for me. Since you're already paying for it, it may be a good replacement for Apple music.

It's not really that substantial if you're making 170k/year, which isn't an insane salary for a software engineer in the US.

The money is just as substantial, you just don't feel it as much.

Sure, but it's a sliding scale. $1 is a substantial amount to many people, but it's unhealthy for me to feel guilty spending a dollar of groceries. It's only really healthy to consider things in relation to what you can afford in terms of money, time, and physical ability.

I understand (and understood) what you are getting at. But if you don't stop and think about what that same (substantial) money might mean to a person in a different position in society, that is pretty solipsistic.

It’s substantial enough, I could surely think of something costing $850 that I’d rather have than half these, if we take the other half to be “essential.”

My point is that it’s super easy to end up with this kind of expense, or much more, without subscribing to “much.”

Oh sure, and that's the entire point of the article. But even if I look at their MLB subscription and go "I can come up with 10 things I'd rather spend that money on" that's a personal thing of what I like vs. what they like. Who knows what things the author isn't spending money on that you or I are spending money on that they'd think is wasteful of us?

In general, I find it silly to look at anyone else's situation, and outside of extreme situations, try to take a "you're wrong and I know better than you about how your life would be better if you spent your money differently." position.

> It’s substantial enough, I could surely think of something costing $850 that I’d rather have than half these, if we take the other half to be “essential.”

You're look at it as a zero sum game though. The GP may be able to afford all of these and spend $850 on the latest widget too, all without blinking.

ok i know hn hates memes but this one is so relevant: https://i.redd.it/3p9mr4vuxny41.jpg

like i get a lot of hackernews can afford it but i got so many friends who r "broke" while spending like that and won't stop.

You can get the iCloud subscription and merge dropbox Apple Music and Apple tv all into a single thing.

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