You’re Paying Too Much. Here’s How to Stop.
Every two week I show you exactly how to take back control of your data, your money, and your digital life.
Why This Exists
I have a love-hate relationship with corporate America.
I’m tired. Tired of paying for subscriptions. Tired of being a never ending product for companies that, through greed and shareholder expectations, continue to raise prices year on year far beyond inflation. Tired of watching these companies collectively drain everyday people of their income one small charge at a time.
A few years ago I started looking at my spending in detail and actually added up every subscription I had. I was spending hundreds of dollars a month on services I might use twice a week. Over two thousand dollars a year. Gone. To companies that didn’t know my name, didn’t care about my data, and would raise prices again next year without blinking.
Like many of you, I bought into the “cut the cord” movement. And it was great at first. Saved my family over a hundred dollars a month ditching cable. But capitalism did what capitalism does. More companies saw the opportunity, jumped in, and before long we were right back to spending the same or more than we ever did on cable. We traded one problem for the same problem with a different logo.
That was the moment I decided I was done. I needed to figure out a different way.
What You’ll Get Here
Every two week, one newsletter. No more, no less.
I cover my frustrations with the constant increase in prices, the drain on our wallets, and what I have done to take back ownership where I can. My goal is to provide background and analysis on subscription culture in a capitalistic society and give you the guidance, tools, and step-by-step guides I personally followed to move away from these tools and save hundreds of dollars a year.
I am not an expert. I am someone who works in corporate America helping companies reduce costs and increase margins. So I decided to apply the same thinking to my own life.
I started by replacing tools I used every day:
YNAB replaced with Actual Budget
Apple iCloud storage replaced with my own photo server immich
Dropbox replaced with my own smb file storage
Password managers, media servers, and more
One by one. On my own hardware. Answering to nobody.
This newsletter is for you if:
You are tired of subscription price increases with no warning
You want to understand what these costs are really doing to your finances
You are curious about self-hosting but don’t know where to start
You believe your data should belong to you, not a corporation
This newsletter is NOT for you if:
You want a quick fix with no effort involved
You are looking for outrage content with no solutions
You are happy handing your data and money to corporations indefinitely
Who I Am
I’m Thomas. I work in tech, I run, I’m working toward my MBA, and I spend my Sundays going down rabbit holes figuring out how to reduce my dependence on corporations for things I can do myself.
I am not a professional writer. I didn’t go to school for this. I’m just someone who got fed up, started figuring things out, and thought other people might find it useful.
I believe in financial freedom. Not the influencer version of it. The real version, where you stop bleeding money on things you don’t control and start building a life that doesn’t depend on a corporation’s pricing decisions.
Free vs Paid
Everything here is built on one principle: information should be free.
Free subscribers get: Bi-weekly newsletter covering subscription culture, corporate price increases, privacy news, and self-hosting tools. Every post. Every two week. I will always point you to the source material, the open source GitHub pages, and the wikis so you can find what you need yourself.
Paid subscribers get: The detailed step-by-step setup guides. The docker compose configs. The real hands-on walkthroughs I personally tested and verified. These take significantly more time to create, test, and format correctly so they live behind the paid tier.
I am a firm believer in transparency. You will always know exactly what tools I am using, where I got the information from, and how to find it yourself. The paid tier is for people who want to support my work and want me to walk them through the setup in detail. Nothing more.
The Mission
My mission is simple. Teach others a new path forward.
Show people how to look at their own income and expenses and see what everything is actually costing them, no matter how small it seems. If you can reduce the cost of four or five things by just five dollars a month, that puts hundreds of dollars back in your pocket every year. Do that across ten things and you have changed your financial life.
Corporations count on you not noticing the incremental increases. I’m here to help you notice.
Take Back Control
New issues drop every two weeks. No filler. No sponsored content designed to sell you something I wouldn’t use myself. Just honest analysis and real solutions.
If that sounds like something you need in your inbox, subscribe below. It is free. Always will be for the core content.
Your data. Your rules.
