What I Spend

[Scott 2]

Most of my media went out 15 years ago, no regrets!
...
I did keep my stereo set: amplifier, radio, speakers, cassette and cd player. Since this summer I'm trying life without headphones.
...

One aspect of selling a used item is finding it a new owner

It was interesting trying to value the CDs and DVDs. Used to be, you could send in to Amazon and do alright. Well they killed that trade in program. If you want to sell disc based media, you need to prove where it came from.

So I checked ebay and offer up. Everyone has the some stuff, from the 90's and early 2000's. You're talking asking prices of $1/cd, maybe $2/dvd. And that stuff is still listed.

Further examining the assumptions around my treasure - the library has increased our monthly credits and more music is available on Hoopla. Many of my CDs are there. Even if I killed my $5/month music streaming, I still have ad free options.

An amplifier from the 90's and a pair of cheap speakers was in the discards. We moved our living room to a wireless bluetooth speaker. The sound quality is not as good. But it's smaller and easier.


The thing I like about goodwill, is some amount of that new ownership still happens. The marginal impact of my selling used is relatively small. Whatever goodwill trashes that I might have succeeded in transitioning, is limited. Given their much larger audience, I suspect it could be zero. A lot of my offer up items had been sitting for 6+ months.

Also the hassle of going through the motions curbs the enthusiasm for acquiring stuff in the first place.
...
I've taken to buying clothing in lots on eBay. The main benefit is that the lot is all the same size and often in matching style/colors. Slightly more expensive than Goodwill but more convenient.

Bless me Jacob, for I have sinned Shopping feels like atonement enough. My brain is compelled to make the most optimal purchase, leaving nothing on the table. Picking out $50 of tea took me over 2 hours Friday. I used a spreadsheet to narrow down on my 2 new video games. I cannot approach things any other way, and it makes me hate to shop.

Ebay was the best option I could find for parting out the clothes. It looked like I'd optimistically clear a few dollars per garment - after listing fees, paypal, shipping overhead, etc. So worthless is an exaggeration, but the hourly return is quite low. When I was busier, I'd buy fast fashion from Kohls with a 30% off coupon. The same stuff I now grab at Goodwill. The clothes just aren't that nice.

It's always been the case that beyond semi-random assortment of best-seller junk that just sits gathering dust, the books people are most likely to hold on to are books related to their avocations or hobbies.

This is spot on.

Last to go was my "best" work books. Devops and programming, often listed for $10-30 used on Amazon. They'd been on Offer Up for 6 months with no takers, since I'm not up for the shipping hassle.

Before that, it was my yoga books. About 2 dozen, all gifted to the current yoga teacher. She drops snippets of philosophy and the occasional Sanskrit pose name. So I passed them off. There was at least a little joy in that hand over.

[Scott 2]

2023 Spend vs. Budget

Code: Select all

		High		Low		Actual
-------------------------------------------------------
Total		$62,344		$46,588		$50,219
-------------------------------------------------------
Medical		$12,442		$8,830		$11,809
Groceries	$8,400		$7,200		$8,492
Discretionary	$7,950		$7,950		$6,281
Dental		$12,844		$5,944		$6,102
Taxes		$5,745		$5,232		$6,050
Home		$7,032		$4,949		$5,403
Utilities	$3,449		$3,389		$3,338
Car		$2,770		$1,955		$1,556
Pets		$1,712		$1,139		$1,187

Annual Spend by Year

Code: Select all

Year	Actual		Inflation Adjusted - 2023 Dollars
----------------------------------------------------------
2023	$50,219		$50,219
2022	$43,284		$45,413
2021	$54,006		$61,197

2024 Budget

Code: Select all

		High		Low
---------------------------------------
Total		$60,970		$53,321
---------------------------------------
Medical		$14,527		$13,391
Discretionary	$10,807		$9,807
Groceries	$8,820		$7,938
Home		$8,743		$6,243
Taxes		$6,352		$6,054
Dental		$4,344		$3,844
Utilities	$2,976		$2,916
Car		$2,687		$1,987
Pets		$1,714		$1,141

Overall
The financial side of retirement works. Year end review took a couple hours. No surprises or stress. Of course - we're spending 10% more year over year. Raises don't hurt feelings. The 2022 market drop caused us to make drastic cuts. Those are unwinding.

The primary increase was medical care. I saw many providers in 2023 and expect more in 2024. During accumulation - my healthcare strategy was "life just be this way." It turns out there are better options. I have a lot of deferred maintenance to address. Some might curse their poor health, but I see this as investment in aging well.

I don't see us moving closer to ERE spend. We'd need to drastically reduce consumption around healthcare, food, fun or the home. Neither of us want to, and we can afford not to. One of my changes for 2024, is to stop chasing small money. A discount here, a used purchase there. The net gain is a couple thousand. Considering opportunity cost, the behavior is not rational. At times, it borders on mental illness.

Now that I have an identity beyond "employee", the need for growth is diminishing. I held a deep seated insecurity. I was running from my bad work experience. Much of 2023 was spent pursuing a performative lifestyle - aspiration to an ideal. That has faded. I'm playing more video games. Exercising less. Eating more flexibly. Volunteering less. Spending more. Even having the occasional drink.

Life goes in ebs and flows. I'm ending 2023 on a lull. It feels right. Maybe it's a life transition.


Random Thoughts
1. Aligning our annual budget with the calendar year worked much better. Society has a financial cadence. Between taxes and insurance, fighting it makes no sense.

2. Similarly - budgeting against annual categories worked much better than monthly targets. Especially with the forecasting I built. Expenses are cyclical, but smooth out over the calendar year. There's no point in stressing over small monthly fluctuations.

3. The budgeting process continues to simplify. Fewer categories. Simpler formulas. Less transactions. Rather than maximizing returns, it's all about minimizing mental overhead. In 2020 I would have said "That's it??? What about X, Y and Z!!!" Now, I think if that little stuff matters, the big picture is broken. Strategy over tactics.

4. My consumer spending continues to shift. A personal goal for 2024 is to separate from paid streaming services. I signed the Netflix account over to my wife and cancelled Pandora. Between Libby, Hoopla and Kanopy via my library - I think this is highly feasible. It's not that I cannot afford it, I just hate the all you can eat subscription model. The increasing prices and ads accelerated my decision.

5. I'm also trying to reduce services accessed via smartphone. A big one is my use of MyFitnessPal. I don't have reliable hunger or fullness signals. I solved the problem by abdicating to an app. It's been at least a decade. So I'm now trying to reign that back in. The tool works great, but I don't want to touch my phone multiple times per day. I can eyeball the nutrition of just about any meal, so I hope it's an unnecessary crutch.

6. I'm cancelling participation in my insurance company's wellness program. It nets out around $150 per year. But I cannot help but to optimize, play it for a high score. It manifests in my life as a really crappy video game. True to form - I'm waiting for the big points boost on 1/1, so I can cash out before closing the account.

7. I finally caught COVID. It wasn't bad. A couple days fighting a fever and intense sore throat. Two weeks tired and isolating. My wife even managed to avoid it. Still - the experience has me second guessing public gyms. When I go. Where I go. If I use one at all. I don't think opting out entirely is my best choice, but it is tempting. More likely I'll limit to low traffic times. At least through winter.

8. Credit card churning might stay. That's the best hourly return I've found on chasing small money. It nets out close to $100/hr, tax free. As we're close to the 5/24 limit, I may consider bank account churning as well. I don't need it, but saying no to free money is hard.

9. We never did hire a housekeeper. The service was also scrapped from our draft 2024 budget. We never got better at cleaning either.

10. The house is in a borderline state of disrepair. In an attempt to combat this, we doubled the home maintenance budget for 2024 - from $1k to $2k. The challenge is I neither care nor have the DIY skills. My wife is a little better, but it's hard to overcome inertia. I expect the budget to escalate further in 2025, as other one time expenses slow down.

11. We're finally biting the bullet for formal estate planning, with a real life lawyer. That's budgeted at $2k. We've reached the age where a death in the extended family is unsurprising. After watching that repeatedly unfold, my wife wants to minimize our burden on loved ones. I cannot say I'm eager to do this, but she's taking the lead.

12. Some of the medical care I anticipate leads to a lot of sedentary time. I'm debating how that time is spent. Part of me considers making a run at programming. I don't relish the associated computer time. But it might be engaging, and I might be really good at it. I could also be bored and mentally wandering, due to my recent COVID downtime.

13. Along those lines, I'm making a renewed effort to reduce the presence of big tech feeds in my life. Reddit. LinkedIn. News. Offer Up. Deku Deals. Instagram. This is a cyclical problem. I cut things out and then they creep back in. While resting during COVID, it got bad. 8+ hours per day on my phone. If I'm gonna stare at a screen, I might as well get something more out of it.

14. I'm also debating on making a stronger attempt at removing big tech services from my life. Replace gmail and google calendar with hey. Rip my audible books and delete the Amazon account. Transition from Windows and Office to an open source solution. Move my phone to LineageOS. This might be aspirational stuff, but it's on my mind. The services are all great, but I dislike being dependent and the privacy implications.

15. I've decided to buy video games once per year, during the holiday sales. Despite only spending a couple hundred on games per year, I like to constantly monitor for deals. Snagging games at the "lowest price yet!" has lead me to a 1000+ hour backlog. I'd much rather have spent that deal hunting time playing games. So I will. My library also has games to borrow, which I have yet to explore.

[bostonimproper]

For what it’s worth, my husband and I found estate planning to be fairly easy. The biggest decisions were mostly around the who (power of attorney, trustee, etc) rather than the what.

I know you said you’re not looking to chase small money, but if you’re willing to do churning based on ROI, I’d also recommend trying out “airdrop hunting” by using some protocols on Solana or different Ethereum L2’s. Basically performing transactions so that VC’s throw tokens at you for being an “early adopter” of random protocols (which I highly suggest liquidating as soon as you get them). Bankless has a good guide; it’s behind a $22/month paywall, but worth it if you want handholding. I “made” about 1 jacob just playing around with random stuff last cycle, and that was without any intention to airdrop hunt. You’d need to put a little money on chain, and spend a bit on transaction fees, but you should be good throwing $100 or so in each ecosystem as long as you avoid Ethereum mainchain and onboard directly onto an L2 (I’d start with Starknet).

Best wishes for 2024!

[Scott 2]

For what it’s worth, my husband and I found estate planning to be fairly easy. The biggest decisions were mostly around the who

The process might prove painless then. We made a budget attempt 5 years ago, using forms downloaded off the internet. So our big decisions have been made. We're just not confident a notarized web form is legal. Particularly around advanced directives and power of attorney. Several people have told us they are not.

I'll keep the airdrop hunting in mind. I've mostly avoided crypto, thinking I'm likely to be the greater fool. But it could blend well with exploring my programming skills.

[delay]

Thanks for your update! I see your car expenses are lower than expected. Cars are one category that doesn't average out over a single year.

14. I'm also debating on making a stronger attempt at removing big tech services from my life. Replace gmail and google calendar with hey. Rip my audible books and delete the Amazon account. Transition from Windows and Office to an open source solution. Move my phone to LineageOS. This might be aspirational stuff, but it's on my mind. The services are all great, but I dislike being dependent and the privacy implications.

It's a good time to try this! The alternatives to Windows and Office have gotten a lot better lately. I left Excel for LibreOffice, and I've heard other people about alternatives like Open Office or WPS Office. Ubuntu and Mint have become excellent Windows replacements, and there's various ways to play Windows games, like https://www.playonlinux.com/.

LineageOS is a much steeper climb. It's difficult to wean yourself off Google and Apple apps.

In terms of hardware I've never seen anything half as good as a MacBook. A MacBook has 10+ hour battery life, reliable operation, and it lasts for five years.

[Scott 2]

Cars are one category that doesn't average out over a single year.

Agreed. We discussed a few unlikely but significant financial risks. A car failure is one of them. The others are insurance issues with my upcoming jaw surgery, and some possible familial assistance. We are running a more conservative withdrawal rate to mitigate. Because they are unlikely and would be in the 5 figure range, explicitly budgeting them feels wrong.

Should one of our severe risks manifest, we might get a little more aggressive on chasing small money. There's an analysis in McClung's Living Off Your Money around these one time events. They tend not to break the plan, unless there's bad timing relative to sequence of return risks.

Hopefully we're not forced to exceed the budget, and the lower withdrawal becomes a hedge against long term care risks. Between the market drop and inflation in 2022, we lost a good amount of that safety margin. It'd be nice to have back. We're also looking at delayed social security and possible inheritance as other long term care mitigators.


There's definitely some of the tech stuff that's easier than others.

Glad to hear LibreOffice has been acceptable. Replacing MS Office is one of the most appealing changes. I used to get free licenses through my work MSDN subscription. While I'm still riding the last one, it's eventually going to end.

My clever retirement spreadsheets are the hardest to transition. It's part of why I keep simplifying, anticipating the eventual loss of Excel. I'm never paying a subscription fee for my office suite. I refuse to be an automatic source of recurring revenue.

On the OS - We're running a Windows 10 desktop that's approaching ten years old. 2025 is floating around as end of support. With some clever work arounds, I might get a free upgrade to Windows 11. However, I hear the user experience sucks.

So that energy may be better spent spinning up a new Linux machine in parallel. My wife isn't as tech savvy, meaning any transition needs to be seamless. We were forced to the current PC when Microsoft obsoleted a prior OS. Between the forced changed, trends towards subscription based pricing and increasing ads - I'd quite enjoy firing Microsoft.

[delay]

My clever retirement spreadsheets are the hardest to transition. It's part of why I keep simplifying, anticipating the eventual loss of Excel. I'm never paying a subscription fee for my office suite. I refuse to be an automatic source of recurring revenue.

Thanks for your reply! Open source OS / Office has made a ton of progression in the last ten years. My move was entirely painless. I know some people from Finance who run complex spreadheats for their stock trading, they've all moved over too. They said Visual Basic for Applications was the hardest part, that had to be rewritten, but the destionation suite's macro language was better than VBA.

In terms of money, I just checked, Microsoft Office 365 is $69 a year. That's cheaper than I thought.

[loutfard]

So that energy may be better spent spinning up a new Linux machine in parallel. My wife isn't as tech savvy, meaning any transition needs to be seamless. We were forced to the current PC when Microsoft obsoleted a prior OS. Between the forced changed, trends towards subscription based pricing and increasing ads - I'd quite enjoy firing Microsoft.

My wife is perfectly happy with it. My mother used to be a happy Debian user too. Until my father bought her a ticket into the Apple walled garden, that is.

There's hardly any more natural companion to ERE than free/open source software. Just do it yesterday already, and enjoy both freedom-from and freedom-to!

[Scott 2]

Open source OS / Office has made a ton of progression in the last ten years. My move was entirely painless.

You're right. LibreOffice simply worked on my spreadsheet. Even the conditional formatting, subtotals, indirect functions, etc. I spent more time complaining about Microsoft than it took to replace them. Amazing. Far better than the last try.

EDIT - Spoke too soon. Read works great. Saving the file as excel lost my formatting. Saving as open document format worked, until I removed and re-added the subtotals. That breaks all the conditional formatting and indirect functions. I'll have to play with it.

There's hardly any more natural companion to ERE than free/open source software. Just do it yesterday already, and enjoy both freedom-from and freedom-to!

An OS replacement is probably a 2025 project, driven by sun setting of Windows 10 security updates. Or a hardware failure before then. I know I can dual boot, run off a pen drive, etc. But I want to keep a fully isolated, known working machine. I'll wait until the last responsible moment, to get the best hardware for my money.

[Scott 2]

I think I figured out the LIbreOffice Calc problems:

1. It did not convert a style in my spreadsheet's conditional formatting correctly, deciding the font color should be white. That's hard to see.
2. The subtotal wizard is mediocre compared to Excel's. But I can still use subtotal formulas. So I lose a tiny bit of flexibility, which it turns out I don't need.

Not deal breakers. I'd expect problems moving to google sheets or even another version of Excel. So I'm going to continue with the transition, keeping MS Office installed as a fallback. When I finally ditch windows, I hope to make the hard cut over. That would leave LinkedIn as the main lingering Microsoft service. I can't say I'm eager to ditch that. I suppose I also have one or more MS accounts floating around, connected to MSDN.


I drained the points from my insurance wellness program and am getting a sweet $80 gym bag. It was again an irrational sink of time. But I cannot find a way to cancel the wellness program. I highly doubt I'll resist the temptation to see what I can get for free. I threw 7/1 into my planner, thinking that's long enough to accumulate a $50-100 reward. I'll do my best to avoid min-maxing, which is the major time waste.


In an effort to reduce physical access to public gyms, I setup the video streaming service included with my fitness membership. That gives access to around a thousand yoga videos of varying quality. I also got my favorite yoga DVD loaded on my TV, so it's easy to play. Until I see my parents for our delayed Christmas, I'm not heading into any gyms. I expect needs like this to continue over winter, and post surgical recovery.


I deleted my Instagram account (again, lol). As well as the Meta Quest account I setup when trying VR. I don't use What's App, Facebook or Messenger. So I think those are the only hooks Meta had into me. It's hard to be certain. While I submitted the request to delete my accounts, logging in anytime over the next month reverts the decision. And they constantly buy new companies.


I started looking into reducing dependency on Amazon. This one might be too hard.

The first and easiest was killing off my twitch account. I hadn't logged in for several years. I was dismayed to find my favorite streamer's channel reduced to cake smashing in a bikini. She used to play video game music from my childhood, on the piano. WTF Twitch.

I found an open source app to rip my audible books. But I think they'll be about 300 megs a book. And I have to trust it with account credentials. I'm not entirely opposed to this, but want to have unlinked any credit card information first.

Several of my credit card points programs also give a 33% boost redeemed as Amazon credit. And some stuff I bought in the last year is only available via Amazon. And they also own Zappos, which is the easiest place to buy shoes. I've tabled this one. I still think it will be easier than google, but I'm not up for it right now.

[Scott 2]

The plan to end my Amazon relationship. The fact this is such a hassle, is exactly why it's worth doing. My attention is not their commodity.

The last straw has been how little control I get over my Fire stick. So many ads, with prime video pushing content before my paid content. And now they are adding even more ads. I cannot beat a juggernaut, so I won't play. I suspect this saves me substantial "chasing small money" energy. Balancing higher prices elsewhere with Amazon purchases I don't make, I'll probably win financially.


Actions:
1. Spending remaining credit
2. Delete credit card info
3. Rip books, docs, audio books
4. Abandon shows, music, reviews, photos, apps, games
5. Download order data if feasible
6. Format and unplug fire stick, eventually replacing with a linux box, to practice life without Windows
7. Cash out credit card points, cancel card
8. Close good reads account

Confirmed:
1. Credit card churn rewards can cash out for the same value elsewhere, albeit more effort. CVS cards, gas cards and Pay with paypal. Absolute worst case is groceries via a Walmart card. I haven't been there in a decade, so that's a last resort.

Sacrifice:
1. Amazon stores - Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Zappos, Twitch
2. Easy returns, although Amazon is trending away from these anyways
3. Camel camel camel price alerts
4. Amazon exclusive items
5. My oldest credit card, taking the credit score hit
6. Prime day perks and deals
7. Best possible pricing on many items
8. Audible exclusive audio books. The biggest pain point, maybe not sustainable.
9. Good reads and amazon review content???


I don't think this will be a 100% successful endeavor. Ignoring good reads and Amazon reviews will be tough. I won't sacrifice the vegan Thanksgiving roast, even if it means going into Whole Foods. If I have a reason to use AWS, I will. With a good reason, I might even churn an Amazon account. But I can gain a lot from 95% success.

[basuragomi]

LibreOffice takes regular expressions, which is absolutely killer for me.

Obligatory plug for Libby/Overdrive, which your public library probably supports! You can also use the Microsoft Edge program for the "Read Aloud" feature and apply it to Project Gutenberg books.

[Scott 2]

LibreOffice takes regular expressions,

I had no idea it was such an abomination. Deciphering that document 10 years from now... I might have to reconsider, lol


Libby is great, I use it almost every day. Between that and hoopla, I effectively have infinite reads. The library in general honestly. I was there to print just today.


The challenge with avoiding Amazon audiobooks, is they buy exclusive rights to certain content. About 15% of my reading list. Audible is entrenched, with 2/3 of the market. The financial incentive to lock in smaller authors becomes coercive. Exactly the type of behavior that makes me want to opt out.

Not that it's necessarily destructive of the overall audiobook market. Someone has to pay. But it's not good for me personally. It's a symptom of how the parent corporate entity exercises unwanted control. I don't want that in my life.

My library will buy those books, load them on a Kindle, and then lend the Kindle. So I have a pseudo work around. But at that point, I might as well be churning audible trials.

Text to speech might be a good option. Especially if I setup a media PC. I previously tried the Kindle feature and was underwhelmed. Though I've heard it's gotten better with AI improvements.

I can suffer through a print book, in the absolute worst case. *Shudder*.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Could you just "leave" as in leave it mostly as it is and just not use it, to avoid the hassle? Define exactly what (if any) portion of Amazon you'll still use (such as Audible exclusives) and keep to your decision? If in ten years you still think it is worth the effort to go through all the hoops,,, Lose time later.

For a text-to-speech solution, please see first post of my round 2 journal (basically, Voice Aloud app (Android) with Microsoft neural voices (requires setting up an API key with payment details, but it's basically free for standard usage). Works fine for most non-fiction, even PDFs.

[Scott 2]

Could you just "leave" as in leave it mostly as it is and just not use it, to avoid the hassle?

No, I don't think I can succeed in this way. They've got a horde of people dedicated to manipulating my behavior. I can resist what I understand, but I'll always be a step behind.

I'm also interested in the data privacy aspect of deleting the account. It's been active since 1999. They probably know me better than any credit bureau.

Now does account deletion truly remove my data? Well, at least it makes linking to future behavior a little harder. And I can get in on the eventually class action payout if it's discovered delete didn't work.


I'll keep your text to speech journal in mind. Incidental contact with MS is much less objectionable to me. There, I don't think my attention is the primary commodity.

[jacob]

Due to a combination of "not getting rid of hardware until it dies" & "it seemed like a good idea at the time", I/we run a combination of all four dominant OS's at ERE HQ: OSX, linux(ubuntu), chrome, and windows(10). Also both iPhone and android.

Apart from silly not-invented-here idiosyncrasies, OS GUIs are practically the same from a noob perspective. They all do the same. If anything, chrome is the weird kid on the block albeit perhaps not to a smartphone user. The real challenge comes (mostly for the resident power-user) in the beginning (first 3-6 months), when something breaks, and when the system needs to be "updated".

ERE HQ has run on the same ubuntu computer since 2015. Ubuntu likes to do a major update every 2 years and to me it always feels like a two-hour long FML/Imaydie experience (it usually works) going through that. Hit the button and thrust the system. It usually works. The package manager has required manual intervention maybe two or three times over the past almost ten years.

Most of the OMGWTFBBQ at the user level will be in terms of moving files/work over from one OS to another. I interfaced regularly between windows and libreoffice until 2019 or so and "features" were always breaking. Each are good on their own but not together. FWIW, I try to steer GUI collaborations towards google/chrome for that reason.

[Scott 2]

The real challenge comes (mostly for the resident power-user) in the beginning (first 3-6 months), when something breaks, and when the system needs to be "updated".

Exactly my reason for wanting to run old and new in parallel. Basics like the internet and webcam will probably be fine. Telehealth visits? The two factor authentication key? The automatic online data backups? The jabra speaker phone? There could be gotchas that take months or years to present. I've run Windows since 3.1 and can solve most problems. While I know enough to be dangerous on Linux / Unix, that's not always an advantage.

Shopping new PCs a little, Windows seems to be "free". While I know the real price, that doesn't make getting away any easier.

I figure my discomfort with ChromeOS is a symptom of being old. I want to control my device and data. The Chromebook is designed around an "everything in the cloud" mindset. With stuff like Github Codespaces, even the development environment. It breaks my brain a little. If I get down to the Fire stick as my last Amazon tendril, I'll still temporarily replace it with the Chromebook. It is good enough.

In an attempt to reduce the presence of Chrome and Google, we default to firefox with duck duck go search. I end up running back a couple times per week. Some times a site just won't work. Others, the Google search results are just vastly superior. Escaping big tech is not an easy trade off.

Whittling down my Amazon account today, I got sucked into several rabbit holes. Hours wasted. It's a good reminder of exactly why I want out. I'm hopeful to close down the final vestiges by month's end.

[Veronica]

Exactly my reason for wanting to run old and new in parallel. Basics like the internet and webcam will probably be fine. Telehealth visits? The two factor authentication key? The automatic online data backups? The jabra speaker phone? There could be gotchas that take months or years to present. I've run Windows since 3.1 and can solve most problems. While I know enough to be dangerous on Linux / Unix, that's not always an advantage.

Shopping new PCs a little, Windows seems to be "free". While I know the real price, that doesn't make getting away any easier.

I have eventually come to the conclusion that windows will remain in my computing stack as the primary desktop for the foreseeable future.
There's just too many issues with device compatibility (and of course, having to work with those who have not yet been properly proselytized by the penguin!), and I'm tired of having to fight it for that use case.

My life's work will still largely take place on linux systems, but sometimes you just have to bow to the crowd when working with other people. Besides, true freedom is a short ssh tunnel away.

[Scott 2]

sometimes you just have to bow to the crowd

I am finding this already with the home theater PC idea. Streaming sticks are cheaper and better, apparently. Remote control compatibility, support for audio and video protocols, and apps designed for visibility from a distance.

So I can fight it, paying more for a worse experience. Or I can concede my TV to some tech firm. Given that I'm already in the Google Android ecosystem, and a Chromecast is low ad, I'm rethinking how replaceable Google is.

Not that I spend much non video game time on the TV. But when I was down with COVID, the option was really enjoyable.

I don't think Amazon is necessary to my life. I know Meta is not. A Google or Apple may be.

[loutfard]

I am finding this already with the home theater PC idea. Streaming sticks are cheaper and better, apparently. Remote control compatibility, support for audio and video protocols, and apps designed for visibility from a distance.

No tv or video games here. We usually sit close to one another and watch video on my small laptop screen. Works for us. We actually enjoy it like that