Unit 1 · Level 1 · Where your money goes
Fixed, variable, and the sneaky middle
Fixed costs arrive on the same day for the same amount: rent, insurance, a loan payment. Variable costs move with your choices: groceries, fuel, a night out. Between them sits a third group nobody names. Subscriptions, the bigger phone plan, the delivery habit, the upgrade you took a year ago. They behave like fixed costs, because they renew without asking. They started as choices. That is what makes them sneaky.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What you get asked
Sort each cost into fixed, variable, or the sneaky middle
Fixed costs are large and rare, so you review them once a year at best. Variable costs are small and constant, so you feel every one. The middle group is the dangerous one: the size of a fixed cost with the invisibility of a small one.
You pay €9.99, €12.99, €7.99 and €14.99 a month for four subscriptions. What do they cost you over a full year, in euros?
About €552 a year. Each one felt like a rounding error at signup, because it was priced monthly. Priced yearly instead, four small habits become one large cost you never agreed to.
Why is the sneaky middle harder to cut than either a fixed cost or a variable one?
You chose rent once, on purpose, and you feel every trip to the shop. The middle was chosen once and then never revisited. Cancelling it is a single decision that keeps paying you every month after.
To find your own sneaky middle, read back through a full ___ of statements, because some charges renew only once a quarter.
A single month hides anything billed quarterly or annually, and those are usually the largest ones. Twelve months of statements shows every renewal exactly once.
You want to widen your gap by €100 a month with the least ongoing effort. Which move fits best?
Recurring costs are decided once and charged forever, so one afternoon of cancelling and renegotiating keeps paying you every month. Willpower cuts need renewing daily, and eventually a day gets missed. 🐜
The rest of this unit
The gap between what comes in and what goes out is the only number a market can ever act on.