I’m all for writers getting paid and $5 doesn’t sound like much if you’re not on a budget or you’re the type to blow money on fancy coffee or whatever.

Thing is, it’s not just $5. It’s $5 for Medium.

Then another $10 for Hulu or Netflix.

Another $10 for Pandora or Spotify.

Maybe you need Premium content on LinkedIn, so there’s another $30.

Then there’s online learning, if you do any of that, there’s another $20–50 a month.

Software for your job? Pay for a subscription to MS Office, for Adobe products, for Quickbooks or Freshbooks.

Want to read the newspaper? There’s another fee.

Any of the other apps and services who nickel and dime you with access fees.

Then you’re paying for home wireless to access it all, phone service to access it when you’re not home, and you’ve bundled a payment bigger than your parents’ mortgage back in the days when wages weren’t stagnant and inflation wasn’t rising.