When free stuff is better than paid products; when cheaper things are better than expensive those
Under capitalism, life is always easier when we make use of our money to pay for products or services. However, there are also things for free, which can be worse than purchasing, while some can be better. Based on my experience in London, I am here to list a few which are worth to not pay.
Note taking apps
There are free apps which are good enough for note taking, like Apple Notes (Apple devices), Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac), and even feature-rich Obsidian (covering almost all platforms) as they already meet our most important and basic needs of just writing in order to clarify our chaotic thoughts and figure our what we need to do next. Refer to 2025.4.6 On the myths of writing.
More powerful tools that need to be paid may contain too many features which we don’t need, and even distract our action of writing by having a false sense of satisfaction of, like building our digital garden or dashboards as what Notion can do.
Books
Most of them can be borrowed from our library, and ebooks can be obtained from an app called Libby. Many of them are those you can find in bookstores. When I need to read 4 to 5 books a month, I can save up to £50.
Walking and running to commute
Owning and maintaining a car is expensive, and public transport is expensive in London. It looks like walking and running can be painful and time wasting, but as a kind of light exercise, it’s good for our both physical and mental health, thus relying less on medicine and public health burdens.
There are surely other benefits too, like discovering more interesting shops and places, and more importantly, stimulating more new ideas for your life and business!
Bonus: When cheaper is better
Sometimes we find good free products, sometimes we pay more for more valuable. And sometimes, we notice cheaper can be better too.
Bus vs train
I have been going all-in bus and tram in London (see 2025.7.11 An experiment of going all-in bus and tram in London) for almost two months as of writing.
Buses (£1.75 for an hour) are much cheaper than Overground, Underground and National Rail services (from £2.1 to £4 per trip) but the former is much slower and less reliable due to road conditions. That said, bus allows me to understand the city and thus explore more places, and longer journeys allow me to do something like reading and writing.
Food
Pub like Wetherspoon has better quality food with comfortable dining environment cheaper than fast food. For instance, breakfast can be as low as £4.88 with hot drinks refilled dependent on locations (while McDonald’s one is around £6); the meal deal of lunch and dinner between Tuesday and Thursday lies between £6.96 to £8.46.
One-time purchase apps
As I said before in a previous post 2025.7.29 Why one-time purchase is always better than subscription on productivity apps?, one-time purchase apps are more reliable than subscription, because the former focus on core features and reliability while the latter is always trying to justify their business mode by giving customers an illusion that they are working hard to add features endlessly and have the so-called improvement, so that their apps become more bloated and buggy, and users will find it more confusing especially when the UI is changing.
Cheaper tools
Sometimes premium tools are giving people a sense of luxury but not practicality. That means cheaper tools are not necessarily worse.
There is something money can’t buy: your ideas and ways of expression!
Conclusion
I am not to say free or cheap is always good, or expensive is evil. Good stuff is independent of the prices, and expensive stuff can be great in some cases. There is something money can buy and fix, while some can’t be solved by money, like our ability to create.
I love the world without fixed patterns!
