An interesting phrase that I have been attributing various aspects of my life to is "existence tax". How I will initially define this, is: Existence Tax, for a particular person, is the additional cost of living due to unexpected consequence. What quite do I mean by this? Instead of an explaination, how about instead a set of potentially embarrasing situations from my life? I mean, what else are you here for... So, one classic example for me is phones. My family will gladly affirm that I have had waaay too many phones. Listing them off: Samsung J1, Sony Xperia L1, HTC m8, Oneplus 6, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6a, Pixel 8a. Some of these still work, others very much not: My first ever phone was a Samsung J1, a cute little device with a physical home button and a couple capacitive buttons for apps and back. Re-move-ab-le battery (sighs dreamily). This poor fella met a tragic fate... All I am going to say, is that men's swimshorts should NOT have pockets; we are not to be trusted. It still somehow works after it's (salt?)water bath and has been upgraded to Lineage 14. My Xperia was a significant upgrade and I imagine would still be usable today if security and OS updates didn't stop. This one did have it's screen broken (to prove a point...) and then replaced by me, my first ever major repair I believe. HTC was maybe lost; oneplus was water damage and then had it's display layer melted by a toaster; Pixel 6a, cycling in the rain; other Pixel 6a was in my back pocket before being impaled by a fork co-occupying said same back pocket - I fall from a chair. (Was then self repaired and then broke again; cheap 3rd party glass). I'm currently on a 8a. Now, the price of these unexpected hiccups, I would include under existence tax. All of these "problems" were caused soley by me existing* and simply needed "solving". *(don't look at me like that, all of these were completely and unterrly not my fault). There were things I could have done to mitigate, but nothing here quite fits under a typical category. To give another example, purely for your enjoyment: Couple years back, one very stressed, exhausted Daniel was processing the every unlikelier Zurich flixbus transfer. Mobile data was out, with Switzerland not being in the standard EU telephone agreements, and it was very late in the day- no further nordward buses going from Zurich. With circa 18h multi-bus-based travel behind me, my brain wasn't quite with it anymore. Upon arriving, the frantic "how on earth do I continue travelling" was priority 1. Is my next bus already gone? Where was the train station? Do I need to pay for the tram? How do I buy a ticket? You know what didn't cross my mind... My suitcase. About an hour later, successfully on a train, it hit me. After around 3 months and a lot of quality time with flixbus support chat, it was magically found and I managed to pay for a shipping label to the UK with everything somehow getting through customs and arriving safe and sound. This, the time and the money, also comes under existence tax. I defined "Existence Tax" using the word "cost" for a reason. In life's different stages, cost can mean very different things: time, sentimentals, relationships, health, money. Replacing crucial tech, for example, means data loss, physical cost, and stress ran-across. The idea of existence tax could even be extended to things that didn't occur, such as missed opportunities. Regardless, we all have a baseline level of existence tax: when things simply didn't go to plan. Some people are very error-prone, sozusagen, where others may prefer not to share their mis(takes/fortunes). We all do learn to deal with costs of "existing" in different ways- double checks, backup plans, savings. So yeah, that was existence tax. An exciting area of consideration for my future budgeting self. This was a little bit of a shorter post from me; just sharing this random phrase I coined (because I can, and 'cos a friend told me to blog it). What are your opinions? Would you give this a different name? What ways do you mitigate your existence tax? Thanks for reading :)