Living with it, is.

Let's say I want to subscribe to a magazine. So what do I do? I pay a certain amount and bingo! I've bought the subscription. One feels that the transaction is over. Far from over! Guess it's just begun.

If I am one finicky person (guess everyone, who pays any money, is) then I would want the magazine to reach my place at regular intervals. So here's an important tast post 'buying'. 'Remembering' the subscription. If you don't remember, then also it's fine. Just that the middlemen or whoever is involved might just play with your magazines and you might not get what you've paid for.

Let's say, at one of the designated dates, you don't get the magazine. Since you 'remember' the subscription, you blood will boil. You want to contact the customer service. To do that you need the subscription details (the date of subscription, the subscription order number, etc.). To recall these details, you need to have the bill handy. Which means you need 'preserve' the bill. So another task.

'Preserving' the bill is one thing but again you need to remember where (the place, the drawer, the shelf, the file, the folder, etc.) you've kept the bill for preservation. 'Remembering the place of preservation' is yet another task and a bigger task than 'preserving'.

Let's say now, you want a change in the address where the magazine gets delivered. Again you might have to put in a request. Depending on the policies of the publication company, you might have to call or email or give a handwritten letter. So yet another task. Of course, these tasks are contingent and unforeseeable, but they come up nonetheless.

You would say, why bother for such things. If you don't, it simply means you pay the money but don't care about what you get in return for that money. Akin to fooling yourself, isn't it?

Living with something that you've bought is a bigger deal. Not buying it. Buying is just a one time (and most likely short) process. It is dealing with what you've bought day in and day out that demands (most often saps) energy and attention.

Take care before you buy. After you buy, there's very little choice.