For as long as I can remember my computer has been yelling at me that my iCloud account was almost out of space. Every time it would, I would dutifully hit the ignore button and continue on with my task. This worked great until the past week.
To help run my family’s real estate business I have sheets set up in Numbers, Apple’s version of Excel, that are shared between the family. As I went to update the sheets this week, my computer stated that it would not share the documents because my iCloud was out of space. I could no longer just hit the ignore button.
I first checked the upgrade options available. Upgrading to more storage space would cost 99 cents a month. Thankfully this is an amount I can easily afford, but I realized that by just purchasing off the cuff I would not be being intentional with my spending.
Now, for those about to write me off as too cheap to pay 99 cents a month, I ask you to stay with me as I explain my reasoning and thought process, as it is not about the monetary amount.
As I mentioned above, my main reason for not immediately upgrading my storage was that I realized I would not have been intentional with my spending. I would have been making a financial decision in the heat of emotion, “I need to be able to share these documents now”, instead of thinking through the decision, since the documents were not needed imminently. Spending with intentionality is how I try to live my “frugal” life as I discuss in my post, Intentional Spending. As stated in that posted, “Intentional spending is powerful because it makes sure you have a purpose behind each dollar you are using to purchase an item.” In other words, it makes sure you are thinking about each purchase.
While one could say purchasing the extra iCloud storage would be making sure each dollar had a purpose, as I needed more space to share the spreadsheets, I realized that I had no idea what was stored on my iCloud account. As I went through what was taking up space in my iCloud, I realized that I was losing almost 1 GB of storage because my iCloud account was backing up my iPad. This brings us to the title of this post, “Check Your Settings”. My iPad is used to play games on, search for things online when I want a larger screen than my iPhone, and to watch movies on trips. There is absolutely nothing of value on it that needs to be backed up. So, I turned off the iPad backup and was able to regain 1GB of space in my iCloud account.
Another reason I didn’t immediately make the purchase is that I started thinking about how many products I use that have been yelling at me about almost running out of space. The two products that came immediately to mind were Dropbox and Gmail. Just as I believe, Frugality is a Muscle, that needs to be built up, spending is also a muscle that can be built up. By not making intentional choices, the spending muscle can be built up and spending become easier and easier. I realized that upgrading iCloud, without being intentional, would make it that much easier to upgrade Gmail and Dropbox when they yelled at me again. This would cause a $.99 a month fee to balloon to a $13 a month fee. While $13 is still an amount I can easily afford, I would rather that money go towards a drink with friends, as opposed to storage space I do not need.
Being intentional doesn’t just apply to finances. To avoid paying for more space in my Gmail accounts I have started to become intentional in what emails I archive. While saving every message that comes in and having access to them seems like a nice idea, I don’t really need to save all the store sales emails, political emails, etc. that I receive. It is thankfully just as easy to select the message and hit the archive button as it is to select the message and hit the delete button.
Now, with all the above being said, I have been thinking about making the intentional choice of purchasing more iCloud storage space, but as a business expense. Since it is necessary to have space for us to share the spreadsheets, and since storage space can be shared amongst family members, our business could use the upgraded space to make sure we do not run out. This thought would have not occurred to me if I had just made the purchase in the heat of the moment.
If you stayed with me and didn’t immediately leave after reading about the $.99 a month, I hope you have seen that it was not the monetary amount, but about the lack of intentionality that made me question the purchase. As Paula Pant of Afford Anything says, “You can afford anything, but not everything.” I would much rather delete emails as opposed to archiving them, and put the money that would have gone to storage space towards great food and drink!!
* Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
