Turning your home into a digital oasis doesn’t require you to shell out thousands of dollars upfront, nor does it require Geek Squad installation or hunting down your neighborhood tech whiz. In fact, the easiest way to get started swimming in the waters of home automation is simply dipping your toes into the shallow end and eventually wading into deeper waters.
Here’s a simple approach to finding out if home automation is right for you.
For as long as I can remember, Aldi has been my first choice for groceries. The only knock I had on Aldi – at least in relation to my three major values of cost, control, and convenience – was the convenience aspect. That’s where Walmart Grocery Pickup came into my life (as noted in my previous article on Four Focus Areas for Digital Frugalism). Over the last month, with the exception of one week of Aldi relapse, I consistently turned to Walmart Grocery to satisfy my weekly grocery shopping needs. While I estimated I could save about a buck on my weekly grocery bill by going to Aldi, I found that Walmart better aligned with my value for convenience. By my calculations, that 30-minute time savings more than justified the difference.
So in the battle between cost, convenience, control, Walmart was winning the battle of convenience, Aldi retained the cost crown, with the deciding factor coming down to control. More specifically, this meant the grocery provider I would anoint as my go-to moving forward would hinge on how much control the two gave me over my own life.