Comment by akeck

I do three things to cut consumption: borrow, rent, and "rent". "Rent" is buy high quality/high value, and resell for a significant fraction of retail when you are done with it. I learned it from a friend at work. She bought a Dell Deal high-end desktop with free monitor. She sold the monitor immediately, which covered most of her layout for the initial deal. Then, three years later, she sold the desktop for about 60% of retail. The items were being enjoyed by new owners, and she recovered the value she put into them.