The VR desk

Your virtual lifestyle is overleveraged.

You have cut back in the real world until there is nothing left to cut. Meanwhile your avatar owns a beach house, eleven outfits and a pet dragon. Our VR desk applies sensible austerity to the one economy where you are still, somehow, rich.
Virtual asset 1

Phantom calories

The strategy is simple: replace every other meal with a virtual one. A virtual meal costs nothing, needs no shopping and no washing up, and can be eaten in any world with a table in it. Our analysts were initially very excited.

They have since flagged one drawback, which is that a virtual meal also contains nothing. Our compliance department has therefore revised the strategy. Eat the real meal, the cheap one you made on Sunday, and then sit down with friends in VR and eat the virtual one as dessert. The saving comes from the real meal being at home. The phantom calories are for company, and they are the only calories that will never show up on your bank statement.

Two meals side by side. On the left a sandwich on a plate drawn as a dashed pink wireframe, labelled virtual meal, zero dollars, zero calories. On the right a solid glass meal-prep box of rice, beans and greens, labelled real meal, two dollars fifty, eat this one.
Fig. 2. The revised phantom calories strategy. Both meals are eaten. Only one is food.
Compliance

A note on phantom calories

Please eat. A virtual meal has no calories and no nutrients, and skipping real meals is not a saving: it costs more later, in every sense. Every meal should be a real one. The cheapest real meal is still the one you cook yourself.

Virtual asset 2

Downsize to a virtual condo

Your home world has fourteen rooms, an infinity pool, a private beach and eleven mirrors. It takes forty seconds to load and your graphics card sounds like a hair dryer every time you go home. Our analysts recommend downsizing to a one-room virtual condo with a kettle and a single, modest mirror.

Your friends will still visit. It will load in four seconds. And a smaller world asks less of your computer, which draws less power, which is a saving on your electricity bill. A small one, but this is the first time in your life that downsizing has saved you anything.

Two floor plans in white line on navy. On the left a sprawling home world labelled before: fourteen rooms, an infinity pool, eleven mirrors and a forty-one second load time. A pink arrow labelled downsize points to a single small room on the right labelled after: one room, one kettle, one mirror, four second load time.
Fig. 3. A typical client downsizing. The pool was never used. Nobody can swim in VR.
Virtual asset 3 onwards

The rest of the virtual household

Dining

Dine out, virtually

Meet friends in a virtual restaurant instead of a real one. Same conversation, no bill, no tip worked out in a panic, no one ordering the lobster and then suggesting you split it evenly.

Travel

Holiday in a beach world

A sunset beach world needs no flight, no hotel, no passport and no week of leave you were saving for the dentist. The sand does not get into anything.

Fitness

Cancel the real gym

If you already own a headset, a fitness game is a gym membership you have already paid for. Cancel the real one you have not been to since March.

Wardrobe

Avatar austerity

Stop buying a new avatar every payday. You already own a perfectly good one. Wear it again. Nobody remembers. When you really must, wait for a sale.

Hardware

Your headset is not an investment

It is a depreciating asset. The only way to improve its returns is to lower its cost per hour, so use the one you have, and do not upgrade it until it stops turning on.

Housing

Virtual roommates

Share an instance with friends instead of each hosting your own. It is the only housing market in which having roommates in your thirties is considered aspirational.

The numbers

Monthly savings, virtual household

For one person who already owns a headset, in dollars, per month. Figures are typical and entirely invented, like the economy.

Position Kept per month
Two dinners out replaced with dinners in VR Cook the real one at home first. See the note on phantom calories $80.00
Gym membership cancelled for a fitness game you own Only counts if you actually play it $45.00
A weekend away replaced with a beach world Averaged over the year $50.00
Avatar purchases paused Your current avatar thanks you for your loyalty $35.00
Home world downsized to a condo Less work for the graphics card, less on the power bill. It is not much. It is something $3.00
Phantom calories A virtual meal saves nothing, because you still have to eat a real one $0.00
Monthly return from virtual austerity $213.00