I have been running the Examined Life for over five years. As I have announced, I am stepping back from organising and hosting it, and here I will try to explain what it costs and why I have made that decision.
But before I start talking about the costs to me, I should acknowledge and appreciate the costs to you: the time and effort it takes you to come to the events. I must say, without you I would have been sitting on my own at every event until I gave up. Your effort in putting in the time, showing up and supporting is very much appreciated.
The costs
In running the Examined Life there are three types of costs, plus a hidden one that everyone pays. I will list the group’s costs separately from my own costs of attending, since you probably pay most of those too.
Per-event costs. This is the cost in time of thinking up the next event, writing the description, finding appropriate artwork, researching the introduction for the event, booking the venue and making sure we have a place to meet. This needs to be done every two weeks, and none of it carries over to the next event. This is the cost of maintaining and running the events.
The cost of improvements. This is the time and money spent improving the Examined Life overall: the website design, hosting and donation links, as well as the Substack, which needs work and more articles. The Examined Life also has rules and guidelines for potential hosts, and other documentation that I have written and plan to write. I would also like the Examined Life to have a book-sharing library with its own rules, along with other side projects. I did buy the Examined Life painting to use as its main image, on the business cards, the website and the Meetup page, but I haven’t counted it here, because it stays with me.
The financial costs of the Examined Life. These may seem insignificant, depending on how you look at them. The Examined Life has to pay for a Meetup organiser membership, which came to a little over £330 for the last two billing cycles (12 months). This is charged in dollars, so it fluctuates slightly. There is also the cost of the domain and hosting for the website, a one-off order of business cards, a new fee I pay to writers published on the Substack, and little things here and there. I don’t keep a close eye on these, as some are shared with my other projects, but from September 2025 to September 2026 they came to about £80.
Finally, there is the hidden cost that everyone pays: the cost of showing up. This isn’t really an Examined Life cost, since the group doesn’t pay it, but it is worth keeping in mind. The difference is that you can choose not to pay it, while as the organiser I can’t. It has two parts.
The first is the opportunity cost. By choosing to show up at the Examined Life, you can’t be in other places doing other things. I have less freedom there, as I am the organiser and the host; unless I am there, or arrange for someone else to host, the event doesn’t happen.
The second is the financial cost of showing up. For me, this includes £7.40 to £12 per event in travel and at least two drinks at about £3.40 each. I don’t keep records of these, so this is an estimate: from September 2025 to September 2026, by a back-of-the-envelope calculation, it came to around £500, not including food. The real figure could be different, as I can’t track what I spent in cash or on my Oyster card. I also have to spend more than I otherwise would, because I am expected to spend money: I am the person who books the pub, and if the pub doesn’t see us as worth having, they will not let us book again (this has happened in the past with other pubs).
Income and donations
I have been subsidising the Examined Life’s Meetup fees by taking over as organiser of another Meetup group I attend. This is possible because a Meetup organiser membership allows up to three groups under one membership, which halves the Meetup fee for the Examined Life. I also host the Examined Life website on my own hosting platform.
As for donations: if you have donated to the Examined Life at any time, thank you. I am very grateful for your help. That said, donations have been lower than I had hoped, despite the effort I put into accepting several ways to pay.
Donations of time and effort matter too: over the past five years and 140 events, 17 events have been hosted by others. What that number doesn’t show is the help I have had writing descriptions and co-hosting some of the events. Thank you to everyone who has helped.
The numbers
As I have mentioned, not all of the costs can be quantified, but for those that can, here they are from 2022 up to the end of September 2026 (before then, the previous organiser was paying the Meetup fees):
Total income: £1,024.20
Total expenses: £1,364.25
Net balance: −£340.05
In 2025 alone, donations and income came to £620.01, and so far in 2026 (to the end of September) they have come to £314.79.
The rest of the costs, which make up the majority, cannot be measured precisely.
The scale of the work
To be clear, I don’t expect to make money from the Examined Life, and I never have. This section is only here to give a sense of how much goes into running it. These are rough estimates.
The events often run for six hours or more, but I have only counted three hours of that. Adding one hour of prep and two hours of travel makes six hours per event. Over 23 events, that’s 138 hours a year. On top of that are about £400 in Meetup fees and other running costs, and about £500 of my own spending on travel and drinks. This still doesn’t include the time spent on the website and Substack.
Why not sell tickets?
For those of you wondering whether I should just charge for events: this would have a few consequences.
It would change who comes. I would like people who are interested in an event to come without having to think about a fee. Once people pay, some will expect more, because they are now customers and I am being paid. I would then be the one dealing with complaints and disputes more often, even though I might only just break even on the money.
I don’t want the Examined Life to be one of the first things people cut when money is tight, as it was built with the aim of improving people’s lives.
It would also shrink the group. I believe ticketed events would cut attendance by more than half. Attendance in groups like this tends to follow a snowball effect. Below a certain number, a group stops being worth turning up to: people stay away because few others are coming, and so even fewer come.
I believe the best way is donation. If people don’t want to donate, a ticketed event would only discourage them more.
If you are interested in how much a ticketed event would cost in fees, Meetup explains them here: Setting event fees with PayPal
Why I’m stepping back
My part in the Examined Life started with the aim of creating an environment where people can find like-minded friends. This built on an idea that Peter (the previous organiser) had, which he called the Community Project. My only involvement at that stage was reviewing the manifesto before it was published. A few events in, the Covid lockdowns began. Peter was not interested in organising or hosting, so I stepped up as co-organiser in April 2021 and was the only host until mid-2022, when Peter fully stepped down. From then on, I set out to build a community I would want to be part of myself. This meant running events that people could enjoy and take part in without the pressure of endless small talk. And that’s how the format we have today slowly emerged.
Since the project loses money, it has to be rewarding in other ways to be worth the time and effort. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be worth it. This is not an objective measure; it is just how it feels to me as the person who does the majority of the work. The rewards of the Examined Life are shared by everyone who comes, but most of the costs fall on one person.
Like most people, I would rather not be the one who organises. I want to relax and be an attendee too, turning up at other people’s events without having read the description or knowing what the event is about. That said, I don’t feel empowered by being the boss of it all; I just have a certain philosophy about running a group like this. You can see the difference if you go to other groups and notice how they are run. In case it isn’t clear, I am not happy about letting it go, but it feels like I have been running it on autopilot, without much reward. I may come back after some time, but for now I need to step back.
I had wanted to retire the Examined Life name, since it would no longer be run by me or in my way, so that whoever came next could start fresh without any past associations. But it seems people want to keep it going.
Overall, I have spent a lot of time building the Examined Life, and I still have lots of ideas to make it better. But I am not sure whether that is the sunk cost fallacy in me, or the fear of leaving a perfectly good thing behind.
This was not an exhaustive explanation but a way to start the conversation. Hopefully, I have given you enough to think about.
Let me know what you think.
Saman.K