Personal Dependency Audit: What Does My Life Actually Depend On?

Dependency is not the opposite of freedom; invisible dependency is the problem

No one individually produces all of their food, electricity, medicines, communications networks, roads and financial services. Interdependence is a normal feature of a complex society and often improves quality of life. The problem appears when an important dependency is hidden, concentrated or so difficult to replace that we notice it only after failure.

A personal audit therefore does not measure how many things we do alone. It measures how many critical functions depend on one person, firm, device, contract, account or infrastructure layer. Someone may be materially comfortable while depending completely on one income, one bank account and one phone. Another person may have fewer resources but several independent paths and people they can rely on.

Freedom in this sense is the practical capacity to continue, adapt or exit when one route fails. It does not require total independence; it requires us not to confuse an essential life function with the provider that currently delivers it most conveniently.

If an audit begins by listing apps, shops and devices, it quickly becomes a catalogue of details. It is more useful to begin with functions: where I live, where income comes from, how I obtain food and water, how I keep warm, how I move, how I access health care, how I communicate, how I prove identity, how I pay, and who can help me.

This resembles the critical-function approach used in emergency preparedness. FEMA describes community lifelines such as food and shelter, health, energy, communications, transport and water. At the personal level the same logic is useful without disaster language: which functions must continue for ordinary life to remain viable?

Once the functions are written down, we add the actual providers, devices, accounts, documents and people beneath them. That reveals whether we truly have several options or merely several names that depend on the same underlying infrastructure.

For each function, map the chain from need to failure point

For each important function, record six things: the main route, enabling infrastructure, the key provider or decision-maker, the consequence of failure, the time until the problem becomes serious, and the fallback route. A card payment may depend on a bank, phone, electricity and communications network. A job may depend on one employer, transport, a computer, internet access and a specific skill set.

This step exposes chains that normal use hides. Two apps on the same phone are not two independent paths. Two cards tied to the same account and the same device do not create full redundancy. Two food sources supplied through the same distribution centre or road are more connected than they look.

The aim is not absolute independence. It is to find critical nodes where one failure creates several problems at once. Those nodes are the best candidates for a first small correction.

Housing and income: how quickly can the foundation disappear?

Housing and income are often the strongest personal dependencies because they affect almost every other function. For housing, ownership is not the only question. The lease or mortgage, energy costs, insurance, location, transport access and the speed at which another option could be found all matter if the current arrangement fails.

For income, salary size is not enough. The audit asks: does the whole household rest on one income? How transferable are my skills? How long could we function after an income interruption? Do I have contacts, documents and capabilities that could produce another temporary source? OECD work on income instability shows that many households lack enough liquid buffers to absorb even a several-month income shock.

A financial buffer is not a moral duty and is not equally feasible for everyone. Where it is possible, however, it is a form of time: days or weeks in which a person does not have to accept the first available condition simply because there is no room to manoeuvre.

For material needs, the most useful measure is often time to critical shortage. How much drinking water is available if supply is temporarily disrupted? How long can food be prepared without the normal shop or electricity? What happens to heating, cooking and refrigeration during a longer outage? Slovenian preparedness guidance explicitly notes that disasters can disrupt electricity, water, roads, communications, card payments and shops at the same time.

The goal is not indefinite stockpiling. A modest reserve primarily buys time for normal supply to recover or for another route to be used. The same is true for energy: a torch, charging option, alternative heat source or an agreement about where to go during a prolonged outage can be more useful than an abstract idea of complete energy independence.

the articles from “Local Economy Without Autarky” through “Energy: From Consumer to Energy Cooperation” already showed that resilience is not autarky. The personal audit therefore seeks a combination of nearby fallback options and wider links that are not all exposed to the same risk.

Transport, health and medicines have different criticality thresholds

Some dependencies can wait; others cannot. A person who regularly needs medicine, medical equipment or treatment has a different dependency map from someone without those needs. The same is true for a person without a car in an area with no useful public transport, a parent with small children or someone caring for another household member.

The audit therefore avoids a universal checklist. Instead it records what is time-sensitive: how many days of medicine are available, who has prescriptions and health information, who can provide transport, which route to care is the fallback, and who needs to know that help may be required. Slovenian emergency guidance specifically highlights regular medicines, first aid, contact information and the special needs of household members.

The lesson is simple: two dependencies with the same probability of failure are not equally critical if one becomes harmful in a week and the other in a few hours.

Digital access: one phone can be key, wallet and map at the same time

the articles from “Who Controls the Data About Us?” through “Artificial Intelligence: Tool, Adviser or New Authority?” showed how many functions have moved into the digital layer. This article now combines them into a personal question: what disappears if I lose my phone, phone number, primary email account or access to one device? For many people the same phone enables banking, multifactor authentication, communication, navigation, documents, work and digital identity.

A useful digital fallback is not necessarily a second copy of everything. More important is knowing how access can be recovered: backup codes, another secure contact channel, passwords in a password manager, copies of key documents and a recovery process that does not depend entirely on the device that has just been lost. CISA's basic guidance emphasises strong passwords, password managers, multifactor authentication and software updates.

Payments also benefit from a functionally different fallback. “Digital Identity and Payments as Control Points” showed why cash is not the enemy of digital payments but can serve as a different route during disruptions that affect communications or electricity.

Personal resilience is often described as an individual trait, yet many real fallback routes are social. Who has a spare key? Who can collect a child? Who can help if transport fails? Who knows something I do not? Whom can I help in return? A network of reciprocity is one of the oldest forms of redundancy.

WHO treats social connection as an important contributor to health and community resilience. For this article this does not mean treating people as assets. It means recognising that the image of a completely self-sufficient individual is practically false. Trust, relationships and agreed mutual help are real parts of a dependency map.

The audit therefore asks a question that financial and technical checklists often miss: who will notice that I need help, and who knows how to provide it? The reverse question matters just as much: who depends on me?

A fallback must fail differently from the primary route

Redundancy is not the number of objects; it is the independence of paths. Two phones on one network, two cards tied to one account, two cars without fuel or two data copies on one disk can fail together. NIST contingency-planning guidance stresses alternative procedures, equipment, locations and recovery strategies because a common failure point can defeat apparent redundancy.

For each fallback, the personal audit therefore asks: would the same event disable it as the primary route? If two income streams depend on the same company, two forms of transport use the same road, or all key accounts require the same phone, independence is lower than the list suggests.

This is one of this article's strongest rules: we do not need a backup plan for everything. We first need a genuinely different route for the small number of dependencies whose joint failure would hurt most.

Prioritise consequence, time and replaceability rather than fear

An audit can become an endless list of possible dangers. To keep it useful, assess every dependency through three questions: how severe is the consequence, how quickly does it appear, and how difficult is the route to replace or recover? Probability matters, but personal estimates are often imprecise, so broad categories are usually better than false numerical precision.

High priority goes to dependencies where the consequence is large, the time window short and replacement difficult. A regular medicine without a reserve can matter more than a much more likely interruption of a streaming service. One income with no buffer may matter more than several smaller everyday inconveniences.

This approach reduces panic because it does not demand preparation for everything. It asks us to direct the first steps toward places where a small change creates the greatest increase in room to manoeuvre.

Twelve questions for a personal dependency map

This article can be reduced to one sheet of paper or a simple spreadsheet. For each category, record the main route, its failure point and one possible fallback, then answer twelve questions:

1. Housing: what would happen if I suddenly lost my current place to live or access to it?
2. Income: how much of my household depends on one employer, client or income source?
3. Food: how long could we eat normally if the usual shop or delivery route temporarily failed?
4. Water: what is the fallback if the normal source is temporarily unsafe or unavailable?
5. Energy: which critical functions stop during an electricity or fuel outage, and what is the first fallback?
6. Transport: do I have a workable second route to work, health care, school or people close to me?
7. Health: which medicines, devices, information or people are time-critical, and how much time do I have to restore access?
8. Communication: how do I receive and send important information without the usual phone, app or internet connection?
9. Identity and documents: can I prove who I am and recover important accounts if I lose my primary device or document?
10. Payments: do I have a functionally different way to pay if the normal digital route temporarily fails?
11. People: who can realistically help me, whom can I help, and do we have contact information outside the phone?
12. Weakest link: which single dependency would disrupt the greatest number of other functions, and what is the smallest correction I can make within the next 30 days?

The result is not a character score and not a contest in self-sufficiency. It is a working map. If the audit reveals only one or two serious single points of failure, that is already enough for a concrete next step.

The worst outcome would be a long list that is never opened again. This article therefore ends with a small rule: choose one critical dependency and reduce it by one degree. That may mean a document copy, an extra contact, a backup code, some cash, a modest reserve, a second transport route, additional training, a small financial buffer or an agreement with someone nearby.

Once the first correction works, choose another. This is how Stage 10 becomes a sequence of verifiable actions rather than another collection of ideas. The purpose is not to make one person carry the functions of society, but to understand which networks they need and where they lack a realistic exit or substitute.

“Local Resource Map: What Do We Already Have Around Us?” will expand the same method outward. Once we know what we need and where we are vulnerable, we can ask: which of these capabilities already exist nearby—which people, skills, spaces, tools, services and natural resources are already present but not yet connected into a usable map?