About
Why Free Tier Life exists
Free Tier Life exists to help self-learners build cool things in the cloud without getting buried in cost, complexity, or generic tutorial sludge.
The mission
There is no shortage of cloud content on the internet. There is also no shortage of content that looks useful right up until the moment you try to follow it and realize it skips steps, hides tradeoffs, assumes too much, or quietly points you toward paid services the author never bothered to mention.
Free Tier Life is built to be the opposite of that.
This site is for people who want to learn by building. Real systems. Real patterns. Real decisions. Not glossy architecture diagrams with no operational truth behind them.
Why this matters to me personally
Before spending nearly three decades in consulting, I served for eight years as a military officer. That experience shaped the way I think about leadership, discipline, mission focus, accountability, and responsibility.
Since then, I have spent almost thirty years as a consultant helping organizations navigate complexity, technology change, delivery pressure, and the gap between how systems are supposed to work and how they actually work in the real world.
That combination matters. The military years taught me structure and service. The consulting years taught me that real systems are messy, constrained, political, hybrid, and often badly designed — but still fixable when people are willing to think clearly and build deliberately.
Free Tier Life sits right at the intersection of those lessons.
What matters to me
Practical learning
The best way to learn technology is to build with it. Not admire it from a distance. Not collect badges. Build something, break it, fix it, and understand why it works.
Clarity over hype
Cloud providers are very good at making everything sound simple. Real implementation is usually messier. People deserve honest explanations, complete steps, and real tradeoffs.
Constraints are useful
Free-tier limits force better thinking. They make you choose architecture deliberately, reduce waste, and learn how to work inside real boundaries.
Self-learners deserve better
Smart, motivated people are teaching themselves cloud engineering every day. They deserve content that respects their intelligence and their time.
Who this site is for
Free Tier Life is built for self-learners, builders, engineers trying new platforms, cloud-curious technologists, and anybody who wants practical guidance without surprise costs and half-finished instructions.
- People learning cloud by doing
- Engineers experimenting across OCI, AWS, GCP, and Azure
- Builders who like hands-on recipes more than abstract theory
- Technologists who want to understand tradeoffs, not just commands
- Anyone who has ever said, “I just want one guide that actually works.”
What you will find here
Recipes
Step-by-step guides for building and deploying useful systems on public cloud platforms using free-tier and always-free services wherever possible.
Articles
Deeper writing on architecture, delivery realities, cloud tradeoffs, and the practical lessons that sit behind the recipes.
Comparisons
Cross-cloud patterns and side-by-side approaches that help explain not just how to build something, but why one path may make more sense than another.
The bigger vision
Free Tier Life is more than a blog. It is evolving into a platform for practical cloud learning, technical storytelling, architecture experimentation, and high-signal guidance for people who want to build real things.
The vision is simple: help self-learners build cool things in the cloud, explain the tradeoffs honestly, and make the journey more accessible, more practical, and a lot more fun.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, welcome. You are exactly who this site is for.
Professional independence
Free Tier Life is a personal platform. The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of any past, current, or future employer, client, customer, or partner organization.
Build something cool
Start with a recipe, read an article, and learn by building. Free Tier Life is here to help you turn cloud curiosity into real systems and real skills.