Certain bills and expenses are deemed to be autonomous (or independent), such as electricity, food and rent, because these expenses cannot ever be entirely eliminated whether you have money or not. Even in the worst-case financial scenario, you would still need to eat and have a place to live. If a consumer's income were to disappear for a time, he or she would have to dip into savings or increase debt in order to pay these expenses, which is also known as being in a "dissaving mode".