This has not been a cheap weekend. i had to buy a slew of handles for the kitchen, 16 (so far) bags of various mulch, a new mattress and box-spring (to replace the 10 year old, HEAVILY SAGGING mattress we currently have) and a number of other things that ensures that i'm doing my part to spark the economy by raising consumer confidence. Considering that i regard myself as a cheap bastard, i notice these sorts of things.
Actually, let me restate that. i'm more of a Value bastard.
i'm not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past 20 or so years, folks seemed to have confused "value" with "cheap". Maybe it was those various "val-u packs" of discount (and unfortunately water soluble) toothbrushes they have at CostCo, or maybe it was the "Buy two Mercedes C-330's and get $5 off!" coupons in the mail, but somewhere we seem to have lost sense of what a thing's actual worth is.
For the most part, i try to recognize that when i'm in the purchasing mood for a widget, i do some research to determine the manufacturing price of said widget, then tack on a fair sum to compensate for non-manufacturing prices. For instance, for the mattress, i knew that the model i was interested in cost $600. It was "clearance" priced at $800 (Ok, granted, that's still around 4x manufacturing cost, but i'm not in control of that), but i was willing to pay the additional price because the person i was dealing with was not high pressure and actually went out of her way at the onset to save me the cost of purchasing a mattress to begin with. Sure, i could have played games and haggled around, but i felt that the final price and the assurance of actually being able to sleep more than an hour or two at night was well worth the cost. In other words, the mattress was valuable to me so i was willing to pay the cost.
See, that's the thing. Value isn't about being the cheapest. Value is about balancing the worth of something against the costs. Sometimes it's good, othertimes it's not. That's how you determine your value of things and what price you feel it's worth paying.
If i learned anything from a year and a half of economics (before i saned up and transfered over to CS), it's that. Or maybe it's double entry book-keeping. Or possibly that "Everything" bagels never really do include "everything" because who'd want a garlic, salt, onion, pumpernickel, cranberry, raisin bagel with chocolate chips, jalapeños and poppy seeds?
Obviously i didn't get a lot of value out of those years in Business school.
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justin2009-07-12 20:33:46I guess there's a value in getting chumped and learning from your mistakes, but it's even better to learn from somebody else's.
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Shep2009-07-13 04:28:11There's an interesting aspect of poverty theory which basically runs along the logic that wealthier people pay less for stuff, long term, than less wealthy people. If you can afford $800 for a mattress that will last 20 years, for instance, you're better off in the long run than people that can only scrape together $200 for a mattress that will die in two years. My core concern for purchases now is longevity -- I try to look at anything that's not direct food or entertainment as an investment, and if it's something that I won't use in ten years or that will break in a few months, I try to abstain. This has kept me away from console gaming, which I kind of regret sometimes but on balance is probably a good thing.
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Andrew S2009-07-26 09:49:14That's just poor sales work. For a mattress you're supposed to say, "You're going to spend a third of your life in this thing, so why not spend a third of your income and buy the best?"
