One thing that I’ve gotten wrong for years when buying anything has been to always think about price instead of cost-per-use (CPU), but this is generally an incorrect way of thinking spending money, or even worse, time.
Wealth is found not in what you own but in how you spend your time.
Think about, for example, a cell phone. Phones can be as cheap as a couple hundred dollars or as expensive as several thousands of dollars. Most people will use cell phones almost all day every day (which is another story for another day), but for easy math let’s just say the average person uses their cell phone about 50 times a day.
That’s a lot of times using this little object per day. What other things that you buy do you use this many times per day?
The answer is - probably nothing, aside from whatever you use to complete your job, which is often supplied to you by your employer. Something used this frequently should be prioritized in terms of money spent on it, so long as it has a positive impact on your life.
Let’s say on average you get a new phone every 2 years, on average using it 50 times per day - this comes out to be using your phone about 36,500 times! That’s a big number.
Let’s say you spend on average $1,000 on your phone (which I know, is a big number compared to what most people probably do spend), this means you spent about $0.02 per use, 2 cents every single time you use your phone. That seems like a way better deal than the $14.05 McDonalds meal that you just bought last week, which comes out to a cost-per-use of $14.05, or the $52.67 tab from the night of drinking last weekend.
Yet, when it comes to eating out, a night out, or spending anything over $50, we tend to hesitate and cringe at the thought of spending that money when we’re slowly draining our bank accounts from these low cost-per-use transactions that add barely anything to our lives aside from a brief moment of satisfaction that is gone is to never be enjoyed again until we buy something the next time we feel hungry or the next weekend is upon us.
Of course there’s exceptions to the rule, such as your friend from out of town is visiting and you want to experience a new restaurant together, or you’re going to fulfill your dream of visiting Machu Picchu, your cost per use will always be 1 in these circumstances, so that’s up for you to decide what the exceptions are versus what purchases should be looked at with more scrutiny than previously done. Also, this principal can be broken up into cost-per-day, cost-per-hour, cost-per-minute, or any form of derivative where you think about the number of times something is being used in an effort to maximize your dollar spent to times used.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.