Ever wanted to buy something expensive, but feel it was a waste of money? Here’s a distinction you can use to figure out if you should.
Think about the cost per use.
The first time I did this was when I bought a fancy $900 office chair. That seemed a ludicrous amount of money to pay for a chair.
But I was starting to work from home and was going to spend 8+ hours a day sitting in that chair. It felt good and let me adjust it to ergonomics that keep me away from the Chiropractor. I concluded it was worth it because I was going to use it alot.
That was in 2013. I’m sitting in that chair now. I think it was worth the $900 bucks.
You can get more technical about it and figure out exactly how much you will use something.
For instance I have two pair of Thursday Boots. I probably wear one of them 5 days a week, maybe more. So that is 2.5 days a week. In a year that’s 130 times. For roughly 10 hours a day.
Thursday Boots are a quality product and their “honest” price isn’t cheap at $200. Their build quality is so I high I don’t know what the life expectancy is. It’s measured in years if not decades, and I’ll probably make a style change before they wear out. But for the sake of this bit of math, we’ll say I’m going to wear them for the next 3 years.
The Cost Per Use is ¢51.
That doesn’t take into account the added value of all the complements I get on how they look.
BTW the cost per use on the chair was around ¢43 per day.
