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Saving (Part I)
Sep. 5th, 2007 07:02 pmWhen you make a purchase, how do you know how much you saved?
Sometimes it will tell you right on the receipt: The maximum imaginable retail price minus however much you spent equals how much you saved. Sometimes that's useful. I normally buy this one kind of cheese at this one store, so when it goes on sale, I know just how much I'm saving. But normally I don't find that useful. And not just because it doesn't take taxes into account.
I prefer to compare what I paid to what I normally would have paid. Sometimes that's easy. But hey, people are unique and ever-changing and unpredictable. Who knows what we would normally have paid?
So the best compromise I can think of is to compare it to your second-best option. And by that I mean your second-best option that you know about. If this purchase wasn't available, what would you have done instead?
Still, we have problems. If the book I found for someone else at that Half-Price Books sale hadn't been available, I wouldn't have bought it. So maybe I didn't save any money. But I'd still want to get this person a present, so maybe I would have spent more. However much more this hazy other present would have cost me is what I've saved. But actually, I'm probably going to look for another present anyway, because just an eighty-cent present seems like not quite enough somehow. So now I'm back to saving a negative eighty cents. Only now I won't feel overly pressured to find something, because I have this present by itself as a backup plan. So maybe what I really bought for eighty cents was peace of mind, not a book.
And that's why it makes sense that I often don't think in terms of saving. Normally I just think in terms of finding the best way to accomplish some goal, like keeping stocked up on delicious cheese or improving my options in clothing for occasions suitable for little black dresses.
Sometimes it will tell you right on the receipt: The maximum imaginable retail price minus however much you spent equals how much you saved. Sometimes that's useful. I normally buy this one kind of cheese at this one store, so when it goes on sale, I know just how much I'm saving. But normally I don't find that useful. And not just because it doesn't take taxes into account.
I prefer to compare what I paid to what I normally would have paid. Sometimes that's easy. But hey, people are unique and ever-changing and unpredictable. Who knows what we would normally have paid?
So the best compromise I can think of is to compare it to your second-best option. And by that I mean your second-best option that you know about. If this purchase wasn't available, what would you have done instead?
Still, we have problems. If the book I found for someone else at that Half-Price Books sale hadn't been available, I wouldn't have bought it. So maybe I didn't save any money. But I'd still want to get this person a present, so maybe I would have spent more. However much more this hazy other present would have cost me is what I've saved. But actually, I'm probably going to look for another present anyway, because just an eighty-cent present seems like not quite enough somehow. So now I'm back to saving a negative eighty cents. Only now I won't feel overly pressured to find something, because I have this present by itself as a backup plan. So maybe what I really bought for eighty cents was peace of mind, not a book.
And that's why it makes sense that I often don't think in terms of saving. Normally I just think in terms of finding the best way to accomplish some goal, like keeping stocked up on delicious cheese or improving my options in clothing for occasions suitable for little black dresses.