How Much Are Your Habits Really Worth?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Alas, even large sums rarely become a reason to give up a habit - harmful or not. But the money spent on it could bring you much more benefit than you think.

Habits take a lot of money. Many even try to calculate how much is spent on this or that little thing every month. This rarely motivates you to give up a bad habit or a small, meaningless purchase.

From the point of view of economics, in this case it is necessary to apply a different concept - not "direct costs", but "". It would be correct to count not how much was spent, but how much was lost. Money donated to cigarette makers or coffee shops could be deposited in a bank account. But you never know what can be done with them by investing correctly!

Let's say you like to drink coffee and eat muffins in one of the nearby coffee shops. Let's say that it takes about 850 rubles per week, or $ 14 at the current exchange rate (and just one cupcake and a cup of coffee before or after work). This is about $ 728 per year, or almost 41,000 rubles.

But what if you invest this money at interest? Over the course of two years, ditching cupcake and coffee will bring you nearly $ 1,500. How much more could you earn? Hugh Chow, a system administrator at the University of Washington, has developed a "bun calculator" that lets you know how much savings on low costs can bring over time.

I was once interviewed by Sharon Rosenberg, who confessed her love for cupcakes. $ 2.75 three times a week. Then I realized that she eats up the equivalent of a new Dell desktop with a monitor every year!

Hugh Chow

Of course, muffin in a calculator means any expense per habit. You just need to enter a one-time cost (Gourmet Muffin price), the number of costs per week (Muffin eaten per week), select a time period in years and indicate the percentage at which the money will be invested.