How to Buy Things

Or, better put, how to put value on the things you buy. If you're like most stupid people, you buy things without any real idea of their value to you. You probably haven't sat down with a grocery list and written how much each item is worth to you. If you have or if you do, what you will probably be writing is an expectation of how much it will cost or the maximum you are willing to pay. While these technically are valuations, they're valued against a displaced concept of labor.

Try this method instead:

Put the item in front of you if you're at a store, it's online, or just write down what it is and look at it. If it's not visible to you, picture it in your head. Now ask yourself: how many hours are you willing to work right at that moment, at your normal pay, in order to acquire the item? Assuming you had no money, but you could go at your job right there and immediately get paid thereafter, would you be willing to put that time in at that moment in order to buy the thing in question?

If the item is less than an hour of work's pay, figure out how many you'd have to buy to equal one hour's pay and do the same experiment. Then just take the item value relative to that amount (1 /20th if 20 items equals 1 hour pay) and gauge your evaluation against that scale.

Is it still worth it? Probably not.

Of course, you can look at money in hand as hours worked in the past, and for many, this lessens the need for valuation. Don't make that mistake - your time is just as valuable today as it was yesterday (accepting that you haven't joined a political party or suffered a head injury).