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I find I do this all the time. For instance, if I'm out of town for the day, I'd think nothing of spending $10 at Wendy's for lunch. But somehow spending $8 f
by colomon 15y ago
I find I do this all the time. For instance, if I'm out of town for the day, I'd think nothing of spending $10 at Wendy's for lunch. But somehow spending $8 for an MP3 album I've wanted badly for months is an extravagance.
For me, part of the problem is family budgeting. As long as I only do it a few times a month, I won't have to justify $10 for lunch to my wife. Even though going with a $2 lunch and buying the $8 album would be spending the same amount of money, in practice I'd still be trying to justify the album purchase.
Clearly that sucks. But there's a pretty good reason for it. If we weren't budgeting, my wife and I would probably buy 20-30 albums a month, and that we cannot afford. So clamping limits on albums makes very good sense. But it definitely feels like it leads to non-optimal use of money overall -- we're keeping to a budget, but perhaps not spending the money as well as we could.
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoMore to do with marketing? I've told my boys all their lives "If they have to put it on a TV ad, its probably crap. Good stuff we all know about through our friends." Got to ask - you don't budget Wendy's? (Hardees is a better choice anyway:)
- colomon 15y agoI believe my wife budgets both restaurants and fast food. I suppose that means at a fundamental level, the problem is shifting budgeting from one line item to another is a PITA. I don't think it's anything to do with marketing. I just grabbed Wendy's as an example, but I also recently ended up at a relatively fancy restaurant I'd never heard of before walking in their front door, and I spent more on a single glass of wine there than that album would have cost. On some level, I think it comes down to feeling like food is a necessity and buying more music is not. But at the same time, if you'd offered me the choice ("Don't buy the wine and you can buy the album") I'd have taken the album for sure.
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoThat is so true! If I consciously do the A/B comparison, I'd make entirely different choices. But I'm faced with one choice at a time. So the dilemma never materializes.