Imagine putting on a pair of shoes and having to pay a dollar to wear them today. And then the next time you put on the shoes, you had to pay a dollar again. And again.
Now, imagine putting on a pair of shoes and having to pay five dollars to wear them today. And then the next time you put on the shoes, you had to pay five dollars to wear them. And again.
Given these options, which would you prefer – paying five dollars or just one dollar?
I’d pick the one-dollar option.
This is a simple concept about figuring out whether the overall price paid for an item works out to be a dollar (or less) per use.
Let’s consider two examples:
Example 1
I buy a pair of shoes for $100. Super comfy and stylish. I wear the shoes for approximately 200 days. $100 divided by 200 equals 50 cents per use.
Example 2
I buy a pair of shoes for $10. Pretty but uncomfortable. I wear the shoes twice, get blisters, and donate them to an op shop. $10 divided by 2 equals $5 per use.
Even though the first option was more expensive to begin with, in the end, it worked out to be cheaper in the long run, and I didn’t need to go buy a new pair of shoes to replace the blister-inducing ones.
My thoughts:
I’ve been using this concept for about a year or so now when deciding to buy clothes. For example, if I want to buy a shirt that costs $70, I ask myself, will I wear this shirt seventy times? If the answer is no, I (probably) won’t buy the shirt.
I use this concept with flexibility. It’s not like I am carrying around a calculator and tallying every time I wear a shirt. I don’t follow this concept rigorously and I work only in approximates. And sometimes, I still buy an item knowing that it won’t work out to be a dollar per use.
Now, ideally, I would be buying items that work out to be less than a dollar per use. The $100 pair of shoes is a good example of this.
(NOTE: I won’t be buying anything this year, since I am doing a No Buying Year.)
The overall concept of this blog is to learn simple living to find financial freedom. This notion of a dollar per use may help assess whether an item provides good value for money.
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