Dog walk diaries: small costs

With a student today we were talking about large projects and small costs and how quickly things can add up. The ability to track them all is difficult mainly because, people's unwillingness to record them all. What seems insignificant to an individual to note can add up when 1000 people don't see the significance.

This isn't uncommon in life is it? My student is a pack a day smoker and in Finland, that is ~7€ a pack or, 2500€ a year. The average salary in Finland is 3200€ a month which makes his smoking habit approximately 3 weeks of work or ~6% of his income. Pretty significant.

Of course, smoking has other costs associated with it but there are coffees, alcoholic drinks, junk food etc that all come under the same category.

What is interesting is that breaking something up into small pieces is an easy way to approach a large task as it lowers barriers and makes it seem much more manageable. What I wonder is if it will have a similar effect to change bad habits, if increasing the size of tasks would curb behaviours.

In some developing countries where tobacco advertising is still allowed and laws are lax, they break packs and sell individual cigarettes. This encourages smoking, especially in youth who can't afford a whole pack by lowering the cost to smoke significantly.

What if people took the approach of buying their cigarettes for a year upfront instead. What if my student had a cigarette fund of 2500€ that he would need before smoking, would it change hos behaviour? Mist likely because not much can be done with 7€ (10 Steem) a day but, a lot can be done with 2500€ (3000+ Steem). If he had the 2500 in his hand, would he invest in the next year of smoking?

It is interesting to think about considering that that amount invested into Steem now would mean that if it reaches its ATH of $7ish, would be worth 22,000€. Up in smoke.

Of course, no one I know has ever tried this but in a world of buy now, pay a bit at a time lifestyle (with interest), do people really know how much they are spending and, what the potential cost of it is? Subscriptions to Netflix, a couple beers for dinner, a new TV on a 24 month payoff period, a car paid monthly. A hundred small payments for what is often unnecessary and doesn't add a lot of value to quality of life.

None of us can go back in time but if you added up all the unnecessaries bought in the last 3 years that haven't added value to you life in any way, how much Steem could you buy today? As said, people aren't very good remembering and visualizing large series of small numbers as they do not make much of an impression but, it is likely quite a lot more than you think.

Incremental payments put everything within our reach except, wealth. At least for the majority of the world. Incremental payments make a small percentage of the population very wealthy indeed.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(posted from phone)}