How much does it cost to have fun? When making making most purchases, I often consider this cost vs enjoyment “principle” – I want to enjoy myself and not be limited by money but I recognise that money and enjoyment aren’t linked exactly and I can’t spend my way to happiness or can I?
When you increase expenditure on something you desire to get more out of it: “it costs more so it should be better” (and make you feel better). This doesn’t seem to be the case though a lot of the time. I’ve stayed in horrifically expensive hotels that are pointlessly decadent and, more importantly, entirely un-fun despite the fact that their rates were 5x other places nearby. Did I feel 5x happier? No. Did I have 5x more fun? No fucking way.
So money doesn’t exactly correlate to making things more fun or making you happier, a point well discussed by plenty of people smarter than me BUT there are frequent exceptions where increasing expenditure does lead to a more fun, and therefore better, outcome.
For example, when traveling, a bus might be 10x cheaper than an Uber but it takes twice as long and is multiples more uncomfortable so generally even at the higher price, the Uber, by virtue of getting you there faster and without having to deal with other people, is going to win here as cost and enjoyment align or are certainly closer to aligning.
When choosing somewhere to stay on holiday, yes, the hostel bed in a shared room of 10 people is super social and 3x cheaper than the private room but it is going to cause far far more discomfort than that 3x price reduction appears to alleviate – you try getting to sleep with strangers shagging and snoring all night, not fun. However, the hotel room that’s twice as expensive as the private room at the hostel likely isn’t going to be 2x more comfortable despite the major price hike, it’s also going to be unsociable as nobody, bar business men and hookers, meets new people in hotels, in this argument, if you’re travelling solo, the private hostel room wins. The cost vs enjoyment aligns.
I generally struggle to interact with people who don’t understand this argument and who always, no matter what, go for the absolute cheapest option and entirely neglect the possible gains of enjoyment from spending a little more.[Note: if you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money, I’m talking about misers not people who are skint]. You can have a better time if you spend a little more, in the right way. If you want the cocktail that’s a few pounds more than the others then get it and enjoy it, you shouldn’t allow small expenditures of money to limit your enjoyment.
I have wondered frequently where this desire for the cheapest thing comes from in people, I used to think it was people letting value-seeking-bargain-hunting instincts go into overdrive to the point where the real value was lost in exchange for the false value of something just having a low price but now I’m fairly certain it’s some kind of post-poverty mindset drilled into people who have gone from having no money to “some money”. Anyway, I may explore this in a future post.
In the meantime, I’ll remind myself that spending should align with enjoyment.
Sumb Luck 