An overheard snippet of conversation while on the way to pick up Akra Jr from school today:
Bloke 1: … was 23 quid
Bloke 2: 23 QUID?! That’s half a day’s wages, mate!
Not a particularly exceptional conversation, I grant you, but it did get me thinking.
I don’t know what the purchase in question was, but what a great way to view money! I think most people have a cut off point, below which a spend is off the radar – the cut off varies in life and among different people – £10, £20, £30… below which the transaction becomes an impulse buy without it registering as “real” money.
So – if you started to view purchases in terms of the hours or days it actually took you to earn it – would your cut off point be much lower than it is now? It certainly makes a £10 takeaway feel a lot more expensive and extravagant…
5 responses so far ↓
1 Gert // 29th Jun 2006 at 7:46 pm
I had a brief spell working in a pub in 2000, and it made me view the cost of a round somewhat differently. Two pints was over an hour’s pay.
2 Kaptain Kobold // 30th Jun 2006 at 10:15 am
The converse is true; at one place I worked we idly calculated how much money we earned going to the loo for 15 minutes :-)
The job I currently have involves me doing out of hours call-out, which is paid at double-time if I’m actually called. My first ever call-out came at a time when I was thinking of buying an iPod. I was on-site for 13 hours fixing the problem, but I worked out that at about 3am on the Saturday morning I had earned enough money to buy the iPod …
3 Magpie // 30th Jun 2006 at 11:22 am
When I was working behind a counter, I always used to view customers purchases in terms of my wages. “They’ve spent x on their shopping, so that’s my wages for the day. Everything else from here on in is profit for the company.”
4 On the money at Littlemummy.Com // 30th Jun 2006 at 11:41 pm
[...] This post at pewari’s prattle is on the money. [...]
5 paula // 1st Jul 2006 at 10:41 pm
I’ve always viewed purchases that way, especially when I was younger. How long did I have to work to be able to buy X. It made it more enjoyable in some ways.
The only problem is when you count up how long at work you spend which goes straight to tax.
Of course now, as a SAHM I earn nothing, so that is that!
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