Would you pay $15 for a movie ticket? How about $45,000 for a Honda Accord? No? Why not? Well, the main reason is because the going rate of these two items are about 1/2 of the above mentioned prices. Well, if you buy soft drinks or snacks from a vending machine every day, you are paying that kind of markup on the product, approximately 100% (or 2x more). I am guilty of this myself, but not on a daily basis. But there are people in my office that purchase 2 to 3 soft drinks and 2 to 3 “snacks” daily, spending $2 to $3 dollars daily. Most of this stuff is not that healthy either, but that is for another discussion.
My work has a refrigerator that is bigger than the one in my house, so I could easily buy a 12 pack, purchased at Sam’s or some other wholesale club and put a couple in there every day. I could also buy a large 30 packs of chips, crackers or whatever kind of snacks I happen to like, at a wholesale club, and pay half or even less than I would by visiting the vending machine everyday. So if I make 4 trips to the vending machine everyday, and spend $2.00, I am now only spending $1.00 without cutting back on anything. $1.00 x 250 working days a year (if you are lucky to get 2 weeks of vacation) =$250.00 year. To earn $250 in interest at 3.5% you would need approximately $7,150.00.
That’s a lot of money needed to cover the cost of the “Convenience Factor”.
Vending machines are only one example of the “convenience factor” in our daily lives, such as buying coffee from high-priced places like Starbucks, but the truth of the matter is you don’t have to cut many of these things totally out of your life. Instead, you can frequently find a way to keep those things in your life at a cheaper price. You don’t have to cut coffee, soft drinks or whatever beverage you enjoy and switch to water from the tap, just try to get what you consume at a cheaper price, as often as possible.
I think one of the reasons we don’t look at some of these items is because they are such small dollar amounts, even as little as $0.50 from a vending machine. But if you add up multiple small purchases, day in and day out, the savings can and do add up. Consciously examining even the smallest expenditures in your life can result in positive changes to your personal bottom line.
How much is the convenience factor costing you?
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