The Finer Things

The biggest barrier to having the finer things in life is money, or better said the lack thereof. This is an interesting topic for a few other reasons. First, some people follow a very rigid rule of spending money: whatever it is you need, spend the least possible to get it. The idea is that you're saving money by sacrificing and becoming wealthier. I argue that it's rarely a tangible wealth. What is apparent is that you've chosen to reduce the your own quality of life. This is especially true when it's become a habit to never have the finer things. Does this also tie-in to self-esteem? I'm not going to rule it out.

To illustrate my point here's an example: I'm in the grocery store and I want to buy a jar of dill pickles, and there are 3-4 different brands. The worst thing I could do is make my decision by price alone. If I choose poorly then I've condemned myself to a rubbery, unpleasant experience. So I've narrowed my choice to 2 jars, one that costs $4 and another that costs $2 and is about 2x the size of the more expensive jar. At this point it is critical that you say to yourself, "I'm not a peasant, I'm buying the good ones." Trust me. Thank me. This lesson is best said, "You get what you pay for." The unseen costs of the cheaper are quality of life, satisfaction, and many others that are situation specific.

I watched a TED talk recently that basically had the same topic as this blog post. In it a wine tasting satisfaction study was conducted. Each participant was given 2 glasses of wine. The wine in both glasses was from the same bottle but the subjects were led to believe that one wine was very expensive and that the other was inexpensive. The participants were surveyed then to see which wine they preferred. Not surprisingly the majority chose the wine labeled with the higher price tag. The most interesting part of the study was that the brain activity of each participant was measured throughout the experiment and there was a significant increase in brain activity when the people thought they were drinking the "better" wine. I think there are two ways to interpret these results. First, the different labels had a placebo-like effect on the preference of the person. Second, the preparation of the brain before drinking the wine enhanced the experience.

Good news! Earlier I spoke of negative hidden costs of buying cheap,