constantly travel to exotic climes in
order to photograph himself doing
so. It is an exhausting existence for
mind and for wallet.
Therefore a proper understanding
of value for money is a must, and I
think I have an insight to share
which will change your life. It is not
about how much money you can
'save'. A reduction on ticket price is
a red herring. Buying a car for half a
million Euros, no matter how
magnificent it is, is never good
value for money even if it 'should'
have cost twice as much. You
haven't saved half a million. You've
wasted almost that much. Value for
money is about the relation
between the price of an item and its
actual value TO YOU!
Let me give you an example. I
recently threw a party, as all
gentlemen occasionally must to
'maintain social relevance' (i.e. to
avoid becoming a 'sad old loser').
And having as I do a pathological
obsession with quantifying the
value of everything (all my friends,
for instance, have an ever changing
percentage score in my head,
depending on how much I like them
at a given time – a good joke might
gain you a point or two, whereas
killing my dog would cut your
percentage in half immediately) I
chose to provide the party not with
the best booze money could buy,
but with the best value booze I
could find in the nearest
supermarket to my house.
So of course, the cheapest wine was
out – to pay three pounds for a
bottle of wine no one will drink is to
waste three pounds. But equally
the expensive wines (costing ten
pounds per bottle and beyond