but promotional offers too. I ended
up paying about three or four
pounds a bottle, and was (as you
can no doubt understand)
delighted. The thing is, getting
quite bad wine for the price of
terrible wine is good value in a way
that getting nice expensive wine for
the price of still really quite
expensive wine can never be.
Admittedly the wine I bought can
only ever score about 50% on the
absolute niceness scale, but it only
need cost less than half as much as
the mythological 100% perfectly
delicious wine (and be barely
drinkable, in the way that 20% or
30% wines just aren't) to be good
value for money.
And the same principle applies
elsewhere. Value for money isn't
about making savings as compared
to imagined perfection. It's about
optimising the ratio of enjoyment
of a thing to its price. When you
travel, fly in economy. It's over in a
matter of hours, and if you don't
take pictures no one need ever
know. It's just as good as first class
at getting you to your destination,
and it costs half as much or less.
Sure there are perks to higher
classes of travel, but in the grand
scheme of things they don't add up.
Eschew them.
Clothing is similar. A thousand Euro
t-shirt can never represent good
value as long as a ten Euro
equivalent, paired with a few bold
accessories and the right attitude,
is available. Does it cover your skin?
Does it look wonderful? These are
the questions that matter. And the
best way to answer them in the
affirmative is rarely if ever to scale
the price up by 100.
Save yourself money for the things
that matter by weighing cost
against your actual experience of
enjoyment of an item or service.
You'll be a better, bolder, richer
version of yourself in no time.
Sleeves Magazine