Archive for June 8th, 2009
Looking at purchases in terms of “cost per unit”
Do you ever do this? What do I mean? I mean, for example, the other day we bought some mugs to replace the ones we bought between 6-10 years ago. Big mugs for tea, but being a fussy Englishman I find the tea tastes better when it is in a proper “bone china” mug and not one of those stone things that gives you tennis elbow! Something like these from DUNOON is what we bought.
Anyway, my tea-mug fussiness is not the point. What is the point is that, staggered by the 500+ PLN total cost of few mugs, I found myself working out how much that’s going to cost me to use the mug each time I have a cup of tea. ;-/
These mugs would only be used for tea, at home, in the afternoon/evening. Mornings are coffee and different mugs, oczy-vista! So, we might get through 5 mugs of tea a day between us on average, exclude holidays and other times when we’re not home and we might have 300 days x five mugs a day = 1,500 uses per annum. Allowing a lifespan of five years that’s 7,500 total uses for this investment. That’s the same as paying roughly seven groszy every time we enjoy a cup of tea from these mugs or handing over a ten zloty note every month for “mug rental”!
If someone came to you and said “Look, I’ve got a good deal for you, you can rent these mugs from me for eight zloty a month” you’d probably tell them to bugger off and go buy your own, right. But you’d be wrong to do that, eight zloty a month is a good deal for the use of such fine bone china!
The trampoline is another example. Cost about 1,600 zloty IIRC. How much is that costing per hour of use? On average the use is probably close to 30 minutes per day. Some days not used at all, sometimes used by multiple kids for hours. Lifespan is guesswork but by the looks of it it might be as little as 3 years. That’s 1,100 days x 30 minutes = 550 hours use. 1,600 divided by 550 = three zloty per hour.
Again, if someone turned up on your lawn, set up the trampoline and proposed to charge you two zloty per hour to use the thing you’d probably tell him to get lost, but that would be a big mistake.
I don’t want to do the exercise for the Bravia & BluRay combo because I’m worried what the hourly rental is going to come out at!
Am I the only anorak who (sometimes) looks at things this
