$50 for a pair of jeans.
£100 for a pair of shoes.
£250 for a smartphone – if you’re thrifty.
The prices of these and many other things make me wince when I think about buying new ones, but they probably shouldn’t.
Imagine there was a toll booth just inside your front door, and you had to put money in a box to rent each of those items each day you used them. What are they worth? Would you pay a pound to have shoes on your feet for the day? That sounds like a good deal to me. How about putting a dollar in the box to be able to use your smartphone?
Let’s say you wear those shoes three times a week for eight hours, and they last you a couple of years. That’s three-hundred-and-twelve days of use, at 32 pence per day – four pence an hour.
Jeans are cheaper still.
And the smartphone? Let’s say a very conservative two hours a day of some kind of use (in my case emails, whatsapp, podcasts, browsing, maps)… and at least two-years between phones (I’ve gone four years in the past, but my current phone is dying after two-and-a-bit)… that comes in at about 32p a day as well.* And that’s not counting the value of a phone even when you’re not using it – you’re contactable**, you can contact others, you have information at your fingertips, you can leave your address book, map book, reading book, audiobook player, newspaper and television behind when you go out…
That Moto G7power (amazon) would be cheap at twice the price.***
*DriverlessCrocodile’s Law: Many useful things cost about 32p a day. Your read it here first. Please write to me if this turns out to be true.
*Okayokayokay, you need to factor in the cost of data, but the point still stands.
**Not necessarily desirable
***And why not throw in a pair of JBL Endurance Run or Sprint headphones (amazon) while you’re at it? DriverlessCrocodile Podcast Guest Victoria Patience was right, they’re great… but I wouldn’t stump up the extra for bluetooth.