Tuesday, October 20

Name the price out loud

Most money leaks happen because nobody says the number.

Key takeaways

Say the full cost out loud before you buy
Add shipping, tax, and the monthly to the number
Walk out and come back tomorrow if unsure

TL;DR

Most money leaks happen because nobody says the number. You see the payment, not the price, and the two are not the same animal.

Say the full number

The fix is small and a little embarrassing. You say the real cost out loud, to yourself or to whoever is standing there, before the card comes out.

Watch the number hide

Everything is built to keep you from seeing it. Twelve easy payments. Starting at. Six months same as cash. The brain hears the slice and never asks about the pie. So you end up with a thing you half wanted and a bill you fully have.

Then comes the math you do in your head, which is always generous. You round down. You forget the tax. You decide the old one was basically broken. The quiet arithmetic in your head is doing someone else's job for them. Pull the number out of your head and put it in the air where it has to stand up.

Photo by Osmany M Leyva Aldana on Unsplash

Count what it keeps costing

Price is not just the sticker. There's the insurance, the upkeep, the storage, the thing that only works with the other thing you now have to buy. A cheap purchase with a long tail is not cheap. Say the whole chain out loud and some of it dies on contact.

And be honest about what you're actually buying. Half the time it isn't the object. It's relief, or status, or the feeling of being a man who has his act together. Those are real wants. They just don't ship.

Let someone hear it

Saying it to another person is the strong version. Not permission, just daylight. Tell your wife, your buddy, your roommate the actual number and watch what your own voice does. Men talk themselves into things in silence and out of things in company. Use that.

If you can't say the number out loud without flinching, you already know the answer.

Today

Before your next purchase over fifty dollars, say the full cost out loud, tax and all, to yourself or to someone in the room.

Go deeper

Jesus talked money more than most of us would like, and he didn't start with guilt. He started with arithmetic. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" (Luke 14:28) Sitting down first is the whole move. Not shame about the wanting, just the honest count before the digging starts. A man who counts out loud is harder to fool, including by himself. And the money that stops leaking has somewhere better to go, toward people, toward debt, toward the ones who come after you.